Day 50: Update on Goals

2025 is now well underway, so time for the first update on the goals for the year:

• Books: This is on target - by day 50 I should have completed 4.1 books, and I'm somewhat ahead of that. My only slight concern is that my "to read" list contains a number of doorstop volumes, which may slow me down.
• Weight: There has been some limited progress in this area, but I'm not on target for the year. There's still plenty of time, but this does need to become a focus.
• Career: As I said, this can play out in one of two ways, and for the first half of the year I'm focused on the first of these. There were two windows of opportunity here, but the first of those has recently closed, leaving one other. I can't say any more than that.
• Church Website: I've made a very minor update to the website, clearing out a handful of unused pages. But I need to get some work done on this.
• Redecoration: No progress as yet. By the next update I intend to at least have a quote for getting the windows done.
• Blogging: This was not set as a goal, but if I had targeted the normal 120 posts for the year, the expectation would have been to hit 17 by now. As this is indeed the 17th post of the year, that is therefore on target.
• Home Automation: The other "not a goal" has seen no movement thus far. However, there is now a clear target in place, so I may be able to advance some of it in the next few months.

And that's that. In terms of goals, things are looking okay, but everything is in the early days at this stage. To be honest, I'm not expecting a massive change to anything for the next update, but as long as nothing falls to the "yeah, I can't do this" bucket that's not too bad.

The Next Bond: A Proposal

Every so often the news about casting the next James Bond flares up for a while, and then seems to go cold again. A bunch of names are in the frame, and then gradually they all fall out and it starts again. The latest news is that they're apparently looking for someone to fill the role for the next 5ish movies across 15ish years, so they're looking for a male in his early to mid thirties.

I must admit, though, that I think they're making a mistake.

The thing is, "No Time to Die" represented a fairly definitive end to the adventures of James Bond as-was. Whether you consider the Daniel Craig films to be a continuation of the previous continuity or being their own thing, he pretty clearly died. This gives the producers an opportunity to wipe the board clear, and start over.

What I'd be inclined to do, therefore, is to produce a number of standalone, and more experimental, Bond films. Do something unexpected with the character, and see how the audience takes it.

So, for instance, they could cast Idris Elba as an older Bond - if he's only signed for one film, why would his age be a barrier? Or they could see if Dalton would be willing to come back and do a much older Bond, forced back into action by circumstance but forced to contend with the fact that now there are people who can do it better.

Or maybe they could revert back to the 60's and show Bond in his pomp, or even the 1860s and explore how the situation changes if, instead of being an agent of a fading world power, he's an agent of the dominant world power. Or maybe they do a film about Commander Bond of the Royal Navy in WWII - something to do with the Nazis having stolen nuclear secrets, perhaps?

They could even use this as an opportunity to do the "female James Bond" they've been talking about for 20 years. I think it's a terrible idea (on a par with a "male Jane Eyre"), but maybe they just need to get it out of their system?

Anyway, that's how I think I would approach it at this time. And maybe they find something that has real legs, and can turn it into a whole series. Or maybe they do a few, let a decade pass, and then cast someone we haven't heard of yet and start over.

#4: "The Maps of Middle Earth", by J.R.R. Tolkien (sort of)
#5: "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban", by J.K. Rowling (a book for Funsize)

Rebooting Buffy

Every few years there is talk of a reboot, reimagination, or continuation of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", and every time until now it comes to nothing. This time, it does look like the project has legs, helped by the fact that Sarah Michelle Gellar is on board to reprise her role.

Unfortunately, my position on any "Buffy" reboot is the same as my position on any "Firefly" reboot (or "Angel", "Dollhouse", or any of the rest): I'm not interested in any such project that doesn't involve Joss Whedon... and I'm not interested in any project that does.

#3: "So You Want to be a Game Master", by Justin Alexander

And Another Thing...

While I'm on the topic of streamers...

Netflix have recently informed me that they're increasing their subscription cost again. But at the same time Netflix are in the unfortunate position that they've already lost many of the shows that I've been watching, cancelled almost all the others that I thought I might want to watch, and now have one of the very few I am waiting for about to drop their final ever episodes.

In other words, I think Netflix may be joining NOW and Paramout+ on the "occasional" subscription list, leaving only Disney+ on the "permanent" list.

Boiling a Frog

I don't generally watch a lot of shows on Amazon Prime - we're mostly subscribed for other things, and most of what I do watch is elsewhere. But as it happens I have recently found myself watching two shows in sequence ("Rings of Power" and then "The Rig" - the latter I recommend, by the way), and the adverts have been bothering me.

For a long time, Amazon Prime didn't have any adverts, and that was good. Then they introduced the adverts, along with a surcharge to get rid of those adverts. But at that time the adverts were few and far between, and often they put the adverts at the start of the show and so once you actually got to watching you could watch without interruption.

And that was fine.

But what has been very obvious while watching these two shows is that things have been getting worse all the time - there are now more adverts, more interruptions, and those interruptions seem to be worse integrated into the show, sometimes even seeming to cut in the middle of a sentence.

I would assume that this is mostly about Amazon really wanting us to pay the surcharge to get rid of the adverts. And I'm quite sure that they do indeed want that money.

Except that I'm reasonably sure that it won't stop there - I fully expect them to start having people sponsor their various shows, meaning they get a dedicated advert before the show starts (or, perhaps, even during the show). And one of the conditions for that sponsorship, and one of the things done with other streamers where you pay to "skip the adverts" is that the sponsorship is not considered an advert, and so can't be skipped.

Basically, they're looking to boil the frog, to gradually turn up the heat to extract the absolute maximum amount of money they can from all sources.

But there comes a point where instead the frog jumps out of the pot. Amazon Prime is one of the weakest of the streamers (as I said, we're subscribed for other reasons), so maybe it's time to let it go.

Experimental Cookery 2025: Sweet and Sour Prawn Stir-fry

This one comes from Tom Kerridge's "Real Life Recipes", which is one of the recipe books I keep thinking I should make more use of and yet never seem to get around to.

Anyway, this one was quick and easy to put together, although I was rather nervous of the shallow fry stage for the prawns (large amounts of hot oil always make me nervous, and having small children in the house exacerbates the situation). In future, therefore, I think we'll probably skip the batter and the shallow fry.

In any case, the result was very nice, providing exactly the sort of sweet and sour combination we were expecting and hoping for. Like the sweet and sour dish (from the first "Hairy Dieters" book), the sauce is the key to the dish, and is really easy to make. And it was a winner - to the extent that I'm sorely tempted to drop sweet and sour chicken from my takeaway rotation.

All in all, this one was a winner. We'll surely have it again.

Something to Thank Trump For

The return of the Trump was always going to be horrible, and in the event it has been even more horrible than was expected. Although in hindsight it's an obvious strategy - change so many things so quickly and create so many outrages that the other side just can't keep up on what their supposed to be responding to now.

But there is one good thing that comes of this.

Trump has launched a number of trade wars, and threatened a number more. He's attacked Canada, the EU, made noises about annexing Greenland, and there's no sign that he's anything other than serious. That is, he's attacking his allies and trade partners.

And what that means is that those allies and trade partners should now be in absolutely no doubt: the US cannot be relied on to act in anything other than its perceived self-interest. That has always been true, but until now we've kidded ourselves on, pretended there's a "special relationship".

And that "special relationship", and the equivalants elsewhere, have been extremely dangerous. The EU is far, far too dependent on the US for its defence against Russia. Greenland hosts US military bases rather than looking to its own defence, Canada's economy and fuel security are intricately tied to the US. And, of course, our Trident system is tied in with US technology and systems.

That really needs to stop. If we cannot rely on the US, we need to look to our own interests and our own defence.

And that's a good thing, because the assumption that the big guy with the stick will only ever use it as we direct is always a faulty one.

Entropy

Our kettle died on us on Sunday. On the one hand, this was a mild inconvenience - kettles aren't exactly either very hard to get or very expensive. On the other hand, it's just annoying adding one more job to the list.

And, of course, it's unfortunate having to run out to get a kettle and spend the money just to end up back where we started. Multiply that by, well, everything and it's a constant annoyance of having to maintain everything, all of which gets in the way of making anything better.

Oh well.

In other news, and especially annoying, my car has developed yet another fault - after the type pressure sensors now finally seem to be fixed, it is time for the parking assist mechanism to fail. Another function that I don't make much actual use of, but which is installed and therefore needs to be working.

Sigh.