This post is a continuation of my series of monthly review posts - what I've been doing and all that kind of good stuff. Other entries in the 2025 series:

Iron Maiden!

I'm writing this on the train heading down from Glasgow. Last night I was at the Ovo Hydro watching Iron Maiden perform live. It was my first time, for my sins. The setlist was amazing, essentially a love letter to their '80s albums. Most of the band are in their late 60s now yet can still put on an energetic performance with some very technically complex parts. I enjoyed the use of staging, with the LED screens around the bands making brick walls, temple walls, cell walls, the hull of a ship as necessary. The band also have a new touring drummer from Steve Harris' side project British Lion, who had phenomenal stamina to perform this set at such a high tempo. Speaking of Harris, his son's band The Raven Age were supporting, and were pretty ace too.

Writing

I managed two blog posts this month - one technical and one more process/Agile-oriented. You can now read about how I built the Halloween Idler game loop and my perspective on prioritisation. Recently, I received feedback I recognised in my oral and written communication. These two posts intentionally improve on that. I'm not saying what it is!

Home

In the wildflower patch, the oxeye-daisies are giving way to beautiful poppies, although the leaves are lasting about a day or two thanks to the incessant wind. The cornflowers are coming through too, making for a lovely blend of colour.

The old foot's still hurting, so I've restricted myself to a very limited running schedule. I've purchased an exercise bike to be my main form of exercise and I'm trying to read up on stretching and pilates to try and complement the exercise. Problem is finding the time though.

Work

It's been a big month at work. My team, alongside our Networking department, have migrated our full AWS traffic from a vendor-supplied proxy/firewall offering to a different one that offers better networking management, service stability and a considerably cheaper run rate. We've spent the best part of a year performing engineering engagement, building up a new egress whitelist from scratch, and performing ahead-of-time migrations before performing a DNS change and a global firewall deny rule. We performed this change without customer impact and with zero downtime. I'm incredibly proud of this achievement and impressed with the team's dedication to doing this the right way: with safety, diligence and technical integrity.

Media

The Satsuma Complex by Bob Mortimer

I grew up on Vic and Bob's TV work such as Shooting Stars and Monkey Trousers, and I love Bob Mortimer's podcast Athletico Mince, so it is entirely unexpected that I enjoyed this book. At its heart it's a murder mystery, with the main character Gary Thorn becoming embroiled in a world of corrupt policeman. But it's also a love story, as Gary meets and falls for Emily. Bob is a great storyteller and this is a tight, well-paced story, told using Bob's unique voice. I must go back and listen to the audiobook to hear him to the voices.

The Hotel Avocado by Bob Mortimer

After reading The Satsuma Complex I dived straight into its sequel, The Hotel Avocado, in which Emily has moved to Brighton to redevelop her deceased parent's hotel. Gary still lives in Peckham, struggling to make the decision to stay or join Emily. It turns out the world of corrupt policemen and gangsters is not behind Gary, as the mysterious Mister Sequence tries to do everything in his power to stop Gary from giving evidence at trial. This continues with Bob's surrealist storytelling (Sequence uses packs of mince as a torture device), with a slightly more expansive and disparate story than the first. Another enjoyable work from Bob Mortimer.

Autocracy, Inc by Anne Applebaum

Unsurprising why I read this right now. The world is feeling less safe and more volatile, with outbreaks of war in the Middle East and Europe, alongside political instability in the United States. How far we have fallen this year, with ideas such as liberal democracy and the rules-based international order in tatters across the globe. Anne Applebaum explores the remaking of the autocratic globe, not as a fixed ideology, but as gangsters with spheres of influence:

There are no “blocs” to join and no Berlin Walls marking neat geographic divides. Many countries don’t fit comfortably into either category, democracy or autocracy.

and

Between 1980 and 2002, new kinds of states emerged, not just tax havens, but “bridging jurisdictions,” ... These are hybrid states that are a legitimate part of the international financial system, that trade normally with the democratic world, that are sometimes part of democratic military alliances, but that are also willing to launder or accept criminal or stolen wealth or to assist people and companies that have been sanctioned.

These dictators and autocrats prop each other up and run propaganda farms that undermine democracy around the world. A troubling but necessary read in these dark times.

The King in Yellow by Robert W Chambers

The King in Yellow is a collection of semi-related short stories, broadly referring to the titular play. This is pre-Lovecraft Lovecraft - the first Act of the play is fairly benign, although it instills an insatiable curiosity to read the second Act, which drives the reader to insanity with its visions of the mysterious city Carcosa and the gothic King. To be quite honest, I wasn't impressed with this collection of stories. It starts strong with horror and supernatural themes but these progressively disappear in favour of Paris-based romance stories. The premise is strong but the execution is lacking.

From Hell by Alan Moore

A writer of the calibre of Alan Moore has several works that could be considered a magnum opus. From Hell is one of those, providing a compelling and consistent interpretation of the Jack the Ripper Whitechapel Murders with typical Moore mysticism, conspiracy and intrigue. Graphic when it needs to be and always deeply humane in perspective, From Hell is a profound experience perfectly suited to this medium. Eddie Campbell's illustrations, with the subtle colouring added in the Master Edition, distinctly bring the work to life.

The theory revealed in the book involves a royal conspiracy executed by the Freemasons and brought about by the birth of an illegitimate royal baby. Moore's Jack the Ripper is Sir William Gull, a real-life Royal physician. The theory is, of course, discredited, but don't let that get in the way of a good story well told.

The Haar by David Sodergren

Now this is what I want from Eldritch Horror! In a short 200 pages, Soergren tells a creepy tale of sea creatures, capitalist exploitation and old-fashioned romance. A wealthy American Billionaire has bought the local government and police forces in a coastal Scottish village and wants to kick out all the elderly residents to make way for a golf course. Sound familiar?!

Muriel McAuley, a widowed resident in her eighties, isn't taking this lying down. Remarkably, she encounters and rescues a creature on the beach, who possesses powers beyond her imagination. Able to take on human forms, specifically that of her husband, the creature and Muriel become directly involved in the Grant family.

This is a story you can read in one sitting, that's what I did! It's dark, beautiful, gory and has a haunting finale. Really worth picking this one up and devouring it too.

Mario Kart World on the Nintendo Switch 2

The latest Mario Kart's here on the recently-released Switch 2 (yeah, I'm a day one-r) and this time, it's gone open world, with a little bit of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater thrown in. Rather than Grand Prixs being a procession of four courses with three laps each (broadly speaking), you now drive between the courses on a map. Additionally, there's an arcade-inspired Knockout mode reminiscent of Outrun. You can also freely roam the open world looking for coins, easter eggs and puzzles. You can do Everything - walls, rails, water - everything is traversable.

It's a weird game. Enjoyable. Frustrating.

I don't like the new Grand Prix format - it feels like you spend more time driving between the tracks than you do actually racing on the courses. This works well in Knockout mode, but not for Grand Prix. What this means is that you only really do one or two laps of a course. Some of these courses are great, too. Rainbow Road is a tribute to all the previous incarnations. Mario Circuit is now a fully-realized stadium, with pit-stops and standing stalls. Nintendo have worked very hard to make the open world as varied as possible - there's a winter area, a jungle, a desert and a volcanic region.

Driving around in open world mode is surprisingly fun. Dotted around are various challenges that vary considerably in difficulty. They can be races, blue-coin collections or really test the new 'tricks', grinding and wall-riding abilities in Tony Hawk-esque combinations. Each course also has ? blocks to find, which themselves reveal shortcuts that can be utilised during races.

Weirdly, the character selection screen places the many alternative outfits available for the main characters as separate character listings, and not in a consistent order. This makes character selection more cumbersome than it needs to be.

For me, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is still the definitive Mario Kart. It lasted over a decade and has nearly 100 courses - it was an evolution of the racecraft and a greatest hits. Mario Kart World should be commended for daring to be different, and I look forward to see how this game evolves based on the feedback.

The Pitt

The Pitt is a real-time drama set in a fictional Emergency Room (A&E for us Brits) in a Pittsburgh hospital, which is remarkable in its storytelling and execution. Each episode roughly correlates to an hour of a twelve-hour shift (which extends to fifteen hours because spoilers). It intricately weaves the commercial and performance pressures of a private hospital with the incoming and unmangeable demand placed on the frontline workers. Each of the hospital workers is dealing with their own demons, whether it's Dr. Robby's trauma over the anniversary of the loss of his mentor, Dr. Collin's pregnancy, and so on. In addition, the hospital has a new cohort of medical students starting their first day of training. And what a day it is! This is a brilliant piece of telly and I highly recommend it.