Hello, world. I’m MacDara Conroy, and this is my blog.


Weeknotes #759-761

There goes March without much fanfare and, apart from the day job, little to show for it in terms of productivity. Not compared to my busy February, at any rate, when I ploughed through freelance work and the words flowed from my fingertips.

I haven’t even written about the Music Writers Exercise (or #MWE on Twitter) that challenged reviewers to listen to albums previously unheard, one for each day of February, and tweet a single line about them. It was a palate-cleanser and ear-scrubber in one, and I hope it becomes a regular thing.

Yet it also reminds me of the reviewing I still need to get off my plate, because I keep putting it on the long finger. I think I need to catch myself off guard; lately I seem to get more thoughts out of my brain and into computer glyphs when I don’t plan on it. Besides, I can’t really call myself a music writer if I’m not writing about music, can I? Still, procrastination has other rewards, as I found the impetus to dust off my Flickr account with a couple of hundred uploads over the last week or so.

Remember I talked about moving to Google Photos? Well, the problem is that Google Photos sucks for the kind of thing Flickr does so well, that being defaulting to permalinked, publicly accessible images and galleries.

Closer reading of the ‘death of Flickr’ press that went around in mid March also reveals what’s really a storm in a teacup: they’ve moved a service that I haven’t used in years if ever (batch uploading) to the paid tier. It’s no skin off my nose.

Also, boo to that kind of self-absorbed tech reporting, the same attitude behind pieces moaning about the iPhone SE being ‘tiny’ when that form factor was the largest iPhone in the line not even two years ago. I’m looking forward to upgrading this month when my network finally gets them.

Healthwise, my weight stayed pretty constant throughout March, but since I’ve been tracking everything I eat the reason is clear: I ate too much. But I ate well, so it was a fair enough trade-off. April should be back to normal, with no holidays to interrupt the schedule. Plus I’ve started doing DDP Yoga. Yes, me doing yoga! Well, I thought since the gym doesn’t suit me and I don’t have proper walking shoes and I’m still a week or two away from a new bicycle, I ought to do something.

With only four sessions done as I write, I can’t judge it much other than to note that my lower abs have stopped hurting after day one, but we’ll see how it goes. In the meantime, forget April Fool’s Day — it’s WrestleMania weekend! And yes, the exclamation mark is necessary.