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

Category: Self

Weaknotes for f/e 21 December 2019

I’m still not quite sold on the utility of these weaknotes when my blog already pulls in tweets from the stream of consciousness of my daily life (of which I care to share) but I suppose there’s some worth in sitting down to take stock, and see what’s stuck from the previous days (or weeks). As for this past fortnight? Mostly depression about the awfulness of the UK general election. That and I’ve hardly seen the sun come out this month. More…

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Weaknotes for w/e 7 December 2019

Lots of work this week, plus a visit to the doctor and a trip to IKEA. Not a lot of time for much else. I’m still watching The Irishman, as it happens, but it’s not unusual for me to watch films in chunks over days so I wouldn’t read too much into that.

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Weaknotes for f/e 2 November 2019

This sudden change of seasons hasn’t been great for my health the last couple of weeks. And it is most definitely a new season: winter in Ireland starts in November and don’t let anyone ever tell you different. More…

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Weaknotes for m/e 5 October 2019

So I let a month go by. That’s why I went with ‘weaknotes’, after all. Bullet points required here, I think — just the highlights, the most remarkable that I didn’t already tweet or blog. Here we go. More…

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Weaknotes for w/e 31 August 2019

Today is Blog Day (3108 = BLOG) and I have little to say. It was a week that did not go as planned. But not all surprises are bad, as I did get the Unwound box set I ordered earlier this month in yesterday’s post. Here’s looking forward to a few days a week from now to unwind with it.

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Weaknotes for f/e 24 August 2019

Nothing to report from the two weeks previous to this one just gone. I was ill for a few days over the big wrestling weekend in early August (TakeOver, SummerSlam and the G1 Climax final, as if you didn’t know) and the non-drowsy decongestant I got for my sinusitis messed up my sleep pattern completely. So it’s mostly a blur. It simultaneously feels like a lot less and a lot longer than the actual time that’s passed. More…

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Weaknotes for w/o 4 August 2019

After my previous tribulations, I finally got Webmentions (or at least pings between my own entries) to display on my posts. That involved a lot of trial and error to find the right PHP code to display comments in WordPress, which is a lot more difficult than you might imagine. More…

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Weaknotes for w/o 28 July 2019

In the middle of another long work stretch, eight days that ends this Wednesday evening. But it also includes a press screening on Tuesday so it’s not all bad. I’m looking forward to having a couple of days off to unwind later this week. More…

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Monthnotes for Q1 2019

So, I dropped the monthnotes ball for a while there, didn’t I? But anyway, what’s to say? Xmas was Xmas. I don’t remember January. February was more fruitful than expected for the month also known as Freelancer’s Bane. March was more of the same. More…

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Monthnotes for April & May 2018

April was quiet enough. I enjoyed WrestleMania weekend, even if I wasn’t moved to write much about it. My Twitter thread is here, though you might need the context of the show itself to follow along. As always, the NXT TakeOver show was the highlight.

As I mentioned previously, April saw a few actual trips to the cinema for me, to see Rampage, Lu Over the Wall and The Breadwinner, the last of which is one of my favourite films of the year thus far.

I started upping my rate of movies watched in May, which I’ll elaborate on in a separate post. I’ve also been watching more streaming TV as of late. More…

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My personality profile, according to IBM Watson

Jason Kottke let IBM’s Watson AI system profile his personality via his Twitter feed; the results were mixed, to say the least. I gave it a go with my own tweets (you can try it too, with tweets or a body of text) and here’s what Watson had to say about me, with my own comments appended.

You are skeptical, inner-directed and unconventional.

Generally speaking, yes. But the degrees of each vary, I’d say.

You are authority-challenging: you prefer to challenge authority and traditional values to help bring about positive changes. You are solemn: you are generally serious and do not joke much. And you are self-conscious: you are sensitive about what others might be thinking about you.

Yes, no, and yes. I might seem sour and grumpy on social media sometimes but I’m not so bad in person. I’m just an introvert is all. More…

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Monthnotes for March 2018

My second feature for Bandcamp Daily was published mid-month, this one on a selection of bands exploring new directions in grindcore. Again, it’s not a definitive guide, nor meant to be one; it’s a selection of artists across a spectrum that have caught my attention over time, and which fit the brief. I’m very happy with how it turned out; cheers to my editor Jes Skolnik for their work in that regard. More…

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Monthnotes for February 2018

I already covered the beginning of February in my previous notes, and there’s little to report for the rest of the month. Time flies; sometimes there isn’t much to show for it work-wise. And sometimes the weather slows the country into shutdown mode. So let’s turn to some personal projects. More…

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Monthnotes for November 2017

November was a bullet-point kind of month:

  • Enlarged Heart Radio has been revived for the winter, with two shows this past month, numbers 20 and 21. I’ll probably have another one up before Xmas, provided my weekends aren’t too hectic.
  • I saw and reviewed Battle of the Sexes and Suburbicon for Thumped. I also attended screenings for three 2018 releases (or they are on this side of the Atlantic, anyway). My notes on those are just that at this stage, but expect my thoughts in the new year. More…

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Monthnotes for October 2017

I should be writing about October, but since the first of November has passed, I must note that it’s 16 years since I started this blog. It really doesn’t feel that long; a decade at most. I suppose it’s true what they say about time seeming to go by faster as one grows older.

Anyway, I don’t really have much to say about this anniversary other than I’m glad I picked things up again this year, even in the piecemeal fashion that I have. It’s good to carve out a space for oneself in the increasingly walled garden of the web. More…

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Monthnotes for September 2017

So, an eventful September as predicted.

The biggest news, both work-related and personal, from the last few weeks is that my Bandcamp Daily feature on Ireland’s heavy underground was published.

It’s my highest-profile writing project to date, and only happened because I decided I had nothing to lose by sending the pitch. I’m not exactly brimming with self-belief (the term ‘imposter syndrome’ was created for people like me) but this has been a big boost of confidence. More…

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Monthnotes for July & August 2017

Wow, summer just kind of came and went, didn’t it? Nose to the grindstone for the most part, meeting deadlines and whatnot. It’s difficult to write about here, as I can’t yet show the work. But that’s the problem with writing, about anything: every day involves countless little problems that, once solved, don’t bear thinking about. Hence two months since my last update. I expect September to be a little more show-and-tell.

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Monthnotes for May & June 2017

May more or less blurred into June on the work front, which is grand. It means I was busy.

Of course I did make sure to take some time off for Bee’s birthday (and mine, since it’s the same day and all). We overnighted in Dublin to see the National Theatre’s production of Amadeus at the Light House Cinema, which was well worth it. The play and the hotel; wouldn’t you rather have a room next door to the cinema (and enjoy a buffet breakfast the next morning) than rush across town with 15 minutes to spare to catch the last bus home? More…

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Weeknotes #818-820

Not a whole lot to report from the last few weeks:

  • My reviews of Lady Macbeth and Mindhorn went online. I’ll have one for The Red Turtle later in this month. I won’t have one for Alien: Covenant this week, since I appear to have slipped off the Fox press list. My press screenings calendar is clear for the time being.
  • I still have a lot of music promos to listen to. Also, I went to my first gig in forever the weekend after Easter, but I didn’t write about it.
  • I blogged this list of SST artists still going today. For no particular reason other than that I was curious about it.
  • I left my bicycle in the shop for a long-delayed service at the end of April. Turns out I’d buckled the hub of my rear wheel what with all the potholes Irish Water have left around town since last October, so a whole new wheel was in order. Once I got it back I took advantage of the good weather to ride out to the Cooley Peninsula. But my second trip, yesterday in fact, ended abruptly when I ran over a nail on the cycle path. Result: one exploded inner tube and one shredded rear tyre. So my bike is currently back in the shop. Sigh.

More current updates via my Twitter account, as always.

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Weeknotes #810-817

Well. The time since my last weeknotes did not go exactly as according to plan. But that’s nothing unusual for me. Here are the highlights:

  • A few print deadline scheduling changes meant planned writing was either scrapped or put on the long finger. Ultimately that turned out to be a good thing, as I made the time to wrap up my fourth Noises On! column for Thumped: long, long delayed, but hopefully you’ll find something of interest in it. Of course now it’s up, all I can think of are the records I didn’t mention. FOMO and all that.
  • Only two film reviews, as previously linked, for Free Fire and A Cure for Wellness. Scheduling conflicts meant a bit of a screening drought for a few weeks, but in recent days I saw a couple of late April/early May releases, and have another one on the agenda for next week. Still trying to spend less time with passable movies in my leisurely viewing, which has meant more TV than films in my diet; lately we’ve been flying through The Legend of Korra of an evening.

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Weeknotes #807-809

Past the midway mark in February now, and not that much to report:

  • My review of Hidden Figures was published earlier this week. I’m drafting two others that will have to be finished by Monday if they’re to go online in time for their respective release dates. And since I’ve got another screening on Monday morning, that means I’ll be working on those over the weekend.
  • Since I’m writing this weekend, I’ll wrap up my long, long delayed music wrap-up so I can clean the slate for 2017 before the clocks change. Yes, it’s apparent that I need a better schedule for this stuff, though it was a (blessedly brief) cold that made last weekend a write-off, productivity-wise.

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Weeknotes #805-806

A few things to close out January:

  • I documented the redesign of this website last week. The visual aspects came swifter than I expected; the scripting stuff caused more frustration. But I still got there within a matter of days. Since then I’ve tweaked things a little, adding a post format template for videos, and the FitVids jQuery plugin to make video embeds resize fluidly in tandem with the responsive grid; it doesn’t work for Mixcloud iframes, however, I think because they’re widgets drawing from too many variables.
  • Over on Afloat.ie I wrote up a thing on Annalise Murphy’s Sailor of the Year win. Usually my contributions aren’t as lengthy or as live-wire as that, writing up and editing and CMSing on the fly, as the quotes come in. That’s modern journalism for you. And I should sell myself more on it.

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Documenting the new design

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably seen my site’s had a bit of a redesign.

Well, ‘a bit’ is putting it lightly: I coded a whole new site template from scratch over the last three days, building on the Skeleton framework that a lot of people seem to be using (from snooping around their sites with view-source, like the old days).

It’s been ages since I’ve done so much web coding — more than three years since my last redesign. I think I’ve kept things clean enough under the hood, and it resizes nicely on my smartphone.

The new look was pretty much a necessity seeing as I’ve finally migrated from Movable Type to WordPress. And boy has that been a learning curve. Not so much using the CMS itself; I’ve become familiar enough with that posting things on other sites. But getting my own stuff into the system was a challenge.

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Weeknotes #800-804

Halfway through January already? I suppose I should write up something about the last few weeks, so.

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Weeknotes #796-799

I should’ve been posting this via a fancy new super-fast broadband connection over the national grid, one to which our new supplier was only too eager to sign us up and get us connected. Dundalk’s one of the launch towns for Siro, after all, and there’s quite the drive locally to get people hooked up. Our own connection was scheduled for eight days ago. But it never happened. Because apparently the clearance to the nearest electricity pole is too far, and our house is too low. Funny that, considering every house in this neighbourhood is a bungalow.

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Weeknotes #789-795

It’s well and truly winter now, even though the leaves have only fallen in the last few weeks. I think the snow in some parts is sign enough, if not the calendar. It’s also fucking freezing, but on the plus side, that appears to have finally killed off the wasp nest in the extension that’s prevented me from mowing the back garden since midsummer. (And annoyed the shit out of us with dying wasps spontaneously appearing in the house.)

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Weeknotes #788

So I’ve finally got the hang of changing down to the lowest gears on my hybrid, which means I can tackle those steep climbs on the road from Dundalk to Newry. And boy are they steep.

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Weeknotes #785-787

It’s been a productive September on the writing front, with seven (and a bit) film reviews under my belt so far. There’s bit of a breather for the next few days, as I don’t have any press shows on my calendar till the end of next week, but I have got a couple of screeners to watch this weekend, for which I’ll have my little notebook ready.

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Weeknotes #767-784

Summer went by all too quickly, or not quickly enough, depending on which way I look at it. I’m already missing the long days, as sunset creeps earlier and earlier with each passing evening. But the rotten stuff of life that spoiled days and weeks, I could’ve done without. I’ll trade daylight after seven for the knot in my guts, no question. Let’s see what the rest of September holds.

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Weeknotes #762-766

Well, April went by fast. Too fast to stop and take account, though on review I didn’t achieve that much. I watched a few movies and a bit of wrestling and a lot of anime. I listened to hours of podcasts. I read a whole bunch. I suppose that all adds up to something but right now I couldn’t tell you what.

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Photos old and new

Seagull in the sky

I spent a day or two over my mid-March week off trawling through my photo archive, going back quite a few years, looking for things worth posting to my dormant Flickr account. It turns out there were quite a few, and they’re not half bad.

I’ve grouped them into albums as I’ve done before to make things easier. Keep an eye on my smartphone shots, which I expect will be the one most regularly updated going forward.

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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.

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Weeknotes #757-758

Not the best fortnight for me, in fairness. Existential anxiety last weekend reverberated through the following days, and I’m foggy on the details, so they’re a write-off. Then as soon as I started feeling more like myself, it was head down for a production deadline. And with the hauntings of a cold and all.

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Weeknotes #755-756

Week 755 brought a modest web article assignment and some freelance subediting (a nice bonus for a short month) that continued into the following week, leading into three straight production days, and the requisite subbing, layout and hair-pulling (a bit less of the latter than the last few deadline, though). But it began with a full day of film screenings, one of which was decent fodder for a review (and which I linked last week; I’m doing better!).

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Weeknotes #753-754

My did the last two weeks fly by with little to show for it. My work hours were off schedule again, which always throws things for a loop. And Daniel Bryan retired, casting a unexpected pall over proceedings. But I made the time to spend a day out with Bee in the city, write up a film review last weekend (that I remembered to link here this time) and join in the #MWE fun on Twitter.

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Weeknotes #750-752

Not a whole lot to report for the last few weeks. I’m still playing catch-up on my music promos, and I’ve seen feck-all movies so far this year. I did have a few film reviews published but I forgot to blog about them here. (Sorry.)

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