🎵 Song of the week for my daughter — How Soon Is Now? by The Smiths. A classic alternative song that still sounds great to me.
music
Go by The Chemical Brothers showed up just in time to get me through today’s tough ride 🚴🎵
Default app updates for 2026 Q1
Thursday, March 5, 2026
I’m making some updates to my app defaults.
I have three broad motivations:
- Although I don’t hate Liquid Glass, it is odd enough to motivate exploring approaches by indie developers. To be honest, I’ve really missed using indie apps, so this is a great excuse to make some changes.
- Many of Apple’s apps emphasize discovery too much. I like opening Overcast and only seeing a list of unplayed podcasts that I’ve chosen to follow or opening Albums and seeing colourful album art exclusively from artists I like. These apps are designed for me to access content I’ve chosen, not to upsell me on other things.
- Like many others, I’m accumulating some vague ickiness with Apple these days. I’m nowhere near switching, but want to reduce some dependencies. Of course, I’m still using lots of Apple devices and services, so this is a very small step.
Given these motivations, here are the changes:
- 🎧 Podcasts: Overcast
- 🎶 Music: Albums for listening and MusicBox for tracking
- 👓 Read It Later: Micro.blog Bookmarks
- 📰 RSS: Micro.blog Inkwell, discussed here
- 🗓️ Calendar: Finalist
- ✅ To-Do: Finalist
As I wrote, small steps and I’m not making a big deal of this. Just fun to explore some new apps.
🎵 Song of the week for my daughter — Don’t Swallow the Cap by The National from Trouble Will Find Me. Likely my favourite song from them.
🎵 Song of the week for my daughter — Don’t Swallow the Cap by The National from Trouble Will Find Me. Likely my favourite song from them.
Losing Everything (feat. Anaïs Mitchell) by Donovan Woods from Squander Your Gifts is a highlight of a great new EP 🎵
🎵 Song of the week for my daughter: With or Without You by U2 from The Joshua Tree. Kind of ridiculous to pick a single U2 song, but I chose this one.
🎵 Song of the week for my daughter: With or Without You by U2 from The Joshua Tree. Kind of ridiculous to pick a single U2 song, but I chose this one.
🚴 Worldwide by Snõõper got me through some tough intervals on today’s ride 🎵
🎵 Song of the week for my daughter: Possession by Sarah McLachlan from Fumbling Towards Ecstasy
Wednesday, February 11, 2026 →
Boilermaker by Royal Blood from Typhoons helped me finish off a too early Zwift ride 🎵
🎵 Song of the week for my daughter: Weighty Ghost by Wintersleep from Welcome to the Night Sky. We listened to this one a lot when she was little.
When Our Friends Come Over by Donovan Woods & Madi Diaz from Things Were Never Good If They’re Not Good Now is a great song on a great album 🎵
🎶 Song of the week for my daughter: Cloudbusting by Kate Bush. She knows Running Up That Hill from Stranger Things and this exposes her to more from a visionary artist.
🎶 Having claimed recently that my kids have good musical tastes, I was chagrined when my daughter mixed up Peter Gabriel and Pearl Jam. Parenting fail!
As my penance, I’m now sending her a weekly song to make sure that her musical foundation is sound. These won’t necessarily be the best, most popular, or my favourite songs (though sometimes they will be all three). Rather, they will be influential to my musical tastes and worth her consideration.
Given how this started, the first song is Solsbury Hill by Peter Gabriel. There are plenty of his songs to choose from. I think this one is a great place to start.
🎶 A mention in a Pitchfork review reminded me that Spiritchaser by Dead Can Dance is great. I hadn’t listened to it in at least twenty years.
🎶 What the kids are listening to
Friday, January 9, 2026
A side benefit of my kids being old enough to drive, is that I actually get to hear their music now.
At home, they’re always listening with their AirPods, unlike when I was a kid. My parents had to endure our music: my brother and I both had component stereo systems with large speakers. Plus, we lived across the hall from each other, so we had to play our music loud, to be able to hear it over the other’s music!
In general, both of my kids have pretty good taste. Though, of course, some of the new music is too weird for me. I’m always pleased when I hear one of my favourites show up on their playlists. Evidence that I raised them right.
Wednesday, December 24, 2025 →
🎶 II by Voices from the Lake is good for getting focused
🎶 Great version of A Dawning at 9:34
🎶 David Byrne’s Tiny Desk Concert is great fun
🎶 Amazing, Rush is going back on tour!
🎵 Worldwide by Snõõper will wake you up
🎵Delightfully strange music from Patrick Watson on Uh Oh
🎵 Bite Down by Ribbon Skirt is solid indie rock
🎶 Some good, new albums that fit well together:
🎵 Although Secret World Live is my reference album for live Peter Gabriel, In The Big Room is quite good with interesting changes to some classic songs
🎵 I got distracted by the upcoming Rival Consoles album and missed that they already released an album this year: MindsEye. MindsEye Is more dramatic and foreboding. Both are good!
Budweiser Stage. 📍
🎶 Fantastic Mumford and Sons concert! They really know how to put on a show.
🎵 Songs of a Lost World by The Cure was a favourite album of 2024. The new Mixes Of A Lost World is a musical exploration of that album through multiple remixes.
1990’s Mixed Up was also a great remix album from The Cure. Robert Smith has a knack for these collaborations.
🎵 Great to hear a new Rival Consoles album: Landscape from Memory
