Looking back at 12 years on the internet12 years ago today, I wrote and published my first blog post. It was a badly written piece about world affairs—among the topics I had covered were the Russian annexation of Crimea and the missing Malaysian Airlines MH370. Reading it today, I'm confused as to what I was trying...

A long weekend well spentI took two days off work this week—which is quite a rare thing for me to do—to fly off the Manchester. I go there quite a lot for gigs, and I feel like I know the city quite well even though I have never lived there. This was a quick trip. I flew there on Monday and flew back to Belfast on...

How I vibe-coded a simple catalogue appFor the longest time, my Blu-ray collection was catalogued on a spreadsheet. Compared to heavy-hitters on r/4kbluray and other corners of the physical media loving internet, my collection is unremarkably small (around 250 titles at the time of writing), and my spreadsheet...

Some thoughts swirling around in my head after watching the new documentaryThere are two kinds of people in the world: Those who don’t know much, or anything at all, about Jeff Buckley. Those who adore him to bits. I’m staunchly in the latter camp. The new doc, It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley, I felt, is for the...

A “quick” update that took a while It's been a while since the last iteration of my website, thamara.xyz. It was mostly text-based. I bought the thamara.co.uk and thamara.uk domains last year, and thought I should give this space a new look. I've refreshed everything. The homepage, the blog (which has now been moved...

Ready to be deployed at an ice planet nearbyBuilt our first Lego set this weekend. An Imperial AT-AT. Complete with Luke's snowspeeder and the tow cable around the AT-AT's legs. I have friends who are obsessed with Lego, and I have bought sets as presents in the past, but this is the first set I bought for myself....

Karel Bittner on Pexels A note on my favourite film genreAs I was walking out of the cinema after watching Akinola Davies Jr.'s wonderful feature debut My Father's Shadow yesterday, I started thinking about how my favourite films from the past few years have been about memory. Not just the exercise of remembering,...

An incomplete reviewIn this “review” that nobody asked for, I shall make a lousy yet sincere attempt to articulate my thoughts about the much awaited biopic of an artist I revere. If I succeed at nothing else I shall do my best to make it all about me. There are spoilers here, you have been cautioned. I don’t watch...

A short reviewNot that I was hoping to, but it is impossible to review this film objectively. My fondness for Dylan borders on veneration. I had the good fortune of seeing him in the flesh recently, his voice frail, gait faltering, yet somehow in my mind he still transcends the mortal plain and all its restraints....

Want to maximise your chances of getting the Wordle right? Try this.I discovered Wordle a few days ago. After spending some time with it, I’ve come up with a “hack” to maximise the chances of guessing the right Wordle. The strategy is to eliminate the maximum number of characters possible in 4 attempts, and to guess...

4K UHD Blu-ray impressionsRogue One is my 2nd favourite Star Wars movie after Empire. I loved it so much when it came out, I saw it three times in the theatre. I bought the 4K Blu-ray disc a few weeks ago and was pleased to find that the 4K transfer is every bit as good as I had hoped. The movie was shot digitally...

4K UHD Blu-ray impressionsI managed to watch my favourite Star Wars movie last week in the highest available quality. It’s of course as good as it has always been. I still think this is one of the best sequels ever made. As far as the video quality is concerned, the 4K transfer is quite good, albeit with a...