What I've been reading and listening to in May
Inspired by various people's lists of things they find interesting/inspiring, I thought I'd share a list of things I've found inspiring in May. As I've recently started running, I end up listening to a lot of podcasts to while away the time, so there's a fair few of those below.
Book: 'Show your Work!'
Austin Kleon (one of my favourite creative people) published this third book over a year ago, and I found a shelf pretty much dedicated to him in my local bookshop, so bought it. 10 ways to share your creativity. As a very sporadic blogger, I'm hoping the tips in here will help me write and share more.
Poetry: NewspaperBlackout.com
Sneakily leading on from #1, check out Austin's amazing Blackout poetry and tumblr of interesting things.
Podcast: Developer Tea Podcast.
“Developer Tea is engineered to be a highly-concentrated, short, frequent podcast specifically for developers who like to learn on their tea (and coffee) break.”
The description basically says it all. Short sharp bursts on learning, inspiration, motivation and creativity, interspersed with interviews with developers, usually around 10 minutes.
Music: Royal Blood, Royal Blood
Can't stop listening to the eponymous album from Royal Blood - a bluesy hard rock duo from Worthing, UK. Perfect to listen to after a hard day. Full album seems to be up on youtube.
Slightly crazy video for their “Out of The Black” with appropriate video from an Adult Swim animator:
Art: Brighton Artist Open Houses
https://www.aoh.org.uk/ - Brighton host's this event twice a year. I went along to the May one and ended up thoroughly inspired and wanting to create stuff. There's another one in November/December that I'll definitely be going to.
Podcast: The Tobolowsky Files
A long time podcast favourite, hosted by David Chen of Slashfilm and character actor Stephen Tobolowsky. You might recognise Stephen from 100's of films as a character actor, but his ability to weave together a good story is insanely good.
The strapline “Tales of life, love and the entertainment industry” is a pretty accurate summation of it's often thought provoking, moving stories.
You can subscribe on SlashFilm/iTunes, and a chronologic playlist of the music featured at the start and end of each episode (also great) is on Stephen's site.
Podcast: Javascript Jabber
One for developers only really - geeky podcast for the JavaScript Developer - lots of interesting interviews with developers talking through JavaScript frameworks and tools, plus their picks of the week of books/anything-of-interest at the end are always interesting.
Podcast: RubyOnRails
While I don't use Rails or Ruby professionally, I do work with/on a search framework for my day job, so find this podcast quite interesting to see comparisons of what others are doing in the framework world. Plus it seems to be just as much about JavaScript these days.
Book (Crime Thriller): The Hitchcock Murders
The Hitchcock Murders - great debut crime novel by Gavin Collinson (by day a Doctor Who producer). Fun, dark, twisty. Still reading it.
Films: Gone Girl and Ex Machina
Gone Girl: Dark thriller with Ben Affleck on good form, about a man suspected of murdering his wife.
Ex Machina - excellent Sci-Fi thriller about about Robot AI, something that is likely closer than we think.
News: The day's most fascinating news by Dave Pell
Great newsletter of interesting links to things of the day sent to your inbox, with an ascerbic wit.
Blog: BeautifulSimplicity.co.uk
My lovely wife Zoë got fed up with Blogger so taught herself how to use SquareSpace and re-designed and re-launched her blog which focuses on photography, life musings and crafting/vintage things, with occasional posts on where we have moved to. Inspired by both her general get-up-and-go, finding out more about how SquareSpace works over her shoulder, and her putting what she likes and creates out there way more than I do.