Items of Interest

Movies in 2020

#244
With the cinema becoming a potential arena of peril because of COVID, new movie releases were few and far between, and so is my selection of movies for 2020. Aside from re-watching all of the Marvel MCU movies in order, only a few movies jumped out for consideration this year. Top of the list is Ford Vs Ferrari (Le Mans '66). It came out in 2019 but I didn't get around to seeing it until early this year. For me, this film is a near perfect blockbuster.
Review

TV in 2020

#244
Needless to say, my TV viewing increased this year due to lockdown and some shows really did deliver the ideal escapism at times. Top of the list by far of the best shows I watched this year is Normal People. Without expecting to be, I was quickly worrying non stop about Connell & Marianne's many life issues and I was thankful to be able to binge watch this great show to forgo the weeks of anguish!
Review

Podcast of the Week: Tell Me A Story with Eddie Lenihan on Christmas

#243
Tell Me A Story with Eddie Lenihan is a podcast of stories collected and retold by Seanchaí (Irish traditional storyteller/historian) Eddie Lenihan. In his latest episode about Christmas, Eddie describes some of the older Irish Christmas traditions, along with some folktales about the magical time of midnight on Christmas Eve.
History
Life
Podcast

Netflix 40ms Bug

#243
John Blair, partner engineer at Netflix, published an interesting post about tracking down a bug in the Netflix Android application that was causing playback to stutter on a set-top box. Turns out an extra 40ms delay in thread management by Android was bubbling up to cause the playback to stutter. What I found interesting is the process of exploration using logging that John used to narrow down the delay.
Tech
Web Dev

The Podcast of The Week: Rhodes Center Podcast - The Fraught, Complex, and Important 'Economics of Belonging'

#242
The Rhodes Center Podcast is an economics podcast hosted by Mark Blyth from Brown University. In the episode The Fraught, Complex, and Important 'Economics of Belonging', Mark interviews Martin Sandbu about his new book The Economics of Belonging. The excellent interview covers the woes of the political and economic world and previews the solutions offered in the new book.
Business
Life
Podcast

Web Almanac 2020

#242
The HTTP Archive has published the 2020 Web Almanac, which combines the raw stats and trends of the TTP Archive with the expertise of the web community in order to document that latest start of the art on the web, from web development languages, to UX and deployment.
Web Dev

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