Using macOS location on the command line
As part of reviving this blog, I had to update some of the support scripts that help me write it and re-develop my method of using macOS location APIs from the command line.
Ben Ward
Latest posts
No Magic, Just Music: Ben's 5 for 2021
What records even came out in 2021? Did any? Did I just spend the entire year playing indie rock from 1999 as a coping strategy? Is Feeder ’s Yesterday Went Too Soon actually the dark horse album of 2021? I could just abruptly end this post right here. While this year’s list required a lot more basic research to get the neurons firing, I do feel pretty good about the outcome.
The No Magic Roundabout: Ben's 5 for 2020
2020, right ? For its second year, No Magic just about endured the loss of live studio guests, and I still managed to play 1100 tracks and host 44 new shows. Musically, the trend this year was to play a lot more older tracks: Nostalgia and the familiar made for vital comfort in trying times. All the same, the show still featured 12 brand new albums.
A Kind of Magic: Ben Ward's 5 for 2019
It’s traditional at BFF.fm to publish an annual retrospective at the start of each new year. At the start of 2020, for whatever reasons around travelling and getting a bit lost in the writing (as you’ll see), I had only finished half the post. In the time since… well, what is time, anymore, anyway? While it feels slightly absurd to share a “Best of the year 2019” post now, seven-hundred-thousand…
Parboiled Kettle: Ben's 5 for 2018
Here we go again. In 2018 the Eclectic Kettle playlist spanned 1073 tracks. As we went through the emotional rollercoaster of compiling the final episode, pulling some of our favourite tracks we’d ever played, I feel really good about how our show ended up sounding. Now, with that final Christmas Day broadcast edited and cued up, just time for one more “Parboiled…” post for me to reflect on our…
Out of Time
At Christmas last year, I left my job at Twitter after seven years. A month in, I got the first instinct to write about one sliver of the real-time society in contrast to my newfound sense of space. (It took a little while to edit it for publication.)
Parboiled Kettle: Ben's 5 for 2017
In 2017, Simon, myself and a gleeful bevy of guests played 981 pieces of music on Eclectic Kettle. As always, the annual traditional distilling to just five tracks makes for a slightly absurd proposition. But with the consternation and relentless trial of a year tainted by violence, sex crimes and the smear of tanning spray, there must be some satisfaction in noting its end. There was great music,…
Parboiled Kettle: Ben's 5 for 2016
983 pieces of music were aired on Eclectic Kettle in 2016. Once again at the turn of the new year, I get to distill that into just five records.
Parboiled Kettle: Ben's 5 for 2015
A “Top 5” then? As I look over those last two shows of the year and try to think which of those records I would insist on taking with me to the next place it’s not terribly easy. But here are five that if you come here from space, or the past (or the future, Doctor) you might think that 2015 was a pretty solid year for this strange Earth-magic we call music
On Writing Well Enough
I’m a man who rather enjoys the idea of writing and the art of the field more than I act on it. I’m grateful to have read a book that might inspire me to take greater care over writing.
He Honks
Observations of leaving Goa.
Eclectic Brews
Lately I’ve had the immense pleasure of co-hosting a radio show with my good friend Simon. Besides being a good deal of fun in and of itself, it’s made for a challenging, invigorating shift in how I approach music.
There can only be Uno
I regularly host games nights. Sometimes we play intricate, grown up games like Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne (with expansions), Ticket to Ride, and the like. Recently we’ve been taken to playing …Uno. Here are some notes on why, and the large extended ruleset we built up to wonderful effect.
Silicon Valley through a PRISM
This week’s events surrounding NSA surveillance triggered some cynicism in the tech industry, but also carelessness and even hypothetical enthusiasm for the massive, untargeted collection of data by a government, and I find that quite weird. Along with the ever-present privilege bias of the place, it set me thinking about how desensitised we as developers are to the entire practice.
Building the Great Libraries of the Internet with a DNS time machine
We need to concede that though we can maintain the paths of URIs over the lifetime of a service, most domain names are unavoidably ephemeral. A two year registration to host a joke, a fifteen year registration to build a company. All will eventually be resold. We need to not fight the ephemerality. We need to look at the very heart of the web and apply the concept of the Wayback Machine to it.
Unsettling
Compliance means establishing routine. Settling in. Living in London, as I otherwise might under other circumstances. Not fretting over events outside of my control. It means finding comfort in these surroundings, and shedding the playful idea that you can go for weeks pretending to be a Londoner. After Christmas I needed my space, I needed to decompress. This year I did that in London.
Cold Comfort
I rather like the cold. I don’t like being cold, but I find great comfort in being warm whilst the world is cold around me. Scarves and woollen jumpers and thick pea coats and open fires. Watching your breath in the air while feeling snug all at the same time.
Free! Ben Ward
So it is that I find myself starting 2013 in London, rather than my regular location of San Francisco. Back on December 19th I stopped by the US embassy for a routine update to the H1-B stamp in my passport, but now I’m still here, having been held up in some additional processing with no specified duration, and very little information upon which to estimate the delay. Here are my thoughts on…
On Writing
Throughout 2012 I got to enjoy writing regularly for The Pastry Box. In illustrious company I got to join in the great pleasure of writing for an audience, writing to a deadline, and having people give me feedback on my drafts. I had a really really good time doing it, so here’s a short reflection on the work now the year is done and Pastry Box is handing off to new authors.
The Pastry Box: ▊
Concerning the mortality of all things.