Finished reading Donald J Robertson’s Stoicism and the Art of Happiness. A pretty easy read and good introduction to modern Stoicism. If I had to give it one criticism I’d say it is a tad repetitive, I would imagine partly because it’s part of a Teach Yourself series. I will probably read it through again in a bit more detail in due course.

Delving into Stoicism, I’d not realised at all that it has experienced a resurgence in the last few years. Which I’m glad about because given I have a pretty contrary nature, I will often shy away from something if it’s currently a ‘thing’. The impression I get is, like anything that gets into the public imagination, it has attracted the genuinely inquisitive, but also bandwagoners. It also has its critics and I’m very happy to read well-reasoned arguments pointing out its flaws as I wouldn’t want to accept an idea without looking at it from all angles. And I’d rather read something of that nature than articles of the cringe-inducing ‘mind hack’ variety.

Stoicism has a lot going for it but also many questions. Which is fine.

Did Axel Scheffler invent guinea pigs?

I have ordered a handheld recorder.

I often use my phone to record birdsong or ambient sounds but obviously the quality is not great. Field recording appeals and I’d like to ‘collect’ sounds more. The kit that is coming means I can dip my toe into it a bit more and make some better quality recordings, all without spending vast amounts upfront.

My wife and I had the day off so we walked around Westhay Nature Reserve. So many warblers and so much sound! Numerous sightings, the most notable of which were the first hobby, common whitethroat and swifts of the year, plus house martins and a redpoll. Heard about 3 cuckoos. And good to see several pairs of great crested grebes and their nests.

With all the busyness of late, it was good to have a chance to catch up and talk over a few things.

I have this weird thing going on with the blog and Netlify. When I upload a post to GitHub, Netlify is set to deploy automatically. Now, the auto deploy occurs but doesn’t load the post. So I have to trigger a deploy manually, which works sometimes but not always. Hmmmmm. Time to get onto the Netlify forum.

I use Drafts every day. One of the many frequent tasks I use it for is saving links to articles. I’ve only just discovered that if I select some text in said article it gets saved in the draft as well. That is so useful - how did I not know this before!?