My mood seems to have settled down somewhat. At least, things feel a little less bleak today. Last night I got a sleep score of 98 (thank you, Voltarol). So far this week I've managed to record some more music for 50-90, created a whole bunch of new banners for the blog (I'd run out of header graphics), I made it to the shops, and I got the lawn cut so I don't feel like quite as much of a dead loss as I did last week. But I need to practise rather more self care than I've been doing lately so I've been spending a fair amount of time just sitting in my favourite armchair reading quietly while listening to ambient music on Internet radio stations and as a result of that I've just posted my review of the fiftieth book I've read this year. I should manage to reach my target of sixty books well before the end of December.

And while we're talking about targets, my 50-90 progress has picked up again after falling woefully behind at the end of last month. I now have just four songs left to write to meet my target, which puts me about a week ahead of schedule. My current tally of 46 songs isn't bad, but it pales into insignificance next to my output back in 2022 when I had already recorded 100 songs by September 18th. But back then, I was throwing everything at the wall just to see if anything stuck; this year has been very different. I've been much more picky about what I'm doing and my approach has been far more considered. I'm not going to make any facetious statements about favouring quality over quantity though; after all, it's me we're talking about here. September is more about research and development and taking the time to delve deeply into the tools and techniques I have at my disposal in the studio. I enjoy learning what a plugin can do by tweaking and playing with settings rather than just scrolling through presets until I find a sound that appeals to me. So there's been a lot of tweaking and knob twiddling going on. Oo-er, missus.

I might fire the studio up this afternoon and see what happens. And the fact that I just thought that suggests to me that maybe I am feeling a little more like my old self...

Thank goodness for Voltarol, that's all I can say. After liberally applying it to my joints after bath time for the last couple of evenings I actually managed to get a couple of decent nights' sleep this weekend. On Saturday night I managed a remarkable and unprecedented 100-minute stretch of completely uninterrupted NREM sleep and that statistic on its own should be enough to convey just how shattered I feel at the moment. This morning my mood feels like it might be starting to stabilise. About bloody time, too. But I'm still experiencing an awful lot of discomfort. I'm a wreck.

And "stabilise" is not the same as "improve". I don't feel like doing anything today. Instead, I feel curiously empty. Not sad, not depressed, just—empty. Used up. I can't say that I hate feeling like this, because I don't really feel much of anything today other than a general lack of affect. Emotionally distant.

So even though it's a nice day outside and the sun is shining, I've abandoned my plans to go shopping and then do some gardening today. The studio will most likely stay powered down. I just don't have enough spoons right now.

I have just commissioned the presence speakers in the living room and to test that everything is working correctly I just listened to the In-Side Dolby Atmos mix of Peter Gabriel's latest album i/o. Holy moly, what a difference it's made. I was impressed by the vast improvement I got just by moving the left and right surround speakers off the bookshelf behind me to the sides of the room where they're supposed to be, but adding verticality to the mix has taken things to a completely different level...

Did you see what I did there? ;-)

When I woke up in the middle of the night (as I usually do these days), the bedroom felt cold. When I checked the max/min thermometer in the conservatory this morning, I was not surprised to discover that the temperature in the back garden had dropped to 0°C (32°F). I couldn't see any obvious signs of a frost and the sunflower by my front door seems to have survived unscathed, but summer is definitely over. The Virginia creeper on the house is already starting to turn red.

So I think I'm going to break out the winter duvet.

Yes, this is the glamorous and vibrantly active life I lead these days. I can tell you're all ridiculously jealous.

Yesterday I read a very sensible article about how unlikely it is for humans to ever colonize Mars. And when I say "unlikely" what I actually mean is "suicidally impossible." The first sentence of the article makes an essential point that extropians and other technology fantasists like Elon Musk tend to brush off as being of no consequence to their ambitions, but it absolutely isn't: Mars does not have a magnetosphere. Amongst other things, this is why Mars lost its oceans and has very little atmosphere. The Earth's magnetic field protects us from high-energy cosmic rays and other forms of radiation that would kill us in fairly short order (long before the solar wind, which our magnetosphere diverts away from the Earths surface, blasted our fragile atmosphere off into space and then boiled Earth's oceans away into nothingness). Mars does not have an equivalent force field to divert the radiation away. Instead, it slams into the planet's surface with pretty much the same lethality as it would in outer space. Mars's landscape is effectively being continuously sterilised. The only safe place to live on Mars (or the Moon, for that matter) would be deep underground, protected by as much rock as possible and if I was in charge I'd want all the buildings to have a nice thick lining of lead as well. Avoiding radiation is why NASA is extremely interested in lunar lava tubes, by the way; hiding away in one might allow humans to survive on the Moon for somewhat longer than they could manage on the surface. But imagine living an existence deep underground where you could never go outside. There's a reason that this is a trope in dystopian science fiction novels: it's a quick way to get the reader to picture a brutalist, joyless, oppressive existence that will suck all the fun out of life.

Even if you ignore the whole "the environment is trying to kill you" part of life on Mars, there are other existential issues to deal with and Albert Burneko points them out explicitly in his Defector article. Imagine running out of some essential item and expecting someone to be kind enough (and resourceful enough) to ship you some more of it. Are you going to manage without it for the nine months or so that it will take to arrive? I don't think I'd fancy the chances of getting by without oh, I dunno, toilet paper, paracetamol, or breathable air. Would you?

Oh—and Earth only has limited resources, by the way. At the moment it's a closed system. What happens when you start shipping out material to Mars, where it can't be recycled or reused? What do we do when those resources are depleted back home? How realistic will commerce be once people start realising things are running out? And who gets to decide which parts of humanity are at the front of the queue? (Spoiler: it's the folk who are shipping stuff out elsewhere. If they decide that it's no longer in their best interest to do so, then all those off-world colonies are effectively and royally screwed.)

The outside temperature hasn't dropped into single figures for months but it plummeted to 3°C (37°F) last night. This morning there is a definite chill in the air. The weather's expected to turn warmer again next week but as we'll be past the middle of September by then, the warmth is unlikely to last very long.

I knew it was going to turn cooler, so I'd dropped a blanket on the bed before I turned in last night. I think it helped somewhat, as I didn't have quite as rough a night as I'd had on Tuesday night (when my sleep score was a dismal 44) but once again I was awake by 5 am and I'd given up any thoughts of further sleep and was up and dressed by 9 am. As you have probably already gathered I am not having a good time of things at the moment.

Expanding my home audio setup is proving to be a good way of keeping myself occupied with doing something nice when I'm not doing something nice like making music for 50-90 (at this point I have seven songs left to write and record if I'm to meet the challenge's target of writing fifty songs by October the first, and there are 18 days remaining for me to do so, so I should manage that without too much difficulty).

Moving the existing speakers around and putting the left and right main speakers on more robust stands has already made a huge difference to my listening experience. I didn't expect the bass response of the B&W DM602 S2s I've had for nearly 25 years to be affected much by the move, but I was very wrong. Maybe it's because the main drivers are now at ear level instead of the tweeters; maybe it's because the speakers are resting on bigger bases with rubber pads to isolate them, but after listening to a few CDs yesterday they seem to have acquired a thump to them I don't remember hearing before. With the left and right surround speakers at the side rather than behind me, Atmos mixes have already become truly immersive, so I spent a couple of happy hours yesterday evening just listening to music. And I intend to be doing a lot more of that once all the additional gear is bedded in. Even though the new presence speakers (they're tiny!) are now fixed to the wall, I'm still waiting for a spool of speaker cable to be delivered so that I can connect them to the amp—and as the Yamaha doesn't have sufficient grunt to drive all eleven speakers at the same time, I'm also waiting for a small power amp to be delivered which is necessary to drive the last two channels (the manual recommends that I should use it to drive the rear presence speakers, so that's what I'm going to do) and to start with I've ordered a ridiculously cheap power amp which seems to have acceptable performance for the price; I can always upgrade it later if it isn't up to scratch.

I suspect I'm going to be watching a lot of movies and buying a few more Atmos mixes this winter.

On Sunday I recorded my 41st piece of music for this year's 50-90 Songwriting Challenge and when I updated the spreadsheet I keep on this computer to keep track of the music I've made since I first signed up for February Album Writing Month (FAWM) back in 2009, the total rolled over to 1400. Yes, that's right: fourteen hundred songs. To put it another way, that's the equivalent of successfully finishing FAWM a hundred times.

Which is nuts.

But then again, I am nuts. The older I get, the more obvious this has become to me, and I'm sure everyone I know has known it for considerably longer than I have. After all, I don't really have much of a life these days other than doing this sort of thing. Making and listening to music is my principal source of joy these days, so I may as well lean into it, right?

Good. I'm glad you agree, because I just ordered four Cambridge Audio Minx Min 12 satellite speakers and shelf brackets to finally complete my living room Dolby Atmos setup. I managed to resist the temptation to add the ".4" part of my "7.1.4 immersive audio" system for more than four years, which is pretty good going for me, but I've been obsessively listening to the In-Side mix of Peter Gabriel's album i/o since I got back from the Real World masterclass in July (where I heard it in its full glory) and just yesterday the new album from David Gilmour landed on my doormat. I want—no, I need to hear it exactly as it was intended, so very soon I will be doing just that. Because (and this is another thing that I used to say as just a turn of phrase but now realise its underlying truth) life's too short.

I'm really feeling that this week. Yesterday I spent four hours in the garden trying to wrest control of it back from the brambles and thistles that have moved in over the summer. The garden is much improved; I think I'm winning the battle, at least for the time being. After I'd finished, I came back inside to have a sit down while I re-hydrated with a litre and a half of squash and ten minutes later when I tried to get up again I could barely move. This morning I look (and feel) like I've been in a fight because I'm covered in scratches and puncture wounds and I'm feeling very old and decrepit right now. I also had yet another shitty night's sleep last night and I have been awake since 5 am. After last week's crash I'm still all over the place emotionally. A few bits of bad news over the past week have tempered the manic episode I was experiencing in August, but I am still being clobbered by insomnia and even without the aftereffects of yesterday's exertions, I'm in constant pain.

But life is always too short, whatever age you live to. I was extremely sad to hear yesterday that the great James Earl Jones had died at the age of 93. I loved his work. My ex-wife adored him, and would always refer to him as "Jedge" (after his initials of JEJ) and we both agreed that he would make any film he was in a thousand times cooler purely because he was in it. Heather, you will probably never read this but I immediately thought of you (as I often do) when I heard the news.

Yes, JEJ was Darth Vader's voice, and that role more than any other defined his career as far as most of social media is concerned but how much poorer a film would The Hunt For Red October have been without his Admiral Greer, for instance? How much more mundane a movie would Sneakers have been without his brief but memorable appearance as the exasperated intelligence chief Bernard Abbot? And my god, Field of Dreams would not have been the masterpiece that it was without him in the role of the disillusioned activist and writer Terence Mann; he steals every scene he's in, even from legends like Burt Lancaster.

JEJ had announced his retirement back in 2022, but even then Disney had ensured that Darth Vader would continue to speak with that most distinctive cinematic voice for ever more, thanks to some clever software; I suspect that even so, the next time Vader makes an appearance in some new Star Wars show, I will experience a deep feeling of sadness knowing it's not really him any more.

From 8 am BST this morning to 8 am tomorrow morning, Bandcamp will once again waive their transaction fee for anything you buy on the site (but if you use Paypal, you won't be surprised to learn that they will still take their cut). Buying a single album from Bandcamp gets more money to the artist than several hundred plays on streaming services will, so I make a point of buying stuff from musicians I like who post their work there; I have just bought a whole bunch of albums and I'm looking forward to giving them a spin later. And of course I also have a new album of my own for you to listen to. The link (and cover art) for Uncommercial Album is at the top of the page. I've updated several pages on this website to point to the new album, but you can still stream or purchase the rest of my now rather extensive discography from Bandcamp as well.

Because this is the thirtieth album I've released since I finished the grand home studio refit of 2020. Thirty! The first post-refit album I released was The Geometry of Sleep which was released on December 3rd that year and announced on my blog the very next day. I still find it amazing that I've been able to sustain the work rate I have for nearly four years. I've spent a lot of time in the studio since then and I reckon you can hear the improvement in what I do. I can, anyway.

This album is just over an hour long and contains fifteen songs which were originally recorded for 50-90 but I went back and did some more tweaking to them, because of course I did. And it has the title it does because every single track on the album is a song. With me singing on it. With my voice. Sorry about that.

And thank you to everyone who has already bought a copy. Those "You've got money from Bandcamp!" emails always brighten my day and they certainly did so this morning.

Because it's a grim, grey old day out there today. I woke up at about half-past seven this morning thinking that my next door neighbours were a day late putting their bins out, but then I realised that the village was getting another thunderstorm, the third one since Sunday afternoon. It's been very wet here since Wednesday night, which is good because it's been noticeably drier than average here all summer.

Although summer here in the UK has been the coolest since 2015, globally it's been the hottest summer on record and the increasing number of reports about extreme weather should be a cause for grave concern.

But it still isn't. I've given up any hope of humanity taking mitigating action before it's too late, because it kind of already is too late; the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) declared that the time for action is now more than two years ago, but what's happened since then? Very little. And we can point the finger at the fossil fuel companies, who are still actively working against the adoption of alternative energy sources. Until something is done about that, the world will continue to burn.

Yesterday afternoon—much to my surprise—the Met Office's yellow warning of potential thunderstorms that I was writing about on Saturday paid off, and paid off admirably. The storm passed right over the village here and there were lots of bright flashes followed almost immediately by loud, violent crashes of thunder. One was so close that it knocked out the mains electricity supply for the street, which gave the battery backup part of my solar panel system its first serious practical test (I'm happy to report that it passed with flying colours and all of my studio gear, including the PC, kept on running without a single glitch; power was restored some ten minutes later). The storm definitely spooked the local wildlife; this morning when I checked the back garden's trail cam, it hadn't recorded a single thing.

Best of all, though, was the fact that I'd made preparations to do some sound recording in the event that I was fortunate enough for things to properly kick off. I had my trusty Tascam DR-40 recorder all ready to go, complete with its fluffy wind shield to cut down wind noise. As soon as I noticed how heavily it was raining I plonked it down on my bedroom windowsill, opened the window, and hit record. When I played back the half hour of audio I'd recorded afterwards, I was delighted by what I heard; it had performed flawlessly. I'd captured some truly awe-inspiring sounds and I'm sure that they will end up in a piece of my music before this month is out.

After the storm had passed, I finished off the piece that I'd been working on since the middle of the morning. This was my second attempt at the 212 bpm-in-5/4-time Hit 'Em challenge that Drew Daniel of Matmos invented in a dream which went completely viral last month. I had great fun with it, as 5/4 is one of the most prog-rock beats that there is. I went completely over the top with things and there's even a full-on orchestral break in it.

I felt so tired last night that I'd gone to bed by 8:30 pm. Needless to say, I couldn't sleep and I was still awake at midnight. But as I lay in bed trying in vain to practise mindfulness, it finally dawned on me that this was because I was in the third or fourth week of one of my (thankfully) extremely rare manic episodes. As soon as I realised that, everything fell into place. I don't find myself in that sort of mental head space very often, but when I go there, I go hard. I think it was almost certainly triggered by the wonderful adventure that I had at the end of July at Real World because after reading that blog again right now, it's blindingly obvious—to me at least—that I was undoubtedly completely manic for the entire four days I spent there. So what could I do?

As it happens I still have a limited number of doses of my meds left for "emergencies" like this, so I immediately went downstairs, cut one in half, and swallowed it with a couple of paracetamol tablets (because I'm still in a lot of pain at the moment and that doesn't help sleeping at all, either).

I think it's safe to say it had the desired effect. I didn't just crash out, I cratered. I slept for twelve hours and I didn't wake up this morning until nearly 11 am. Today I feel like I'm on more of an even keel than I have been lately. I hope this continues; if not, I suspect I might have to consider going back on medication again, but I would really have to hate to have to do that. I'll see how it goes this week.

Meteorological autumn, that is; for astronomers, autumn doesn't start until the autumnal equinox, and that falls on September 22nd this year. It's already getting dark noticeably earlier in the evenings and as a result of my continuing bouts of insomnia I can confirm that it's staying dark later in the mornings, too; sunrise here today was at 06:23 BST and sunset will be at 19:55 BST. On the first of August, they took place at 05:34 and 20:57 respectively.

Much as I love the autumn, the blinding speed at which it feels like it's arrived this year has got me thinking about mortality rather a lot lately. I'm already drawing a company pension, after all; the amount of time which I have left in front of me isn't going to be anywhere near as much as the amount of time I've already had.

So these days, I'm profoundly grateful for the fact that I woke up this morning and that I'm still around to add another line to the Blog Archives and another hand-drawn blog banner to my collection.

Yesterday I spent a solid six hours working on the thirty-fourth track I've recorded for this summer's 50-90 Songwriting Challenge since it started on July 4th. It was after 6 pm when I decided it was ready to be uploaded to my profile page there.

As soon as I've updated the blog, however, I will be firing up my home studio again and giving it a thorough remix, because when I listened to it on headphones as I lay in bed last night I realised what a complete mess I'd made of it. The vocals weren't loud enough, some of the keyboards were being buried when they should have been the focal point of that part of the song, and many of the sound effects I was using as transitions between different sections of the arrangement were much, much too loud.

Never mix stuff when your ears are tired, kids. You will get terrible results that way. Trust me on this.