Investigating Launchers

Last night I was experimenting with ulauncher as a way of easily launching apps on my computer. After using it for a few hours it seems like something that I might want to start using all the time, but it also made me start looking at other launchers like Albert which seems a little harder to install but which promises to search across my applications, my local files, and the internet.

I think that as I try and use a keyboard for most things this is the sort of application I need. At the moment I’m using dmenu which does the job well enough but which is also quite basic and relies me to choose between knowing the package name or the name that would be displayed if I was using it in a more traditional menu (so files or naultilus but not both). The launchers I’m looking at now do both of these and more, but both of them require a little hoop-jumping to get them installed so may not be suitable for my default installation image (although there is at least a PPA for ulauncher so I may very well have a go at getting that added this afternoon)

It’s something I’ll come back to, but in the meantime it’s always fun trying out new software that may one day become part of my workflow.

Rough Trade Club 2021

I’ve been subscribed to the Rough Trade Club for a few years now, and receive a monthly record with a few other interesting bits of paraphernalia thrown in. The records I get are rarely bad, and many of them are things I would buy anyway, but the selection this year has been particularly strong, and If I had to only listen to these records for a whole year then I think I would be OK.

January’s selection was Welfare Jazz by Viagra Boys. I loved their last record and this one is also very strong. It fuses together quite a few genres of music, but it’s also immediately accessible and a lot of fun as well.

February saw the very welcome arrival of For The First Time by Black Country, New Road. I had already played a lot of these songs to death, but getting them all in one place was exactly what I needed to shed some truth and light on the cold winter days. I think this is still my record of the year (so far), and it will take something really special to dislodge it. It also came with a badge (more records should come with badges).

March’s record was Flock by Jane Weaver. An artist I already own music by, and another record that was already on my list to buy. Many people may not have heard of Jane Weaver, but this record is a joyous pop masterpiece that I think anyone who appreciates good music would enjoy. It was also the subject of a really entertaining listening party.

April bought with it the excellent New Long Leg by Dry Cleaning. It reminds me a bit of a cross between The Blue Aeroplanes and Arab Strap, but with female vocals. If that sounds intriguing then you should definitely give it a listen. The songs on the bonus CD are very good as well.

May’s record was Bright Green Field by Squid. A new name for me, but one that reminds me a little of Black Country, New Road and a lot of other things that I really like. It’s not an easy first listen, but it soon makes itself indispensable and is another one that will definitely feature on my end of year list.

I’ve also chosen to buy music by Arab Strap, Mogwai, Maximo Park and Field Music, all of which I’ve very much recommend, but it is the Rough Trade selection that I think best represent the musical journey I’ve been on so far this year.

Keyboard shortcuts

I use a fairly eclectic range of hardware and software, and keyboard shortcuts are required to get it to all work together. This list is mainly for me, but I’ve split it up by device/application in case it is of any use to other people with similar setups.

Epomaker SK61 keyboard shortcuts

I use a 61-key keyboard on my main computer. It doesn’t have some of the keys that I use occasionally, and whilst it’s perfect for writing there are a few keyboard shortcuts required to make some things I do a little bit easier. The main ones that I use are:

  • Up arrow – Fn + /
  • Down arrow – Fn + menu
  • Left arrow – Fn + Alt
  • Right arrow – Fn + Ctrl
  • Delete – Fn + M
  • Volume up –Fn + H
  • Volume down –Fn + G
  • Switch to layer 2 – Fn + W

There isn’t really much else I use that this keyboard doesn’t give me naturally, and the form factor and the way it handles more than make up for the lack of keys.

Motospeed CK61 keyboard shortcuts

My other keyboard is a Motospeed CK61, which seems to have increased dramatically in price since I got mine. The layout is the same as the SK61 (which is why I like it), but instead of layers it has shortcuts that translate specific parts of the keyboard to alternate keys, which I find quite useful sometimes. Shortcuts I use are:

  • Factory reset – Fn + Escape
  • Map /, alt, menu and ctrl to arrow keys – Fn + 3
  • Control brightness of backlight – Fn + U/I
  • Cycle through different lighting patterns – Fn + menu

i3 shortcuts

I’ve used i3 as my window manager for over a year now, and I find it fits my workflow perfectly. The main i3 shortcuts I find myself using are:

  • Open a terminal window – $mod + Enter
  • Open a different application – $mod + d then type the application name (eg firefox)
  • Open (or go to) a second desktop – $mod + 2
  • Send the focused application to that desktop – $mod + Shift + 2
  • Split a container vertically – $mod + v
  • Split a container horizontally – $mod + h
  • Move between containers – $mod + arrow keys
  • Switch to a tabbed layout – $mod + w
  • Switch to a stacked layout – $mod + s
  • Close a window – $mod + Shift + q
  • Exit i3 – $mod + Shift + e

I do have a few other custom shortcuts defined, which are detailed in my i3 config file.

Atom shortcuts

I use the Atom text editor for a lot of my workflow. My main shortcuts are:

  • Multi line editing – ctrl + alt (or shift on Linux) + arrow keys
  • Toggle markdown preview – ctrl + shift + m
  • Create a PDF of the current file – alt + ctrl + e
  • Open a terminal ctrl + alt + shift + i
  • Show a hidden menu bar – alt

Kitty shortcuts

I use Kitty as my terminal emulator on any computer that it works with, although I don’t really use too much advanced functionality. The main shortcuts I use in Kitty are:

  • New terminal within an existing session – ctrl + shift + enter
  • Toggle through windows – ctrl + shift + ]

There are lots more of these on the Kitty website

Qutebrowser shortcuts

I’ve just started experimenting with Qutebrowser. It’s very fast, but has a steep learning curve. The main shortcuts that I’ve found myself using so far are:

  • Open a URL in the current tab – o
  • Open a URL in a new tab – shift + o
  • Toggle through open tabs – shift + k and shift + J
  • Close the current tab – d
  • Back – shift + H

A lot of standard shortcuts (ctrl + t for a new tab, Fn + 5 to refresh) also work as expected.

Zathura shortcuts

Zathura is a lightweight PDF viewer, and something else I’ve been incorporating into my workflow over the last few months. I only ever really use it for reading PDFs, so just use the arrow key shortcuts detailed above, plus s to make what I’m reading fit the width on the window/container I’m reading it in. Zathura has a lot of other functionality which I really do need to explore at some point soon, at which point I’ll come back and update this guide with anything interesting I uncover.

My Setup – April 2021

My Setup

I’ve been maintaining an up to date list of what hardware and software I use since I discovered Uses This a few years ago. It used to live as a page in my blog, but I like to maintain an up to date version so I can keep track of exactly what I’m using and how it changes over time. Every couple of years I post a snapshot as a blog post to track the passage of time. This is one of those snapshots.

The hardware I use

Home – I’ve just bought a new desktop computer that mostly consists of components that are fairly new (this is a first for me). Everything feels snappy and fast, and I love it. I also have three monitors (now identical in both size and resolution which pleases me), a mechanical keyboard, a hand-me-down gaming mouse, and all the docks, cables and switches to connect everything together. My personal laptops are both Thinkpads – an x260 for travel and couch-surfing, and an x230 which largely gets used for digitising vinyl and testing software I plan on using on one of my main computers. I also have a variety of Raspberry Pis that fulfil various server and media functions, and a Synology NAS for backups. I’m trying to phase out a lot of my older computers and only use newer machines with SSDs and lots of memory, but it’s hard to let go sometimes.

Work from home – As home, but with a Thinkpad L13 doing the driving. All it requires is a couple of cable switches and toggling the input on two of my monitors. I’d love to do this without crawling under my desk, but that’s a problem for another day.

Work – I’ve not been in my office for a while, but I think I still have something largely similar to my home setup, but with one less screen. I think I’ll be taking my very quiet solar-powered keyboard in as I’ll be sharing an office soon and mechanical keyboards are not conducive to good working relationships.

Travel – I don’t travel right now, but which I did it would be some combination of a Thinkpad, Raspberry Pi Zero, Kindle and phone. I also carry bootable USB versions of Ubuntu and Tails everywhere I go (even places I don’t take a computer). Increasingly my travel hardware also includes a bike and related tools.

The software I use

At work I’m running Windows 10. It largely does the job, but I would like to be able to live without it. Most of my day is spent doing video calls using either Teams or Zoom, but apart from those I tend to use largely the same suite of applications as I do for everything else.

At home (and whilst travelling) It’s mostly Ubuntu with a side order of LibreElec and Raspbian for my Raspberry Pis. I’ve been using the i3 window manager for Ubuntu since early 2020, although I do have Gnome installed on most of my computers as well. The script I use for installing my computers is available on Github and is regularly updated so it generally represents the software I am currently using.

Firefox has always been my main browser, and it surprises me that more people don’t use it. I have a container running with various versions of all the main browsers so that I can test things, but otherwise it’s Firefox all the way.

Other software I use that I feel is somewhat noteworthy includes:

WordPress – All my blogs run on WordPress. I currently maintain a WordPress multisite installation and several stand alone sites.

Atom – A text editor that handles Markdown well, integrates nicely with GitHub, and can preview and export to PDF. I also use Pandoc to convert to PDF, HTML, and/or .docx if required (I try not to use office software until the point I have to share what I’m working on with someone else), and have also started experimenting with using Pandoc to generate slides and ebooks.

Trello – I use this for my to do list, and it’s a good way to visualise the planning and execution of any task based work. It also reminds me when I have forgotten to do something.

Dropbox – Cloud storage and syncing software to ensure I can access everything everywhere.

IFTTT and Buffer – To automate as much as possible. Between them they handle a lot of the seemingly clever things in my digital life, and explain why I seem to be able to post to social media sites at times when I appear to be elsewhere.

Virtualbox and Multipass – Because no-one needs as many physical computers as I had before virtualisation was a thing. Multipass is what I use the most at the moment, and it’s really transformed the way I use containers for anything volatile or requiring increased privacy or security. There are generally at least a couple of containers running on my computer which I can switch to if I need to use a different desktop environment or browser to test something.

Spotify for discovering new music, and Rhythmbox for playing the music I already own. I have 162 days of digital music on my computer, and that’s before we get to all the records and CDs I’ve not got round to digitising yet.

Github for collecting together code that I’ve written and making the way my computers are set up available to other people in case it’s useful. I’ve also increasingly started using private repositories to version control writing and the notes I take at work.

My dream setup

Maybe I’m already living the dream, but the one thing I’d really like is to go back to doing everything on one computer. I also long for reasonably priced mechanical keyboards that are designed for people who just like to type, rather than gamers. Give me RGB and I will activate it, but sometimes I think something a bit more stylish might be more in keeping with the rest of my setup.

More changes to my i3 config file

I had my new computer delivered this week. It was good to install it from my own scripts, copy across my dotfiles, and just carry on working.

Going through this process I did note that my i3 configuration file looks a lot different than when I last blogged about it, so I thought I’d make a note of the things I’ve changed from the defaults.

First up is screen locking. My muscle memory expects to use the same keyboard shortcut as Windows, so I’ve just configured that in:

set $i3lockwall i3lock -i /home/andy/Dropbox/lock.png -t
bindsym mod4+l exec --no-startup-id $i3lockwall

I’ve also set up something to randomise my wallpaper each time I log in (with a different one on each screen if I’m using multiple monitors):

exec --no-startup-id feh --randomize --bg-scale /home/andy/Dropbox/Wallpaper/current/*

I just keep a small folder of images in Dropbox that acts as a repository to pick from, and then add/remove occasionally to keep things fresh.

And then I’ve picked applications that don’t make sense in tiled mode and make the windows float (so they appear on top of everything else and can be moved around):

for_window [class="Gimp"] floating enable
for_window [class="vlc"] floating enable
for_window [class="zoom"] floating enable
for_window [window_role="pop-up"] floating enable
for_window [window_role="task_dialog"] floating enable
for_window [class="Arandr"] floating enable
for_window [class="XTerm"] floating enable

I think that’s about it for now. I’ve also made fairly significant changes to my installation and update scripts, but that’s a topic for another day.

Adding a new repository to Oracle Linux

When I first install Oracle Linux 8 a lot of software I want to use isn’t available. But we can fix this by adding another repository.

First of all, create a new file in /etc/yum.repos.d:

sudo nano /etc/yum.repos.d/ol8-epel.repo

Then add the following to the file:

[ol8_developer_EPEL]
name= Oracle Linux $releasever EPEL ($basearch)
baseurl=https://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL8/developer/EPEL/$basearch/
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle
gpgcheck=1
enabled=1

Issue the following command to start using the new repository:

sudo dnf makecache

Then try and install some software that wasn’t previously available:

sudo dnf install -y byobu neofetch

This gives me access to a lot of software that makes computers feel like my computers.

Building a private cloud with LXD

I’ve been doing some experiments with LXD on Ubuntu and I thought it was worth publishing some of the notes I made myself so that when I come back to this at a later date I can remember what I did.

LXD is described as:

LXD (pronounced lex-dee) is the lightervisor, or lightweight container hypervisor. LXC (lex-see) is a program which creates and administers “containers” on a local system. It also provides an API to allow higher level managers, such as LXD, to administer containers. In a sense, one could compare LXC to QEMU, while comparing LXD to libvirt.

(from https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/containers-lxd)

To install:

sudo snap install lxd
sudo lxd init

Then answer some questions about where you want to store things and what file system to use.

Finding images

For Ubuntu, the syntax is:

lxc image list ubuntu:focal

(replace focal with the name of the version you are interested in)

For non-Ubuntu images, you’ll need to search https://uk.images.linuxcontainers.org/. This shortens to images So for an Oracle Linux 8 image we would type:

lxc image list images:oracle/8

Creating containers

To do this we need to tell LXC which image to build the container from and what to call it. For an Oracle Linux 8 container with the name oracle-01 we would type:

lxc launch images:oracle/8 oracle-01

Once it’s built (it shouldn’t take long) we can connect to it by using the following command:

lxc exec oracle-01 -- bash

The containers are very minimal, and I found myself having to install aditional software before I could set them up to work in the way I like (nano and wget were both missing for example).

Stopping and starting containers

I’m very used to working with Multipass, so the commands for LXD are very similar.

Start a container:

lxc start <container_name>

Stop a container:

lxd stop <container_name>

Delete a container:

lxd delete <container_name>

Viewing your current containers

The command to issue is:

lxc list

You will get to see which containers are running (with their IP address) and which containers you have that have been built but are not running.

That’s about as far as I’ve got with building the latest part of my private cloud. I’ve also been working on using Oracle’s cloud as a location for my backups, but I’ll write about that another day.

Albums of the year 2020

2020 has been a strange year. We all know that. Live music hasn’t really been a thing since March, and so many more people get to listen to music throughout the day thanks to working from home being much more common than it was before March. I think both of these things have probably influenced my list of favourite albums this year, and so I’m going to split it into two lists – one of traditional albums that are best listened to in sequence, and one of the music that soundtracked my working days during those rare few moments when I was not in Zoom or Teams meetings.

Looking down the lists I can see I’ve very much been influenced by the live music I did get to encounter this year (at the 6 Music Festival mainly), and also by the 130+ listening parties I did since live music dried up in March (which I wrote about here and here). I do hope I’ll be able to experience live music again next year, but I also very much hope that listening parties are still something that artists see as a valuable way of connecting with their fans.

In all cases the links below are to somewhere you can listen to and/or buy the record in question (Bandcamp or the artist’s own website). There’s a lot of music here, but hopefully some of it will appeal to someone.

First off we have my list of albums. It’s quite an angry list but I think that’s a fair comment on this year:

And then the list of compilations, soundtracks, live albums, instrumentals and other things that kept me soothed during this turbulant year:

Notes on my experiments with Oracle Cloud

This Christmas I set up two small VMs in Oracle’s cloud; one running Oracle Linux 8 (which I’m trying to learn at the moment), and one running Ubuntu (with my standard VM/container build). I’ve written these notes largely for me, but maybe someone else might find them useful too.

Registering for Oracle Cloud

To sign up for Oracle Cloud go to https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/.

You’ll need a credit card, but it won’t be charged providing you only use things marked as always free. This gets you two VMs, with 1 GB of RAM each and 100 GB of storage. That’s more than enough for what I need to do here so it’s all good. You also get signed up for a trial which allows you to build much bigger machines and access more services. I’ve not tried this out yet, but it’s possible to go all the way up to VMs with 64 GB of RAM or bare metal machines with a lot more (which is basically what I want to build at home at some point soon).

See here for exactly what the free tier gets you.

Using Oracle Cloud

To build VMs and generally interact with the service log in at Oracle Cloud. The first time you create a VM you’ll be asked to generate an SSH key (or provide one). Download the private key and save it somewhere, and then chmod it to 500 (otherwise it won’t let you log in). The key can be used for more than one VM, so you should only need to go through this process once.

You can see all your instances at https://console.uk-london-1.oraclecloud.com/compute/instances – This works for anything in the London data centre but would need to be amended for other data centres.

Logging in to a VM

To log in open up a terminal and SSH to the VM. The syntax is:

ssh -i /path/to/key/ username@ip_address

Where /path/to/key/ is the location you saved your private key. Username and IP address will be in the Instance Access section of the Instance Details for the specific VM.

Full instructions are available on the Oracle Cloud website.

First thoughts

The Ubuntu VM was indistinguishable from what I’m used to, and all my usual software and scripts worked fine. I’m less familiar with Oracle Linux, but installing and updating software works as expected so I have no reason to believe that the experience will be that different from a locally installed server. I still don’t find Oracle Linux anywhere near as easy to use as Ubuntu, but I suspect that’s as much down to 15 years less experience as anything else.

My year of #TimsTwitterListeningParty

A few months ago I wrote about how I had started attending a few listening parties to replace the lack of live music in my life. As I’ve got an automation (via IFTTT) that outputs everything from my calendar to a spreadsheet then it’s fairly easy for me to know how many “a few” actually is.

  1. Open Season (British Sea Power)
  2. The 3 EPs (The Beta Band)
  3. Different Class (Pulp)
  4. Power Corruption & Lies (New Order)
  5. Boat to Bolivia (Martin Stephenson & The Daintees)
  6. Dog Man Star (Suede)
  7. Architecture and Morality (OMD)
  8. 1977 (Ash)
  9. Divide & Exit (Sleeper)
  10. Dogrel (Fontaines DC)
  11. Do You Like Rock Music? (British Sea Power)
  12. Rattlesnakes (Lloyd Cole & The Commotions)
  13. IT WON/T BE LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME LIVE (The Twilight Sad)
  14. Figure 8 (Elliott Smith)
  15. I Should Coco (Supergrass)
  16. The Coral (The Coral)
  17. Love (The Cult)
  18. Real life (Joan As Policewoman)
  19. Before Today (Ariel Pink)
  20. Rum, Sodomy & The Lash (The Pogues)
  21. Hand. Cannot. Erase. (Steven Wilson)
  22. Be Here Now (Oasis)
  23. Infected (The The)
  24. Man of Aran (British Sea Power)
  25. Dig Your Own Hole (Chemical Brothers)
  26. Revel in the Drama (Ren Harvieu)
  27. Trials of Van Occupanther (Midlake)
  28. Last Splash (The Breeders)
  29. The Boy with the Arab Strap (Belle & Sebastian)
  30. Shortly After Takeoff (BC Camplight)
  31. Cafe Bleu (The Style Council)
  32. A Maximum High (Shed Seven)
  33. Bandwagonesque (Teenage Fanclub)
  34. Low Life (New Order)
  35. Machineries of Joy (British Sea Power)
  36. Boat (Pip Blom)
  37. Foolish Loving Spaces (Blossoms)
  38. Up to Our Hips (Charlatans)
  39. West Kirby County Primary (Bill Ryder Jones)
  40. When I Have Fears (The Murder Capital)
  41. The It Girl (Sleeper)
  42. High Land, Hard Rain (Aztec Camera)
  43. Moonshine Freeze (This is the Kit)
  44. Glasvegas (Glasvegas)
  45. I’ve Seen Everything (Trashcan Sinatras)
  46. Attack of the Grey Lantern (Mansun)
  47. I Believe (Tim Burgess)
  48. Eton Alive (Tim Burgess)
  49. Six (Mansun)
  50. Valhalla Dancehall (British Sea Power)
  51. Brutalism (IDLES)
  52. The Raven (The Stranglers)
  53. Joy as an Act of Resistance (IDLES)
  54. Separation Sunday (The Hold Steady)
  55. Source Tags & Codes (…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead)
  56. Sea of Brass (British Sea Power)
  57. University (Throwing Muses)
  58. Let the Dancers Inherit the Party (British Sea Power)
  59. Magic & Medicine (The Coral)
  60. Unknown Pleasures (Joy Division)
  61. Pale Green Ghosts (John Grant)
  62. Oh, Inverted World (The Shins)
  63. Nixon (Lambchop)
  64. Feast of Wire (Calexico)
  65. Don’t Get Weird On Me, Babe (Lloyd Cole)
  66. Deserter’s Songs (Mercury Rev)
  67. Want One (Rufus Wainwright)
  68. I Love The New Sky (Tim Burgess)
  69. Giant Steps (The Boo Radleys)
  70. From the Sea to the Land Beyond (British Sea Power)
  71. Faith (The Cure)
  72. Fibs (Anna Meredith)
  73. Force (A Certain Ratio)
  74. Insurgentes (Steven Wilson)
  75. Holiday Destination (Nadine Shah)
  76. The Decline of British Sea Power (British Sea Power)
  77. Let’s get out of this Country (Camera Obscura)
  78. Harcore Can Never Die But You Will (Mogwai)
  79. Stranger (Our Girl)
  80. Seamosters (The Wedding Present)
  81. The Crackdown (Caberet Voltaire)
  82. Dazzle Ships (OMD)
  83. Philophobia (The Arab Strap)
  84. Source Tags & Codes (..And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead)
  85. Costello Music (The Fratellis)
  86. Aviary (Julia Holter)
  87. Leave Me Alone (Hinds)
  88. Beauty Stab (ABC)
  89. A Certain Trigger (Maximo Park)
  90. Red Roses For Me (The Pogues)
  91. Aladdin Sane (David Bowie)
  92. Fisherman’s Blues (Waterboys)
  93. Underwater Moonlight (The Soft Boys)
  94. Kitchen Sink (Nadine Shah)
  95. Levelling the Land (The Levellers)
  96. If I Should Fall From Grace With God (The Pogues)
  97. Diamond Dogs (David Bowie)
  98. Troublegum (Therapy?)
  99. Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia (The Dandy Warhols)
  100. All Things Being Equal (Sonic Boom)
  101. 101 Damnations (Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine)
  102. Grand Prix (Teenage Fanclub)
  103. Fear Of Music (Talking Heads)
  104. Closer (Joy Division)
  105. Young Americans (David Bowie)
  106. This Is The Sea (The Waterboys)
  107. Soul Mining (The The)
  108. Yuck (Yuck)
  109. All Is Dream (Mercury Rev)
  110. Technique (New Order)
  111. Pin Ups (David Bowie)
  112. Have You In My Wilderness (Julia Holter)
  113. Kaleidoscope (Siouxsie and the Banshees)
  114. A Pagan Place (The Waterboys)
  115. The Don of Diamond Dreams (Shabazz Palaces)
  116. Mind Bomb (The The)
  117. Bizarro (The Wedding Present)
  118. Doolittle (Pixies)
  119. Good Luck, Seeker (The Waterboys)
  120. Movement (New Order)
  121. Fibs (Anna Meredith)
  122. Hours (David Bowie)
  123. Surfer Rosa (Pixies)
  124. Dusk (The The)
  125. Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters (Twilight Sad)
  126. The Queen Is Dead (The Smiths)
  127. Mainstream (Lloyd Cole and the Commotions)
  128. Seventeen Seconds (The Cure)
  129. Strangeways Here We Come (The Smiths)
  130. ACR Loco (A Certain Ratio)
  131. Pornography (The Cure)
  132. Jet Plane and Oxbow (Shearwater)
  133. Hex Enduction Hour (The Fall)
  134. Grotesque (After The Gramme) (The Fall)
  135. Slates (The Fall)
  136. Four-Calendar Café (The Cocteau Twins)
  137. New Facts Emerge (The Fall)
  138. All Blessed (Faithless)
  139. Nobody Wants to Be Here & Nobody Wants to Leave (Twilight Sad)
  140. Songs From Northern Britain (Teenage Fanclub)
  141. Gladsome, Humour & Blue (Martin Stephenson And The Daintees)
  142. Room To Roam (The Waterboys)
  143. Music In A Foreign Language (Lloyd Cole)
  144. Heaven Is Whenever (The Hold Steady)
  145. Songs From The Big Chair (Tears For Fears)
  146. Kiss Ass, Godhead! (Membranes)
  147. This Is the Day…This Is the Hour…This Is This! (Pop Will Eat Itself)

This is everything I’ve listened to that I actually put in my calendar. There may be a few more ad-hoc ones that I didn’t record, but it’s still quite a lot. One day I might go through them and work out how many were new-to-me albums, but that day is not today.