At the point where you and the AI can see someone straightening their tie in a certain way and you and the AI can exchange a single wordless glance and you both burst out laughing 'cos it was just like that thing that you both saw 6 months ago and found hilarious then - then maybe.

Not before.

A few things off the top of my head:

• I made a particularly tasty shakshuka over the weekend.
• I saw a stoat leading her kits nose to tail, so that they looked like a single, bounding, furry snake as they crossed the track a few days back. I have only seen stoats doing that twice before in my life.
• in Forge of Empires, which I have recently started playing, my defending PvP army successfully defeated a challenger: the first time that has happened, and it left me feeling ridiculously happy.
• Albert Finney and Sean Connery’ interaction in the 1974 version of Murder on the Orient Express
• My partner’s pleasure at completing a 1940s style knitted top. It has turned out extremely well.

Oh yes, very much - and not just with movies, but TV, novels, stage performance and the like.

As a kid, it was just the overall visuals and spectacle as much as anything - details of the plot were secondary. Into my teens and early twenties and think that plot details came to dominate and after that exploring interesting concepts began to take priority. Then I guess that I began to appreciate the production side of things more: writing quality and cinematography etc maybe into my 30s and 40s. And these days (in my 50s) I am much more focused on character-driven things.

My first computer was a ZX81 - in 1982 - which, with my brother, I built from a kit and was astonished when it actually worked. We eventually added the 16k ram pack too: how could anyone possibly use all that?!

First phone. I think it was a Nokia 5110 or similar in 2000.

Fairly standard (for the UK, in the '70s): black trousers, blue or white shirt, dark blue blazer, school tie etc.

BUT, the blazer had the school emblem on, which was derived from the poultry trade that had been a major feature of the town’s prosperity at one time: we all had a large un-ironic turkey embroidered on our chests.

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter.

Lucas has said that we wanted it to appeal to 12 year olds - and I was.

Star Wars (A New Hope) - Lucas had a particular age of audience in mind. I was that age when it was released, and he hit the target.

That implies that the others have got complete maps - which I find much more surprising. Every time that I have had any dealings with any utility companies - which I do as part of my job - it becomes apparent very early on that they don’t have anything like accurate maps in whatever area I am looking at. And not just for old lines that they inherited - as seems to be the issue here - but for things like fibre optics that I saw them lay myself just 18 months earlier.

Biggest one for me was swapping from setting the alarm as late as possible and then rushing to get out of the house, to setting it an hour earlier and using that to read, do a little qi gong and have a leisurely breakfast.

Yes, definitely. Why you are doing it makes all the difference.

There is - in my experience - a good deal of how you - and the organisation in general - do it too, and that accounts for much of the cultural difference. Charities tend to treat staff (and volunteers - since so many depend on vols) as people rather that resources much more, although there is also a tendency for the cause to outweigh everything, which can lead to staff, particularly, being expected to commit totally around the clock, and sidelined if they don’t. I have only encountered a few organisations that do this to a problematic extent really though.

I did in my late 20s after working in IT. I didn’t know what I wanted and wasn’t planning on non-profit or anything as such, but jumped ship, did a range of random things before spending some time volunteering (at something that was not in any way IT related)- which was the critical thing. That put me in a spot to A) show some commitment and B) get some training as it was offered. A paid post followed in due course after that.

That is a very simplified version, but volunteering was definitely the critical element for me.

Since then, I met plenty of other people who made the jump. Some simply moved with their existing skills to an equivalent role in a charity - and there are plenty that need project management skills - whilst others have taken the same route as me and spent some time volunteering.

Volunteering means you don’t get paid for some time, of course, so you have to either live off savings and/or find a live-in role and/or work part-time or something and you probably need to downsize one way or another, but people find a way and make it work.

Of course once you are in a role with your chosen cause, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be away from being overworked, stressed and given more and more responsibility. It is a trope that working for a charity means that you don’t do it for the money and you work waaay longer than the official hours say.

Certainly my role at the moment, with a large charity, is the most demanding I have ever had and there is basically nothing left at the end of the month for savings: I am just keeping afloat. For all that though, there is no way at all that I would go back to a for-profit role, and I have never looked back for a moment. The culture is totally different and leagues better.

My main requirement is that it has to be available on my heavily locked down work phone and work laptop as well as my home ones. If it isnt in my face whenever I look at a screen, it isnt going to work. So it ends up being Google tasks.

Yes I would - very much in the same situation.

I think that Jaws is a good reference point here.

I’d say that if you genuinely prefer Benchley’s novel to Spielberg’s film then that is a pretty good indicator that you’re just going to prefer books no matter what.

Without looking for sources - so I could be totally wrong - I believe that it did darken proportionately and that light meters would register that. However, human eyes are not light meters and adjust to the dimmer light without you knowing.

Difficult to say. I’ve never been one to fixate on a single film for long. The ones below are likely candidates for various reasons though. I must have seen each at least 6 times. Probably none of them more than a dozen though.

• The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
• Star Wars/A New Hope (1977)
• Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
• Mon Oncle (1958)
• The Ladykillers (1955)
• The Third Man (1949)

Film

• Uproar (2023) - a New Zealand coming of age tale. There are no surprises here. You know exactly what you are getting right from the start, but it is solidly and engagingly done, with some some good performances from Josh Waaka and Rhys Darby particularly.

• House of Flying Daggers (2004) - continuing my SO’s wuxia fad at the moment. This one looks wonderful and has some great set pieces early on but then runs out of ideas and drifts to a stop in a morass of repetitive melodrama and loose ends. Very pretty but frustratingly unsatisfying.

TV

• A Gentleman in Moscow - the pick of the crop at the moment with Ewan McGregor and Alexa Goodall both both proving charming in their respective roles. The tale balences the pre-revolutionry culture, the bolshevic ideals and the grim reality well - although glamourising the former quite a bit, at least initially.

• Renegade Nell - this has a lot of positive reviews, and i certainly enjoyed the writer’s Gentleman Jack, but on the basis of the first episode it seemed to be tonally all over the place, as though the writer had one thing in mind but the director, or studio bosses or someone were trying for something totally different. I found it pretty off-putting and am not sure whether I’ll continue.

• Extraordinary - I thoroughly enjoyed season 1 and am glad to see that season 2 is keeping it up. Some of the novelty value of the superpowers in season 1 has been replaced by more emphasis on the individual characters this time round, but the comedy is definitely still on point.

Does Ivor the Engine count as a cartoon? Animation, certainly, but I’m not sure about ‘cartoon’ as such.

Anyway, it is the 1975 version for me.

Not a developer, but I will always use 2 monitors when I can - using the secondary for Outlook: inbox on one side, calendar on the other. I will also swivel this for showing presentations/plans/documents to members of my team in face to face meetings, and will move Zoom windows to in webinars etc it whilst I get on with some actual work on the main monitor.