Author: Gareth Saunders

I’m Gareth J M Saunders, 49 years old, 6′ 4″, father of 3 boys (including twins). Enneagram type FOUR and introvert (INFP), I am a non-stipendiary priest in the Scottish Episcopal Church, I sing with the NYCGB alumni choir, play guitar, play mahjong, write, draw and laugh… Scrum master. Latterly, web architect and agile project manager at the University of St Andrews and former warden at Agnes Blackadder Hall.

Espanso text expander

Editing the default phrases file for espanso in Sublime Text 4.

If you are not already using a text expander application then I highly recommend that you start. It will save you hundreds, if not thousands, of keystrokes every month.

As the name suggests, a text expander application is a utility that runs in the background and looks out for you typing predefined phrases which it then replaces with usually a longer text version.

For example, when I type [email protected], my text expander replaces this with my full email address: [email protected], saving me 25 keystrokes.

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Happy 40th birthday Anthrax

L–R: Frank Bello (bass), Joey Belladonna (vocals), Charlie Benante (drums), Scott Ian (guitar)

This year, the New York-based thrash metal band Anthrax turns 40.

Over the last two months on their YouTube channel they’ve been releasing a retrospective on their career with interviews with band members, producers, friends and metalheads across the globe. As I understand it they have 40 of these in the pipeline. So far we’ve reached episode 22 which has taken us to 2003 and probably my favourite Anthrax albums, We’ve Come For You All. I saw them live twice on that tour.

This evening (morning UK-time), they celebrated the event with a live stream event with a nearly 2 hours 15 minutes concert spanning most of their entire 40-year, 12-studio album career. (Typically, their John Bush era material was disappointingly missing.)

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Mr Benn on LEGO Ideas

LEGO model of three terraced houses and a shop with Mr Been dressed in a suit and bowler hat in the foreground waving.
All of a sudden, Mr Benn appeared on LEGO Ideas

LEGO Ideas allows fans to submit their own creations which can be voted up and, if selected by LEGO, released as official LEGO sets.

A recent submission is this wonderful Mr Benn set featuring three terraced houses on Festive Road, the magical shop that transports Mr Benn on his adventures plus—as if by magic—the mysterious shopkeeper.

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