Two years ago I cut the cord that tethered me to cable tv (well, in the UK this is actually satellite and Sky is the dominant player). Even though I’ve done this (and am saving over £300 a year, I’m still able to continue to watch all the tv shows and movies that I want to.

Shortly after we moved into the apartment in Hackney (London), BT began offering their Infinity broadband service in this area. Infinity broadband is fibre-to-the-cabinet but the “last mile” (~100 meters in my case) is VDSL2. I pay for the “up to 76Mbits/second service”. I don’t see speeds anywhere near that, but it is fast enough to allow me to cut the cord by using legal streaming services and Freeview.

I get a decent selection of traditional TV channels to Freeview, the UK’s digital terrestrial television service. For the pleasure of this service and to fund the BBC, I have to pay the annual TV license fee which is currently £145.5/year (or just over £12/month). I get all the BBC channels in HD, BBC News, ITV, Channel 4, Sky News, and a bunch of other channels that I never watch.

All my other entertainment is consumed via three different devices – Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV Stick, and Chromecast. I use these in conjunction with Unblock-US, a “VPN service”. I put that in quotes because its not really a VPN service, but some sort of DNS redirect. I have it configured on my home router, so any device connected to the wifi gets the benefit. This service costs me CAD$ 50/year or ~£25/year

In addition to this, I pay for Netflix and Hulu in US (which I can access thanks to Unblock-Us) and Amazon Prime in the UK. Together, these three services offer a nearly unending stream of entertainment. Netflix and Hulu each cost US$ 7.99/month or a total of ~£125 a year. Amazon Prime, which costs £79/year gives me access to Prime Instant Video.

Finally, thanks to a friend who is wedded to Comcast, I’m able to access a number of other services including HBO Go, WatchESPN, and Showtime. I do use these occasionally, but certainly not enough to justify paying for their services that do not require a cable tv subscription (HBO Now, Showtime Anytime, etc).

Two years ago, the cheapest Sky TV package that was worth getting was costing me in excess of £60 a month (after promotional periods). This meant I was forking over more than £720 a year to Sky. Having cut the cord, I now pay roughly half (~£375 a year) and I get to choose the entertainment I want. I can use just a fraction of the savings to actually buy movies on iTunes, music on streaming services, and the sports I actually care about.

Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE, says that they have 10 or 15 thousand software engineers inside the company.

My grandfather sent me an email forward about Gandhi and his timekeeping. I’ve found the original. It’s a longish article, but reading it made me very happy. I often get accused of being quite militant in my time-keeping. When I ask someone for the time, “about 9:30” doesn’t suffice. I want to know whether its 9:31 or 9:29. I get jittery or nervous when I’m running late and I make others around me nervous when I’m pacing about expecting them to be ready to leave 5 minutes ago. Anyway, this little anecdote about Gandhi being a chronometrically precise person.

Gandhi’s legendary punctuality had a utilitarian imperative—without it he would never have been able to answer the sacks of letters and streams of visitors that demanded his attention each day. But, as with everything he valued, it had a moral imperative as well. Simply put, time was tied to his philosophy of trusteeship: the belief that just as we do not own our wealth but are trustees of it—and thus have to use it wisely—similarly, we are trustees of our time. 

Monday and Tuesday always seem too early in the week for a beer-tasting. On Thursday, I just want an enjoyable beer as I look forward to the weekend and I’m generally not in the mood to try something new. On Friday and Saturday, I’m usually out getting a beer with friends anyway. And Sunday is spent worrying about the week to follow. So when a suitable Wednesday came along and I had nothing else going on, I cracked open the other Hitachino Nest beer I bought back in mid-July. It has been sitting in my refrigerator waiting for just the right day and today was it.

I’m generally not a huge fan of the mildly sweet hefeweizen beer variety, and the Hitachino Nest Weizen didn’t change my expectations too much. It poured with a lovely amber yellow colour, slightly cloudy and had about a 2 finger head showing plenty of carbonation. It had that same annoyingly sweet wheat beer smell to it, almost as if it was over-hopped but I held out hope. In the mouth, the sweetness continues. A citrusy flavour and a touch of spice – clove if I were to guess – but the sweetness detracts. The carbonation that seems evident on the pour is missing in the mouth. This is not a bad thing.

Overall, a light bodied wheat beer, but nothing special. Not one that I’d buy again in a rush but I can see it being enjoyed by those partial to the slightly sweeter and lighter variety.