Now-cast

Roger Allam (First Officer Douglas Richardson and General Campion ) 
 and Benedict Cumberbatch  (Captain Martin Crieff and Christopher Tietjens) 
in Cabin Pressure and Parade's End.

A few things I'm enjoying now.

+ A Bradley Smoker to make smoked: salmon, pastrami, chicken, pork ribs, turkey breast, and more. I don't like using--and therefore purchasing-- proprietary pucks ("brickets") of  wood for infumation, but the control it gives with this electric machine is unsurpassed.

+  The website Dog-shaming. Countless photos, most with dogs evincing true shame.

+ Series Two of John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme on BBC Radio 4. All of Finnemore's work is skilled, insightful, and funny, but this sketch show is something else. The fourth episode is on iPlayer now and  the song about insomnia will be a timeless one for me. Single-writer sketch shows are rare. Few could be of this quality unless the writer's last name is "Cook."

+  For more audio fun the podcast by Dana Gould: The Dana Gould Hour. Each episode is loosely shaped around a theme, and the current one is one tailor-made for me: Occult-O-Rama!, featuring discussion of Alistair Crowley, Anton Le Vey , Jack Parsons, and L. Ron Hubbard, as well as George Lucas. I found the Gould podcast recently but have gone back to download most of them; each one is intelligent and funny, with a great deal of showbiz lore and generally entertaining gab. Dana Gould has been a reliable standup comic for years, though I recall him most fondly as a writer of The Simpsons during some of my favorite years.

+ My gigabite-speed network. I embedded Cat-6 cable in the walls of the house, applied a gigabyte router and switch and a gigabyte-speed 4 TB network-attached storage implement (actually 2 TB storage, since it's 2 discs of 2 TB each, in a RAID 1 array). I use it mainly to trippingly distribute HD media around the house...

+ ... Such as Parade's End, a Tom Stoppard adaptation via the BBC of Ford Maddox Ford's novels. It's difficult to write about since I just finished watching it, but it was engrossing and howlingly funny in parts (though it's a drama, not a comedy). The screen cap at the top of this post ties it in with Finnemore since it shows two of the main players in Finnemore's excellent radio sitcom Cabin Pressure.