it's been quite a good week, although I felt it flew by with Monday being a bank holiday! I've accomplished a bit at work, I've been personally productive and I feel happy. a bit nervous about my talk in Ghent, but I think I'm going to smash it. I just need someone to come with me!

miscellanea

• found out about Nebula Sans, which is a pretty cool open source font for the Nebula streaming platform based on Adobe's Source Sans! YouTube's recommendation system hasn't gone to complete shit just yet, thankfully.
• found this article a few weeks ago on Posthog's blog about hiring and managing cracked engineers. I wouldn't call myself cracked (because, in my opinion, that's a title to be bestowed upon you by others). however, I wholeheartedly agree with the comment about lazy engineers, and about how expecting consistent daily performance is very un-cracked.
• this week's Transformer piece on OpenAI's transition to a public benefit corporation is interesting. it looks like OpenAI may be attempting to pursue for-profit aims while simultaneously escaping the scrutiny a fully non-profit structure provides. it's interesting to note that other AI companies, including Anthropic, are structured like PBCs, but the devil will be in the details which aren't public just yet.
• saw a bright yellow pass in someone's wallet at the gateline on the Tube, and it appears to be a contractor pass. turns out there are many more variants of Oyster than I thought existed.
• without being a mature student in in full-time education, you can only get a 16 to 25 Railcard until you're 27 if you purchase it the day before your 26th birthday. or so I thought! it appears that the Santander 4-year railcard will be issued for the full four years until you're 28! interestingly, it doesn't look like there's any explicit age restriction for owning the card in the Terms and Conditions of the 16 to 25 Railcard, which also apply to the Santander railcard. interesting loophole.
• watched two interesting talks this week. 9001 Ways To Break Out Of A Container, by my good friend Josie Pfeiffer, is on container breakout and the vulnerabilities in the containerised software supply chain. Death of the Tadi Web, from Lu Wilson, is a good talk on what how she builds things (in short, stay slippy and normalise sharing scrappy fiddles).

musings

• these updates felt like a jumble of thoughts, and I've succumbed to the temptation to add more structure (at least for one week). I hope you like it!
• if I hear one more "how does it feel to be the pope?" joke, I'm going to bite someone. hard.
• I hate my phone case, as the slippery plastic feels impossible to keep clean. out of frustration, I went naked with my phone for the past week and it's seemed to work well! am I crazy? perhaps. will I keep it going? absolutely!
• I'm eager to turn down things now, to actually show my commitment to not doing things. that being said, I might not have the opportunity to turn things down simply given that I'm not actively seeking them out
• I've been incredibly productive this week, knocking out 41% the tasks in my cycle. I'm currently on cycle #31, and I'm planning to convert my talk in Ghent to one about how I've managed to last 52 cycles (when the time comes).
• streamed shows should bring back episode recaps! I feel they've been omitted from many shows because of people's tendency to binge watch. however, if I fall asleep during an episode and it continues to autoplay, I want a way to find the last episode I remember. recaps came in useful when watching YOU, where I realised I'd missed an episode when I started watching again.
• I really need to pick up my Spanish learning again. despite having all the resources, I feel I've been too damn busy, and I don't know how I'll be able to achieve A1 by the end of the year.
• how the heck do people stay awake all day without even a little nap?
• I haven't written anything substantial for Ghent yet, but I do have an outline. I'd like to try a presentation with RevealJS this time, so I can link to it from a short link. it'll be fun to experiment!
• dreading the prospect of upskilling at frontend because I hate frontend, but such is the life of a principal engineer. sigh.

misadventures

• this week, I confirmed rancid butter smells and tastes really bad. don't ask how.
• in other, completely unrelated news, I started working through the glut of butter on my fridge, and made a Victoria sponge cake for work!
  • baked the cake on Monday. also cooked the jam mix I prepared on Sunday. tried to experiment with a new kind of cream for the filling by whisking double cream and icing sugar. however, I accidentally made butter from the cream because I whipped it too hard. regardless, it turned out brilliantly
  • brought the cake in on Tuesday, and it went down a treat and it wasn't too sweet. the people at work at about one third, and I shared the rest with the other companies on our floor. people seem to appreciate home-baked goods.
• booked Eurostar tickets for Ghent on Monday morning.
  • I need to pack next week, before all my travelling clothes end up in the wash
  • I'm unfortunately going to miss this year's BBC Radio 1 Big Weekend as I'm in Ghent. I really enjoyed it the last time I went, and I'm a little sad I'll miss it
• this week, found myself inside a pub which actually enforces their no-vaping-inside policy. I'm stunned.
• on Tuesday, I redeemed my Santander 4-year railcard. even though I have a valid one from Monzo Perks set to expire in August, I don't like it because it's digital and only available via the Trainline app. call me old-fashioned, but I prefer physical cards.
• watched two films this week!
  • used Monzo Perks to get a free Thunderbolts* ticket for Vue in Harrow on Wednesday, and went with Arora. the film had a decent-ish buildup, but the ending fell quite flat.
    • I enjoyed the themes of mental health throughout the piece. Bob's feelings of emptiness, and his working through them, are something a few people I know identify with.
    • insurance premiums must be insane in the Marvel universe. I'd watch a show about people working normal jobs on Earth in Marvel-land, where they're constantly affected by superheroes' actions. think construction workers, police officers, insurance loss adjusters, and so on
    • I love it when my films try to sell me Wheaties after such an abrupt ending, where several major plot points weren't satisfactorily resolved and the end credits montage looked more exciting than the movie. it's great a movie's end credits scenes remind me of the illusion of choice in consumer goods I face every day, promptly unsuspending my suspended disbelief.
    • I have a massive gripe with the second end-credits scene. you can't copyright a brand identifier, you can only trademark it. this is one of the most basic tenets of intellectual property law, and would've taken a minute of searching on the Internet to clarify. at this point, it's obvious that it's just lazy, sloppy writing with no attention to detail.
    • it's not self-contained, given the Fantastic Four film setup at the end.
  • watched I Saw the TV Glow on Sunday, which was an unsettlingly good allegory for being trans. the ending was incredibly abrupt (like Thunderbolts), but it left me turning it over and over and over in my head (unlike Thunderbolts*).
• did some outreach for the OpenInfra Summit Student Engagement Committee this week, which entailed emailing some contacts from Middlesex and Edinburgh. I'm looking forward to hearing back from them.
• had a busy Friday, including picking up some Tube posters and dropping them off at Hugh's, swinging by a friend's after, going to London Night Cafe on Friday night, and crashing at another friend's on Saturday morning.
  • acquired 49 new posters. unfortunately, my current folio case is full and the same sized one is out of stock. I'll hold off on the purchase now, but I yearn for consistency
  • Kamī and blueringedbabyy performed an hour of ambient jungle at Night Cafe for this week's Midnight Set. it was such a good set, which I churned out my latest non weeknotes blog post while listening to. I'm planning to edit it tonight, send it out for review by a couple of friends and then post it next week. I think I've found my key to writing.
  • made English muffins on Saturday morning, with and had them with grated cheddar, bacon and eggs. some of the people I cooked for preferred their eggs with soft yolks, which was different from how I normally do it. however, I managed to pull it off and they loved it.
• had a friend over on Sunday, we both played with my frisbee in the park. glad I managed to get some sun on Sunday!
• bought tickets and flights for an event in Glasgow in November. going with a friend, and I'm excited
• pre-saved Lorde's new album, Virgin. What Was That was very good dance-pop song, in my mind, and I can't wait to listen to the rest.
• I'm enjoying myself a lot where I'm at at the minute. did some source control and CI migration at work over this past week, and hoping to make more headway next week. I feel appreciated and valued, which is good.
  • my probation meeting is due next Wednesday. haven't heard a negative word from my manager, and I'm getting shit done and everyone seems happy to work with me.
  • I'm rather happy here, and I feel the only reason I'd leave is if I wanted to start my own thing. I'm not ready for that mentally or financially, so I think that's a ways off for the minute