miscellanea

• found a good Adele remix of Rolling in the Deep, featuring Childish Gambino, from 15 years ago(!). thank you for recommending this gem, YouTube
• graggle is in your walls.

musings

• AI really should've stopped at code completion. how have we taken such a massive step back in writing code? for some funny reason, the term Butlerian Jihad springs to mind.
• the world is frustratingly small. it seems like everyone knows everyone.
• are petrol stations on supermarket premises licensed separately for the sale of alcohol and late night refreshment? I'd think so, given that they tend to have different hours of operation and would probably have different conditions attached to those licenses

misadventures

• spent the bulk of this week, between Tuesday and Thursday being a digital nomad in Deiniolen in north Wales. it was in a lovely little converted chapel run by Astralship
  • Astralship is a live-in creative workspace based out of a reclaimed building, a bit like Newspeak House. I met the people who run it back at WHY last year, and I decided to give it a visit. it doesn't have a specific focus (like political technology) yet, but it's a project I'm excited to see grow
• while I was up there, I baked two cakes, including one chocolate cake and one Victoria sponge in their air-fryer. everyone seemed to like it. I also saw hail for the first time!
• had a chat with Pawel about my Teaching Programming Across Disciplines book chapter (which has been published online, by the way!), which he's thinking of adding some illustrations to.
• managed to be productive at work, and banged out a distributed locking algorithm and some relevant tests. I'm rather shocked how good I am at software engineering. next week, I'm going to actually use it in production, which will be exciting!
• picked up some good music while I was away, including The House of the Rising Sun, Bran (2022) and the particularly funky Aloha Ke Akua
• visited the Dinorwig Power Station, a pumped hydro plant, before I left. it was a misty day, and the scale was absolutely breathtaking
• there's remarkably good 5G in rural Wales
• my Doc Martens got a hole in them, probably from traipsing about Wales. the plan was to destroy them urbexing in Belgium in a few weeks, but this works too. 😔
• journey back into London on Thursday was quite a trek, took ~7h15m from door to door
• headed into work on Friday, met with Josie and Maeve at Where The Pancakes Are for lunch. it's the second time I've been there in about two months. quite a nice place, and I can highly recommend the English breakfast pancakes.
• went to two raves on Friday and Saturday night, both at Distillery N17. had a few realisations about myself that I won't share here.
  • first was a sound system party, featuring a wall of twelve massive bass bins. people seemed to worship that sound system, and the music was pretty damn good. featured some very gentle moshing towards the end. I'm glad I managed to secure some foam earplugs.
  • second was a dyke rave. I got told (quite explicitly, in fact) that oestrogen would look good on me. make of that what you will. also got introduced to Farming Snails 1 & Farming Snails 2, which seem like government sponsored shitposts
  • venue's bathroom graffiti was actually pretty funny. someone scratched away a few stickers I put up, though.
  • remarkably well-ventilated venue, and I didn't get sweaty.
• rest of the Guernsey group went on a big walk in Brighton on Saturday, which was pulled back from next week. I'm planning to do a big walk on the same date, so I can get some practice in