weeknotes for w/c 16/09/24

accomplished quite a bit! finished my first project at Monzo, cooked for a crowd of 20, gave a conference talk and started planning the next step on my neverending quest to self-host all the things!

• had some lower back pain starting on Monday, and took ibuprofen to manage it. by Saturday, it seemed to have subsided quite a bit. 
• had dinner with Hugh Evans on Monday evening at a Chinese restaurant, was nice to catch up
  • we discussed event organising and how difficult it was to find new events of interest in London
• tuesday was rather quiet, as i saved my energy for later in the week.
  • continued with therapy on Tuesday, i feel like i’m some making progress
  • organised codebar workshop at Sedna in the evening, and went to the pub after. it was nice to organise a workshop again, especially since my last one was quite some time ago
• cooked for Ration Club at Newspeak House on Wednesday, and fed a crowd of about 20. managed to rope a friend into helping with cooking.
  • cooked couscous with vegetable stock as the starch for the meal. it came out incredibly fluffy! alongside that, fried up a vegetable medley of mixed peppers, onions, tomatoes
• seasoned some salmon with garlic, fresh parsley and lemon juice, wrapped it, and baked it in the oven. also marinated chicken thighs and breast strips in a mixture of sweet soy sauce, sesame oil, pomegranate sour and some more spices, and fried it
• missed the doctor’s appointment for the wrist this week but spoke to a physiotherapist on Thursday, got some exercises in a PDF. i’ll speak to them again in six weeks.
  • my wrist is feeling much better from the ergonomic setup
  • reassuringly, my wrist problem doesn't appear to be carpal tunnel
• finally completed my first work project on Friday. and i feel i’ve done really well. all that’s left is to clean up and plan for the next project.
  • will be working as floater next week, absorbing any requests from other teams so the rest of my team can get their work done
  • planning to do work on some internal service documentation
• went to uncodebar 10 at Google on Saturday, it was awesome! i love events like these and i’m always excited for the next one, which is most likely in October in Barcelona.
  • learnt about the concept of a do-nothing script, a way to encode the steps of a process in software code. that process can then be automated step-by-step, making the automation less overwhelming
  • this year, i gave a talk on building healthy habits when neurodiverse. it was incredibly well-received, and will help me prep for HalfStack in November 
  • it was great to see so many people I know again, especially since I only get to see them once or twice a year. i also made some new friends and met some cool new people
• i heard about BarCamp London 13 on 23rd November. i'm tempted to go, especially since it was apparently the inspiration for uncodebar
• popped to the pub after and didn’t have too much to drink. i’m proud of myself. crashed at a friend’s after, as i was exhausted
• had a lazy Sunday, picked up some flowers for mum. she loved them and that made me happy.
• started doing Codewars and did some exercises.
  • it's not too bad, and i like the exercises a lot. i think it’s a good way to keep my JavaScript skills sharp while i work day-in and day-out in Go
• inspired by Willow, i set up Uptime Kuma, so now have a status page. i can also check the status of other devices on my network using Tailscale.
  • i added my PiHole to Tailscale, so i no longer need to use my main home server as a bastion box
• i'm considering self-hosting a Jellyfin instance, accessibly through Tailscale. i'd probably do a cheap build with some 4TB or 8TB drives in them, i've started brainstorming the setup
• it'll unfortunately need to be Intel-based for Jellyfin's hardware transcoding 
• i feel Jellyfin will promote more mindful consumption of media, as i'll have to put effort into finding and curating television shows and films i actually enjoy
• got my Sonos One speaker out of storage to create a stereo pair with my existing Sonos One SL
  • i normally use my speakers through AirPlay, and i rarely use the Sonos app, but i am slowly discovering my burning hatred for it. tried to pair three or four times before it finally worked
  • stereo paired speakers sounds so good, and i’m happy i did it
• i’m considering upgrading my over-ear headphones. sony's XM4s are good, but my pair are well-loved
  • i'm disappointed by the AirPods Max non-upgrade (simply adding USB-C)
  • i’ve been tempted by them, but I refuse to get a pair of £500+ headphones which won’t have any new features because of a last-gen chip, which can’t handle when I sweat a bit, and that don’t even have a power button
• my aunt got my letter! i'm pleasantly surprised. i’ll sit down and compose another one next week.
• subscribed to Maia Crimew’s and Terence Eden’s blogs via RSS. the slow nature of RSS makes me happy.
• next week feels busy, but i don’t think will be as busy this week
  • starting planning for new work project on Monday
  • team social on Wednesday
  • eye test on Thursday
  • housewarming on Friday
  • another housewarming on Saturday