✨slightly delayed weeknotes✨ because of the long weekend (more thoughts on that later!). in short, I have had a rough week which has culminated in a pointless shattering of my routine. 😭

miscellanea

• updated my Oyster to add my 16 to 25 Railcard discount for the next three years. the staff couldn’t add the full four years, because that triggered a validation error.
• successfully resisted the urge to submit a talk to LeadDev Berlin, even though they sent me an email about their CfP closing on Sunday
• SWR has (finally) been taken into public ownership! incredibly excited to be screwed by my fellow countrymen instead of... checks notes a consortium of asset management firms and Hong Kong's public transport operator.
• got treated to a Captain Disillusion video on Blur
• learnt there was a difference between fiancée (a woman to be married) versus fiancé
• found out Yahtzee is now on Second Wind YouTube channel instead of The Escapist, who do some interesting video game journalism. stumbled on this piece on the channel about Dr. Who being a metaphor for television as a medium, which was interesting!
• stumbled on a brilliant video essay on predatory for-profit creative software, and enshittification of software in general

musings

• been wondering if you can mount memory and use it as the main storage for a computer. what would be the downsides of this? I think a massive upside could be the volatility when it’s switched off so it doesn’t keep data, although there are ways around that
• found a live version TENDER's Slow Love on Apple Music this week, and it's absolute torture. they forget all the little things that make the song perfect, and I can't stand it
• starting work at 9 o’clock is completely arbitrary. I might start work earlier in the day, because that would mean I can get stuff done with fewer interactions and I can finish earlier
• it’s great that the "Diagnose with Amazon Q" button doesn’t show up when it’s actually useful, like when an issue with a security group doesn't allow me to SSH into an EC2 instance
• the biggest problem with hot Greggs bakes is the filling hasn’t had time to settle and congeal into deliciousness. this is especially true of their spinach, red pepper and feta bake
• the milkshake place I really liked in Westfield closed. as the saying goes, it’s a recession when your neighbour loses his shake spot, but it’s a depression when you lose yours
• my biggest fear with roads is how narrow they are and reversing on them if some other big vehicle, like a bus or lorry, is coming my way
• got an email from my mobile provider encouraging me to use more data. it must be some sort of long game before they jack up prices
• excited to use my movie ticket next month to watch a film of some sort. it's a nice little ritual
• got back into playing Control on Xbox, and it’s a really good video game
• need to buy more shower gel, so I'm considering bulk buying body wash, bleach and other cleaning products I need
• I need to focus on one thing at a time. Ghent has really helped me reprioritise things. I think it’s okay to speak to people and lean on them a bit
• saw a billboad ad for Mullvad VPN, "mass surveillance is made by machine men with machine hearts", while on the Overground. it felt like something you'd see in a video game loading screen while fast-travelling on public transport
• I hate bank holidays with a passion. I don’t need the government to tell me when I need to take a holiday. they’re not evenly spread throughout the year
  • considering asking my boss to take the bank holiday allowance and just put it in my general holiday allowance, so I can choose when to take it. Monzo did something similar, and I took the option

musings

• had a code review on Monday, review on structure was all positive, continued hacking away at it this week
• held some Lumi interviews this week, and one candidate recognised me from my maker talk! that's wild (we're also hiring for senior+ IC engineers, so let me know if you know anyone who's interested)
• got a meal deal on Monday afternoon, and switched the BLT sandwich for a chicken and bacon Caesar salad (without the croutons, because it was from Tesco). it wasn’t too bad, actually.
• brought cinnamon puffs to Campaign Lab on Monday evening, they loved it!
• GitHub Enterprise has finally been set up after weeks of back and forth, so next week will be dedicated to configuring it
• the trip to Ghent went topsy-turvy
  • confirmed Eurostar seats, got the holy grail for both directions: an aisle, table seat
  • set off to Alex's on Wednesday evening, so I could catch the Eurostar from St. Pancras on Thursday morning
  • swung by the Chinese place up the top of my road and had a phenomenal midnight gourmand of sweet and sour chicken, egg fried rice and veg stir-fried in black bean sauce on the bus
  • got to Alex's and settled in. lost my bag, but only realised at midnight. tried to back track to find it and couldn’t.
  • got up early and checked at a bunch of London Underground and Elizabeth Line stations. they have a unified lost and found system for the rail network, so they checked for me.
    • fun fact, there are two systems they use. one is a feed in Viva Engage where staff post lost items and the other is the official NotLost system
  • called up bus garages, one had an automated voice recognition to route to the right garage (which of course didn't work and felt like playing bingo). kept calling and nobody picked up.
    • at least it recognises tree fiddy correctly!
    • ended up going in person, but it wasn't there
  • headed home, and mulled over cancelling my passport. filled in the form, and it was cancelled in seconds.
    • pretty interesting that there's an API for that, now. the future is now, old man!
  • found the bag at the Chinese takeaway (with my passport still in), and kicked myself because I knew it would turn up somewhere but still cancelled it
    • had to cancel my passport physically too, which was interesting! getting it returned to HMPO ASAP. although that guidance states that passports cancelled electronically can be reinstated, I don't think mine can given it's probably in an INTERPOL database already.
• ...I hope Felix had a good time in Ghent, at least
• this got me thinking about why I wanted to go to Ghent in the first place, and to me it felt like an accessible way in to hacker culture. on top of that, I understand that people there are much smarter than me and so it was a real honour to be invited to speak about my personal knowledge arrangement system. I'll probably end up repurposing the talk for another conference later this year, but I'm not sure which
• found eth0 with foss.events. it has a similar vibe, so I've changed my ticket to go to that instead!
• went to the Night Cafe on Friday night, expected to get some focus time but barely got anything done
• met with engineer I worked with from Monzo on Saturday, had a lovely chat with him and got some language learning tips.
• met with patron on Saturday evening, was lovely sitting down with them
• I got holiday in July, so applied for a new passport. had to get it countersigned because I cancelled it. that was a painful process
• had Ollie over on Sunday night, and he was a good sport (even though I was a little grumpy I wasn't in Ghent)