after a really long nap since WHY, I’m back! also, I’ve been very busy with work. that being said, I'm looking to start doing these again regularly. it took me some time to figure out how exactly to collate my thoughts to write weeknotes again, so please enjoy.

miscellanea

• found a very good article on AI and why to be wary about how it shapes and influences our thoughts and personal processes
• since the 1950s, Hong Kong has used seawater for flushing toilets. the plumbing materials have been designed to be resistant to seawater, and about 85% of toilets in Hong Kong are flushed with seawater
• South Western Railway are retiring their fleet of Class 455s, after 42 years of service
• this one's a bit old, from my trip a few months back to Glasgow, but I couldn't help but share it. Glasgow has legal walls for graffiti, which I find really cool
• it looks like you can adjust the message a user sees based on their Fedi instance. see this post, which renders the instance hostname in the body! I'm not too sure how it works, though

musings

• I'm on Mastodon now!
• Airflow is so convoluted.
• people will let an awful lot slide if you're funny. which is great, because I'm incredibly funny
• I need to prep for CCC in December, mostly just booking transport and meeting up with people! also, EMF Camp next year, which I've already got two project ideas lined up for
• /dev/fort, where a bunch of hackers get together in one fort for one week with lots of food would be something fun to resurrect. I feel it would be a blend of eth0 and This Next Thing

misadventures

• went to the London Night Café on Monday! was still exhausted from Bangface a few weeks ago, even if it was a very nice time with the homies.
  • I'm working on a lot of writing, including tackling some of my backlog. I did some writing for WHY, but I also need to hunker down and do some writing for the Edinburgh book.
• stayed at home for most of Tuesday, spent the workday being pretty productive
  • hacked away at getting ECS executors working for Airflow
  • huddled with a few colleagues on an engineering proposal for an internal library
  • during lunch, binged Humans and finished Series 1. it's actually quite pertinent, given all this hoo-hah about AI
• was out and about quite a bit on Wednesday!
  • waited with bated breath for the budget on Wednesday, which I felt was a bit of a flop. nothing to stimulate productivity, with a boatload of taxes to please the markets. a lot of tax rises were a choice, although I welcome the lift of the two child benefit cap
  • watched the first two episodes of Hazbin Hotel series 2.
  • went to the CityJS 200th anniversary meetup, where I saw Ramona. it was lovely to see her again after sharing the stage with her a few years ago at HalfStack. also, cake.
  • in the evening, got invited by Lewis (a bloke I met at Bangface!) to an algorave in Corsica Studios, with some pretty good trance music. apparently, they're shutting down soon, and that was one of their last shows 😔
• on Thursday, managed to take care of a bunch of domestic chores
  • completed The Metro crossword, only needing to look up one word (the Jane Austen novel, Emma)
  • conducted a technical interview for a frontend engineer, which we desperately need
  • got my Malm bed fixed after a few gruelling weeks. I never realised how much bad quality sleep fucks with one's head
• had a good start to the weekend on Friday
  • spent a majority of my time chasing my tail on Airflow executor logging. not all Airflow executors support serving logs, which Airflow uses in the UI when tasks are running
  • saw Now You See Me, Now You Don't (which, by the way, is complete bullshit as it's the third film, and not the second) with Iris, and it was good to see her again. it turned out to be a pretty good heist film, and I've been reminded of how much I love heist films.
• spent the weekend out on
  • headed out to Ramsgate with Chaos and friends, to visit This Museum is Not Obsolete. it was a really fun, interactive experience. ended up buying a sticker sheet and a flipboard, which set me back ~£40.
    • we ended up heading to the biggest Wetherspoons in the country. it was a little rainy, so we didn't get to go out to the pavillion
    • went to Tonbridge for afters, and I crashed until Sunday
  • almost lost Whammageddon on Sunday, after hearing it at a funfair. lucky me!
  • finished Everyone on the Moon Is Essential Personnel on the train back. given the titular story is about space, it would be pretty on theme to organise a dramatic reading of it for EMF

next week, I'm going to hack away at

• debugging some more esoteric Airflow issues
• pick up some more tube posters
• performing at the Freedom Fridge
• finishing up my chapter of the Edinburgh book