weeknotes for w/c 25/11/24

what's that in the distance? is it a bird? is it a plane? no, it's a weeknotes that's (broadly) on time for once!

despite things being cold and windy and miserable, i think i had a productive and fulfilling week.

• i'm slowly realising i need to give myself the mental space to be creative, without putting excessive pressure on myself. figuring out my creative process is a little difficult.
• i finally set up my media server (well, i got a friend to do most of it for me)! i'm getting some surprisingly good public domain movies from archive.org and getting DRM-free music through Bandcamp.
• took me two hours to get into work on Tuesday, because of a massive signal failure in the Elizabeth line core section. however, i managed to get into work in time for lunch with a colleague, and popped to the pub with friends after. it was good to get some social contact, especially since my whole team is remote.
• on Thursday, i presented a session about open data and open standards on Thursday at the NHM for their Explorers Conference. it's a really interesting program get build community for people from racially marginalised backgrounds interested in Earth, environmental, and ecological sciences, and i'm glad i could be a part of it.
• met with my mentee on Friday, identified the project she should work and helped her get her repository set up. i'm really happy with how i've been keeping notes about the whole thing.
• work has been so exhausting, i slept for 3.5 hours immediately after work on Friday. i feel like I’m making lots of silly mistakes at work, which is in turn making me anxious and skittish, which is in turn making me make genuinely silly mistakes.
• finally got around to fixing my blog's image and header!
• upgraded my Plane instance, debugged my workflow for creating new cycles each week. using Plane has been super useful for tracking all my personal tasks, and i'm excited to produce some visualisations at some point. i'm feeling a little overwhelmed by my to-do list growing longer and longer, but i feel i'm managing it.
• December is an active time for meetups and events, likely because of Christmas. i'm tempted by the London Personal Knowledge Management Meetup on the 11th, but i have a few other things i'm interested in. why can't i be in two three places at once?!
• i need to get around to picking apart my notes app. i don't know what's in it, so i'm sure it's chock full of completely unstructured knowledge-gems.
• i thought about making changes to the blog and moving weeknotes to Bluesky, but i've decided against it. i think i'd appreciate some form of social media for shortform shitposts, though.
• went to a housewarming on Saturday, where the hosts asked me to bring a side to go with pulled pork sandwiches. i made made soy-glazed roasted tenderstem broccoli, sugar snap peas and green beans, as well as a Victoria sponge cake with home-made raspberry and strawberry jam and vanilla and sea salt buttercream. it went down a treat!
  • i'm planning on marking up my recipes using Cooklang before I forget!
• went for a 2h15 walk on Sunday through the Ruislip Woods with two frineds. it was a quiet walk until we got to the lido, when it got much busier. started at midday and then had a late lunch at a carvery.
• started Advent of Code in Go, got both stars for the 1st.
• watched Vivarium, it's a crap film