Weeknotes 2023 W23: Decay

Quick bits:

• My web site now has an old-school contact page. Take a look! The form data ends up as an email in my inbox, which is simple and effective. It’s got Akismet spam protection behind it and a honeypot field, which should be enough to eliminate unwanted email. Time will tell.

• I have a new wallet. It is very small. I will call it… Smallet.

• Shoes! I ordered a new pair of custom Nike Air Force 1 high-tops. My old Nike Air Force 1 pair is the best pair shoes I’ve ever had, but they’re practically falling apart at this point. There wasn’t much of a question that I wanted a similar pair. They haven’t arrived yet, but hopefully I’ll have them coming week.

• I ended up skipping the Sternfahrt — this thing — due to not finding people to go with. I was also rather hesitant to be around such a mass of cyclists. Perhaps next year?

• I have been told that I have a slight posh Edinburgh accent. I am confused. I’ve only been to Edinburgh once, and I certainly am not posh, am I?!

I finished the first acting course (based on the Chekhov technique) this week. We all hung our for drinks afterwards, and it was so nice. It was the first time in a long time having drinks this late in the evening, but it was worth it.

For me, this particular class didn’t click so well for me for three reasons. Firstly, I’m now quite sure that the Chekhov technique doesn’t do it for me. Secondly, I felt the class went fairly slow, and I wanted something more intense. Thirdly, the class was deliberately set up to be a gentle introduction, but that means there was no proper challenge for me. I do have the other acting class going on as well still, and that one fits my needs better.

Unfortunately, my brain keeps telling me that I am terrible and will always be terrible at it — “why do I even try; what a waste of time” — despite there being quite some evidence that I am making progress: in one acting exercise, my scene partner said I really got to them, which means I stepped into character properly and I definitely consider that a success.

I’m longing to have exercises that I can do at home; at the moment, I’m so early in the learning process that there doesn’t seem to be too much to effectively do by myself. I want exercises because I want to move fast — faster than how I’m going now.

I started drafting a new short story. For this one, I’m doing proper outlining first, in the hope that I can get the skeleton of the story in shape so that I can focus on writing and not have to worry about where the story is headed.

I’m using iA Writer for the first time, and liking it. While previously I was using Byword, I find iA Writer useful because I can switch between multiple documents (the manuscript, the outline, a scratchpad, etc) quickly. I’m still using the trial, but I think I’ll buy it.

I planned to attend the local Shut Up & Write meetup group on Wednesday morning — I even took half a day off for it — but cancelled my attendance about two hours beforehand because I felt physically unwell. As soon as I had cancelled, I started feeling better. There certainly was something psychosomatic going on. I feel like an impostor when it comes to writing. The though of others looking at me while I’m writing really got to me. “I don’t belong here” was, in hindsight, a prominent thought that I could not get out of my mind.

This week, had a bit of a theme of decay:

• One of my house plants seems is very much not doing well. Its leaves have been yellowing. I removed dead/rotten roots from its system, but I think I was too aggressive: by now it has lost more than half of its leaves, and the rest of the leaves are wilting, and I’m fairly sure it won’t pull through.

• The spider that has been accompanying me near the television in my living room has died. RIP. I’ll forever cherish the good time we had watching the original Spider-Man trilogy together (see Week­notes 2023 W02: Exploding head).

Some work bits:

• As much as I dislike meetings in general, at work the new weekly SteerCo meeting has gathered all the stakeholders in the room. That meeting has showed itself to be the best way to bring everyone and everything into alignment. Meetings aren’t inherently bad, and this was a good meeting.

• It is peer review time. I had a conversation with a non-tech person about peer reviews, and they were astounded that reviewing the performance of your peers is an apparently normal thing to do. They have a point. Peer reviews are an insidious tool: they are only useful for HR (who have the power to fire) and they do not benefit your coworkers.

Entertainment:

• House of Leaves is getting to me. This novel, man. It’s a trip.

• Silo drags on.

• I bought Diablo II Resurrected at Esther’s recommendation, and it is good indeed. It feels exactly like what I remember Diablo II feeling like back when I played it for the first time. It’s a big game, though, and I hope it doesn’t suck up too much of my time — I’ve got other things I want to spend time on.

Links:

• The AI Art Apocalypse (Hello Future Me): This is a very good video on “AI” art. At well over 2h in length, it is definitely worth watching. Quote: “Stories live and die on human connection, and we won’t find that here” (here = in the AI future). Amen to that.

• The Strange Number System Where Infinity Is Tiny (Veritasium): Whoa! I heard of p-adic number before, but never looked into them. They sure are thoroughly unusual!

• The Great Places Erased by Suburbia (the Third Place) (Not Just Bikes): This is something I miss in the area I live in in Berlin.

• Debunking the Tech Hype Cycle with Dan Olson (Factually episode 213) (Adam Conover with Dan Olson): I could watch these two fine people talk for hours.

• REVIEW: Elliot Page’s Memoir, “Pageboy” (SAVY WRITES BOOKS): That book goes on my wishlist!

• THIS STORY WILL RUIN YOUR MIND (The King in Yellow) and Who is The King in Yellow? (Tale Foundry): Wonderful stories that will stick around in your brain.