Weeknotes 2023 W05:
Fridge cleaning

Feeling under the weather this weekend. Hopefully it passes soon. I’ve got a sore throat and I’ve been feeling quite sleepy.

I have some vacation days coming up: I took Monday and Tuesday off. I feel like I need a break. I’ve not got anything planned for those days, but I’m sure they’ll fill up with interesting stuff — or perhaps with nothing at all?

That is, assuming I feel better by then.

I’m reminded that at Shopify, despite having unlimited vacation days, I definitely took far less than I could have taken.

I was struggling with RSI last weekend and that lasted a bit into the week, though I recovered from it quickly enough. The only way to recover is to not use my hands, which I did!

I cleaned out my fridge. I figured that with temperatures being low outside (a few degrees above freezing), it’s really the ideal time: I moved everything from the fridge to a box, put the box on the balcony, cleaned out the fridge and defrosted the freezer, then moved everything back.

It made me realize how inefficient it must be to have a cooled space (the fridge) inside a heated space (kitchen) inside a cool space (the outside world).

I passed my probation period! That’s expected and I’m happy.

Earlier this week, I met up wit a coworker for lunch. That was quite good — and it really was just lunch and not an office visit. I’m still not planning on being regularly in the office; my home office setup is still too good and anything I do, I want to do from home.

I still haven’t found the time to work on hobby projects much. There are at least two bugs in Nanoc that need to be looked at, but I can’t properly make the time.

Also, working for free on a product I already provide for free seems increasingly unfair. Perhaps — once I find time time — I’ll think about setting up a paid support scheme.

I did outline a potential book on writing an interpreter in Ruby:

This could be a fun project to work on, though I can imagine it easily taking more than year. It depends a bit on how much interest there is in the topic. Let me know what you think!

I wanted to verify my Belgian ID data, so I reinstalled the drivers for the electronic ID card reader. Installing drivers (with the necessary number of computer restarts) on macOS feels weird; it ought to be a Windows-only thing, right?!

My Belgian ID card says my address is Germany 1202, Berlin, and the national registry says I was born at 00000.

Yeah, no.

Entertainment:

Shazam is good and surprisingly wholesome. It’s tonally rather weird for a DC movie — DC is usually a lot grittier.

Fallout 76 is a weird, buggy mess. It’s also rather not fun.

I watched Parallel (the 2018 film), which was okay. Its plot is muddy and has twists that don’t add anything.

Links:

• The End of Writing: Lots of thoughts on this one and I instinctively find myself disagreeing with a few points made here. Maybe a few months down the line I’ll have a different view!

• An Annotated Field Guide to Identifying Phish (TidBITS): I nearly got phished earlier today.

Tech links:

• Big Tech is using layoffs to crush worker power (Brian Merchant, LA Times): A scary conclusion, but it’s the most cogent explanation of what the heck is happening.

• The new responsive: Web design in a component-driven world (Una Kravets, 2021): This is an older article but still inspirational.

• Releasing code in large corporations is slow – and there is a good reason for it (Christian Heilmann)

• Four Day Work Week: How and Why We Work Less (Calibre): Working a constant 40h/week often seem really high to me, and it’s good to see that alternatives are possible.

• I’m Now a Full-Time Professional Open Source Maintainer (Filippo Valsorda): I’m envious.