Weeknotes 2024 W40: Unity

September 30​–​October 6, 2024
2000 words

Quick bits:

Quick bits about tech:

Shower thoughts:

Fiction writing hard. (I’ve said this before. I’m repeating myself.)

I’ve put the work on my solo performance4 on hold for now. I keep moving sideways with it, rather than going forward.

The other day I realised that I haven’t published any new fiction in over half a year. That is something I’d like to change: I would much rather publish stuff even if the quality isn’t up to my standards, like I had been doing before.

I could continue with the Alphabet Superset. I’m woefully behind schedule, but that hardly matters. Or I could just write whatever I feel like: I have heaps of concepts and premises that I could turn into stories.

But there is stuff holding me back from fiction writing:

Rationally, I don’t think any of these three fears make sense:

The most important takeaway is that I must not compare myself to others. A while ago, I found myself being envious of an author whose style I really liked, and thought that my own writing was just weak and bad in comparison. That author won the Nobel Prize in Literature. If that’s my standard… well, then I might as well give up right now.

I’ll try not to compare myself to others. But it is so, so tempting.

I’ve made a few changes to my web site. The obvious one is that I have switched the typeface to Atkinson Hyperlegible, which is (surprise!) so much more readable. Perhaps I have arrived in the sans-serif phase of my life. Thanks to Amos, whose serif or sans-serif question pushed me to change the typeface.

I am still fond of Valkyrie, the typeface I used previously. Perhaps it’ll find a use elsewhere.

As a much smaller change, I’ve given the sidenotes proper ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) markup with aria-hidden="true", which should help with screen readers and produce better results in “reader view” modes like the ones that come with Safari and Firefox.

I gave a talk at work on implementing a programming language, in which I explain the basics of writing a tree-walking interpreter in about 45 minutes. It went well, and I’m satisfied with the outcome.

For this talk, I used a sample programming language derived from deli,6 a programming language I created and wrote an interpreter for last year when I had the idea of writing a book on writing interpreters. I didn’t get very far with that book, but I am tempted to pick up the work on that book.

But I probably won’t. I have far too many interesting things to do, and I don’t have the time or energy for this gargantuan project.

Week numbers are weird.

Florian pointed out that there are two kinds of week numbers: US week numbers and ISO week numbers.

I had always assumed, until now, that the first ISO week of the year7 would be the week that has the first Monday of the year in it. But no: it’s the first Thursday.

For example, the first ISO week of 2020 starts on Monday, December 30th, 2019, because three days later is Thursday, January 3rd, 2020, which is the first Thursday of the year.

When I found out, I thought that this would spell doom for my beautiful week­notes numbering scheme. But I got lucky: my week­notes are (incidentally) numbered with ISO week numbers, and everything is just fine and dandy. No changes needed! It’s all fine! Whew!

This whole bit of insight will be relevant rather soon: the next ISO year, 2025, starts on Monday, December 30th, 2024, because three days later is Thursday, January 3rd, 2025, which is the first Thursday of the year 2025. It’ll be just like the end of 2019!

Enough of this nerdy date stuff. Moving on.

I spotted an ugly bit of phrasing on the Internet, and I can’t get over it, so I am compelled to complain about it on my week­notes:

A banner on GitHub that says “(branch name) had recent pushes 5 minutes ago” and a button to the right titled “Compare & pull request.

The problem is the button: Compare & pull request. The intention behind the button text is “compare the branch with the main branch and/or create a pull request for this branch.” But one part is a one-word sentence in the imperative mood (Compare), while the other part is a noun (pull request). This to me makes the whole button text read like a sentence in the imperative mood, as if “pull request” is an order.

Much better would be “Compare & create pull request.”

Why does GitHub choose this weird phrasing? Is it perhaps because the addition of the word “create” makes the button text too long?8

Entertainment:

Tweets and toots:

Links:

Gaming links:

Tech links:

  1. German Unity Day ↩︎

  2. My fridge never has a lot in it, as there are multiple grocery stores open until 10 PM within walking distance. If I need something, I usually will purchase it on the day itself. I love how convenient Berlin can be. ↩︎

  3. Berlin main station ↩︎

  4. I wrote about the work on a solo performance before in W34, W35, W37, W38 and W39. ↩︎

  5. Hopefully this is already clear from context, but I am not talking about monetary worth here. ↩︎

  6. “deli” stands for Denis’ Example Language for Interpretation. Not fantastic — I know. ↩︎

  7. I’m not following US convention because starting weeks on a Sunday makes just no sense. Fight me. ↩︎

  8. To the best of my knowledge, GitHub never abbreviates “pull request” to “PR” anywhere in their UI. I like this (abbreviations create confusion), but it eliminates Compare & create PR” as an option. ↩︎

  9. Rick Burroughs, Alan Wake (New York: Tor, 2013). ↩︎

  10. John Shirley, Bioshock: Rapture (New York: Tor, 2012). ↩︎

  11. Satisfactory (Coffee Stain Studios, 2024), published by Coffee Stain Publishing. ↩︎

You can reply to this weeknotes entry by email. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
If you like what I write, stick your email address below and subscribe. I send out my weeknotes every Sunday morning. Alternatively, you can subscribe to the web feed.
Incoming links: One-person stage play, Weeknotes 2024 W41: Acquired taste.