Weeknotes 2024 W07: In London

Quick bits:

• I had the problem that sometimes on macOS, I’d accidentally open the widgets (the ones to the right hand side). I’ve finally figured out why that happens: two-finger swiping from the right hand side of the trackpad opens up the widgets. That was quite non-obvious.

• The beautiful thing about Twitter crashing and burning (and turning into ash, I mean into X) is that the original meaning of the verb “to twitter” is coming back.

• I am so happy with my business cards.¹¹1 I wrote about them in Week­notes 2023 W43: Business cards.  I find myself sharing my contact details much more quickly and much more often.

I’m in London, and I am having a good time. There are too many thoughts to put them in any semblance of structure, so here they are, unsorted and uncategorized:

• There is so much good food in London, though just like in Berlin, it can be a bit hit-and-miss. I started off my visit with an excellent Sunday roast, which might’ve set the bar rather high.

• My coffee consumption has gone way up. Can’t avoid having coffee in London. (I sometimes have tea with milk, which looks a little like coffee, and so I don’t feel too weird about it.)

• Escalators here are considerably faster than in Berlin. I imagine that this is because the underground stations in London are so much deeper underground than in Berlin, where they’re often right below street level.

• London is expensive, though for now I’m not paying too close attention to it. I’m on holiday! I don’t want to worry about money! I’ll, ehh, worry about that later.

• Living in London is financially rather tough. The people I’ve talked to about this either rent and live far away, live in a flat share, have bought their own place, or have gotten a bizarrely good deal with a reasonable landlord a long time ago.

• Where would I want to live, anyway? London has so many boroughs and they all feel so different. It makes Berlin look bland and uniform.

• It was great to meet up with Tom Apple Tom Stuart for coffee, for the first time in probably ten years. (I think it was from Eurucamp ago?) Tom’s week­notes are what got me started with mine!

• I attended LRUG, the London Ruby User Group, and that was good fun. It’s remarkable how much more social the event feels compared to RUG::B, the Ruby User Group Berlin. London in general feels much more socially warm than Berlin.

• Visiting the Thieves Guild Museum British Museum felt odd, knowing that so much of the stuff in there is, well, stolen. The museum acknowledges this by stating that conversations are ongoing, but it’s more PR than anything else.

And now for something completely different:

• I keep misreading “to let” as “toilet.” On multiple occasions I have gotten confused at building sites advertising 4000 square feet (about 370 m²) of toilets. Luxurious!

• At the Barbican library, I gravitated towards the horror shelves. When I picked up a book, the other books on the shelf expanded to fill up the newly empty space, as if space itself was distorted. A classic H. P. Lovecraft event.

• I finally got to visit my first Whetherspoons! The highlight of my visit.

• I went to the place where time itself was invented: the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. I also walked past the National Maritime Museum, where mari-time must have been invented.

• Remarkably few navels at the Old Royal Navel College. Not impressed.

• Of all the London Underground lines, the Elizabeth Line is the only one that has the word “line” in the name itself. When you say “the Northern line,” then “Northern” is the name of the line. But, because “Elizabeth Line” is the name of the line itself, it stands to reason that it needs to be referred to “the Elizabeth Line line.” Which you can then unambiguously abbreviate to just “line line” which is so perfectly easy!

Look, not having Twitter anymore and barely using social media, the only place where I can do my shit-posting is on my week­notes. Better get used to it.

Last week, I started drafting a novel. The plan is to sit down every day for an hour, and just write.

The genre is something I’ve never attempted before: an epic fantasy novel. Good lord, this will take me ages to write. Scrivener tells me I am about 2.5% done, though that is only counting the words I’ve written in the manuscript itself. At the rate that I am writing now, it’ll take me another six months of daily work to get the first draft ready. Oof.

I am doing everything ad-hoc. I just keep writing: I ask the question “what would this character do” and then continue my writing based on the answer. Even the world-building is ad-hoc, though for an epic fantasy, that aspect of storytelling needs quite a lot of attention.

I don’t know where I am going with this, but I am having good fun — that’s the most important. I’m also very glad I have Scrivener, without which I would’ve never thought about embarking on this project.

I wrote a short story: Extrasensory. It’s a classic ghost story set in a cemetery. It’s a five-minute read.

It was written entirely at the Barbican, a place that gets my creative juices flowing.

Entertainment:

• Doctor Sleep²²2 Stephen King, Doctor Sleep (New York: Scribner, 2013).  has gotten considerably better. I’m about two thirds through, and it is a very good book indeed. More enjoyable than The Institute.³³3 Stephen King, The Institute (Scribner, 2019). 

• At a second-hand bookstore, I picked up Mistborn: The Final Empire⁴⁴4 Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn: the final empire (New York: Tor, 2006).  and Mistborn: The Well of Ascension,⁵⁵5 Brandon Sanderson, The Well of Ascension (New York: Tor, 2007).  which I’m looking forward to reading. That’s plenty of reading material.

Reading is fun.

Links:

• UV light kills viruses. Why isn’t it everywhere? (Vox)

• The game you NEED to play if you loved Alan Wake 2 (Polygon): A Hand With Many Fingers is good fun!

• European human rights court says no to weakened encryption (The Register)

• Naming the London Overground Lines (TfL): This change makes a lot of sense!

• Did Aphex Twin cross the line? “XTAL” How was it made? (Gyu Beats)