Denis Defreyne

Weeknotes 2025 W49: Deeply unfair

December 1​–​7, 2025

Quick bits:

  • It has come to my attention that the Nützung of the nearby Erholungsanlage is only gestattet until Sonnuntergang. I am a born criminal.

  • I am on macOS Tahoe, and I can confirm that Liquid Glass is an embarrassment.

  • I am glad to see the repository and web site of Zigbook (which I wrote about two weeks ago) taken down. I am delighted to see consequences to unacceptable behavior.

  • Discord told me I have no “checkpoint” because of my privacy settings. An unexpected win.

I woke up sick this morning with quite the sore throat. It has only been a few weeks since the last time I was sick, and the symptoms feel identical. I genuinely hope this is something else, and I recover more quickly than last time.

With just over seven days until my performance, I’m a little worried. It would genuinely suck if I were to be unable to make it.

On public transit, I am one of the very few who still wear face masks. This is deeply unfair.

I’ve started my new job!

My immediate impression: Gosh, working full-time takes up so much time. I am not used to it anymore — perhaps understandable after five months of unemployment.

But you know what? There is a good chance that this new job will be more than satisfactory — great, even. I’ve only just finished my first week, so I’m not going to jump to conclusions, but I am working on a product that I was already using as a customer for years. What could be better than that?

And I’ve gotten some changes into production already. Not too bad, is it?

The only bad thing is that when I went to the Falafel place next to the office and the shopkeeper said guten Appetit, I responded with gleichfalls which is a complete faux pas and now I can never go to that place ever again.

My glasses broke, right when I was about to head out to the office for onboarding. The left temple broke off, and now the glasses sit all wobbly on my nose.

I’ve gone to my optician and I’m hoping to get it fixed soon. A replacement temple has been ordered. For €85! Glasses are expensive.

For the time being, when I’m working from home, I’m taping the left side of my glasses to my head. Is it pretty? Absolutely not. Does it work? Yes. And it’s necessary, I find: my glasses have already flown off my face a few times, and I do not want to risk damaging them even more.

This week, I learned about the .git/info/excludes file. It’s like .gitignore, but not versioned.

This makes it great for use with ddenv, where I can create my own ddenv.yaml files without needing to add these files to .gitignore.

Entertainment:

  • In Dream Scenario,1 Nicolas Cage gives probably his best and most truthful performance. It is an intriguing exploration of fame, though I am not entirely sure what the message of the film really is.

Links:

Tech links:

  1. Dream Scenario, directed by Kristoffer Borgli (A24, Square Peg, Quebec Film and Television Tax Credit, 2023). ↩︎

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