Weeknotes 0

• I’ve tried and failed to do week notes before. I’m not going to over think it. I’m just going to start writing something.

• Writing it as a list means I don’t have to worry about writing long prose if I don’t want to. I can just finish a thought and move on.

• Of course we’re home schooling at the moment. My 10 year-old tends to just get on with it. My 6 year-old needs more time and attention from one of us through the day. A big difference to previous lockdowns is that Jo has to go into work one day a week, rather than work at home like I can. So it makes Tuesday’s a particularly tough day as most of my time is spent doing English and Maths during the day and them trying to catch up with work in the evening.

• It’s strange to think I haven’t stepped foot in Hursley for almost a year now. As I spend my time working on an outward facing open source project, it is fairly irrelevant where I sit down to work. The bit I miss is far more the social side of things; bumping into people in the corridor who you haven’t spoken to for ages. You can’t reproduce that with video conferencing and calendar entries for prearranged chats. It’s the unexpected, unplanned interactions you have walking the corridors of the office that I miss.

• I got new glasses just before my 40th birthday last month. I hadn’t had an eye test for over 10 years before then and unsurprisingly my prescription had changed quite a bit - not enough that I wasn’t safe to drive, but enough that it took a day or two for my eyes to adjust to the new lenses. I pretty much started my Christmas holiday after I picked them up, so spent very little time in front of the computer. Since getting back into work, I’ve had quite bad headaches after relatively little time sat at my desk in front of my monitor. I find it’s better working on the sofa with my laptop - but even that has its limits. It isn’t… ideal.

  Finally got around to booking another appointment with the optician next week. Maybe I need varifocal glasses - although that’s something old people have and I’m not old… no really, 40 isn’t old. ahem.

• I’ve started up my weekly Twitch stream working on Node-RED again. When I first started it last year, it was an experiment. I had no idea if there was an audience for it. But I’m up to 26 videos in the archive and there’s a small but dedicated community building around it.

  I should probably write a post about my live-streaming setup - I gather that’s a standard post to write and you aren’t a proper live-streaming if you haven’t blogged in excruiciating detail your OBS settings. I’m sure there will be a template I can fill in somewhere.

• Are these really weeknotes? At this point it feels more like a brain dump of what I’ve been doing generally. Maybe I need to flush this lot out of my head and next time will be better.

Things I’ve watched

• Well geez, it’s still taken me two hours to cobble together these notes even in bullet point style to cut back the prose. Admittedly the TV has been on in the background and we’ve just started Series 6 of Downton Abbey - something I didn’t bother with the first time around, but when you’re locked down, you’ll find anything to fill the time.

• On that note, we started, and finished, Bridgeton on Netflix last week. Period drama that doesn’t take itself too seriously, doesn’t really challenge you and you don’t have to think too hard. The main distraction is when they have chamber orchestra’s playing covers of modern music in the background and you can’t quite recognise it, but you know its familiar and then you realise it’s a Billie Eilish cover.

• We’ve recently binged Schitt’s Creek which was very good. May have binged it a bit too quickly, but it was satisfying to see ~an American~ a Canadian series tell its story and not drag it out too much and to come to a end that works for the characters. It also avoids all the obviously clichés those characters could fall into. I listened to Dan Levy on David Tennant’s podcast after we finished the series which I highly recommend - both the podcast in general and the interview with Dan.

• Community has been on the watch list - again, not one I ever watched the first time round. We’ve only got a handful of episodes left of the final season.

Things I’ve read

• First up, full disclosure, all the links below are Amazon Affiliate links. I doubt any of you will click on them. Maybe you’d be better finding your local independent bookshop and ordering via them.

• I finished off last year reading what I think was only my second book of the year, a feat I plan to improve on this year.

  The Martian by Andy Weir is probably one of my favourite books of recent times. It has a perfect blend of nerdy science blended into a compelling story. Its film adaptation also manages to be a great film - it’s definitely one of those films that if I stumble over it mid-way through on TV, I’ll been hooked until the end every time.

  All that said, that wasn’t the book I read.. although having written that I now want to go re-read it. The book I finished the year with was Andy Weir’s next book, Artemis.

  It was a fun read, with a similar smattering of technical detail through-out. But overall, it didn’t quite land the same way his previous book did for me. I think The Martian felt more grounded in today’s world, albeit on Mars.

  Artemis is further out; it’s created an interesting world to explore and in many ways sets up more stories to tell - it’ll be interesting to see if it’s a world that is returned to.

• I started this year off with a new pile of books on my bedside table from both my birthday and Christmas. Top of the pile was The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. It was a pretty satisfying murder mystery that manages to lay enough threads and false trails through-out to keep the suspense through to the end. An ITV adaptation feels inevitable.

• It occurs to me that I’ve read more books then I remembered last year - because I usually have a book or two on the go with the kids as well. In recent times, I’ve read:

  • Fortunately, the milk by Neil Gaimon. Good surreal fun, with some time travel weirdness that needed a little extra help for my 6 year old to follow.
  • Warriors Cats by Erin Hunter. The first in a very long series that I fear I may end reading lots of.
  • The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. A classic I’ve not read for a very long time. We’ll be cracking open the Lord of the Rings later this year - definitely looking forward to that.