Weeknotes 220

Workflow, workflow, workflow – I’ve now moved over to Snacks.picker from Telescope and I’m already 110% more productive, and ready for AI to take my job.

My flat went up for sale and not a single viewing so far. I wasn’t expecting it to exactly fly off the shelf, but I was expecting at least one viewing by now. I guess it’s always a waiting game with selling houses and/or it’s overpriced. I will need to give it some time at least before making any changes.

My visit to the West Country was a successful one. The drive both up and down were uneventful, which is how drives should be. I did a surprising amount of driving whilst there too, especially compared to the norm these days. It seems like a weird thing to miss, driving, but I do miss it, despite all the obvious benefits of not having to drive literally anywhere I want to go as I once did.

Many people made time for me whilst I was there and good times were had. It was really nice to catch up with everyone, and I felt tinges of sadness once I got home on Saturday. Today (Sunday) it feels like weeks since I was there.

Saturday evening we were booked to see That Feels Significant Live! with Elis, John, and Producer Dave. It was very fun show – basically a live version of the radio show but unshackled by their corporate overlords (the BBC). Dave was a very good sport considering he’s not a performer like Elis and John.

Top tip, don’t leave your pen knife attached to your key ring when trying to enter a venue. They will take this DANGEROUS WEAPON off you. (Although I did manage to get it back when I left thankfully.)

Good Taste Is More Important Than Ever

Taste starts with noticing.

I’m not sure I agree with the whole premise of the article, but I did agree with this.

Vale CLI – “Your style, our editor”

Vale is an open-source, command-line tool that brings your editorial style guide to life.

This is an interesting tool. To date my “editorial style” only goes as far as linting the Markdown I write with the github-action-markdown-cli GitHub Action, but I could see myself using this.

A CYNICAL READ ON ANTHROPIC’S BOOK SETTLEMENT

By settling for $1.5B, is Anthropic sort of pulling up a drawbridge, making it so that other startups can’t possibly come into their castle? I mean, am I crazy?

I mean, maybe.

Plex suffered a “security incident” aka lost a database somehow, so I had to reset my password. Well, I didn’t have to, but it seemed prudent. However, resetting one’s password apparently also means “losing access to the entire server” which I was not expecting and nor were many people apparently judging by the threads I’ve seen on Reddit.

Saying NO is not a free action in the world of software engineering

In order to aid my new journalling habit I’ve become Fountain Pen Guy.

I have gone years without writing anything more than a birthday card but now that I’ve consigned myself to write at least three (small) pages of waffle per day, and given how unpleasant I’ve found it, it felt right to look into writing implements. The only remedy is to spend money.

Not since my Secondary School Parker pen have I regularly written using a fountain pen. I did have a brief dalliance with a Lamy Safari about 10 years ago (according to my Amazon order history!), but it didn’t stick.

It turns out that one of my York Ruby friends is a senior level fountain pen guy already and he had a small collection of pens he was willing to let me try, which was very helpful. Writing in front of someone else, unpleasant but necessary.

Despite liking a few of his more expensive pens, I decided, for now, to bring my Lamy Safari back to life. I failed, but I did try. The ink simply will not flow correctly out of the pen, even with a new nib and cleaning (as far as I know how). So I spent a moderate amount of money instead and bought the same pen again in a different colour (variety is the spice of life) and I’m now happily using it and finding it easier than other pens. I may still splurge on something better later, but for now I’m quite enjoying it.

(Side note, I’m constantly amazed the breadth of content available on YouTube. Because I’m mostly into computer related content, I think I assume that YouTube will be full of computer stuff, which is is. But if you type in almost any niche you’ll find someone producing content. I watched one guy reviewing the different types of paper notebooks for use with fountain pens.)

I did not get the emergency alert on my phone – am I safe?