Weeknotes 246
15th March, 2026
“See some Pandas”
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A is back! I drove down to Heathrow on Saturday to collect her and her friend. Thank god that is over. Travelling via Bangladesh (Dhaka) and then China (Kunming and Chengdu) is not the traditional way to get back to the UK from Sri Lanka, but getting home safely whilst avoiding the Middle East, and seeing some Pandas as part of the process made the journey worthwhile I’m told.
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FontCrafter – Make a font from your handwriting. Now the text on my computer is unreadable too.
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I spent a little time this week looking at “map stuff” which mostly comprised Leaflet.js and OpenStreetMap. Both impressive feats of time and energy. OpenStreetMap in particular astonished me with all the available features, and completely free.
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In order to keep busy whilst waiting for A’s unintentional extended holiday to end, I decided to renovate the wooden worktops in our kitchen. They were in quite a beat up condition when we moved in, but we always intended to replace the kitchen so it wasn’t a big deal. However, those plans are dragging on, and with the available time it seemed like a good idea.
I’m very happy with the results considering I’ve not done this before and it came in around £70 for the job. And that includes spray paint to touch up the fridge when I accidentally sanded it a bit.
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You see two colours. Click on the line between them. That’s it. It starts easy. It does not stay easy.
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To be somewhat reductive about it, there are two main cohorts of coders. A larger, less vocal, group who see coding as a stable, well-paying career that they got into in order to support themselves and their families, and to partake in the upward economic mobility that the tech sector has represented for the last few decades. Then there is the smaller, more visible, group who have seen coding as an avocation, which they were drawn to as a form of creative expression and problem-solving just as much as a career opportunity.
And into which cohort do I fall?
I’ve come to the personal conclusion that the only way forward is for more of the hackers with soul to seize this moment of flux and use these tools to build.
👀
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Via Dan Cederholm at Simple Bits.