Weeknote #47 (20250810-20250816)

meta

this week started out excessively hot; it was also just a chaotic week, as Mx18 wrapped up packing, and then hit the road (accompanied by TheWife) on Saturday, leaving a proud but sad dad behind. (I will catch up with them in NYC at the end of next week…)

did

  • we picked up our Brooks wine allotment on Sunday, and took some friends along to the tasting — usually we speed-run these sorts of things, but we took a bit more time with it this time
  • at work, I landed one website PR, opened another one, and then on Friday opened a third one — all related to porting from an older version of Next.js to a newer one. Next week I’ll rip out all the old components that aren’t needed anymore, and update some documentation, and then I’ll have to figure out what’s next at work…
  • did some work on my keyboard.io firmwares, which broke my Model01 and led to me opening a bug report
  • pushed a big hunk of work on commis on Monday (and even more on Wednesday — and then even more on Saturday) — it’s pretty much at the point where I need to figure out to hook it into an 11ty workflow and then start writing up all my recipes
  • in yet another sign that fall is soon upon us, Friday was the first Apple Club pickup this year

exercise & shoulder recovery

  • Sunday: nothing
  • Monday: stretches in the morning; didn’t run because it was so damn hot
  • Tuesday: stretches in the morning; still too damn hot for anything else
  • Wednesday: stretches in the morning; rest day
  • Thursday: stretches then gym
  • Friday: stretches and laziness
  • Saturday: nothing

read

  • I’d seen it before, but Cursed Knowledge came across my radar again this week, and if you haven’t seen it and you write code …just read it, trust me

  • The Best Line Length — from the indomitable @glyph — is a fun little romp, and I’m not saying that just because I learned this:

    In order to quickly and accurately move from one line of text to another, the start of the next line needs to be clearly visible in the reader’s peripheral vision in order for them to accurately target it. This limits the angle of rotation that the reader can perform in a single saccade, and, thus, the length of a line that they can comfortably read without hunting around for the start of the next line every time they get to the end.

    I wear glasses, and am well towards the “Coke bottle bottom” end of the spectrum of spectacles users — even with the best hi-index material you can buy. I tend to prefer a shorter line length myself (nothing draconian like 80, but past about 90 chars I get twitchy), and now I’m wondering if that’s because my detailed peripheral vision isn’t that great, such that the angle I can comfortably perceive is making me like shorter lines…

  • “Hard-mode Dev” is a really interesting perspective from a long-time friend and multiple-time former co-worker, very much worth a read, particularly if you’re thinking about “techxit” yourself…

    What I’m saying: we learned algorithms. How to do the thing better. Even those of us who skipped school and couldn’t stay awake through a Freecodecamp CS Foundations video.

    We can use what we learned to improve non-digital routines, which has a notable ripple effect.

    You don’t even need to get a crappy job. Find places to volunteer, see where their flow gets stuck, and offer to fix that one bit.

    Do it. You know you want to.

  • How to Surf the Web in 2025, and Why You Should

    This internet, of the late 90s to early 2000s, offered a completely different sensory and emotional experience than today’s. To switch metaphors slightly, the old web felt like an endless city of conjoined, wildly decorated apartments, to be traversed by climbing through little chutes and portals in their walls. Each one sent you straight to some other eccentric space, built by some other eccentric character, each with its own array of chutes radiating out from there.

listened

watched

  • if you could only follow one link from this weeknote, I would strongly urge you to go watch this video — an absolutely amazing rendition of Dream Academy’s classic “Life In A Northern Town”, but sung by a Brisbane pub crowd (a very large crowd, to be fair) — and there are fucking taiko drums. It is fantastic, it is lovely, it made me weep with joy the first time I watched it
  • it’s apparently public choir covers pop songs week here — this time it’s a version of The Cranberries “Dreams” by a crowd at the Derry Choir Festival a few years back
  • S2 Criminal Minds

cooked

  • seared albacore with chimichurri rojo on tuesday
  • nachos on wednesday

looking forward to

NYC next week!