Week 16

🤷‍♂️ Life

• As predicted, a quiet week. Steady at work, steady at home. Productive in small ways, with a lot of little things moved forwards.
• Managed to get some exercise in, both at the gym, on Zwift, and a wee walk one evening too (even if I did get dive bombed by a heron).
• Not long back from a weekend up in Perth — meeting up with family, watching my son and his cousin play together. Restorative fun times. The simple joy of just nipping away for the weekend in the motorhome just confirms what a great buy she was, and Jack loves being away on a ‘holiday’ no matter how long for!
• Out in the bikes today and my brakes are squealing embrassment, the gears don’t shift properly and the chain and cassette are pretty rusted. It’s 14 years old so I shouldn’t complain, but fast approaching the time where the repairs will cost as much as a “new” (secondhand) bike.

📚 Read

• The Girl in Cell A by Vaseem Khan – a twisty psychological thriller that, so far, is intriguing enough to keep me reading.

📰 Considered

• STARFLING — Tap. Release. Chain. — Warning: Do not play this game. It’s is simple but stupidly addictive.
• shmimel/bee-write-back — A simple single use device, including 3D printing files, build it yourself. I do NOT need this.
• I got yet another digital typewriter: The BYOK — ANOTHER single use device. I am starting to see these types of devices pop up more and more, I do not need one. I repeat I DO NOT NEED ONE!
• why does Apple have so many apps? — One to ponder, given I’ve moved more and more to Apple apps, rather than 3rd party ‘better’ ones.
• slash pages — A bit of meta-blogging stuff, great idea, so many little pages of occasionally interesting stuff you can add to your blog.
• Artist Gives Away “Pinkest Pink” for Free on Its 10th Anniversary — I like pink. I like this level of pettiness even more!
• The World Is Basically Begging for Another iPod — I still have my old one. I wonder… can I hook it up and download Apple Music playlists to it?
• [We gave an AI a 3 year retail lease in SF and asked it to make a profit](https://andonlabs.com/blog/andon-market-launch] — The future is terrifyingly close. Maybe. Fascinating idea though.
• Reading is magic – by Sam Kriss – Numb at the Lodge — A long, bleak, article about the looming death of literacy. How social media and AI is killing off the ability to read and, critically understand, the world.
• Why is it so hard to passively stalk my friends’ locations? — Maybe sometimes technology will never have the answer? Is this one of these times?
• Some Contemporary Heresie — There must be more, but this list is scarily familiar.
• Teaching in the Time of ChatGPT — My parents were teachers, I wonder what they would’ve made of AI usage in schools.
• The Case for WordPress: Why the Open Web’s Most Important Platform Needs to Evolve — I do like it when someone else takes something I’d half considered, and writes up a take that is far better than anything I could’ve managed.
• London gets closer to its first robotaxi service as Waymo begins testing — Would love Glasgow to be next (just for the novelty) but fear potholes might be its undoing!
• Slop is text you haven’t read, not text you haven’t written — Still don’t like the word ‘slop’ but this was an interesting take (after my post on the topic)
• Boards of Canada Return With First New Music in 13 Years — New. Boards. Of. Canada!!
• We need a physical digital music experience — Yes. But no. I don’t want to buy individual tracks and albums anymore, streaming has spoiled that for me. Yes, it’s selfish. But we are where we are?
• I Deleted My Second Brain. Why I Erased 10,000 Notes, 7 Years of… | — Huh, is this why my Digital Detox feels so freeing? Just deleting old Journal entries, old blog posts, photos, and notes? Perhaps it is.
• Drift – A journal that lets go — I am intrigued, and with relation to Joan Westenberg’s article, I wonder if this is what most of my Journal should look like? Gives me a decision point (aka friction) though, am I writing to process immediacy, or am I journalling to store and remember.

📺 Watched

• Train Dreams– beautiful heart wrenching, gorgeously shot, slowly told. I love this kind of gentle movie, made purely to be enjoyed. Joel Edgerton is wonderful. I felt his pain vividly, his sense of loss, and of being lost.
• Sinners– finally watched it, mostly avoided because of all the hoopla, that and not a huge horror fan but this was, something else. Good, yes. Memorable, yes. Brilliant? Perhaps. Important, definitely.

🎧 Listened

• MostlyApple Focus playlistas a backdrop to a lot of writing. I seemed to get into a flow of writing for my blog this week and their playlists were perfect.
• Add in some Boards of Canadawith the news of a possible new album coming.

🩻 Health

• Current Weight: 112.8kg. Down from last week.
• Avg. Sleep: 7h 13mins. Up from last week.

👨‍💻 Tech

• Looking for an iPad stand, nothing fancy needed, just so I can use the iPad as a reference point whilst I work.This looks perfect.
• Blog wise, more tweaks in both design and functionality. Yes, I will be moving away from AI for my featured images so have a plugin to help with that now.

🗓️ Next Week

• Blairgowrie for work on Friday, but not much else on the agenda. Do need to get my bike sorted though. Needs some TLC, and likely new chain and cassette.