Week 23

📝 Life Notes

• A busy week! Final check-in with Jack’s nursery and he’s doing great. We knew that, but we also know he’s a different person when he’s not with us, and the structure they have there seems to work for him; we were told that a lot of the other kids look to him for examples of what to do/how to behave. His confidence and independence are soaring. It makes me so happy and proud of him, and us!
• And continuing the parenting theme, we had a parents introduction session to his new primary school, the kids met their teacher and were separated into their classes (two P1s at the school), and we got to hear about the approach, the rules, and the type of day Jack will be having. Roll on August!
• Miffed! I don’t often bother with the suggestions that Apple Fitness give me for my monthly goal, but as I’ve been trying to be active every day it’s offered me a 4.3km walk, 14 times through June. Which was fine but I recorded one on my iPhone (rather than my Apple Watch) and it’s not been counted towards the total. The data is all there, but .. boooooo!
• Started T’ai Chi, beginners sessions, on Monday, was an interesting introduction.
• Sadly I also attended a funeral through the week, my best mates Dad. It was in the same crematorium that I said goodbye to my Dad, my Mum, and my wee sister. Odd set of emotions that day.
• On Saturday night I took Vera up to Aberfoyle for the night, watched Scotland score 4 goals (4!), and then early on Sunday morning I got out on my bike for a couple of hours/42km.
• And Sunday afternoon had me napping on the sofa watching the Monaco Grand Prix. Because I love F1.

📚 Books

• The Bee Sting by Paul Murray – A rollercoaster of a meandering story, it took a while to get moving but the twists and turns, the way the characters develop and the back stories are brought forward led to a fascinating conclusion. I’ve never ‘felt’ a book start to ramp things up so clearly.

📰 Articles

• International Orange — Storied Colors — The story behind colours. More interesting than it sounds!
• The Face of WipEout: Building Feisar in Lego · Andre Lackmann — One day I’ll be able to afford the time and money to do stuff like this! (ht/ www.iand.net)
• Gmail Thinks I’m Stupid, So I Left | moddedbear.com — This isn’t why I’m slowing getting rid of Gmail (I rarely use it directly) but it sure bolsters my reasons.
• Your Body Is Now Considered Vintage – McSweeney’s Internet Tendency — I feel horribly seen.
• The Disappearance of the Public Bench — A sad indictment of modern society that we’ve barely notice has been eroded, our ideals are faltering.
• The Metaverse Fever Dream – Pixel Envy — The culture of ‘Zuck’ is increasingly bizarre and tech bros being tech bros. A lost sight of how the majority of people exist in the world. The metaverse is nothing but a money grab.
• Attenuating the Web – The Darth Mall — Been having similar thoughts. When I share something in this list each week, I’ve usually opened the site in my browser, but I do read a lot in “homogenised RSS”.
• diamond geezer — DG covers the new English banknotes by “interviewing” the Governor of the BoE. Genius
• Le Tap — Emergency NFC Sticker for Helmets — Genius idea, cheap, simple, and could be used for a variety of different sports/uses.
• List of blog aggregators – bstn.info — More ways to find more blogs, yay
• Toy Story 5 director reveals why he made his first Pixar movie in 10 years — I love everything that Pixar do, even when they are mediocre they are better than most, and the passion always shines through. Can’t wait to see this.
• Apple Intelligence Table Stakes – MacSparky — “The reason an Apple assistant could be compelling has nothing to do with raw smarts. It’s that Apple is sitting on the complete picture of your life already. Your mail, your messages, your calendar, your photos, your location, the whole thing, right there on the device. Nobody else has that.” YES.
• People Who Make You Feel Small | Nikhil’s Blog — All horribly true. Sharing in the hope that anyone reading it will spot the signs and GTFO their situation. It can be deadly.
• MC Escher review – hallucinatory insights from the master of the mind-bending staircase | Art | The Guardian — Loved Escher since I was a boy. How can you not marvel at his amazing mind bending sketches
• diamond geezer — Life is full of such moments. If so hadn’t listened to a work colleague and signed up for Bootcamp I wouldn’t now be happily married and with a beautiful son.
• Moments; time – James’ Coffee Blog — So true. Looking back at my posts so many vivid memories come flooding back. Like a well written journal entry (I do journal but I don’t craft what I write there)

📺 Media

• Star City – promising first episode for this For All Mankind spin-off.
• Cape Fear – Javier Bardem as Max Cady could be genius (his role in No Country for Old Men still amazes me), add in Amy Adams, and two legendary Exec Producers (Scorsese, Spielberg), and I was so excited to see this. The first episode did not disappoint!

🫀 Health

• Current Weight: 111.4kg . Down from last week.
• Avg. Sleep: 6h 23mins. A big drop from last week, mostly the lead up to my cycle on Sunday which I was a little nervous about, oddly.

🧑‍💻 Tech

• My GoPro 10 battery life is awful. I thought I could eke out an hour or so but it tapped out at 40 minutes. 40 minutes of a 2 hour cycle. Not great, so I’m gonna sell it and look for something else. Yes I could ‘only record certain parts of the ride’ but I wanna hit record and then forget about it, and edit the bits I want later. DJI Osmo Action 5 Pro looks like the best choice.

💻 Site Notes

• 27 years of blogging passed this week. And I’m still pondering a move away from WordPress. Ghost may be a solution.

🗓️ Next Week

• Becca and Jack are away from Sunday night through to late Tuesday. Looking forward to seeing what Apple announce at WWDC tomorrow (I’ll catch up after T’ai Chi class), but mostly a fairly routine week ahead.