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weeknotes #10: milton keynes
i have nothing of substance to say about the war in Ukraine
other than “fuck Putin”.
chee puts it best:
btw on world war 4, if you have the wikipedia page for ukraine open in another tab rn i do not need to hear from you
💙💛
come to the milton keynes snozone last saturday if you want an asskicking
i hadn’t been snowboarding in two years. i had been going once a year, with university friends, to the French Alps. i miss it so much! our last trip was in February 2020, and i’m pretty sure all we thought about you know was feeling a bit weird playing the board game
Pandemic.sometimes i remember “oh i’m an adult with money. i can just frickin, go to milton keynes and snowboard if i want”, so i did! i had one first slow, steady, careful run down the slope, letting my legs remind me how every turn, every carve, every stop works, and from then on nyoooom. it takes about four minutes to get to the top of the slope and twenty seconds to get back down.
milton keynes is a fucking weird place. it’s like they decided to build the business park on the edge of a town but forgot to build the town.
pizza time
i have a list of the top ten pizzas i’ve ever eaten. number one is John’s, of Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village, New York, New York. i was there (New York) for a conference in 2017 and ate at John’s, this massive anchovy pizza that i also ate cold in the hotel room for breakfast.
third on the list is my own pizza i make at home.
i mean it’s literally just the recipe from The Pizza Book but i’ve gotten pretty fuckin good at it.
the recipe canonically ferments the dough in the fridge for three days. except, i’ve worked out you can just not do that, you can add too much yeast and use yoghurt instead of olive oil and let it overproof a bit and it tastes just as great and is actually slightly easier to throw, even.
this means instead of having to plan pizza three days in advance, i can have it on a ninety-minute whim.
i have eaten pizza for lunch five times in the last two weeks.
spicy pork bun
on Thursday, Alice and Rowan were in the office. we went for lunch at this little Korean place around the corner; i had spicy pork bun. we ate them around a big table in a breakout area at work and chatted about tech strategy and team gossip. felt like i was at the big kids' table. love you folks.
i suppose, in terms of technical leadership at work, i am one of the big kids now. people keep looking around the room at meetings for a grown up to make a decision, and often that’s me, and i have to stop also looking around the room for a grown up and be the grown up. which is a great feeling, and also has caused at least two panic attacks.
WFS(tudio)
i (finally!) finished and programmed the keyboard i had built for my studio (the
Hkeyswitch was just straight up not soldered in), and this monday i actually did my day job from there. i had such a lovely day, the weather on monday was lovely, i went for a walk at lunchtime along the Thames Path at Greenwich Reach and the world felt open and fresh again.i did an experiment and tried to get some packages delivered to the studio. the Amazon package arrived no problem and somebody received it and put it by my studio door. the Pimoroni package did not. i asked around, looked everywhere (including the large pile of flytipped rubbish on the street outside) but no. eventually i realised that the Iceland downstairs actually has the same address, so i went down there and asked (feeling a bit weird about it) and the manager went into the back and came out with a small cardboard box with my name on it.
in the box is a raspberry pi based automatic watering system for my peace lily.
new laptop who dis
work finally came through and gave me this. it’s a thirteen inch pro with an M1. it’s,,, good? the fan is running never, instead of always, and the keyboard doesnnn’t ddo thiis
i should wake up; grab a brush and put a little makeup (you want to)
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weeknotes #2: a real burger made out of cow
1. i went to the office, and it was normal
- i went to the office, and it was normal?
- i’ve gotten weirdly good at self-administering a lateral flow test
- Kara Brightwell: skilled at scraping her own tonsils, and inserting things too far up her nostrils
- imagine showing that my to myself eighteen months ago
- she’d probably go “oh okay so, uh, ‘Kara’, i see, that’s a thing we did, okay. wanna make out”
- i had a desk assigned to me, and it was by a window, and it was in a building that isn’t my flat, and i got to go there and not be in the same 46m² forever
- i saw like. twenty people. in an office that has capacity for like fifteen hundred.
- i had a burger, a real burger made out of cow, from a fast food restaurant, with cheesy fries
- it was so normal!
- this is genuinely the best thing i’ve been able to do for my mental health during the entire panettone
- i’m going back like. twice a week now, fuck it
2. trying not to burn out
- even though i quit therapy a while ago it turns out i have a tiny simulated version of my therapist in my head now that says things like “be kind to yourself” and “what makes you say that” and “you don’t have to feel like this”
- so last week when i wrote “holy shit i’m burning out” it turns out that wasn’t a self deprecating joke, and i actually need to do something about it?
- which i noticed immediately after writing that post, and requested access to the office, and a bunch of fridays off
- doing normal things, which i have not done in some time, is helping reset my brain
- also taking time off and not giving myself pressure to achieve things(? what), good for my energy turns out?
- and i’m going camping in two weeks now and not having any internet and cooking fish on charcoal
3. i made a music
- it’s an accidental homage to Ambient 4: On Land by Brian Eno
- serendipity and coincidence and taking ownership of your surroundings
- from my eurorack that i mostly built myself
- not all of it is soldered with lead solder
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