Weeknotes 1

• Surprise! I made it to the second week. The tricky second album as they say. Who says that really? For me, (What’s The Story) Morning Glory is better than Definitely Maybe but that’s probably more down to what I associate with them from my awkward teenage years. But I’m not going there with you.

• Speaking of (WTS)MG, I still distinctly remember a moment a few years ago when we were discussing the Britpop wars of Oasis versus Blur - (WTS)MG versus The Great Escape. We were sat around the lunch table in Hursley and one of our colleagues said, “Oh yes, I’ve heard about that - I was born that year”. And like that the rest of us felt old.

• I hit 40 last month. I mentioned that last week. It’s still true. I’m dealing with it.

• So yeah, weeknotes - a round up of what I’ve done this last week. Not quite got that bit nailed down yet. But the key thing is I’m writing something. Also, who does weeknotes on a Tuesday?

• This week’s Twitch stream was a 2 hour marathon. As I stream at 8pm, I’m usually doing story time with the kids until about 2 minutes before I go live. Some weeks I’ll have thought about what I’m going to cover in the stream - maybe even done some preparatory work so I’m not going in entirely cold. But I’m careful not to turn it into some performance piece where I’m just redoing something I’ve already done for the sake of the camera. I certainly prefer the weeks where it feels like I make concrete progress on something new. It’s also great when the people watching the stream are active in the chat.

  This week was a good example of something that I had a rough sense of what needed doing and that it mostly worked as I thought it would. I’m very aware of the audience - both on the live stream, but also those watching the replay on YouTube, so I take my time to talk through what I’m doing, explaining how things work and putting what I’m doing into context. More than once, taking that extra time has helped me flush out issues with something before I even start writing the code.

  If you want to watch me develop Theme Plugins for Node-RED, you can watch the replay here.

• I went back to the Optician to see if my glasses needed changing. Conclusion is to try rearranging my desk to reduce eye strain. I currently have a big 28-inch Samsung monitor and I’m reluctant to conclude that I think it’s too big. I work with my laptop sat alongside it on the desk, using both the monitor and its own screen. I think the constant switching between their relative sizes and resolutions is the bit my eyes weren’t enjoying. I’ve changed the resolution on my laptop when its plugged in so everything is the same size on both screens and it has helped somewhat. If that doesn’t work, the next option will be to replace the big screen with a matching pair of smaller screens mounted off the desk and not use the laptop screen. That’ll also mean the screens are slightly higher which is probably going to be better for my posture.

  Maybe I just have desk envy.

• Just finished watching Community. I loved the earlier seasons. The last couple were a struggle. As happens with so many long-running comedies that lose original cast in later seasons, it never quite recovered. They did have one final paint-ball episode, but it all got a bit too meta come the end.

• I’ve started reading Stephen Fry’s Mythos having received a copy both last Christmas and this Christmas. Amazon Wish Lists are great as long as you remember to tidy them up each year.