Kerry Buckley What’s the simplest thing that could possibly go wrong?

I’ve had a cold all week, which has been an excuse for laziness. Not that I’m not normally lazy – I just don’t usually have an excuse.

A few of us at work were asked to record short video snippets with some facts about our projects, to be edited into a package for an all hands call. It turned out that the ten seconds or so I did in the office was too long, so I had to rerecord it at home the following day as a single sentence. Naturally this was an excuse to dig out not only the lights I bought when we all went onto Zoom in 2020, but also the green screen that came with them, so I could superimpose myself on a background of the app I was talking about. This all turned out to be a waste of time as they ended up using a short clip from the original version, and thanks to the vagaries of management chains whole thing was presented as “look at the cool stuff the team in Bangalore do”, so that was well worthwhile.

On Saturday I went to see The Meffs. Not seen them before, but they’re in vaguely the same extended universe as other bands I like, and they were playing at The Smokehouse, which is only ten minutes’ cycle away. They were entertaining, as were Noah and the Loners in support (the latter were also terrifyingly young), and I’m glad I remembered my earplugs. I approve of the kind of gig where the headline band are in the crowd for the support act, and vice versa.

I watched the new Doctor Who, despite the unwelcome return of the irritating “bovvered” woman. It seemed largely designed to troll the kind of person who whines about everything being “woke”, and also featured nods to both ET and Gremlins, conspicuous Disney money, and what sounded like an extended game of Space Team.

Progress on my GOOS/Elixir project is slow, but existent. I made some small strides towards interacting with the Scenic app, inasmuch as I can now assert that the displayed status text is as expected, and eventually found an XMPP library that works with the latest versions of Erlang and Elixir, although I did have to fork it to fix a few incompatibilities.

I had a week off work, which I ought to do more often. One day maybe I’ll even go on holiday somewhere.

I made a tentative start to my attempt to work through GOOS in Elixir. I picked Scenic as a GUI framework, then spent quite a while trying to figure out how to exercise it from acceptance tests. After being unable to find an approach which didn’t entail poking around in the internals of process state, I asked about it on the Elixir Forum. The project maintainer replied admitting that it was an area where the framework needs more attention, and indicating that they’d be open to any API suggestions, so it looks like I’ve already found my first yak.

I finally got round to fitting the new (second hand) sunroof that I picked up a few weeks ago. It was quite a faff, with the headlining needing to be removed (but not fitting through the tailgate, so having to be left resting on the seats). Getting the new frame lifted up to the roof and bolted in without a second pair of hands was also a bit tricky, but it’s all done now. I haven’t tested whether it actually opens yet, figuring it’s safer to get through winter first with it solidly shut!

A lightly-attended Run for Beer on Wednesday, with Alec’s work commitments also meaning we ended up with two separate groups converging on the pub from different directions. At least it wasn’t raining this month!

A few of us from work went to the local bouldering wall on Thursday evening. I didn’t take my chalk that’s older than most of the people there this time though.

On Friday (my birthday) I got the train up to Norwich to see Pet Needs (again) at the Waterfront, supported by Generation Feral and Glitchers.

Phil came up for his annual birthday weekend visit, and for the second year running I talked him into doing the Hadleigh 5 on Sunday. Not before we’d been out for the traditional beer and curry on Saturday night though (which may have somewhat impacted my performance in the race). Then home for the also traditional fry-up, albeit at about 1pm. It’s the only time I get to use all the rings on my cooker.

I’ve given up and turned the heating timer on, rather than just occasionally hitting the “+1 hour” button (although I still seem to be spending much of the time sitting round in two jumpers and a hat).

Having got to the point where I could reliably solve a Rubik’s Cube within a minute, the last couple of algorithms I learned seem to have suddenly evaporated from my brain, and I keep getting in a huge muddle and having to more or less start again mid-solve. An early insight into old age, I guess.

A mixed week of running: on Tuesday night at our club training session I managed to stick with a group who are generally much quicker than me, but at the Scenic 7 on Sunday I came in half a minute slower than last year (and even slower than the year before).

I randomly decided to start trying to work through the GOOS book in Elixir (despite the latter not really being an OO language). It may come to nothing.

15 years today since Obama was elected. Not exactly the first step on an upward path we all hoped it would be.

I finally caved in and set the heating to come on for a while a couple of times a day. Partly because Badger cat had taken to spending half the day sleeping under my duvet, which I assume was a hint.

On Wednesday afternoon I wandered into the kitchen and happened to spy the paddle from the bread machine (said machine being around ? through its programme). Fortunately it hadn’t actually reached the bake stage yet, so I shoved the paddle through the floury goop onto its spindle, reset the machine and it turned out fine. Worst. Anecdote. Ever.

We had another storm on Thursday. The barometer had dropped by about 30mb or 1″ Hg overnight, but I escaped unscathed again – possibly because I didn’t leave the house all day.

I got a new Chromecast, because it was almost free thanks to the store credit they gave me when I bought my phone, which was about to expire. This one comes with Google TV and a remote, but to be honest that’s not really much more convenient than just controlling it from my phone.

Speaking of my phone, it seems to have suddenly started refusing to work for contactless payments (possibly since upgrading to Android 14). Fortunately the first time it happened I had my wallet with me, which I hardly ever do these days. Annoyingly I don’t know any way to check whether it’s fixed itself other than by trying to buy stuff.

I thought my 17-year-old projector had finally given up the ghost, but it turned out I’d just disturbed a connection in the rats’ nest behind my AV unit. It is really noisy though, and its bulb is on about double its rated lifespan. I think the time has finally come to replace it and the small TV with just one massive TV, now it’s possible to get one bigger than the projector screen for a relatively reasonable sum. Like every purchase decision though, this inevitably leads to endless research and confusion.

I did finally make the decision to upgrade my Garmin from a 645 to an Epix (which I bought second hand from eBay so didn’t cost me quite as much as a new one). The screen is a massive step up from the old one – far more detailed than I can make out without my reading glasses on! It has all manner of probably useless new measurements and metrics too – it’s been generously keeping me on a training status of “productive”, but is balancing that today by telling me that my “training readiness” is in the toilet.