Weeknotes 228

Windows open every day. The war on tiny flies recommences right on schedule.

Last year I spent a dangerous proportion of my waking life thinking about insects. This year, in an attempt to maintain a tenuous grip on reality, I’ve bought a mains-powered bug zapper which sits in the middle of the room and occasionally makes an alarming whip-crack sound as a fly gets annihilated.

It’s arguably not in the spirit of veganism but, sorry, I don’t have a humane alternative, I ultimately value my sanity more than my principles, and I also don’t eat the flies.

Why do I have this problem in the first place? It’s mainly because there’s a gutter outside my windows which inexplicably drains through a hole partway up one end instead of at the bottom, so it’s permanently half-filled with a stagnant pool of water. This basic mistake provides a fertile breeding ground for insects, which would be normal and great if it was a garden pond supporting a diverse population of newts and frogs and other insectivores, but instead of a delicately balanced ecosystem it’s just a runaway fly-generation phenomenon.

It gets worse: the gutter is shared with the neighbouring flat, which over the years has been occupied by a rotating cast of tenants. Because they inhabit a parallel world free of consequences and the drain’s at my end, all the junk they throw out of their windows floats down and collects outside of mine, blocking the already ineffective drain.

This was surely contributing to the problem so I bought a litter picker, leaned precariously out of my window and set about removing the debris to see if I could at least slightly lower the water level. Among the usual suspects (a plastic bag, a toothbrush, a huge rubber bung) was the more unexpected corpse of a pigeon in an advanced state of decay. It took a full thirty minutes of retching to get the final disintegrating parts lifted safely into a heavy-duty plastic bag and down to the bins, taking its unholy stench with it.

Just to clarify, I didn’t especially enjoy any of this nightmare fuel wasp factory bullshit. I’m tempted to joke about “the glamour of city life” but I‘ve actually had fewer disgusting encounters with wildlife since leaving the countryside so I’ll chalk this one up to bad luck.

Anyway, unblocking the drain has helped a little bit, but the gutter is simply not designed to empty completely so I’m still stuck with several centimetres of water standing outside my windows in the baking sun, which is more than enough to allow the experimental breeding programme to continue.

Out of desperation I’ve started adding silicone goo to the water to see if it helps. While I’m willing to try anything at this point, the two asterisks after “Highly Effective” aren’t filling me with confidence.

I went to the Reliance on Monday and chatted to Jones and James and pals. Not quite BERG drinks but still a welcome beer with friendly faces.

Then on Wednesday I went to Interesting and anyone who says I didn’t is lying. In an inversion of last time I didn’t manage to meet any friends beforehand but did make it to the conference itself, so let’s call it even.

The new Magic Keyboard has finally given me an Esc key on my iPad and I can begin weaning myself off the Ctrl-[ combo I’ve used for years. It’s a hard habit to break so I need to work out how to disable Ctrl-[ to force myself to switch, much like disabling arrow keys and git checkout, both of which worked perfectly on my simple brain.

Speaking of which, Twitter’s switch to x.com caught me out a couple of times before I blocked that domain too. Hopefully that’s the end of it.

Last February I grudgingly paid for a year of Infuse Pro, then in November I got three extra months in a Black Friday promo, so my “year” is only now expiring. Instead of renewing for another year I just coughed up for the one-off lifetime purchase; yes, it’ll probably work out more expensive than paying annually, but that calculation ignores the psychological cost of having a subscription hanging over me.

I could’ve saved money by realising this a year ago, but oh well, I now like it enough that I’m happy to support them for making a good product.

I started playing Animal Well and I’m mostly enjoying it. It’s very charming and it feels satisfying whenever I make a breakthrough. The only downer is my awareness that it’s constantly teetering on the brink of being too obtuse for me.

I definitely don’t have the patience to spend ten years working it out so I might have to cut my losses if I get stuck. For now I’m hanging in there and hoping I can continue to make progress on the easy stuff.

It always amuses me how, when you buy a game from the Nintendo eShop and go to pay, “required amount only” is but one of several equally prominent payment options, featuring such classic hits as “£20.00”, “£50.00” and (bafflingly) “£110.00”.

You know what Ian Nintendo, I’m feeling spicy today, the game’s only £18.89 but let’s go for £110. You deserve it.

At this point I feel obligated to link to the new Bobby Fingers video in case anyone has accidentally come to rely upon my weeknotes to announce them. As with the latest ContraPoints I must admit I didn’t find this one as transcendentally good as the previous few, but I admire the effort involved and it gave me a few good laughs so it’s still in the top 0.1% of YouTube content.

Speaking of effort, that new Hoffmann video is, like, full Hoffmann.