Weeknotes 0

Happy new year! 🍾

I wanted to try writing weeknotes but didn’t have anywhere to put them so I had to make a new website. I was surprised how involved this turned out to be, even though the same thing has happened to every project I’ve worked on. Since the moment I first thought “I want to try writing weeknotes” I’ve had to make a thousand tiny decisions, each of which is individually meaningless but when taken together are collectively meaningless.

Tuesday was my last day as CTO of FutureLearn. I’d expected it to feel somehow significant because I’d been there for three years, but most people don’t work on New Year’s Eve and the office was closed so the day itself was anticlimactic. It was weird to sit at home locking myself out of every sensitive system and deleting important files from my computer. It’s done now.

Almost everyone I’ve spoken to has asked what I plan to do next, which is a perfectly sensible and polite question, but I don’t know yet. I can’t think straight so I’m going to have a little holiday first.

One problem is that I’m not in good physical condition at the moment: my shoulder hurts, my (opposite) hand hurts, and the usual toll of Christmas has left me generally achy and low on energy. I can’t be useful until I feel better so I’d like to sort this out before anything else.

I tried to go to the gym on 2nd January but it was closed until the 6th. Weird absence of flex but OK.

It’s January so public awareness of vegan food is higher than usual and that makes it easier for me to eat fun things. I’d like to try the KFC burger and Greggs steak bake but haven’t had either yet. Writing this has reminded me that I also haven’t got around to visiting Simplicity Burger even though it’s been open for a while.

It turns out Greggs doughnuts are vegan too, and I noticed that the Doughnut Time near Old Street sells lots of vegan varieties, so in principle it’s a good time to eat doughnuts even if in practice it isn’t.

I’ve lost track of how many copies of A Modern Way to Eat I’ve given to friends who are curious about eating less meat. I did it again this weekend. It’s a good book and I am never not in the mood for the cassoulet.

Over Christmas we took advantage of iPlayer to watch some cosy festive films that were free at the point of delivery. I hadn’t seen Paddington 2 before but it turned out to be very good. We also watched Raiders of the Lost Ark, which has aged pretty well, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which really hasn’t.

I haven’t seen The Rise of Skywalker yet but will probably go this week so that I can watch the Red Letter Media review.

I got a lot of enjoyment out of playing Death Stranding, despite appearances to the contrary — it has problems, but it succeeds at being unique and interesting which is kind of a miracle for a big-budget title. Now that I have enough time to properly play something else, I’m not sure what to pick up. Maybe Outer Wilds?

I was briefly alarmed that Davey Swatpaz had deleted all his YouTube videos, but they’ve just moved to Vimeo, which means soaked leggings glitch 2017 remains online. He apparently did this because YouTube is cracking down on videos with a kiddy aesthetic; I wonder what this’ll mean for Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared and similar.

This week I absent-mindedly pressed ⌘⌫ to delete a file from my desktop without properly selecting it first, so the keypress went to Messages and I deleted a six-year–long conversation instead. The deletion synced instantly to all my other devices and there’s no undo, so those memories are gone forever now. Welcome to the future!