Weeknotes 10

Made it to double digits with the weeknotes. 🎉

I’ve had occasion to cycle along Victoria Embankment a few times recently. It’s a very pleasant ride overall — flat road, safe segregated bike lane, nice view of the river and South Bank — but the best part is being able to cycle continuously for about a mile and a half without being interrupted by traffic lights, which is an unusually liberating experience for London proper. Are there other central routes like this?

I’m enjoying Devs a lot. It has interesting ideas and looks beautiful; the pace is languid but that’s a good thing when everything is this well-executed. It helps that the sci-fi bits make me think of Ted Chiang’s What’s expected of us and Greg Egan’s Learning to Be Me, both of which are favourites.

As with The Mandalorian and (nearly) Watchmen, I like that it’s only going to be 8 episodes. Now that everything has to be serialised drama it can be frustrating to watch a few flimsy plot strands get padded out to fill a season, so it was refreshing to see Devs set up some questions in episode 1 and straightforwardly answer them in episode 2. I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.

I’d seen Paul and others recommend Reply All #158 but only got around to listening a few days ago. It’s a rare example of a really good podcast episode.

After finishing the Broken Earth trilogy last week I decided to make a start on Iain M. Banks’ Culture series because it seems like it might keep me going for a while. Rightly or wrongly I’ve begun with Consider Phlebas which is a good slice of fun space opera so far. I’m not sure how deep or engaging it is really, but I haven’t got that far into it yet and a few people have told me it’s not representative of the series.

I baked more sourdough. I’m beginning to find it a little more pleasurable and therapeutic, and again the loaves came out slightly better than last time, so I think everything’s moving in the right direction.

Although I’m now safely out of cowpat territory, I still find shaping really difficult. Practice is helping. I aim one day to make a perfectly hemispherical loaf.

Physical health update: I’m basically pain-free and have lost about 9kg/20lbs since the start of the year. I feel much better.

Mental health update: 2020’s turning out to be a fucking nightmare isn’t it?