Weeknotes 109

On Tuesday I cycled to Stratford for an ultrasound to check out my organs. It was, as before, a very efficient and friendly process. I rode home through Victoria Park in the sunshine, again feeling almost overwhelmed with gratitude towards the medical staff who’d helped me out for free.

I’m told my organs are fine.

While I was in Stratford I went to Westfield and traded in my old work laptop at the Apple Store. They gave me a decent amount of store credit for it — less than it’s worth, but I’m happy to take the hit because it was fast and hassle-free — so now I have some imaginary money to spend on a new computer at some point. My non-work machine is an ageing Mac mini which I’d like to replace before too long but it’s not really necessary yet. I think I’ll enjoy the delayed gratification more than an actual new computer anyway.

When I handed the laptop over I was surprised by how pristine it was. I suppose it’s just been sitting motionless on my desk at home with its lid closed for almost two years so it’s not had any real opportunity to accumulate damage or debris, but it was still amazing how completely unused it looked. Apparently that degree of perfection doesn’t confer extra trade-in value, so in hindsight I might as well have smashed it with a hammer and had some fun with my life.

Oh yeah, I got a new work laptop: a 14″ MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro. It seems nice so far although I haven’t had a chance to do much except read email and attend meetings with it.

The only compromise is the loss of an invaluable all-purpose USB-C port in exchange for some regressive ports (MagSafe, HDMI) which I’ll never use. I accept this indignity as the price of living in a society.

One thing I did with the new laptop was record a screencast about the scanner (and attendant TDD faff) I built for the Crafting Interpreters book club:

I made the video on a whim because it didn’t require any preparation and I thought my coworkers might find it useful. I really like the idea of doing quick stuff like this (versus an incredibly laboured conference talk) as a scrappy and accessible way of sharing ideas, although in practice I don’t yet know whether it was a good use of time, or even whether any of the target audience watched it. In any case I think I’ll stick with it for a few more chapters and see if I can get into the habit.

I got the email from Google saying they’re going to start charging for their previously-free product which gives you a Gmail account on a custom domain. I have a couple of these for different domains so I’m going to have to decide what to do about it. Unlike YouTube I don’t think the service is good enough to actually pay money for, so I’ll probably end up consolidating all those domains and forwarding them to normal Gmail. Not interesting but true.

On Friday I saw two friends for lunch and two more for dinner — Chris and Matt, Aleks and Reema 👋 — which makes four people. This was rejuvenating and felt like a significant milestone in my vague project to get more variety and normality back into my life.

I rode home at 3:30am through deserted streets, just me and the foxes and the night sky packed with stars, and thought about how I love living in London and the experiences it creates, and how much I’ve missed that feeling.

I bought tulips and daffodils and put them in vases. Is it spring yet? 🌱