Weeknotes 110

As the days lengthen I instinctively worry I’ll get tripped up by my provincial human assumptions about the time difference between me and my North American teammates. It turns out I’m exactly a month early: this spring’s confusion zone stretches from the 13th to the 27th of March. I’ll probably never get the hang of this.

Back in 2020 a kind reader updated GOV.UK to remove old summer time dates, but nobody’s done it since then, so gov.uk/when-do-the-clocks-change is again in danger of containing more information about the past than the future.

Inspired by Paul’s Shortcuts noodling, I belatedly realised I could use Shortcuts to send HTTP requests to my Elgato key lights. So now I’ve got a complication on my watch which can turn both lights on when I start a video call and off again when I finish. The Shortcuts programming model is a bit weird but overall I’m impressed that this sort of thing is possible now.

Recently I’ve been experimenting with adding extra ingredients to my usual bread dough. So far I’d only tried mixed seeds but this weekend I felt more adventurous and made the polenta, pumpkin seed & rosemary loaf from Tartine Bread. It was close to being a disaster because the extremely soupy polenta produced a dough which was too wet to shape. I resisted the urge to bin it like a baked Alaska and managed to slop it into a banneton and bake it the next morning instead.

Although it spread out a lot in the pan and ended up wider and flatter than normal, it still produced a usable loaf with an excellent flavour and texture. Other people online seem to have had the same problem so I’d like to try it again with less water than the recipe specifies. Maybe all polenta is different‽

I’ve also grudgingly ordered a set of measuring cups so I can directly follow misguided volumetric recipes rather than translating them into actually usable (but presumably very approximate) weights. I fundamentally object to this way of measuring ingredients but buying a “cup” is probably easier than having the argument with every American baker individually.

At the risk of becoming relentlessly medical: this week has been dominated by me pulling a muscle in my lower back while cycling, thus proving that cardio is bad for you and should be avoided. So I’ve spent a lot of time lying down, taking painkillers, being short-tempered, and getting told by my friends that you’re not meant to lie down, that’s the worst thing you can do, you’re meant to keep moving.

It’s getting better with rest & exercise and I expect it’ll be over soon. If nothing else it’s been a welcome distraction from the kidney-stones-question-mark situation, which is still unresolved but doesn’t feel important in comparison.

While I’d rather not have to deal with any pain at all, I feel fortunate that these ailments are minor and ultimately ignorable. I choose to believe there exists some future point where everything is fine again.

While lying down I’ve been replaying Uncharted: The Lost Legacy in the form of its new PlayStation 5 remaster. Unlike Uncharted 4 I’ve only played this game once before and had forgotten most of the details, but — hey, it’s really good! It still looks amazing, especially at 60fps, and the absurdly fast load times make the whole experience way more pleasurable. It makes me feel a little excited about the potential of the PS5 even though it’s a nearly five-year-old game.

PS5 PSA: if you have a PS5 and are intending to play Horizon Forbidden West on it, you can save money by buying the cheaper PS4 version because it comes with a free upgrade to the PS5 version; for digital purchases the PS4 version is only visible when buying from the web store or mobile app, not on the PS5 itself. Sony has mysteriously failed to make this situation clear. 🙄

Hang in there everyone. Things will, in the medium term, get better.