Weeknotes 126

June, though.

I successfully claimed my commemorative four-day weekend. It’s nice to have some downtime, although at the moment I’ve got lots of work to do so the timing wasn’t ideal.

I remember it blowing my mind as a kid when I realised that other people can see the world so differently from me. Now I can watch millions falling over themselves to thank an elderly woman for living a life of obscene luxury and the needle doesn’t even twitch. Growth! ♻️

My biggest wish for WWDC tomorrow is some kind of improvement to iPadOS. The multitasking and external display support are not good, and the UI is generally buggy in places; I’m tired of force-quitting apps that have stopped listening to input, or whose janky interface has got into a broken state after the Shortcuts bar has appeared and disappeared a few times. The whole thing has been due an overhaul for a while. I hope it’s time.

Also, maybe get Safari tabs to show the correct favicons instead of random ones? I’m no nerd but I think that’s possible.

Despite my earlier enthusiasm in principle for GPG-signing Git commits, I hadn’t actually started doing it in practice because I was confused about how GitHub dealt with commits signed by expired or revoked keys.

I was reluctant to begin accumulating a stockpile of signed commits which might incorrectly show an “unverified” badge one day, since an unverified signature can look worse than no signature at all — so long as they never roll out an even more alarming “unsigned” badge, I suppose.

The lack of clarity in GitHub’s documentation had the effect of paralysing me and preventing me from doing anything at all because of the high probability that my choice would turn out to be wrong in future for some reason I don’t currently anticipate. It’s hard for any exploratory option to compete with the tantalising possibility of doing nothing.

Anyway, point is, I complained about it on Twitter and the very next day GitHub changed how they verify old signatures, clearly as a direct result of my vague griping, so we should all be impressed and a little bit frightened by the kind of power I wield.

A few weeks ago I watched Moonfall on the plane to Portland and since then I’ve been struggling to understand why.

I think the fundamental issue is that whenever I scroll through the in-flight entertainment and spot a film that actually looks interesting and watchable, I think “oh, but it’d be a shame to waste that on this tiny screen and these terrible headphones! I’ll make a mental note to watch it on my proper TV when I get home”.

So I always end up watching bilge like Moonfall in place of something good, and mostly forget to watch the good option later, thus ensuring the worst possible outcome of having seen only Moonfall.

I didn’t understand anything that happened in the final episode of Shining Girls, which indicates I’ve finally reached the point in my life where I’m no longer clever enough to understand TV.

Conversely, The Essex Serpent continues to be good. The focus has definitely shifted from the core mystery (er, is there one?) to the characters themselves, but the performances are good enough that I don’t mind at all. It’s visually extremely interesting too.

I tried The Stanley Parable now that it’s available on a platform where I play games. It’s the least interesting walking simulator I’ve played, plus it thinks it’s funny but it isn’t, so that didn’t really work out.

I’m excited about Stray coming out on the 19th of July and can’t foresee any possible disappointment.

My physical health is pretty good at the moment: I’ve been paying attention to food & exercise and have lost another 3.5kg since last time, so I feel more like my pre-COVID self and am getting less posture-related discomfort. My mental health isn’t doing well but that’s next in line.

One problem with working from home in this time zone is that it doesn’t make sense for me to have a shave at a normal and convenient hour, i.e. first thing in the morning, because by the time my first video call rolls around at 3pm or so I’ve already got visible stubble again and I needn’t (in my head) have bothered.

Instead I play chicken with it and try to shave as late in the afternoon as possible so that I get maximum benefit from the pain of scraping away at my skin. This is usually okay but there’s always the risk I’ll be caught out by a surprise morning meeting with a European and have to either execute an Emergency Shave or, occasionally, just show up scruffy.

I suppose it’s not a huge problem.