Weeknotes 131

I’d meant to write up a transcript of my Brighton Ruby talk this week but unearthed two problems with that plan: firstly, I’m lazy, and secondly, I didn’t record the presentation so I won’t know what I actually said until the video comes out.

I did try to record it, but Keynote’s “Record Slideshow” menu item was inexplicably greyed out. Standing onstage I was too flustered to investigate or even realise I could record a voice note on my phone instead, so I swore and gave up and moved on.

In hindsight it might’ve been a problem with permission to access the microphone or similar, but even if that’s true it doesn’t help much. I don’t know how to get macOS to prompt for permission when there’s no way to hit record in the first place.

Anyway, I still have no idea what went wrong or how to fix it. I do know that it’s exactly the sort of stress you don’t want to be dealing with in the thirty seconds before starting a presentation, which makes it a surprising inclusion in software whose only purpose is to give presentations. So, to whichever Apple engineer decided under certain mysterious circumstances to disable that menu item without explanation: thanks for nothing.

At last week’s gig Stewart Lee berated the audience for our unenthusiastic reaction to a joke, so I sent him a helpful explanation:

Thank you for the Sunday afternoon gig at the RFH. It was great.

I didn’t laugh at the Venn diagram joke, because it’s inaccurate: a Venn diagram shows all possible combinations of sets, so in a two-set diagram the two circles must visually overlap even when their intersection is meant to contain nothing. If they’re drawn as two completely disconnected circles then that’s an Euler diagram.

I laughed at the business rates and Robin Hood’s Jacket Potatoes jokes.

He hasn’t replied.

For the record, I don’t think I care about popular confusion between Venn and Euler diagrams; somehow it just makes me laugh that it’s possible to split such an absurd hair in the first place. So I’m pretty sure this is an intentional bit, rather than me having something wrong with my brain. Pretty sure.

I’m still enjoying this season of For All Mankind, mainly because it’s keeping up the pace and not milking any of the opportunities for dramatic filler. We’re only halfway through and several things have already happened! It feels very confident.

I wish I could preorder Stray so it magically appears on my PS5 in just over a week. I realise the intent is for me to become so confused that I accidentally upgrade to a more expensive PS Plus tier instead but that’s not going to happen.

I bought a slightly different kind of almond milk to inject some novelty into my life and the carton boasts that the almonds are pollinated by wild bees. Revolting.

(Clarification after reader feedback: I don’t have a problem with bees pollinating flowers, I just don’t want to think about feral insects while I’m eating my breakfast. I don’t understand why they put pictures of cows on dairy milk either. Let people enjoy their fully abstract beverages in peace.)

My ISP sent me a cheerful email saying that they were, by the way, going to start charging me £60/mo for broadband instead of the current £43/mo. I phoned them up and said: hey, can you not do that? And they said: yes, alright, how about we charge you £40/mo instead, and also make your connection 500 Mbps instead of the current 350 Mbps?

Er, okay then. I understand what’s happening here but it doesn’t seem like a great system. I now realise I should’ve asked what kind of minimum viable service they could provide for £20/mo but in the moment I was just relieved to have stopped the price going up. And that’s how they get you, probably.

I met Emily for breakfast. It was the first time I’d seen her in probably four years and I found it incredibly restorative.

The days are getting warmer but I’m still resisting the lure of the air conditioner. Last year I made it until the 18th of July before giving in, so it’d be nice to hang in there for another week this time around. To be honest that seems unlikely given how hot it’s about to become.

I’m off work for two weeks now. ☀️