Weeknotes 173

Some absolutely perfect weather this week: gentle breeze, warm sun, cool shade. I’m trying to make the most of this brief moment before it becomes sweaty and unpleasant for four months.

And so a few nights at the pub!

On Tuesday I met Murray at a pub in Earth, London, Islington where a live band were mysteriously playing “gypsy jazz”. In my head this outing made up for chickening out of the LRUG pub last week. It was very good.

Last night I met Aleks at a sunny pub in Peckham and that was also very good.

For the first time it struck me that COVID is comprehensively over as far as London pubs are concerned. I went to one in the City and it was absolutely rammed with shouting men. This is fine.

Micromorts aside, all the fresh air and friendly faces are probably helping my mood.

After weeks of procrastination I finally restarted work on my WebAssembly interpreter. The task I’m doing is nothing ambitious but it already took me a while to reorient myself and find a sensible thing to do next so I’m just relieved I didn’t bounce straight off it.

I’m always nagging people to write focused atomic commits with detailed commit messages, and on this occasion I’m incredibly grateful I followed that advice because otherwise it would’ve been much harder for me to get back into the code. It felt satisfying to be able to git log my way back to a decent understanding relatively quickly.

In the interests of continuing (albeit asynchronously) to work in the open, I’m experimenting with sharing each chunk of work-in-progress as a draft pull request which will get a proper write-up in its description by the time it’s finished. That’s arguably not as fun or interesting as a video but it still gives me an opportunity to explain what I’m doing and how it fits into a larger goal. I’ve found the performative aspect of the project motivating so hopefully this’ll trick me into believing I’m still addressing an audience.

I caved and watched a speedrun of Outer Wilds in acceptance of the fact that I’m never going to finish it myself. I’m none the wiser about what’s going on in the game but, as expected, spoiling the ending did provide some welcome closure.

To quote a comment on a different video: how did this game win a BAFTA?? thanks for the walkthrough though

In other game news, Paul sent me an entire article complaining about tiny text, which obviously I agreed the shit out of. The most representative paragraph:

Developers create UI on large, high-definition monitors right in front of them. This is a context in which few of us play.

I’ve seen enough positive buzz about Picard season three — and have so far resisted watching the Red Letter Media review of the final four episodes — that I’m tempted to watch it to give myself some TNG closure. Can I do that without watching the first two seasons? Because I gave up on season one well before the end.

I finally got my MRI results. Everything’s normal, so it’s likely I only (?) have RSI. I’m going to see a physiotherapist at some unknown time and hope they can help me.

I’ve watched the video for the new and extremely relatable Vulfmon song so many times that I’m starting to go a bit funny.

Speaking of which, this week supplied more reminders than usual that the UK has plainly lost its mind, probably centuries ago. The Stone of Destiny has been temporarily reinstalled and we’re being encouraged to swear allegiance to a hereditary, magical monarchy.

The absurdity of all this would be funny if it wasn’t deeply worrying. At least we get a bonus bank holiday out of it.

Tomorrow: May bank holiday one of three.