Weeknotes 243

Hello September. It’s slowly, slowly cooling down.

Most of the packaging has now left my flat. Only a few large chunks of expanded polystyrene remain.

The communal waste & recycling bins aren’t large enough for me to get rid of everything at once without inconveniencing my neighbours. I initially threw about half of it out and lived with the rest in my hallway until the bins were collected, then did a second run later in the week to dispose of more. Give me another week and it’ll be like it never happened.

Obviously nobody else in the building cares whether their bin habits make my life difficult but I’ve long subscribed to the SQLite Code of Ethics.

On Monday I did nothing. Brilliant.

After work on Tuesday I went to Soho Theatre to see Demi Adejuyigbe is Going To Do One (1) Backflip. It was pretty much what you’d expect: not high-concept or thought-provoking, just an enjoyable hour of assorted funny bits and songs. It worked well for a light-hearted evening out and, crucially, was all over by 8:15pm.

I bumped into Simon in the audience, illustrating either that it’s a small world or that my interests aren’t entirely unique.

A teammate’s visiting from California so it‘s been another busy week in the office. On Friday we all went for dinner at Dishoom; we accidentally over-ordered but what I did manage to eat was delicious. Although I’m not a huge Dishoom fan I don’t think I’ll ever get bored of their chole.

I watched the overhyped and mismarketed horror film Longlegs. It’s well-made and visually interesting, and it succeeds at creating an atmosphere with a sustained sense of dread, but it’s not really scary at all and stops working entirely in the third act. Still, I enjoyed it, and Maika Monroe’s performance made me want to rewatch the better film It Follows (and perhaps even its sequel???).

Then I saw Godzilla Minus One, for which I didn‘t have high hopes because I’d assumed it would be a silly summer blockbuster. It turned out to be surprisingly good! I was expecting the impressive visual effects but it also has great performances and writing, and is overall much sweeter and more emotionally engaging than it needs to be. I liked the costumes a lot too.

I can’t think of a good reason, other than my biological inability to enjoy anything, why I haven’t watched season three of The Bear yet. The first two seasons were great and I’ve read enough to know that people were disappointed by the third one, so maybe it’s wisest to leave it and treasure my happy memories.

NICHE FRUIT COMPUTER NEWS: the new version of uhubctl adds support for Raspberry Pi 5, allowing me to once again remotely control the power to my DIRIGERA hub.

Unfortunately I have to power down all of the ports with sudo uhubctl -⁠-⁠location 1 -⁠-⁠action off; sudo uhubctl -⁠-⁠location 3 -⁠-⁠action off and then power them back up with sudo uhubctl -⁠-⁠location 1 -⁠-⁠action on; sudo uhubctl -⁠-⁠location 3 -⁠-⁠action on. That isn’t as convenient as a single -⁠-⁠action cycle but it’ll do in an emergency.

The increasingly erratic behaviour of my washer dryer makes me think I need to buy a new one before I abruptly lose the ability to wash clothes altogether. But how do you even start to do that? There’s no single reputable manufacturer and they all sell ten indistinguishable models with names like 123JOZXYQK, so it seems like you just have to pick one at random and hope for the best.

After a while spent clicking around different web pages and feeling confused I made the executive decision to put it off for another day and hope my existing machine doesn’t break and cause a laundry emergency in the meantime. Should be fine.

I still play Connections every day, and at the start of August I arbitrarily decided to try to lose zero lives for the entire month. Well: I made it! 🎉