Weeknotes 289

Back to work. Instead of wfh on Monday I went into the office to escape the heat and spent the day alone, easing back into my unread messages.

The punishing emotional journey of reading both “Bank Holiday (N Ireland)” this week and “Summer Bank Holiday (Scotland)” for three weeks hence pushed me over the edge and I finally deactivated the built-in “UK Holidays” calendar, replacing it with a subscription to the far less aggravating England and Wales iCal feed.

A weight was immediately lifted from my shoulders. I’m not angry, just disappointed, that nobody told me about this years ago.

I decided to get my boiler serviced during the hot weather while demand is low. On Friday a man came round and charged me £60 to tell me it’s technically At Risk because a short section of flue runs above the ceiling of the hallway and can’t be visually inspected. I should probably get that sorted out but I’m kind of relieved it was the only problem, given the boiler’s not been checked since it was installed over a decade ago.

I hope, yet cannot guarantee, that the above paragraph is never submitted as evidence at an inquest into my death from carbon monoxide poisoning.

It’ll be fine!

Today I went to the Yokimono Japanese summer market at the Royal Festival Hall, which had lots of interesting stalls to browse. Crucially it gave me an excuse to eat an asparagus tempura sushi burrito from Drumsco, fresh fruit mochi from Tokyo Bakery and dango & daifuku from OKASHI 2 Sweets — all extremely delicious — and buy some beautiful ceramics from Reiko Kaneko.

Really the only way this could’ve been better is if I’d gone last month when it was in Dalston instead of schlepping all the way down to Waterloo.

Three gyms. I’ve recovered from my holiday.

Bear Head is really good so far and is expanding the scope of the first book in a satisfying way. I’m glad I picked it.

I became so frustrated with several unnecessarily complex OpenID Connect client implementations that I wrote one from scratch and it was easy and pleasant. Just a couple of HTTP requests innit?

When I created a Bluesky account in July 2023 I wanted to use my website as my handle but hesitated because that would’ve abandoned the .bsky.social username I claimed at signup, so I had to make a decision, so I never did anything. But this week I discovered they made a change in December 2024 to keep your old username reserved when you switch to a custom domain, so I’ve now done that without having to bloody think about it.

I’ve never posted to Bluesky but this reminder of its existence might cause me to start checking it more regularly (than once a year) to see what’s happening there.

Like an implausibly broad parody of a mindless consumer I nearly sleepwalked into buying Cyberpunk 2077 purely because it’s on sale for £13.99. Fortunately I retain just enough conscious agency to realise that even a low price isn’t a bargain for a game I already know for certain I don’t enjoy and will never play, so I was able to catch myself in the nick of time. God’s sake.