Weeknotes 29

I never got any scan results. I think this silence is NHS-speak for “you’re fine, stop wasting our time” so I’m happy enough with it.

In other Elderly Gentleman News, on Wednesday I managed to injure my wrist somehow, probably with the sheer intensity of Vim after several leisurely years of Google Calendar and Trello. So I had to spend all of Thursday operating a computer with only my left hand which made it really hard to use Vim. Stupid colon.

I feel very fortunate that my keyboard-ravaged hands could rest and mend on Friday. Four-day weeks are incredibly civilised and I’m not sure I can go back.

We watched The Vast of Night on Amazon Prime and I liked it a lot. It’s really well-made without being too showy about it, and the suspense kept me hooked all the way through. It’s probably most enjoyable if you know nothing going in, so… trust me and watch it?

I made another two loaves of wholemeal sourdough this week which came out pretty great. The aesthetics still need work but the taste and texture are wonderful.

Nat bought me a new, smaller (24cm vs 30cm) cast iron pot to bake in. The narrower diameter seems to be helping the loaves to expand upwards instead of outwards as they bake. I also managed to buy more flour yesterday so August is probably going to be a bready month.

I’ve been playing a lot of Good Sudoku. For a while I’ve wanted in principle to get better at sudoku, mainly because I enjoy watching the Cracking The Cryptic videos (especially this remarkable one), but in practice I haven’t had the patience to sit down and learn how to solve anything more challenging than a beginner-level puzzle. But Good Sudoku has changed that and I can now comfortably beat an “advanced” or “expert” sudoku without hints, which feels like a superpower. It’s an excellently-designed app that’s only occasionally spoiled by bugs; if those get fixed it’ll be pretty much perfect.

One reason I’m getting on so well with the app is its advertised ability to “eliminate busywork” by filling in all the notes automatically and filtering them by number to make it easier to spot opportunities for progress. I’ve chosen to view this as legitimate assistive technology for a slow-witted and one-handed man, but: is it cheating at sudoku? Is the busywork an essential part of solving the puzzle? Almost certainly there exist sudoku diehards who would say yes and laugh derisively in my astonished face, especially since I doubt I could solve a challenging puzzle with just pencil and paper. But I’m having fun and it makes me feel like I’m improving my skills so I’m not too bothered about their imagined judgement.

After roughly a day’s labour spread out unnecessarily over six weeks of total chaos, my home office is finally tidy. I now have a clean floor and a comfortable chair away from the computer where I can sit and think. It feels peaceful.