Weeknotes 337

Happy summer solstice. ☀️

Two days in the office, then three days off to burn some leftover holiday before it expired. I was exhausted so I spent the time catching up on chores & admin and otherwise silently recharging. It was mostly too hot to do anything.

I did make it out on my bike to Mr Bingo’s shop on Friday morning to buy a self-affirming print, and to Black Cat Café for lunch on Thursday & Saturday.

I also rode to the big Sainsbury’s in Whitechapel to stock up on “extra fiery” ginger beer, which for me is the most thirst-quenching summer drink available. I felt a bit silly buying a basket full of individual cans but that’s the only way they sell drinks in the mysterious world foods aisle. Besides, not being perceived is the unspoken dividend of self-checkouts.

Then to my parents’ and back today, on trains and endless rail replacement buses, rattling through the sunshine.

Three gyms. There Is No Antimemetics Division wrapped up in a nonsensical but emotionally satisfying way, and I began Redemption Ark, which is so far just table-setting and name-remembering.

I finished the first season of Widow’s Bay. Overall I really like the show and I think they just about managed to land the last episode. I’d have preferred a little more closure but I can forgive them the desire to lead into a second season now that I know it’ll exist. If it’d ended here I’d be a bit less satisfied.

I’m four episodes into Heated Rivalry and genuinely surprised by how weak it is. With the exception of the far superior off-format third episode, the writing and performances have been embarrassingly poor. I’ll stick it out til the end but it’s a real disappointment after all the buzz.

On Friday night — midsummer eve — I watched the 4K director’s cut of Midsommar for the first time. I found it completely absorbing: langorous, creepy, Florence Pugh radiant like an avenging god all the way through.

This cut is more graphic and provides more information about the various relationships, which worked well for me. I understand why some people think the additional footage and exposition detracts from the pacing but I enjoyed soaking in the longer runtime with more sinister detail. It felt like a perfect watch for a long lazy summer evening.

I find it hard to compare with Hereditary, another one of my favourites. My best guess is that Hereditary is a more successful scary film but Midsommar is the better film overall. Either way: great.

I did eventually finish watching that five-hour solve and found it enjoyable all the way through. The drama peaked when he made a crucial mistake nearly three hours in, then didn’t identify it for almost another hour and had to backtrack and redo it all. I do find his dogged persistence inspiring; my confidence is fragile enough that I’m liable to throw in the towel over far less.

By chance I stumbled across my visualisation of backpropagation training of a three-layer feedforward neural network and realised it’s almost exactly ten years old. Remember machine learning? Remember… learning?

It’s going to be 37 °C on Wednesday. I’m not looking forward to it.