August 2024: First newsletter!
Hello! This newsletter is going to be a semi-regular (monthly?) summary of my work and writing, ideas I’m thinking about, and stuff that’s making me smile.
I have two goals with this newsletter:
- Make it easier for people to keep up with what I’m doing. Currently your only option is “subscribe to my RSS feed”, which is fairly inaccessible in 2024.
- Create a space to share more casual stuff than my main site, like book recommendations or life news. (I did this on Twitter for a long time, but my desire to use social media has cratered in the last few years.)
What have I been up to?
At the beginning of the month, I came back from a work trip to Vermont. This was my first time in the US as an adult, and I’m glad I went. Between witchy Salem and rural Vermont, a lot of stuff about the US makes sense now in a way it didn’t before – the size and scale were difficult for my European brain to grasp without seeing it in-person.
One place I visited was the Salem Witch Board Museum, which I’d recommend. We got a tour from John Kozik, who owns the museum. He seems to know the story of every board, and tells them in a delightfully theatrical way. He also picked up on my accent, and deliberately pointed out several boards from the UK for us to enjoy.
In the middle of the month, I went to the Edinburgh Fringe. This was my first trip to the Fringe, and it was magical. I saw eight different shows over three days, and I got to meet some Internet friends who were there at the same time.
There were two shows that really stood out to me:
- Lee and the Black Hole. Lee is a hotshot NASA astronaut, and she’s going to be the first human to fly around (and into) a black hole. This is a one-woman show where we hear not from Lee, but from the girl who loved her, who got left behind. How does she feel about Lee’s career, Lee’s sacrifice, and the impact on her own life? It’s a heartfelt and heartbreaking performance, and the script mixes science and emotion in a way I’ll be thinking about for a long time.
- Conversations We Never Had, As People We'll Never Be. Gina and Frankie have recently broken up, and now they have the option to completely erase all memory of their relationship. Gina is keen to do it, and doesn’t like the current version of herself; Frankie finds the idea horrifying, and is still unashamedly in love with Gina. They discuss the ups and downs of their time together, and whether to reset such a formative relationship. The characters felt messy and realistic, and they cover a lot of ground in a short time. I cried several times.
I’d happily have seen them both again; they were such rich plays that I’m sure there are details I missed on my first viewing.
As well as the theatre, the vibes in Edinburgh were lovely. Everybody was chill and friendly; there were lots of venue-adjacent spaces where you could hang out without spending money; it was easy to find toilets in the city centre. (And although I’m sure Edinburgh is busier than usual, it was far less busy than I‘d expected.)
I’d like to go again next year, and ideally stay a little bit longer.
For the rest of the month, I slept. Those two trips took it out of me, and I’ve had a quiet week or so to recover. It’s been nice to spend a few evenings at home, and not be rushing around to get places.
I did manage to organise in a plumbing fix, stopping a leaky pipe that’s been bothering me since I moved into this house four years ago. Finally!
What did I write in August?
Two articles:
- Plates and states is about the car license plates I saw while driving in the US. They’re quite different to what I’m used to seeing in Europe, and plotting them on a map helped me understand US geography better than I have in the past.
- Mountaintop moments is about events that let us temporarily escape our lives; amazing experiences that end with an emotional crash. How do you return to normal life after that? This is an idea I’ve been thinking about for years, and I’m glad to finally have it written down.
Two “today I learned” entries:
- How to write to the middle of a file with Python – this has been handy for some work where I’ve been manipulating large JSON files.
- How to get the expiry date of an HTTPS certificate – I’ve been adding tests to some of my websites, and checking I have HTTPS certificate renewal set up correctly.
How’s the day job?
The one public-facing feature I worked on this month is the Recent Photos page in the Flickr Commons Explorer. This took a couple of iterations to get right. I wanted the page to show you every photo uploaded from every member in the last week, and also show you the variety of different members who are actively uploading photos.
Some members only upload 1 or 2 photos a week, others upload several hundred. How do you prevent the latter from completely dominating the page? I settled on showing just the first few photos from every member, then a “See more” button for the rest. It’s a little inelegant, but it does the job.
We also moved to a new office. The move was fairly smooth, some IKEA furniture mishaps aside. We’ve all done a few days in the new office now, and I’m starting to settle into my new commute. I’m a fan – I save fifteen minutes in each direction, and I go from two trains to one. Win-win!
What am I tinkering with?
- I have an external hard drive where I store media that doesn’t fit on my main disk, and I plan to replace it soon. (It’s four years old, and I don’t want to wait for it to break.) I’ve been going through it to work out what’s worth keeping, and what I can safely delete. I’ve made a decent dent in it already, and only asked “why on earth did I save that?!” a few times.
- I’ve made a new tool create_thumbnail to share thumbnailing code across all my projects.
- I’ve been adding Lynn Root’s tool interrogate to all my Python projects, which checks your docstring coverage. It turns out I’m pretty diligent about writing docstrings in application code, but not in tests. Now I’m fixing that! I’m enjoying it so far, and I’m finding useful information to write down that was previously undocumented.
What’s making me smile?
I read Lover Birds by Leanne Egan this week and it put a big smile on my face. It’s an enemies-to-lovers YA romance with an ADHD girl who’s struggling with nascent feelings of queerness. I haven’t read many books this month, and something fun and light-hearted is always what I need after a break.
I played World of Goo 2, the sequel to one of my all-time favourite puzzle games. It’s a good blend of nostalgia and new mechanics, and feels like a worthy successor.
I love the cosy vibes of autumn at twilight. When the sky is a deep navy, everywhere indoors is lit up with warm and welcoming lights, and the world is full of people sheltering from the night? Those are cosy vibes.
I got my first taste of that last Friday – I was near King’s Cross that evening, and there were lots of people hanging out around candles and lights. It felt homely. It felt nice.
Have a superb September,
~ Alex