February was another busy month, with a bunch of trips in London and beyond. The news continues to be horrifying; the good news from the Denton and Gorton by-election quickly displaced by yet another ill-conceived war in the Middle East. I hope you’re all safe, or as safe as we can be right now.

The month began with a new fence, because my old fence helpfully fell down the day I decided to sell my house. Otherwise, not much has happened in my house move – I've had a few viewings, but no offers. Lots of people tell me that selling a house is incredibly stressful, but I’m pretty chill right now. I’ve done as much as I can prepare, and it’s up to my estate agent to find a buyer. Getting stressed about it won’t change anything.

In more exciting news, my partner and I have been starting to learn some basic BSL. We kicked off the month with a trip to 1880 THAT, an exhibition at Wellcome Collection about sign language and Deaf communities, then took a day trip around Bethnal Green learning signs like “park” and “bus”. We’re only learning a few signs at the time, but we’re having fun doing it.

At the end of the month, I travelled to Vancouver for a work event. Tailscale is a fully remote company, so we gather twice a year to meet in-person – and a lot of new people have joined since the last event in October. I was only in town for a few days, but that was enough time to chat to my colleagues and see a little bit of the city.

We were staying in Richmond, next to a gorgeous park with black squirrels, and I even had time to visit the local library.

I also had some time before my flight to visit Kitsilano Beach, which was a relaxing way to end an intensive trip. I had some lovely weather walking along the waterfront, and then I took a trip into the city on the False Creek Ferry. Standing on the pier, I found a little free library with a book “The Last Bookshop in London”. In that moment, my life became a Lemony Snicket novel.

I’m now safely back in the UK, where the warmer weather is rolling in – I went out for a walk yesterday and didn’t even need a jumper. Bring on the spring!

What have I been writing?

I’ve been tying off loose ends from my blog migration to Python last month, so I’ve had less time for writing – hopefully I’ll wrap up the blog migration soon, and get back to writing.

I wrote quite a bit about how I’ve set up my computers:

• Creating Caddyfiles with Cog
• The bare minimum for syncing Git repos
• My Git config
• Removing a self-hosted runner from GitHub Actions
• Testing date formatting with date-fns-tz and different timezones
• Setting up golink in my personal tailnet

A couple of notes on programming ideas I learnt this month:

• Use systemctl is-active to determine if a service is running
• Use SQL triggers to prevent overwriting a value
• The SQLite command line shell will count your unclosed parentheses
• Get a map of IP addresses for devices in my tailnet
• Create a file atomically in Go

And here are three notes about stuff in the world:

• Place with the same name, but different etymology
• The "strangler" pattern is named after a tree, not an act of violence
• Road signs in the Soviet union don't have circular heads

What’s making me smile?

💼 This time last year, I was in New York for the opening of Operation Mincemeat on Broadway. I didn’t go back for the original cast’s final show, but I did get to enjoy the cast’s livestreamed concert after their final show was cancelled due to snow. I watched the stream with the same group of friends I went to New York with, and it was a lovely way to see out that cast.

🍔 I’ve already linked Cabel Sasser’s talk at XOXO 2024; he’s now written a behind-the-scenes article explaining how the talk came together. I recommend reading for more detail, but only after you’ve watched the talk!

🗄️ Dan Abramov’s article A Social Filesystem helped me understand why everyone is so excited about ATProto. It starts from the problem first and doesn’t mention the protocol until near the end; I find that more compelling than vague statements about its potential.

Beware the Ides of March, and have a lovely month. Speak soon!

~ Alex