June 2025: Hot weather and cool libraries
Hello friends! I’m sorry this newsletter is arriving in what is unquestionably July. I mentioned a new craft project in my last newsletter, and a week ago it became very time-sensitive. I only finished yesterday, which freed me up to write this newsletter. (Should I have started that project weeks ago? LOOK, A BADGER.)
I got to start the month with another trip to the Netherlands, for a two-day DPC Forum to discuss digital preservation. I had a fun time at the conference, and I always enjoy visiting the Hague. The trip included a tour of the KB National Library of the Netherlands, who hire rock climbers to clean their interior. Libraries remain extremely cool.
Speaking of people dangling from ropes, I marked Pride by going to After the Act, a musical featuring abseiling lesbians. The titular act is Section 28 (a now-repealed UK law banning the teaching or “promotion” of homosexuality in schools). The show focused more on how the act came to be than the effect it had, but I still enjoyed the show and I learned about an aspect of queer history that I don’t know enough about.
The UK heatwaves kept me indoors for a lot of the month, but I’m quite proud of how much I managed to stay cool. I used to really suffer in the heat, and I wouldn’t think to take care of myself until I was collapsing with a headache. These days, I’m much better at remembering to drink water and top up my electrolytes.
I got some exciting work news in June that I can’t share yet, and I got to spend a lot of time with my friends and family. July promises to be a more painful month – I just booked the extraction of three wisdom teeth – but I have some nice things to look forward to as well, including my birthday.
What have I been writing?
I posted the final entry in my bookmarking mini-series, and I said lots of nice things about other people’s websites: My favourite websites from my bookmark collection.
I followed this with a deep dive on the Swift.org website, looking at how they achieved a particular animation: Recreating the bird animation from Swift.org. This was a really fun post to write, with several interactive demos and inline animations.
Plus nine “today I learned” posts:
Go's compiler is smart enough to spot division by zero errors
Get a string representation of a Python traceback with traceback.format_exc()
The error "No aggregated item, sequence was empty" comes from Jinja2
How to get information about toots and users from the Mastodon API
Use typing.getargs() to get a list of typing.Literal[…] values
Python's f-strings support = for self-documenting expressions
What’s making me smile?
🪚 I’ve mentioned before that I watch a lot of YouTube DIY channels when I’m doing embroidery, and Studio Astrig is a new addition to my rotation. Charlotte is chronically ill and I’m really enjoying her approach to “work smarter, not harder” – balancing the demands of a DIY project with the limits of her physical health.
🃏 It’s a great time to be watching improv-based game shows – the current series of Game Changer and Taskmaster are both fantastic. I’m glad my house has loud walls, so I don’t disturb my neighbours with my laughing.
🍜 Last year I went to see The Witches, a musical adaptation of Roald Dahl’s novel. It was a lot of fun, closed in January, and I hadn’t thought about it since they unexpectedly dropped a soundtrack at the end of June. I’m enjoying listening to songs I’d forgotten, and hoping this means it might come back soon!
🏀 How You Get the Girl, by Anita Kelly. This was June’s book club book, a sapphic romance about a basketball coach and a former pro-level player who fall for each other. I was a bit worried about the potential for unhealthy power dynamics, but I think it actually sets up a nice symmetry between characters. They both look up to the other in one regard, and in another regard are looked up to. I really enjoyed reading it.
July is already here, and mercifully a bit cooler. I hope you all have a pleasant and comfortable month, and I’ll speak to you again in a few weeks.
Cheers,
~ Alex