How to Beat Worry

I like blogs where people add little cartoons and drawings to the text, which makes me think I should do it more. This one does it, and is a good read: [How to Beat Worry](https://moretothat.com/how-to-beat-worry/).

> The last thing a worrier should do is wait around for something to happen. Anticipation doesn’t bode well for someone caught in a worry feedback loop, so the key is to proactively invest thought into a worthwhile challenge instead.

Franklin Park Zoo

We had plans to visit friends in Dorchester today, and earlier in the week I thought “well what else can we do if we have to drive to Dorchester”, then realized the [Franklin Park Zoo](https://www.zoonewengland.org/franklin-park-zoo) was nearby, and the weather looked nice, and it was “Princess & Pirates” day so why not.

We went to the [zoo in 2020](/blog-posts/2021/03/one-year?searchterm=zoo) but not to see the animals, to see the [Zoo Lights](https://www.zoonewengland.org/engage/boston-lights). I’d never actually been there to see the animals. On a scale of 1-10 I’d give the zoo a solid 7. Going during Zoo Lights but not at night means the park is more decorated, and given that its past Labor day there wasn’t much of a crowd, although a few animals were away. I assume in Florida.

Notes:
- The “open air” exhibits were the big hits, like the rooms where the birds could fly around or the butterfly house.
- Lorelei: “ocelots in real life are cuter than in Minecraft”.
- I’ve always kind of thought of tapirs as being about the size of a dog about apparently some are 600 pounds.
- We spent a little over 3 hours there, which included eventually getting food because we had planned on being there more like 2 - 2.5 hours.
- ![](https://coffee-cake.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/images/2022/chad.jpeg) look at this absolute Chad. 
- Driving to a point in Boston has gotten so much more annoying in the last 10 years that it might have been easier to drive to the zoo in Providence had we not already had a reason to be in Dorchester.

🔗 Link: THE HIERARCHY IS BULLSHIT, WE CAN DO BETTER

THE HIERARCHY IS BULLSHIT, WE CAN DO BETTER.

> Why do people climb the ladder? “Because it’s there.” And when they don’t have any other goals, the ladder fills a vacuum.

> If you never make the leap from externally-motivated to intrinsically-motivated, this will eventually becomes a serious risk factor for your career. Without an inner compass (and a renewable source of joy), you will struggle to locate and connect with the work that gives your life meaning. You will risk burnout, apathy and a serious lack of fucks given..

> The times I have come closest to burnout or flaming out have not been when I was working the hardest, but when I cared the least. Or when I felt the least needed.📈📉💔

From [THE HIERARCHY IS BULLSHIT, WE CAN DO BETTER.](https://charity.wtf/2022/09/23/the-hierarchy-is-bullshit-we-can-do-better/). Happy Friday everyone.

DOOMCAT


We were out at lunch the other day and after burning through all the games on the front of the kids menu, Lorelei turned the menu over and started Tic-Tac-Toe on the back. Andrea suggested Hangman instead, and started explaining how you play it. It occurred to me that Hangman is… well kind of awful, so I suggested instead of Hangman we play DOOMCAT. Which is drawing a cat: two ears, two eyes, two pairs of whiskers, two teeth and then the DOOMCAT eats you. Which is also a little morbid but at least avoids antiquated forms of capital punishment.

We ran out of paper and then we ran out of food and left. Lorelei mentioned she liked and I thought, well, what if I just made it for you to play whenever. 

So… I made [DOOMCAT](https://doomcat.builtwith.coffee).

![DOOMCAT the game in action](https://coffee-cake.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/images/2022/doomcat.gif)

Some fun things:
- The cat emojis came from [OpenMoji](https://openmoji.org). They’re well set up for slicing for simple animations like this.
- Rather than set up a new project I made the entire thing in [Code Sandbox](https://codesandbox.io/) then exported it to Github. From there I added it as a project in Netlify and made the custom domain a subdomain of this site which, as far as I can tell, worked and didn’t break anything.
- The GIF above was made with [Gifski](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gifski/id1351639930?mt=12).



dun nuh na nuh nuh nuh, dun nuh na nuh nuh nuh, wah woo we woo we woooooo

I Want To Believe

![A ballon over George Washington in the Boston Public Garden](https://coffee-cake.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/images/2022/i-want-to-believe.jpeg)

Nice evening in Boston. Met up with the parents for dinner at [Citrus & Salt](https://www.citrusandsaltboston.com)

Treating links on the blog as real content.

A Little More Love for Links


I’m going to start treating links as content and not as a separate thing living under [links](/links). I started thinking about this by way of [Stat’s Page](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2022/stats-page/) on Jim Nielsen’s blog, which led me to [Indexing My Blog’s Links](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2020/indexing-my-blogs-links/), which got me thinking that all the inline links I post get lost in posts over time, and the posts I created as "link" type posts were... not numerous. There’s a lot of things I read which are interesting, and it’s a disservice to the Internet (alright… it’s a disservice to me when I go to look these things up again) to not treat them as the rest of the content.

So, I updated [the links page](/links) to show all the external links ever posted here, and I’ll try to get better about re-sharing the good stuff I find. And I’ll remember to share links with the whole link title instead of some clever words because that might be clever but it is _not_ helpful.

Wherein we visit the fair and Lorelei is married off to a Vermont boy.

The Comedy and Tragedy of County Fairs


We went to the [Caledonia County Fair](https://caledoniacountyfair.com) yesterday. I used to go with my parents every Summer when I was a kid, because it was honestly about the only thing to do in the Summer in the Northeast Kingdom back then, short of the day they switched the movie at the theatre in St. Johnsbury.

I don’t remember the fair as much: there were the cows, goats, other small animals being judged (with every single one seemingly winning first place), a demolition derby, a tractor/horse/ox pull, rides that had not seen a maintenance check since the day they left the facility that built them, the usual lineup of crappy carnival games and fair food mixed in with local grub. 

This year was a lot of the same. The big hit was the magic show — Lorelei got picked to be the last “assistant”, and was part of an elaborate “pick a card, any card” trick during which she was part of a sham wedding to a Vermont boy and was threatened to have her armed removed.

![The card Lorelei pulled at the magic show](/assets/images/2022/card.jpeg)

_The card Lorelei picked and how she made it clear it was hers._

But the big difference from when I was a kid was the “guns and Trump” stalls all about the fair. Need a hat with a pistol on it and the words “we don’t call 911 here” above it? Need a Trump 2024 flag? Need a “let’s go Brandon”, uh, anything?

Thirty years ago you’d see some knock off No Fear shirts, or Calvin pissing on whatever stickers, but it tended towards Beavis and Butthead levels of stupid and silly, not blatantly offensive. And it’s not like I think Vermont is the hyper-liberal wonderland some people picture it as (the “no steppy on snek” flags don’t stop at the Connecticut River) but it’s disappointing to see so much of the fair become political Hot Topics for shitfucks.

Even the bears don't want to hike up this.

Above Black Bear


![The gazebo in East Haven at the top of the Haul Road trail](/assets/images/2022/my-east-haven.jpeg)

I wish I could post the sound for this photo. Well I can, I guess? There was no sound. You get out early enough here and there’s no other bikers, no road noise, heck even the birds seemed like they’d had their worms and were chilling. 

This didn’t help the voice in my head that kept wondering why the trail was named Black Bear. It’s just a fun name… right?


A pleasant change from the brown yards of home.

Green Mountains


![](/assets/images/2022/green-mountains.jpeg)

A pleasant change from the brown yards of home. 

You just gotta ignite the light


I [mentioned in July](/blog-posts/2022/07/fourth-fireworks) I had some less than stellar ideas for watching Fourth of July fireworks without crowds. I made up for it tonight by getting a great spot for the Beverly Homecoming ones.

![Fireworks at Beverly Homecoming 2022](/assets/images/2022/fireworks.jpeg).

It’s amazing how well the iPhone Pros can take pictures at night. In the past I’ve tried getting photos of fireworks with a decent DSLR and ended up with blurry lights, now I can balance the phone that I carry in my pocket on my ankle and get something good-enough in 3 seconds.


Elden Ring


![Platinum trophy from Elden Ring.](/assets/images/2022/elden-ring-done.jpeg)

![Frodo saying “it’s done” after he throws the ring into Mount Doom.](/assets/gifs/its-done.gif)

Some notes:
- Took about 90 hours, not including time spent Googling “wtf is going on”.
- Ended up doing two runs, one as a DEX/INT build with Ranni’s ending, and a second NG+ run as STR/FTH that was a speed run to the end so I could do the other two endings via some save scumming. DEX/INT I ran with Moonveil katana and Wing of Astel, and then got enough INT to throw the moon at people. STR/FTH I dual wielded Blasphemous Blade and the Gargoyle's Blackblade. Both were fun. Never used a shield.
- If you’ve never played a Dark Souls game, this is the easiest one to get into, for sure, and there are a lot of ways to have fun exploring and not constantly seeing YOU DIED screens.
- Definitely a top ten favorite game. Maybe a top five. The open world map is _just_ the right size: huge, and so much to explore, but almost every inch of it has enough to make it unique and memorable.

Now, time to wait for some more _God of War_.

Leaving the Island


![](/assets/images/2022/bileaving.jpeg)

Back on the Cecilia Ann. 

Island Night


![](/assets/images/2022/binightsky.jpeg)

Clear skies. 

Morning View


![](/assets/images/2022/bimorningview.jpeg)

From the Block Island Beach House. 

Cecelia Ann


![](/assets/images/2022/ceceliaann.jpeg)

On the way to Block Island. 

What I’ve been up to for the last month instead of posting here.

An illustrated guide to why I haven’t been posting as much

A few reasons:

1. It’s been a beautiful Summer

Like, super nice. Lots of times I’ve just gone out and sat on the back porch and done this for a bit:

![Scene from Con Air where Nic Cage feels the breeze of freedom.](/assets/gifs/freedom.gif)

Granted, it’s nice because it’s been _dry_, no rainy days, not a lot of humidity, so we’re slowly heading towards a future that looks like this:

![Scene from Mad Max where they release the water to the people waiting below](/assets/gifs/mad-max-water.gif)

2. I’ve been playing a lot of Elden Ring

Probably not a lot by some standards but a lot by my standards. I’m working on Platinum-ing it. It’s good. That might be an understatement. It might be my favorite game ever, just need to make it through the last few bosses to make a final judgement.

![Screenshot from Elden Ring](/assets/images/2022/elden-ring.jpeg)

3. I’ve been playing guitar more

I went all in on [Helix](https://line6.com/helix/) and picked up a Helix LT[^1] to replace my Pod Go. It’s cool and makes loud noises at reasonable volumes.

![Angus Young playing guitar.](/assets/gifs/thunderstruck.gif)

4. We’ve been doing house projects

Sometimes it feels silly to be redoing parts of a house that’s not even 10 years old, but it turns out that when builders do a new construction you get a decent house built to the latest standards and literally the cheapest versions of every single thing to finish the house. For example, I was at the store today looking for a replacement for our back lights[^2] and I found our current lights. They cost $7. In 2022! The light bulb in them cost more than that.

Andrea has done most of the planning and work, but she subcontracts to me for plumbing and electrical and moving heavy stuff and some amount of demolition although that’s mostly because I want to use the sawzall.

![](/assets/images/2022/bathroom.jpeg)
_our redone guest bathroom_

[^1]: More on this later.
[^2]: More on this later too.

Convincing your kid that walking into the woods at night is worth it.

Not all ideas are good ideas


The back of our house points towards Salem, and Salem had their 4th of July fireworks tonight. In past years the booms have been loud enough to wake up Lorelei, and we could see the flashes through the trees on our back deck, but it wasn’t “watching fireworks”.

This year, I thought… oh, there’s a trail behind our house, in the woods. Let’s walk back there to where there’s a clear view over the water and watch them. Lorelei is old enough to stay up late, it’ll be fun.

We watched three tiny explosions before I was informed this was “the worst idea ever” and we marched back home. Standing in the (surprisingly dark considering we live in a city) woods was not her idea of a good time. Honestly it wasn’t _my_ idea of a good time either (how long has it been since I was in the woods at night?), but the booms of the grand finale are taunting me a bit right now.

Arts Fest Beverly 2022: Bridge to Nowhere

Took a walk down to [Arts Fest Beverly](https://www.bevmain.org/arts-fest-beverly/) early this morning. Nice weather for a walk, and it seemed like a lot of other people agreed, it was quite crowded. We picked up some prints for the house, and Lorelei went a bit cat crazy:

![Various cats art, books, and clothing.](/assets/images/2022/cats-cats-cats.jpeg)

The walk was great not only because of the weather, but because there wasn’t many cars out because the bridge we take into town is [closed forever](https://baystatelocal.com/2022/06/16/hall-whitaker-bridge-to-permanently-close-friday-replacement-bridge-could-take-over-2-years-news/).

![Picture of the closed bridge.](/assets/images/2022/bridge-1.jpeg)

This bridge has always had an appearance of “should we be driving over this?” so the news of its closure was not surprising, but the one day of notice was. 

![Picture of the bridge deck with holes in it.](/assets/images/2022/bridge-2.jpeg)

Some prints not pictured were from:
- [Eric Pow](https://www.ericpow.com)
- [Ashbeadle](https://www.ashbeadle.com/links)

### Past Years
- [2021](https://www.builtwith.coffee/blog-posts/2021/08/weeknotes-for-the-week-ending-august-22-2021#arts-fest-beverly)
- [2019](https://www.builtwith.coffee/blog-posts/2019/06/arts-fest-beverly)

Forty


I turned forty today. It was a nice day at home, and there was ice cream cake. One upside to having a birthday on a holiday: you almost always have it off. One downside: a lot of other people do too. But late May also coincides with peak allergy season for me, so I’m happy with at home cake instead of sneezing the top scoop of ice cream off my cone.

## My thirties, by the numbers:
- 1 child.
- 3 houses and 1 apartment across two states.
- 4 cars. Two Subarus, a Honda and a Volkswagen. Real exotics.
- Visited 5 new countries: Mexico, Spain, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and two new US states, Colorado and Nevada.
- 6 jobs (across 2 careers).
- 1 global pandemic.

The most complete record for those numbers (besides my head) was my Photos library. While I had online accounts that pre-dated my thirties, I deleted two of them (Facebook entirely, everything on Twitter over a few years old), and lost track of a few others (two blogs, including one that was a webcomic that _I swear_ was pretty funny but I have absolutely no record of). I choose to believe that, God willing and the creek don’t rise[^1], I’ll be able to point to this blog post on this blog when I turn fifty.

## Notes for my Forties
Last night Andrea said she wanted to document me giving advice for my fifty-year-old self because, “you can’t go back and give advice to your thirty-year-old self”. Fair. Although I wish I could, because I feel like the main difference between my twenties and thirties was that I had to actually learn something. While I could brute-force my way through a lot of things in my twenties (with mixed results) that fell apart early in my thirties. So, here’s some advice for myself for the next ten years from what I’ve learned from the last ten years.

### Know what to say “no” to
I spent a lot of my early and mid-thirties saying “no” to things out of avoidance. My anxiety about being anxious when doing something got the best of me, and I wouldn’t do it. I know relationships ended because of this. I missed out on things that were objectively fun because of it. I missed out on career paths because of it. Eventually I went to therapy and now I have the metacognition to know better _why_ I’m saying no, and a historical record to look back and that proves that the alternative to avoiding anxiety isn’t being not anxious, it’s being miserable about the choices you made to avoid it.

Austin Kleon wrote about a similar idea recently, [“Would I do it tomorrow?”](https://austinkleon.com/2022/04/27/would-i-do-it-tomorrow/). I haven’t found the right mental model for me to decide yes or no to things, but I at least know it’s not defaulting to “no”, or choosing “no” because you’re worrying about what the bad parts of saying “yes” are.

### Know what choices have been made and no longer require further thought
This is the crux of why becoming an adult is difficult, to me. Looking again at my twenties, I wasn’t entangled with anything. I could quit a job on a whim, move, spend money on whatever. Once I got married, owned a house, had a kid, that all becomes more difficult. Which then breeds a different mindset where you think things _can’t_ or _shouldn’t_ change. 

But a) everything changes eventually and b) being adaptable to change of your own volition is important for being able to deal with when change happens outside of your control.

So think of the future like an artist trying a bunch of different mediums, then saying “I’m going to draw with pen on paper from now on”. They can draw anything, but they don’t have to think about what they’re going to draw it with.

### Listen to the birds
Sometimes Andrea asks me what I’m thinking about, and I reply “nothing”. I don’t think she always believes me, but I’ve been trying to get better about being bored. It’s like a return to my pre-Internet youth, where when you sat down outside, that was it, there was the outside and nothing else. You could listen to the birds, or look at the clouds. Do we need more than that?

This isn’t me going full [“blow up your TV”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BofvfVPFbiM). I recently bought a really large, very fancy one. It’s more an acknowledgement that I can only think about so many things, and often I’ll think about things in unhelpful ways. So, sometimes don’t think, just listen and watch, or doodle on a piece of paper, or close your eyes and feel the breeze. Brains need rest too.

### Take more vacations
…and travel to more places. We made an intentional decision after getting married to spend most of our savings on a house, and then made a lot of other life choices around having a house. We now have a nice house and will never move again (see above about knowing what won’t change. Again, God willing and the creek don’t rise), but it meant there was never a lot of money left over for vacations or travel[^2], or we felt that travel was an extravagance. While I do enjoy spending time in our lovely home, some of the best memories I have and the biggest source of novel ideas came from traveling. 

### You can respond to everything with this now
![](/assets/images/2022/too-old-for-this-shit.jpg)

[^1]: Even though I don’t believe in God, this is by far my favorite American saying.
[^2]: But Joe, you say, you went to 5 new countries. Well, they were all for work. If you want to travel, I highly recommend working for a travel company.

Seven


Lorelei turned seven this week. We had a party today, with a princess / fairy theme. We did a pile of yard work on Friday to finish off projects in the back yard, then woke up to clouds. Luckily it burned off by the time the kids got here, and they got to play outside for a bit. None of them mentioned the work we did, although I suppose they would have noticed if it was all a big dirt pile still (and, maybe enjoyed it more).

I look forward to a time in the future when I can tell Lorelei how she spent most of first grade pretending to be a cat. All of her friends seem to accept her catness — they all came with cat-themed gifts, and there was a game they played called “pet the cat” where Lorelei got to pretend to be a cat. The parents lamented that none of their kids ever tell them what goes on at school except in bits and pieces, but we pieced together that this is a game that gets played often at recess.

We also picked up an [instax Link wide](https://instax.com/link_wide/en/) so we could send real pictures of the party home with the kids. This is Lorelei testing it out the day before:

![](/assets/images/2022/seven.jpeg)

I’ve [wrote before about how much I enjoy the instax formats](/blog-posts/2020/12/instax). The wide format is even better, and the printer, which allows you to use your much better camera phone as the source, makes it better x2.

Since yet another Easter has passed and Covid still isn’t over, it was, of course, a topic of discussion. The kids at the party are all in the same class, so the risk of one party is the same as the risk every single other day. Among the parents it was more a sense of resignation: we’re going out, we’re going to work, what else would we do. We want to start talking about “the pandemic” in past tense. Can we? I’m not sure it’s up to us. May of 2022 isn’t the same as [May of 2020](/blog-posts/2020/05), but it’s not the same as [May of 2019](/blog-posts/2019/05), either, but I guess that’s how life goes.

The end of last week we were in Connecticut and Andrea wanted to go to a used book store, so I suggested we go to the Niantic Book Barn.

Books and cats and books and cats and….


Our trips in the past few years have been there-and-back affairs, due to the complications of figuring out COVID hours/openings, the fickle nature of New England nature, and wanting some amount of post-travel pre-work time to relax. But the end of last week we were in Connecticut, Andrea wanted to go to a used book store, and none of the aforementioned issues were issues, so I suggested we go to the [Niantic Book Barn](https://www.bookbarnniantic.com), which met everyone’s requests:

- Andrea: a large, semi-curated but mildly out of control collection of books.
- Lorelei: cats

Andrea found a pile of romance novels:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I just bought a crap ton of paperback romances and romantica dating from the 1930s to early 2000s. Check out my Instagram stories where I’m sharing pics (and commentary of course)!<a href="https://t.co/S578iWQU7P">https://t.co/S578iWQU7P</a> <a href="https://t.co/TzqdudeynW">pic.twitter.com/TzqdudeynW</a></p>&mdash; Shelf Love: Romantic Love Stories in Pop Culture (@ShelfLovePod) <a href="https://twitter.com/ShelfLovePod/status/1517970192852299776?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 23, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Lorelei and I found the cats. Credit to her sixth sense for finding the two under couch.

<div class="four-up">
	<img src="/assets/images/2022/bb-1.jpeg" />
	<img src="/assets/images/2022/bb-2.jpeg" />
	<img src="/assets/images/2022/bb-3.jpeg" />
	<img src="/assets/images/2022/bb-4.jpeg" />
</div>

I wouldn’t recommend going far out of the way to stop there, but if you’re by the Connecticut shoreline already it’s a fun stop. You won’t find a lot of _good_ books unless you snipe one that just got sorted or you pull it straight from the newly arrived section. The stuff that accumulates… well, let’s say they had three entire shelves of L. Ron Hubbard.

![The thermostat, in the politics section](/assets/images/2022/bb-5.jpeg)

As for me, I walked out with one, one dollar book. I think it was a steal.

![A 1968 copy of Conan the Warrior](/assets/images/2022/bb-6.jpeg)



Spending a school-break day underwhelmed at the Boston Museum of Science.

Museum of Science


We went to the Boston Museum of Science today. I have fond memories of it from when I was a kid, although growing up in Connecticut it was a rare treat, so far away in the big city of Boston.

![Floor shot from the Boston Museum of Science](/assets/images/2022/mos.jpeg )

This time I was not terribly impressed. Neither was Lorelei. I was thinking about why, on the way home, and I think it’s:

1. No one would pick the Boston Museum of Science as a museum to really wow someone. They make lightning indoors and it’s got a nice view of the river but it’s not even close to one of those “oh man this is so much museum it might be too much museum” kind of museums.
2. The interest and interaction you can get out of a museum exhibit for a six year old today is _so_ much less than what it was for me as a six year old. You want to learn about nature? Great, here’s birds in 8k video, let’s look up what sounds they make, here’s an AR app to see what kinds of birds live in our backyard. What did I have as a kid? Look up “bird” in the encyclopedia, get a few pictures, maybe go to the library and get a bird book. Bug my Grandfather about bird names until he’d tell me something like “if it’s black it’s a Blackbird” until I went away. Going to a museum and seeing all of that knowledge in one place was mind blowing.

But today a hall of dead (or are they fake? Probably dead) animals isn’t really a draw. A dinosaur skeleton is (if it’s real). A cool physical or interactive exhibit is. The 4D movie theatre was a hit.

But still, we had fun, even though Lorelei pretended she did not when we chose to not eat at the food court there.

![Lorelei trying to max out the sadness meter](/assets/images/2022/sadness-meter.jpeg)

I will say if you’re not from Boston and thinking of going, going on a holiday is _great_. For reasons I cannot explain after living in the area for twenty years, Boston on a holiday is always empty. I have no idea where people go. On the drive in there was not only no traffic, there were parts of the highway where there were _no other cars_. That maxes out the happiness meter for me.



In this era of “more of everything” it’s nice to enjoy something that ends.

The Three-Body Problem or the Three-Book problem?


I finished [The Three-Body Problem](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780765382030) this morning. I’ve been reading it in stops and starts, I found many parts too tell-not-show for my tastes. It’s an interesting sci-fi plot with a graduate-level physics class thrown in the middle. Or it’s not sci-fi at all and it’s an allegory for Communist China’s interactions with the West. 

Either way it’s book number one of a three book series and I don’t think I’ll continue. I tend to stay away from books that are part of a series that can’t stand on their own. I’m two books into [The Stormlight Archive](https://www.goodreads.com/series/49075-the-stormlight-archive) but I’m not interested enough to keep going. Similarly I finished [Horizon Forbidden West](https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/horizon-forbidden-west/) recently, a sequel itself that sets the story up for a trilogy and — I dunno, I’m not that interested in hearing more, especially if it’s tens or hundreds of hours more.

On sort of the other side of this, we watched _[Coda](https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/coda/umc.cmc.3eh9r5iz32ggdm4ccvw5igiir)_ last night. It’s as good as everyone said it was and I don’t think anyone is going to pitch an incredibly ironically titled _Coda 2_ about Ruby in college. In this era of “more of everything” it’s nice to enjoy something that ends.


Sometimes a cigar is just a useless thing to learn about.

Why Didn’t Someone Tell Me This Sooner?

I finished _[Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780063227934)_ yesterday. It’s a good high level intro into almost everything a person might go see a therapist for.  It’s better organized than 6000 Tik Tok videos, which seems to be the _de rigueur_ way to learn about these things.

I took a Psychology class in college, it was pretty useless. I’d much rather someone had just given me this book. Honestly a week reading this instead of an extra week of Freud and bearskin rugs or whatever might have been the most helpful thing for me in college. Oh! This is how anxious thoughts work? And strategies for stopping them? No, useless information. More on Pavlov’s dogs, please.

There’s a lot of overlap here with _[Atomic Habits][1]_ by James Clear, it’s even referenced a few times. There’s an idea they share: say you’re out of shape. A bad goal is to say, “I want to run a marathon”. You’ll probably fail (too ambitious), but you could also succeed then never run again. The idea is to not have a goal but to form a habit. Tomorrow say “I’m a person who runs”, then start running, even if just down the block. While “becoming more physically fit” is one easy to understand example, the crux of it is you reframe your thoughts and change how you think about yourself rather than being reactive (I’m depressed, I need to be happy) or problem solving (I’m burned out, I need a plan for relaxing). 

If you want the super short version of both books, it’s the song “The Next Right Thing” from _Frozen 2_[^1].

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kFkClV2gM-s" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I recommend the book. It’s a quick read. It unfortunately doesn’t cover finding or affording a therapist because your insurance won’t cover it, but I suppose that’s out of scope.

[1]:	https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits
[^1]: I love this song and reference it often. While the lyrics are like the textbook example of helping someone overcome grief slid into a children’s musical, it’s also just _really good advice_. 99.9% of the time you can get through life… just doing the next (right) thing. Don’t overthink it! Our brains are dumb!

A minimal reproduction of a bug that took too long to find.

An obvious bug

Debugging is one of the things I enjoy about programming. It’s like a little puzzle to solve. But as code gets more complicated, the little bugs can hide themselves in ways that make them very, very, annoyingly hard to find. This one, minimally reproduced in this Codepen, got me this week:

<p class="codepen" data-height="300" data-default-tab="html,result" data-slug-hash="ZEvxdZg" data-user="jjmartucci" style="height: 300px; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; align-items: center; justify-content: center; border: 2px solid; margin: 1em 0; padding: 1em;">
  <span>See the Pen <a href="https://codepen.io/jjmartucci/pen/ZEvxdZg">
  A small bug 🐞</a> by Joseph Martucci (<a href="https://codepen.io/jjmartucci">@jjmartucci</a>)
  on <a href="https://codepen.io">CodePen</a>.</span>
</p>
<script async src="https://cpwebassets.codepen.io/assets/embed/ei.js"></script>

It seems obvious —  an empty input calculates an invalid date. But then imagine the calculated date was never visible, an empty input is considered valid data, and the system that reported this being an issue was 3 microservice hops away.

And the real issue, it turns out, was ever using `parseInt`. [Day.js](https://day.js.org) can do the calculation just fine with strings.

There’s more writing going on now than ever before in human history.

The most writing in human history

I’ve been reading [Smarter Than You Think](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780143125822). Chapter 2 is about online writing and blogging, and Clive Thompson mentions how there’s more writing going on now than ever before in human history:

> As the historian David Henkin notes in The Postal Age, the per capita volume of letters in the United States in 1860 was only 5.15 per year. “That was a huge change at the time—it was important,” Henkin tells me. “But today it’s the exceptional person who doesn’t write five messages a day. I think a hundred years from now scholars will be swimming in a bewildering excess of life writing.”

What’s wild to me is that I got an English degree between the years of 2000 and 2004, and… no one saw this coming. A few weeks before graduating someone suggested I should sign up on some “Facebook thing, it just opened up outside of Harvard, you can see other people from other schools”, and no one I knew had ever blogged anything. So it wasn’t a miss of what was happening, but it was a miss on what _would_ be happening. 

Also, any English program could have ditched Hemingway for some basic communication writing and maybe we could have replaced the E in STEM.

React 18 [is now available on npm](https://reactjs.org/blog/2022/03/29/react-v18.html).

React 18

React 18 [is now available on npm](https://reactjs.org/blog/2022/03/29/react-v18.html).

I started using React back in the `0.14.X` days. I still prefer it over other front-end frameworks because it’s _not_ a framework, it’s just a library. That said — these days I prefer to use it _with_ a framework. When I first started using React it was as part of an MVC app (usually) or a truly single-page application. Once we moved to handling routing client-side, and handling all data fetching and state management client side, and handling authentication client side… it’s a lot. There’s a lot of cases where you would have been better of using AngularJS or Vue or an MVC whatever backend and some web components than trying to glue together React + React Router (no wait, Reach?) + Redux (no everyone uses MobX now, wait, now it’s just React Hooks WAIT, no, now we’re using state machines) + the CSS-in-JS library of the day.

You see the problem. Still, I think the React combination of JSX and parent/child rendering updates, and prioritizing functional JavaScript without a lot of magic is great. Do I care about most of the updates in React 18? Not really. I’m glad Next, or Remix, or some other great framework is going to do magic with them.

Web links worth reading on Canvas2D and the File System Access API.

Two articles on web APIs

The first one: [It’s always been you, Canvas2D - Chrome Developers](https://developer.chrome.com/blog/canvas2d/). Lots of nice updates to performance and quality of life for the Canvas API. I have a soft spot for the `<canvas>` tag — when I was (re)learning web development I spent a lot of time at my non-development related job spinning up little web projects that required no libraries or compilation steps to run in the browser pre-installed on my laptop. The canvas element was the most readily available but also _complex_  web API that runs locally, so I built all kinds of interfaces and animations in it while learning.

Second: [Using files with browsers, in reality - macwright.com](https://macwright.com/2022/03/04/browsers-and-files.html)

> The meaning and importance of the *file* has shifted a lot in the last decade. The Verge wrote about how  [students today don’t have a grasp](https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z)  on how files and folders work - or they have a very good understanding of the norms of storing information in the cloud, but not on their local computers. The web contains all sorts of things that we never think of or use as files: is your email an  [Mbox file](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbox) ? Do you ever directly use the  [HEIC files](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Image_File_Format)  that are the native format of Apple Photos? Or consider any rich text on the internet, like a Notion page - does it have a defined file type and an option to download? And think of the mobile web. You can download a file from mobile Safari, but do you?

Worth noting, I suppose, that I’m writing this in an application which does not use files. But I generally prefer the workflow of “don’t make me think about this as a file, but give me the file if I ask for it”, so it’s nice to see this API coming together.

And I enjoyed this bit from that article:

> Working with the web platform is dealing with history, with the accumulated matter of  [quirksmode](https://www.quirksmode.org/)  and good-enough standards. In exchange for the ability to deliver instantly-updating software directly to customers with no middlemen and no installation, you have to absorb a great deal of nearly-useless information that’s entirely about dodging meaningless traps.

Edifier R1280T compared to the JBL 104, Apple Mini and Sonos Symfonisk.

Another set of speakers for the $100 speaker shootout

![Edifier R1280Ts next to JBL104s](/assets/images/2022/edifier.jpeg)

I have a thing for cheap, powered speakers, it seems. In November I picked up an Apple Mini and a Sonos Symfonisk. I noted then that [both are fine](https://www.builtwith.coffee/blog-posts/2021/11/weeknotes-for-the-week-ending-november-21-2021#speaker-of-the-house) but neither blew me away. The Sonos was being used in the basement with an old Apple TV for workouts, but because it required selecting it as the output _every single time_ the TV turned on I wanted to find a better solution.

I’ve read many good things about Edifier speakers so I picked up a pair of [Edifier R1280Ts](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B088685QVJ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1). I put them in the office to compare them to the speakers I was using, the [JBL 104s](https://jblpro.com/en/products/104). Here’s a high level ranking:

1. JBL104. Still my favorites. Not as loud as the Edifiers but a better shape for a desktop and much clearer.
2. Edifier 1280T. Ended up going in the basement workout space, hardwired to the TV out. Gets decently loud, not exactly clear but if I’m listening to speed metal while lifting clear isn’t the highest priority.
3. Sonos Symfonisk. Sounds good at moderate volume, and the shape (and ability to be a shelf) is neat. Distorted at high volumes, the Sonos app is miserable to use, and very directional sound. Might be better as a stereo pair but I’m suspicious of the overhead of two wireless speakers working together.
4. Apple Mini. Cute. Fun color. Unless you really need something in this specific size and need it to be “smart” and work with Siri it’s overpriced and anything would be better.




All we need is just a little patience

Two things I worked on this weekend:

1. I cleaned up _all_ the crap on this site from it being a developer playground over the years. Multiple frameworks, 3+ CMSs, metadata from various and sundry file managers, unused APIs, image optimization code that never worked and was making 100s of additional images every time I built, etc. Now everything is done “[the Next way](https://nextjs.org)”, including images, because I finally took the time to set up `next/image` using [Next on Netlify](https://docs.netlify.com/configure-builds/common-configurations/next-js/). I cleaned up a bunch of components and the typography, so hopefully everything reads better.
2. For Christmas this year we proposed the East Coast and West Coast families get together for a “paint (by numbers) night”. We ordered the paint kits for everyone, then forgot about it, then scheduled the time, but then people were busy, then we _finally_ scheduled the time, and last night we did it.

![My finished paint by numbers picture of a cat with cool sunglasses.](/assets/images/2022/paint-by-numbers.jpeg)

Some people were a bit ambitious in their choices and might be occupied by this project until Christmas 2022. 8.5″ x 11″ is a good size. Excited to add this to the rotating art wall behind my on Zoom calls.

Throughout the week I throw interesting articles in my Things inbox, to either file or re-read on the weekend. I’m clearing it out, but these are some I thought you might enjoy.

Interesting reads from the last week

Throughout the week I throw interesting articles in my [Things](http://culturedcode.com/things/) inbox, to either file or re-read on the weekend. I’m clearing it out, but these are some I thought you, dear reader, might enjoy.

[My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll](https://alexanderell.is/posts/infinite-scroll/)
> There’s a broad pattern these days of mobile sites being much worse and more restrictive, since they’re trying to push you towards logging in or downloading the app. Ironically, being conscious of my struggle, these moments of friction actually help push me towards closing the site instead. For that, I’m grateful for Reddit’s mobile UI.

[Desperation-Induced Focus](https://rkg.blog/desperation-induced-focus.php)
> My advice to people when they are thinking about instituting a new process is to go to a whiteboard2 and write down the answer to this question: “If you could only get one thing done this year, what would it be?”. If that answer is “institute some new process”, go for it. But if it’s something like “increase market share from 30% to 60%” or “launch this new product that will 2x our TAM”, don’t waste your time on anything else. Just take your best person (up to and including the CEO), make them responsible for solving that problem, and give them everything and everyone they need to make it happen.

[Family IT Support Turned Blog Post Turned Anecdote in The Wall Street Journal](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2022/my-mom-and-the-wsj/)
> In my conversation with Nicole, I tried to explain the idea of “progressive enhancement” and why, I believe, the website my Mom was trying to access should’ve still been accessible. 

[I Welcome Your Performance](https://hypertext.monster/2022/03/08/i-welcome-your.html)
> Please-please-please, don’t let the voice of cynicism stop you from sharing what brings you joy. Instead, let us say to one another: Hey! Fellow humans. I welcome your beautiful performance!

> ‘Performative sharing’ is a small, fascinating window into who we are, what we love, and what’s possible. It takes us out of our own heads, and it challenges our limited view of the world. Sometimes, it’s about nothing but fun, or the base human desire to walk up to another upright ape and show them this thing we found. Isn’t it cool? And what’s wrong with that?

My favorite part of TypeScript is debugging the config

Really nothing I love more than figuring out why a random config option got added 2 years ago by a dev, with no comments, and removing or changing it causes thousands of seemingly unrelated errors.

![Scene from We Bear Bears where a doctor is testing each bear for reflex but a different bear is responding.](https://www.builtwith.coffee/assets/gifs/debugging.gif)

I reorganized my office recently and — there’s too many books!

Take my books, please

I reorganized my office recently and — there’s too many books! So I made a filter on my [reading](/books) page of books [I’m trying to give away](/books?year=take-it). They’re all good books, I just don’t want them any more! Drop me a line [on the contact page](/contact) and I’ll send it your way.

Netflix’s Explained: Coding

I recommend [Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software](https://www.microsoftpressstore.com/store/code-the-hidden-language-of-computer-hardware-and-software-9780735611313) as a great history of _how_ we got to our current world of computers and programming. If you want the < 30 minute version, [Netflix’s Explained: Coding](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11167964/) is pretty good too.

5 Accessibility Quick Wins (and two for this site)

From CSS Tricks: [5 Accessibility Quick Wins You Can Implement Today](https://css-tricks.com/5-accessibility-quick-wins-you-can-implement-today/).

I like articles about accessibility in this format, how-tos of practical examples you see on almost every website. Heydon Pickering’s [Inclusive Components](https://inclusive-components.design) was the first place I saw this, but the site had only a few examples and ended up being short-lived.

I went to implement two of the 5 “quick wins” above that were relevant to this site:

1. The active page now shows up with a bit of style and the `aria-current` page. I was doing a gross hack with the `window.location` to parse out the current page before, and cleaned that up with Next’s [useRouter](https://nextjs.org/docs/api-reference/next/router).
2. I thought the site didn’t have a document language, but it did! Modifying the `<html>` tag in Next is, like most JavaScript frameworks, somewhat unintuitive. This post shows one way: [How to set the HTML lang attribute in Next.js?](https://melvingeorge.me/blog/set-html-lang-attribute-in-nextjs) but I found out it doesn’t work with `next export` when generating a static site. I then realized I had already done it the _other_ way, using a [custom Document](https://nextjs.org/docs/advanced-features/custom-document).

First ride

I see:

![Screenshot of the iOS weather app showing a temperature of 66 degrees and a Winter storm warning.](/assets/images/2022/weather.jpeg)

I do this:
![My Santa Cruz Tallboy in the woods.](/assets/images/2022/bike-at-gordon.jpeg)

Warm days in early Spring used to be my favorite time to ride as a kid. Warm enough you go in shorts and a shirt, but you can goof around on icy patches and catch those cool breezes off all the semi-frozen streams and ponds.

Today… wasn’t as great. Too much coffee and not enough breakfast and amazingly, even though these woods aren’t big, the trails were littered with enough dead leaves and dropped trees I got lost once, or twice, or thrice. But still — some goofin’ on the ice.

The last time I stopped by my parent’s house they handed me a medium sized box full of my old CDs. As an elder-millennial I did have an iPod and a hard drive full of mp3s in college, so these CDs were from the pre-Internet days, and none of them were good enough that I wanted them around after graduating college. So, take a trip down memory lane with me, by way of CD.

Compact discs

The last time I stopped by my parent’s house they handed me a medium sized box full of my old CDs. As an elder-millennial I did have an iPod and a hard drive full of mp3s in college, so these CDs were from the pre-Internet days, and none of them were good enough that I wanted them around after graduating college. So, take a trip down memory lane with me, by way of CD.

### Ska one hits
Only 90s kids will remember, but once upon a time if you heard a good song and wanted to hear it again, and it didn’t get radio play… you had to buy the whole CD. 

![A bunch of ska albums I bought for one song.][image-1]

### The albums I thought were cool when I was a teenager I haven’t thought about since

![CD covers of Candlebox’s Lucy, one hot minute by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and pet your friends by Dishwalla.][image-2]

Alright… I do think _one hot minute_ is a good album. And there’s two good songs on the Dishwalla album. But I really wanted that Candlebox CD and can’t remember a single song from it.

### The cool covers collection

![CD covers of Tool’s Anima and Alice in Chains’ self named album.][image-3]

I’m glad animated covers have made their way back to Apple Music. The Alice in Chains one didn’t move, but purple plastic! My kid will never understand the excitement of plastic in a non-clear color.

### Lost and gone
I have a number of albums that I downloaded (don’t tell Lars) or had copies of from friends that disappeared[^1], but this one, _Gravelled and Green_ by the Actual Tigers I liked, but it was [possibly never released](https://www.andrewjoslynmusic.com/gravelled-and-green-the-best-album-never-to-have-happened/), and doesn’t exist (as far as I can tell) on any streaming platform.

![Gravelled and Green by the Actual Tigers][image-4]

But if you want the vibe, some of their songs are on YouTube.
 
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tMuvLRC1mOw" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

### Deep regrets
Man I hope I didn’t actually pay this much for this one.

![Cover of the Megadeth album Youthanasia with a $24.99 price tag on it.](/assets/images/2022/cd-price.jpeg)

### Ran out of lives
![CD cover of Aerosmith’s album Nine Lives.](/assets/images/2022/cd-nine-lives.jpeg)

I bring up this CD in conversation a lot because it included a game on the disc called [Virtual Guitar Quest For Fame](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quest_for_Fame) which at the time was cool. It was also the only way you could reasonably listen to the album, which otherwise sucked.

### Wrong place, wrong time
Some CDs just bring up very distinct memories. That long car ride you took where it was the only CD you had so you listened to it over and over. Sad songs that bring up sad times and ska songs that… also bring up sad times. _Hangs-ups_ by Goldfinger always brings up one specific memory for me.

![CD and cover of Goldfinger’s album Hang-ups.](/assets/images/2022/cd-superman.jpeg)

When I was in college I broke my leg, but due to some questionable doctoring it was assumed to be a pulled ligament or muscle for a few weeks, until I noted that it still wasn’t better. So they sent me off for an MRI[^2]. When scheduling it, the hospital mentioned that I would be in the MRI machine for a while, so I could bring a CD to listen to. 

Great, I have CDs. So which one would I pick, what music would be most appropriate to listen to while lying still for 30 minutes? Of course, the one that starts off with the most upbeat track from the _Tony Hawk 2_ soundtrack.

![](/assets/gifs/i-will-never-turn-my-back-on-ska.gif)

[^1]: The albums and the friends.
[^2]: The astute among you will note that an MRI is not a good way to diagnose a broken leg, but it did image the torn ligaments around my knee, which then led a slightly better doctor to recommend I get an X-ray which found the cracks on my femur and tibia. Yay!

[image-1]:	/assets/images/2022/cd-ska.jpeg
[image-2]:	/assets/images/2022/cd-wanted.jpeg
[image-3]:	/assets/images/2022/cd-covers.jpeg
[image-4]:	/assets/images/2022/cd-missing.jpeg

At some point I found a webpage that had an entire list of Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies. I put it in a Bear note but that doesn’t quite capture the “I just need a new way of thinking aspect” of it, so I put the list on a page, and it grabs one from the list at random.

Oblique Strategies

At some point I [found a webpage][1] that had an entire list of [Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies][2]. I put it in a Bear note but that doesn’t quite capture the “I just need a new way of thinking aspect” of it, so I put the list on a page, and it grabs one from the list at random.

Please enjoy [an Oblique Strategy][3].

And if you’re like “uhhhh what”… just reload the page!

[1]:	https://oblique.ookb.co/list.html
[2]:	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies
[3]:	https://www.builtwith.coffee/oblique

Is a human on a Zoom call just an avatar of a human?

The cognitive dissonance of digital communication.

Two things I read this weekend.

1. [What We Lost][1]: about Zoom versus reality. I’m on the fence, I do like seeing people, but very rarely. Certainly not enough to consider going to an office every day again, but still…
> No, I have no idea that everyone hates the idea you just proposed because my ability to read the room has been mostly erased. I can’t tell the difference between “We hate this idea” silence and “We mostly just quiet because it’s a chore to speak during a video conference” silence.

And in reading that I think, wow, Zoom hasn’t improved in voice quality _at all_ during this pandemic. Background blur _still_ makes you look like a spirit passing through a room from another plane of existence. And it’s not just Zoom, I Facetime with my parents and in the middle of saying something important hear, “oh the video just went away” on the other-side.

![This is fine][image-1]

2. [Gurman: FaceTime for Apple AR/VR Headset Could Rely on Memojis and SharePlay][2]. The flip side of this is it appears (or in the case of Meta, it is known) that tech companies think the problem with remote communication is that we haven’t gone far enough. Maybe they’re right. Voice chat while playing a video game is usually better than Zoom. My Zoom avatar, when I don’t have my camera on, is a T-Rexicorn, why not just animate it and make it 3D and map it to my face.

With so many companies sticking to all-remote for now and in the future, maybe it’s the right move. Get rid of offices, get rid of conferences, get a fancy reclining pod chair in your house and drop in to any “room” in the world. Sure, you’ll have the head of a cat and you’ll only exist from the waist up, but that’s close enough, right?


[1]:	https://randsinrepose.com/archives/what-we-lost/
[2]:	https://www.macrumors.com/2022/02/13/headset-facetime-could-use-memojis-and-shareplay/

[image-1]:	https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E9LhOhLWUAwpozS?format=png&name=900x900

The motion of the ocean

Because my wife is an amazing podcaster and, when it comes to dealing with me, editor.

My first podcast appearance

Why bother with Finder when you can grab them straight from the cloud itself.

TIL, you can download your iCloud data

I learned from a [possibly hyperbolic Reddit thread][1] that if you go to [https://privacy.apple.com][2] you can download not only all of the data Apple has about you, but also all of your iCloud files. Because Apple insists that the iCloud folder must live on  an internal hard drive, making a complete copy to an external drive has always been a chore. The best options are either spend $800 on a 2TB internal drive (which, isn’t a great option on a $999 machine and is only recently even an option) or setting up a Windows machine because iCloud on Windows could be installed in any directory.

There’s still no easy way to do this for family accounts, that I know of. If you know of one, let me know. I generally trust iCloud, but [after last week’s outages][3] I realized I might be _too_ trusting.

[1]:	https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/sixyvx/warning_files_on_icloud_drive_are_not_safe/hvbq9y2/?context=1
[2]:	https://privacy.apple.com
[3]:	https://www.macrumors.com/2022/01/26/apples-icloud-service-experiencing-outage/

Full self-driving beta controls the whole car, but you’ll only need the edge of your seat!

When you steal your ideas for a self-driving car from Maximum Overdrive

[Maximum Overdrive][1] was a film written and directed by Stephen King in which all machines become sentient, including vehicles. It’s probably best known for:

1. Being the only movie Stephen King directed.
2. Having the AC/DC album _Who Made Who_ as its soundtrack.
3. The “main character”, a semi-truck with a goblin face that tries to kill people.

![][image-1]

It’s an awful film, but it’s a great “here’s the absolute worst-case scenario for self-driving vehicles.”

Related, Tesla has to [recall a bunch of cars because they roll through stop signs][2]. That’s not quite stick a goblin mask on it bad, but as a consumer product it ain’t a great start. Tesla true believers will tell you “humans would do that too”, but in my opinion human drivers are only _slightly_ better than sentient goblin trucks anyway, so maybe we should aim higher.

I find many interesting articles on Hacker News, and sometimes interesting comments. [But the first one here is a treat][3]: basically, how should a self-driving car know whether to do the “school’s in” speed in a school zone, or the “school’s out” speed. Can mankind solve this impossible question? What first solution might we try? My gut says if we go double the max speed limit, we’ll be too fast for anyone to catch us!

[1]:	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_Overdrive
[2]:	https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-recalls-nearly-54000-us-vehicles-rolling-stop-software-feature-2022-02-01/
[3]:	https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30164317

[image-1]:	/assets/images/2022/maximum-overdrive.png

Notes on the book Effortless, by Greg McKeown.

Effortless


I read Greg McKeown’s book [Essentialism][1] back in 2020. It had been sitting on a shelf in our house for a long time, but I picked it up on a sunny pandemic Sunday and read the whole thing in one go. It’s a good book for that type of reading, lots of anecdotes and the central point is “say no to more things” which isn’t a terribly complicated message.

I was browsing Libby the other day and saw his new book, [Effortless][2] was available. Sure, I said, why not.

**TL;DR:** If you were only going to read one of the two, read Essentialism. Really, read neither.

The central theme here starts with the “rocks in a jar problem”. If you have big rocks, little rocks, and sand, and needed to fill a jar, you’d start with the big rocks, then the little ones, then fill in the gaps with sand. Use that as a metaphor for prioritization: big rocks first, sand last. But what if, the book wonders, you have too many big rocks to fit in the jar?
McKeown gives a productivity book great hits list as the solution to this problem: time-block your life, make checklists, ask how to make something “easier” by rejecting notions of how it is currently hard. Automate common actions, prefer solutions that have non-linear application, set reasonable goals that can be repeatedly daily rather than burning bright and burning out fast.

My problems with the book:
- McKeown frames all of the business platitudes with a story about how he needed to find a way to make his own life more effortless because one of his children suddenly became seriously ill. This is an _interesting_ story he only touches on at the start and the end. You go back to the rock metaphor: if you’re a parent, you can easily end up with too many kid shaped rocks. Not to mention a lot of his great ideas for being more effortless (get more sleep! set a schedule!) become way harder when you have kids. I wanted more of this!
- Every book aimed at anyone in business has to name drop Warren Buffet, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos. I find it especially weird (the last two, anyway), in a story book ended about being effortless _for your family_. Two of those guys suck at it[^1]!
- All books of this nature have to quietly ignore survivorship bias. They also have to ignore counter examples. At one point McKeown suggests, as an example of consistency, writing more than 500 words a day, but stopping at 1000. This ignores that someone like Stephen King wrote his best books after snorting a table-full of cocaine.

McKeown suggests not just reading books, but understanding books. Write a one-page summary afterwards. Well, here it is. To follow the lessons of his first book, here’s the 10% version: don’t read it.

[^1]:	I know nothing about Warren Buffet’s personal life. Nor do I care.

[1]:	https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780804137386
[2]:	https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780593135648

Wintering

Some ice, and some snow.
![][image-1]![][image-2]

It occurred to me, watching Lorelei try to ice skate, how absurdly hard it is to learn unless you’re out on the ice _all the time_, and even then it’s such an odd activity. Here’s some tiny stilts that make you go much faster, unless your legs get a little bit further apart in which case you’ll fall directly on your head on the hardest thing we could find that wasn’t a rock.

On the topic of skates, I ordered some for myself. While we don’t skate often I figure at this point my feet are this size until I die, so why not get some decent skates. Fate has decided this is a Winter 2022 — 2023 goal for me instead.

![][image-3]

It’s fine. I’ll go slip on the front walk and hit my head on that instead.

[image-1]:	/assets/images/2022/wintering-ice.jpeg
[image-2]:	/assets/images/2022/wintering-snow.jpeg
[image-3]:	/assets/images/2022/skate-delays.png

Happy Sunday, life is meaningless. But not just yours, everyone's!

The End of Everything

Finished [The End of Everything][1] this morning. Here’s a fun quote from the epilogue to chew over:

> If the universe is going to end, one way or another, I concede that we may as well make our peace with it. Pedro Ferreira is way ahead of me on that one. “I think it’s great,” he says. “It’s so simple and so clean.”
> 
> “I’ve never understood why people get so depressed about the end, the death of the Sun and all,” he continues, “I just like the serenity of it.”
> 
> “So it doesn’t bother you that we ultimately have no legacy in the universe?” I ask him.
> 
> “No, not at all,” he says. “I very much like our blip-ness… It’s always appealed to me,” he continues. “It’s the transience of these things. It’s the doing. It’s the process. It’s the journey. Who cares where you get to, right?”

<video autoplay loop muted playsinline src="/assets/images/2022/heat-death.mp4"></video>

[1]:	https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781982103552

The Platinum is in Another Castle

I played two games recently: [Death’s Door][1] and [The Forgotten City][2], both on the Playstation 5. Both were good (Death’s Door I’d even say great), but one thing they have in common that I don’t love about modern video games is the notion that the story is over, but wait, there’s more! More quests, or endings, or collectibles, or twists on playing the game you just played but slightly differently.

I kind of liked old video games where there was an end, and you could say you beat it, or, more likely with some [Nintendo-hard][3] games, didn’t.

![The Contra end screen.][image-1]

[1]:	https://store.playstation.com/en-us/concept/10003808
[2]:	https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP1309-PPSA03026_00-THEFORGOTTENCITY
[3]:	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NintendoHard

[image-1]:	/assets/images/2022/contra-end.png

Hygge


![Maggie and Jake on the couch together.][image-1]

[image-1]:	/assets/images/2022/hygge.jpeg

Pandemic musings while waiting for an oil change. And tire rotation. Oh and the inspection, don’t forget that.

Annual maintenance

In January of 2020 we bought a new car, a 2019 Volkswagen GTI. It’s become a little touchpoint on the pandemic over the years. 

### 2020
We bought the car because, while we had gotten by with only one car for a few years at that point, Andrea had started a new job that required one, and while I was already mostly remote, various kid related tasks were outside the range of convenience for seriously considering walking.

### 2021
Volkswagen sets its service schedule as 10,000 miles or 1 year. If it had been used to commute every day, plus various side trips, it probably would have been around that mileage mark. Instead, after having it for 2 months, we found out we wouldn’t be commuting for a while, which became a long while, which by January was looking pretty much like never, ever again. It had under 3,000 miles on it. I waited at the dealership for the service because at that point it was a bit of a novelty to be out in public. It was still pre-vaccine so everyone waiting was avoiding the other people waiting, and most of the people working at the dealership were over it. They had a VW Bug by the front door. I went to Trader Joe’s on the way home, and there was a queue out front to limit the number of people in the store at any time. A cheerful Trader Joe’s employee handed you a cart when they let you in.

![a sketch of the VW Bug I drew while waiting last year.][image-1]

### 2022
2 years, or 20,000 miles. We’re still well under 10,000 miles despite using the GTI for every “trip” we’ve taken in the last two years. They replaced the VW Bug in the lobby with a VW Bus. Everyone is, once again, wearing masks, but it doesn’t feel weird to drink coffee while waiting, or have a conversation at a reasonable, human distance. There’s a 2022 GTI in the dealership in the flat-gray color I wanted to get ours in[^1], but two years later I wouldn’t even think about a new gas powered car. We’ll drive the two we have until they become dinosaurs running on dinosaurs. I went to Trader Joe’s on the way home. There was no queue outside, but the store was its normal weekend levels of packed. I had to get my own cart.

What’s my best guess for January, 2023? No masks. Finally hit 10,000 miles but still well under 20,000 and impossibly far from 30,000. I’ll still go to Trader Joe’s after. I’ll be smart enough to do this on a weekday so I don’t get stuck in the weekend crowd. Things change, but things stay the same.

[^1]:	One upside to buying a car where model year = current year -1 is that they can be cheaper, or have better financing deals. The downside is you’re usually stuck picking from black or white for colors.

[image-1]:	/assets/images/2022/bug.png

Adding search to a static site

This blog post is [based off this tweet reply][1]. Because I read it and thought “oh, I already did write about this!” then tried searching for it on the site and couldn’t find it by clicking around, so I searched in the files for the site on my computer and couldn’t find it, then searched across my entire computer and found a long blog post about using [Lunr][2] to search gifs that I never finished[^1].

So, here’s a finished version in a similar vein: let’s add search functionality to this site using Lunr. We need to build an index for Lunr at build time, which means we need some piece of code that will be triggered to begin looking for items to add. I did this by creating a new [Search page (/search)][3]. I copied the logic from my index page and removed some logic that isn’t relevant, but the code here gets all of the markdown files in my content folder and then loops through them. In this case we want to build a “[document][4]” structure for Lunr to be able to search through:
```js
export async function getStaticProps({ ...ctx }) {
  //get posts & context from folder
  const posts = ((context) => {
    const keys = context.keys();
    const values = keys.map(context);
    const data = keys.map((key, index) => {
      const value = values[index];
      // Parse yaml metadata & markdownbody in document
      const document = matter(value.default);
      document.data.date = singleDateFormat(document.data.date);
      if (document.data.finished) {
        document.data.finished = singleDateFormat(document.data.finished);
      }

      return {
        title: document.data.title || "",
        body: document.content || "",
        slug: key.replace(".md", "").substring(1),
      };
    });

    return data;
  })(require.context("../content", true, /\.\/.*\.md$/));

  return {
    props: {
      searchData: posts,
    },
  };
}
```

In the actual Search page component itself, we build the Lunr index from the `searchData` prop:

```js
 const lunrIndex = lunr(function () {
  this.ref("title");
  this.field("title");
  this.field("body");
  this.field("slug");

  props.searchData.forEach(function (doc) {
    this.add(doc);
  }, this);
});
```

After this we wire up the Search page to have a text input that,  on change, searches the Lunr index. This is the code for the entire page[^2]:

```js
function Search(props) {
  const [searchString, setSearchString] = useState("");
  const [searchResults, setSearchResults] = useState();
  var lunrIndex = lunr(function () {
    this.ref("title");
    this.field("title");
    this.field("body");
    this.field("slug");

    props.searchData.forEach(function (doc) {
      this.add(doc);
    }, this);
  });

  const searchLunr = (e) => {
    setSearchString(e.target.value);
    setSearchResults(lunrIndex.search(e.target.value));
  };

  const searchResultsList = () => {
    if (!searchResults || !searchResults.length) {
      return null;
    }
    return searchResults.map((result) => {
      const slug = props.searchData.find(
        (data) => data.title === result.ref
      ).slug;
      return (
        <li key={slug}>
          <p>{result.ref}</p>
          <Link href={`/${slug}`}>{slug}</Link>
        </li>
      );
    });
  };

  return (
    <Layout>
      <ReadingContent>
        <h1>Search</h1>
        <input type="text" value={searchString} onChange={searchLunr} />
        <h2>Results</h2>
        <ul>{searchResultsList()}</ul>
      </ReadingContent>
    </Layout>
  );
}
```

So that’s cool, and it works, but one thing I noticed here is that this Lunr search runs against the full text of the content, but once you click through, if the post is long it’s not immediately obvious where the term you were searching for appears. Let’s do something about that, at least for blog content.

First, let’s append a query parameter to the link we get from our search results, like this:
```js
<Link href={`/${slug}?searchterm=${searchString}`}>{slug}</Link>
```

This blog is built with Next so for me getting that query parameter on any given page looks something like:
```js
import { useRouter } from "next/router";

// inside the component
const { query } = useRouter();
const searchTerm = query.searchterm;
```

All of the post content is written in Markdown, so we can pass the post body to a function that looks for the search term in the string and replaces it, like this: 
```js
const wrapSearchTerm = (string) => {
    if (searchTerm) {
      const regex = new RegExp(`${searchTerm}`, "g");
      return string.replace(
        regex,
        `<span class="searchTerm">${searchTerm}</span>`
      );
    }
    return string;
  };
```

One thing I realized was doing it this way breaks links that might have the search term in it, because the searching is happening on the unprocessed Markdown. Running it post processing would be better, but to be lazy, let’s just search for the word with a reasonable set of boundaries to ignore, like this:
```js
const regex = new RegExp(`${searchTerm}(?![-_])`, "g");`
```

which eliminates most slugified versions of the word. It’s still case sensitive but the 80/20 among its users (me) says it’s good enough to ship.

[^1]:	For good reason, the original post was about recreating Giphy using Lunr and lambda functions. Those parts were fine, but I think I lost the thread trying to make a Slackbot to tie them together.

[^2]:	This is React with some wrapping components like Layout and ReadingContent that only handle styling.

[1]:	https://twitter.com/jayroh/status/1479568755478999055
[2]:	https://lunrjs.com
[3]:	https://www.builtwith.coffee/search
[4]:	https://lunrjs.com/guides/core_concepts.html#documents

A post on a Sunday about the past week that is definitely not a weeknotes post.

A Sunday Post that is not a Weeknotes Post

I said in my [last weeknotes post][1] I didn’t want to do weeknotes any more, so this isn’t that, it’s just a post that happens to be on a Sunday that _maybe_ talks about the past week.
- We were at my parents house on Monday and Tuesday. This was considerably better than last year’s Zoom-Christmas for lots of reasons but I have to say one big reason is because my mother makes lasagna for Christmas and that’s very hard to reproduce digitally.
- As far as we know, no one has gotten COVID in this house. That said school starts back up tomorrow and based on the numbers it seems like either we’ve already had it and we just didn’t notice or we will by the end of January.
- I read _[If You Lived Here You’d Be Home By Now][2] _ yesterday, and posted some bits I liked from the book. It’s an interesting story — I liked Christopher Ingraham’s posts for the _Washington Post_ and had read the original article that started the whole story so I enjoyed the book. The book was written pre-Pandemic, and a fair amount of his complaints about living in the greater DC area revolved around commuting. Housing costs were the other big issue, so maybe that last two years have been a wash but I should go see if he’s had any follow-ups on his thoughts about moving the Minnesota.
- Starting and finishing a book on January 1st means I’m currently on track to read 365 books this year.
- Lorelei has restarted and beat [Donut County][3] every day for the last five days.
- It was Andrea’s birthday this week. Like every year, we fail to account for the fact that her birthday is on New Year’s Eve and without at least a few minutes of prior planning, getting food from a restaurant is _not_ going to happen.
- Also like every year we’ve gone to bed well past midnight almost every night this week, so getting back to our routine tomorrow is going to be painful.

[1]:	https://www.builtwith.coffee/blog-posts/2021/12/weeknotes-for-the-week-ending-december-26-2021
[2]:	https://www.builtwith.coffee/books/2022/if-you-lived-here
[3]:	https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/donut-county-switch/

Looking back on 2021. Also I guess Christmas happened.

Weeknotes for the week ending December 26, 2021

Last weeknotes of the year. Andrea and I were reflecting on something the other day, and we realized how hard it is to separate 2020 from 2021. There were some big, obvious, very good differences between the years but in terms of how things got filed away mentally they didn’t get their own boxes. For me 2020 continued until April / May, when Lorelei went to in-person school, I started a new job, and the adults started getting vaccines.

One good thing though, I can actually look back here and figure out what happened when!

**Personal highlights:**
- Started a new job at [Chewy](https://www.chewy.com). It’s better than the old job. I’m old enough now that calling out when things got better and not worse is worth mentioning!
- Redid the kitchen and [fancied up the back yard](https://www.builtwith.coffee/blog-posts/2021/06/weeknotes-for-the-week-ending-june-20).
- Sent the kid to school with other kids.
- Stayed [married for 10 years](https://www.builtwith.coffee/blog-posts/2021/08/weeknotes-for-the-week-ending-august-29-2021).
- Got back into [mountain biking](https://www.builtwith.coffee/blog-posts/2021/09/weeknotes-for-the-week-ending-september-05-2021). Strava says I put 60 miles on the bike, but more importantly all but two of those rides were with friends.
- Got [a little into Fortnite](https://fortnitetracker.com/profile/all/Verycoolperson88).

**Meta highlights**
- I updated my [about page](https://www.builtwith.coffee/about).
- I switched from [Netlify CMS to Forestry ](https://www.builtwith.coffee/blog-posts/2021/02/from-netlify-cms-to-forestry) and then gave up on both. I’m currently trying [Frontmatter](https://frontmatter.codes) in VS Code out. I’m about two more annoyances away from making my own CMS.
- I started doing weeknotes [mid-May](https://www.builtwith.coffee/blog-posts/2021/05/weeknotes-for-the-week-ending-may-16-2021) and haven’t missed a week[^1]. After doing it for a year I’m a) glad I did, because I just read through all of them and there was a lot I had forgotten and b) would like to move away from them next year and instead write more often, and break events/thoughts into their own posts with useful titles.
- I added the “recommended” button on my [reading list page](https://www.builtwith.coffee/books).

### etc
- Christmas! We don’t make a big deal of it here. I made cinnamon buns from a recipe my dad adapted from a King Arthur Flour cookbook that seems to not exist on their website. It’s basically: make dough, fill with sugar and nuts, stuff in face, but if you want the actual recipe just ask me. It seems easier than the ones they do have on their website.
![Our cats Maggie and Jake exuding Christmas energy](/assets/images/2021/cat-christmas-energy.jpeg)
- We started watching season two of _The Witcher_. It’s good, it’s not amazing. I really liked the first episode which was it’s own little story, but the season-wide plot is too high fantasy “it’s the end of the world as we know it” boring. The game had the same problem. I just want a _Columbo_ style _The Witcher_. Which of the townfolks turns into a monster at night? What clues will give it away? How great would Geralt angrily mumbling “one more thing” sound?
- We also started watching _Station Eleven_. I read the book a long time ago and enjoyed it, the TV show is different but good in its own way.
- Dave Barry’s humor is a hand-me-down from my dad, but at least unlike Scott Adams he didn’t turn out to be a terrible person and I still enjoy his yearly reviews in WaPo: [Dave Barry’s 2021 Year in Review](https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/12/26/dave-barrys-year-review-2021/?itid=hp-top-table-main)
> Another improvement was that most stores got rid of those one-way anti-covid arrows on the floor. Remember those, from 2020? You’d be halfway down a supermarket aisle, and you’d realize that you’d gone past the Cheez-Its but you couldn’t turn around and go back because you’d be going AGAINST THE ARROWS, which meant YOU WOULD GET COVID.

[^1]: I don’t think I did, anyway. Making a view of the site that’s calendar is on my todo list. I made the calendar for the [album a day project I gave up on](/album-a-day) so it’s half done.

Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.

Weeknotes for the week ending December 19, 2021


My father has a few rhymes that he breaks out whenever relevant, and one is a common weather forecasting one:

> Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.
> 
> Red sky at night, sailors' delight.

The sky was throwing some moods this week, but storms, at least for us landlubbers, didn’t develop in a meaningful way.

Monday:
![The sky on Monday morning](/assets/images/2021/sky-1.jpeg)

Tuesday:
![The sky on Tuesday morning](/assets/images/2021/sky-2.jpeg)

What I do love about that little rhyme though is that it’s thousands of years old, and it’s [accurate enough](https://www.loc.gov/everyday-mysteries/item/is-the-old-adage-red-sky-at-night-sailors-delight-red-sky-in-morning-sailors-warning-true-or-is-it-just-an-old-wives-tale/) that it’s been worth repeating all of those thousands of years.

### Seasonal wind-down

This has been an uneventful week. Ideally this next one is too, and the one after that… super uneventful. If humans could hibernate, I would. We’re also all trying to lay somewhat low, we are going to see my parents next week and I’d rather not deliver a package of germs for Christmas.

- Of tiny, murderous note, I did start playing [Death’s Door](https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/deaths-door/). I heard a lot of favorable comparisons to Zelda — it’s not that, but once you get a few crow hops in, it’s a delight of its own.
- Also I introduced Lorelei to the idea of the doodle pad. Just a blank notebook you doodle in. Doodling seemed like a foreign concept to her, and honestly it’s been a while for me, as well. I explained it as just drawing shapes, and then seeing where you end up. I remember both my mother and her father having paper all over the house with doodles on it, opened envelopes, marginalia in catalogs, hotel sticky notepads. Just something to do while talking on the phone.

This is where we ended up:
![This is where our doodle session went](/assets/images/2021/doodles.jpeg)
- I almost bought an interesting book in Apple Books this morning, then stopped. I’ll get it from the local book store or library. I’ve been adamant about not reading digital books lately, and I’d like to stay that way. Also I have a Winter plan to build a little library[^1] for the yard for Spring, and it needs more souls.

### etc

- [Mess with DNS](https://messwithdns.net) via/made by [Julia Evans](https://jvns.ca/blog/2021/12/15/mess-with-dns/)
- [Why would a business push a native app over a website?](https://css-tricks.com/why-would-a-business-push-a-native-app-over-a-website/). Yes, why. I’m living this dilemma these days. One point Chris brings up that’s particularly painful to me is: “Because they get the full feature set of APIs”. Not only the full feature set, but you know which feature set they’re getting, instead of doing the which browser / which features hokey-pokey.
- ["It's a true frontier of game design": How Naughty Dog and Insomniac Games think about accessibility](https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-12-18-its-a-true-frontier-of-game-design-how-naughty-dog-and-insomniac-games-think-about-accessibility), which led me to [Accessible Player Experiences (APX)](https://accessible.games/accessible-player-experiences/#access-patterns). If there’s a resource similar to this for the web, please let me know!
- [Play therapy prescribes video games to combat anxiety](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/play-therapy-prescribes-video-games-to-combat-anxiety)
> However I recently read that Geek Therapy, a non-profit advocating the use of video games for wellness, promote using world-building games such as Minecraft, Roblox, Animal Crossing, and Fortnite to help people deal with mental health issues.

…creative Fortnite, I assume. The “rooty tooty let’s go shooty” version of Fornite _does not_ reduce anxiety, for me.
- [Debt Demands a Body](https://longreads.com/2021/12/01/debt-demands-a-body/). The TL;DR: a mother takes out student loans in her daughter’s name then gambles it away.

[^1]: If Little Library is (TM) then Small Book Shelter.

None of us are comfortable until we are all comfortable.

Weeknotes for the week ending December 12, 2021


I was in the office two days this week. I took the train in both days, it was a ~50% as crowded as I remembered it from the pre-pandemic times. It was comfortably crowded, if you can call it that.

I missed the city. It’s not like we live in the farmlands but both days I walked from North Station to just past South, through the heart of downtown Boston, past historical landmarks from the early days of America and skyscrapers not yet a decade old. It is also mind-blowing to take that particular walk, because while I’m not native to Massachusetts I’ve lived here long enough to remember when it was just the noise and exhaust from 93 overhead.

Also I finally got a cup of coffee from [George Howell](https://www.georgehowellcoffee.com) at [Boston Public Market](https://bostonpublicmarket.org). I like our local place more but it was good and I’m very glad for whoever thought to build the Boston Public Market.

### Pfots
Got my third Pfizer shot this week. That’s… as exciting as it was. Got a really great nap in later in the day.

### What are you watching, Apple Watch
I do like my Apple Watch but lately it’s been… finicky. This was from a bike ride today.

![Apple Watch readings from a bike ride today](/assets/images/2021/watch.jpeg)

I made it almost two miles without increasing my heart rate at all, and then teleported almost two miles later.

### Christmas Prep
![Lorelei with a Santa Claus mask](/assets/images/2021/santy-claws.jpeg)

### etc
Reading from this week:
- Finished [The Song Of Achilles](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780062060617). Circe was was [one of my favorite books of 2019](https://www.builtwith.coffee/blog-posts/2019/12/no-pizza-for-me), _The Song of Achilles_ will probably be one of my favorite of 2021.
- [The Internet Has a Rat Poison Problem](https://www.audubon.org/magazine/winter-2021/the-internet-has-rat-poison-problem). I think there’s a bigger issue about supply sourcing and the large e-commerce retailers but this one is pretty eye opening.
- [A Better Relationship with the Internet](https://hypertext.monster/2021/12/10/a-better-relationship.html)
- [America Is Running on Fumes](https://www.inkl.com/news/america-is-running-out-of-new-ideas?share=ylMMrGIVyyQ) via [Ran Prieur](http://ranprieur.com)

Weeknotes for the week ending December 5, 2021


Added a December folder. I also spent some time looking for a previous post on this site that I thought existed, but it doesn’t. I can search the files that make up this blog in [iA Writer](https://ia.net/writer), but maybe it’s time to figure out a search feature for the site itself.

### Dusty Domains
Netlify is doing this [Dusty Domains](https://dusty.domains) thing and I have a domain which is not _that_ dusty but for some reason I bought it and now it’s a website, so please enjoy [whatisannft.digital](https://whatisannft.digital).

### Second shot snacks
![Lorelei eating a chocolate mint donut](/assets/images/2021/donuts.jpeg)

Lorelei got her second shot so we celebrated with donuts from [Half Baked Cafe](http://halfbakedbeverly.com).

### Replay (and replay, and replay)
Apple Music has their year end [personalized replay lists](https://music.apple.com/replay) thing up, and this is a highlight from mine:

![Screenshot showing we listened to the Centaurworld soundtrack 614 times](/assets/images/2021/centaurworld.png)

Yeah, we like [Centaurworld](https://www.netflix.com/title/80992673) in this house. We’re very excited for Season 2 tomorrow. You will often hear one of us say “none of us are comfortable until we are all comfortable” (watch from below if you have no idea what I’m talking about. Then go back and watch the entire show).

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6eSmKiTbwcY?start=2421" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

### How long will browsers be the UI target of choice
Microsoft Edge released a [Buy now, pay later](https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/articles/introducing-buy-now-pay-later-in-microsoft-edge/m-p/2967030) feature. I only knew from Twitter because, why would I ever run Edge. But more to the point, how far are we from when browsers are their own compile targets. We’re close enough already with web to native frameworks, why not just reduce everything to `<BuyButton>` and let a compiler figure out what that turns into.

Sometimes, and not enough to keep me up at night, but sometimes, I think browsers are getting boring, the same e-commerce and silo’d text update websites being given all of the priority. Other times I find things like [this demo of Townscaper that runs in your browser](https://oskarstalberg.com/Townscaper/). There’s still “cool” stuff being made for the web, but there’s a heavily biased incentive to build things that feed the beast, and if AR and VR grow like some companies hope they will, I can only see the monetization wedge being driven even deeper.

### etc
Reading this week that was interesting:
- [Book Notes: “An Essay on Typography” by Eric Gill - Jim Nielsen’s Blog](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2021/book-notes-eric-gill-typography/)
- [How This All Happened · Collaborative Fund](http://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/how-this-all-happened/) from [Daring Fireball: ‘How This All Happened’](https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/12/02/housel-how-all-this-happened)
- [How to rest well](https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-rest-well-and-enjoy-a-more-creative-sustainable-life)

Letting your brain turn to the consistency of canned cranberry sauce.

Weeknotes for the week ending November 28, 2021


Since we did the family Thanksgiving last weekend, the last four days have been nothing but relaxation for us. The six-year old watched TV until her brain melted, my wife read books or did research until her brain melted, and I just kind of chilled until my already melted brain reshaped. Or something. Maybe it’s still a little gooey.

### The end of spooky season…
I picked up the _[RESIDENT EVIL 2](https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP0102-CUSA09193_00-BH2R000000000001/)_  remake around Halloween. I finally beat it this weekend. I’m not usually a fan of  games that you have to play through twice to completely enjoy but I went through both the Claire and Leon runs and I'm glad I did. I played the original game on the N64 and never beat it, so this might set a record for the longest time to finish a game.

I also said [last week](https://www.builtwith.coffee/blog-posts/2021/11/weeknotes-for-the-week-ending-november-21-2021) that I would start reading again, and I did. I finished _[Mexican Gothic](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780525620808)_, which was a well done little bit of horror. I think pretty early on it became obvious where the plot was going so I sped through the later half of the book but I'd still recommend it [^1].

### …start of snowy season
Put up the tree. Immediately the cats starting losing their minds.

![Maggie under the Christmas tree](/assets/images/2021/cat-christmas.jpeg)

We also watched [The Shop Around the Corner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shop_Around_the_Corner) which is the lesser known of the Jimmy Stewart Christmas movies. Arguably the better of the two.

## Remapping my life
Every year around Christmas / New Years I look at the systems I used for my personal life the year before and reevaluate things. This year I wanted to get a head start on it, mainly because in past years if I start something at the beginning of the New Year and then find out three months in it’s not working I think “well I’ve already got three months” in or “well there’s only nine months left?” or some such silly ideas.

Today I sat down and organized Things, Bear, and iCloud to all be in line. Essentially I borrowed the structure from Things (Areas with Projects in them) and used that in Bear and iCloud. So now at the top level of iCloud there’s the areas, and inside of that there are folders that correspond to a project or context for that area. Same with Bear, there’s top level tags for the areas, and second level tags for the projects / context.

Some notes on the process:
- MacOS allows you to add comments to files and folders and show them in Finder. Between that and tags I can’t think of a reason to add an external app on top of this to organize files.
- There’s a folder in Finder labeled something along the lines of “IDFK what any of this is”. I’ll get to it… eventually. The point is there is only _one_ folder named that now, not multiple.
- The remnants of the early days of doing iCloud storage means that the `/` folder of iCloud is a disaster to organize, so I created this structure inside of `/documents` instead, and the top level can be whatever apps want to make of it.
- Bear has been the hardest to get through, because for a bit I thought I could just map connected ideas by hashtags, so there were way too many top level hashtags. So now it’s either remove the hashtag, or delete the note, or find a better one.

I did find this in one of my Bear notes, from _[Think Again](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781984878106)_:

> As Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio told me, “If you don’t look back at yourself and think, ‘Wow, how stupid was I a year ago,’ then you must not have learned much in the last year.”

So I guess I learned something in the last year?

## COVID time
I might have more thoughts on this later[^2], but for now I’m just here to point out that with us entering COVID round three…

![Street Fighter round three start screen](/assets/gifs/round3-fight.gif)

…we’re looking at two years of whatever we’ve been calling the last two years, and should probably stop talking about “the new normal” or “the way things were” and start living like things are as they are. I suppose it’s a human way of thinking to say “now is _bad_ but the future will be different and better!” but… I dunno, it’s probably not!

[^1]: In case you’re thinking “Joe that doesn’t seem nearly lazy enough for a lazy long weekend” I also made it to the final boss of _[Metroid Dread](https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/metroid-dread-switch/)_, figured out how the loop works in _[Deathloop](https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/deathloop/)_ and started a [second book](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780062060624). This isn’t quite pre-kid levels of lazy but now that she’s old enough to be lazy herself it’s getting closer.
[^2]: Is having thoughts on days that aren’t Sunday part of why I reorganized all my projects/notes/files? Stay tuned!

Weeknotes for the week ending November 21, 2021


### Thanksgiving
We did Thanksgiving this weekend with my parents. I’m a big fan of doing holiday gatherings _not_ on holidays, whenever possible, because traveling and planning is so much easier. Some menu notes from this year:
- I [spatchcocked the turkey](https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-spatchcock-cook-turkey-thanksgiving-fast-easy-way-spatchcocked), coated it in mayonnaise and [bird herbs](https://www.generalstorepr.com/product/bird-herbs/317595) and cooked at 450° for about 80 minutes (it was a 12.something pound bird). Came out fantastic. Only tough part is [going full _Predator_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjWVWLTAHaU) and pulling the backbone out.
- If you’re going to make sweet potato casserole and attempt to cook it with the turkey at 450°, _do not_ put it under the turkey pan unless you want the marshmallows to immediately caramelize.
- I made the [easy self-rising biscuits](https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/easy-self-rising-biscuits-recipe) with [King Arthur Self Rising Flour](https://shop.kingarthurbaking.com/items/unbleached-self-rising-flour). Easy, like it says, came out great.
- Homemade cranberry sauce is the big winner (for me). I did it this year with 1/4 cup of red wine we had open and orange zest.
- Stuffing and gravy we’ve outsourced to store bought. Both take too long to make for the end result (and you won’t have any drippings cooking the turkey the way I did).
- [Maple-Honey Pecan Pie](https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1022734-maple-honey-pecan-pie?smid=yt-nytfood&smtyp=cur?ftag=MSF0951a18) for dessert. A++++, would eat again.

I don’t have any pictures because this isn’t Instagram. I made the food, I ate the food.

### Speaker of the House
I ordered new speakers / tried out switching around the ones we had. I picked up the two base, not ad-revenue-driven “smart speakers” on the market, the Apple Homepod Mini and the Ikea Symfonisk shelfspeaker. Both are around $100. They’re both… ok. They work for what I wanted them for, the Homepod (mini) is in an office, and the Symfonisk is in the basement literally being used as a shelf. If I didn’t also want a shelf I think a stereo pair of dumb speakers would have blown it away. I also tried the mini as the output for the TV (haha - no!), and tried the Homepod in place of the lower-end soundbar we have. I think a stereo pair of Homepods would sound great. I’d think a stereo pair up front and stereo minis as satellites should work really great. I expect that will be a thing Apple sells and supports just before the heat-death of the universe.

### etc
- [Why SOLID principles are still the foundation for modern software architecture](https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/11/01/why-solid-principles-are-still-the-foundation-for-modern-software-architecture/). I liked this article from one of the Stack Overflow emails this week. Good examples of SOLID were always from class based languages, which made it hard to get in my head which had (until recently) only had working knowledge of languages that didn’t have classical inheritance at all.
- [The secret of the macOS Monterey network quality tool](https://danpetrov.xyz/macos/2021/11/14/analysing-network-quality-macos.html) never hit [fast.com](https://fast.com) again!
- I haven’t [finished a book](https://www.builtwith.coffee/books) since early September. Maybe because I tend to read for a few hours on weekend mornings when I am reading a lot, and those hours have been replaced with mountain biking. Or I got stuck on a boring book and found myself overly distracted reading digital ones. Either way, I got some more dead-tree books today. Winter is coming, and all.

Weeknotes for the week ending November 14, 2021

<span role="image" aria-label="Falling Leaves">🍂🍂🍂</span>

![Lorelei riding her bike at the school.](/assets/images/2021/leaf-kid-bike.jpeg)
![A bird’s nest with broken eggs on top of a pile of leaves.](/assets/images/2021/leaf-seasons.jpeg)
![A mountain bike in the woods next to a beat up couch.](/assets/images/2021/leaf-bike.jpeg)

### etc
- Our not quite five-year-old LCD TV has been acting up lately, sometimes turning two solid colors and then shutting down, sometimes not wanting to turn on, sometimes not wanting to turn off. Like any piece of modern technology, debugging the issue is a combination of:
	- Check every physical input, output, and also the software settings on the inputs and outputs.
	- Check the software settings on the TV itself.
	- Reset all of the above.
	- If it’s still failing you can narrow it down to a hardware issue. The TV has a mainboard, a T-Con board, and a power controller. Try to figure out, based on what’s failing, which of these is most likely. Given the set of symptoms I’ve seen, they all seem equally likely.
	- Do some mental math on whether or not the cost of parts + time is < a new TV, factoring in that the new TV will have 5 years of technology improvements.
	- Now do the last equation but factor in that the new TV will also have 5 years of additional software related issues.
	- Give up, go outside.

Weeknotes for the week ending November 7, 2021


Not a lot of updates this week. It was a super busy one at work, so that was my main focus. When things get busy my journaling falls off first, then scraps of notes, _then_ photos, and I’ve got like two photos from this week so I guess that means something.

### Daylight Savings
The Solar Dial is my “weekend” watch face for my Apple Watch. It’s set to show the temperature, when the Sun is going to set, and if it’s going to rain - and also the date because I have never, in my life, had any fucking idea what day it is. Today it gets a bit more fun by lining up on both sides.

![The Solar Dial on my Apple Watch on Daylight Savings](/assets/images/2021/symmetry.jpeg).

Unfortunately for the next months it will slowly descend into a tiny sliver of sunlight. I should put on my bucket list taking it to a location with 24 hours of sunlight.

### etc
- [Some new BMWs won't have touchscreens thanks to chip shortage](https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/5/22765709/bmw-chip-shortage-touchscreen-car-suv-manufacturing). Finally some good news from the chip shortage. I never thought touchscreens would catch on in cars. I get it, it’s cheaper to make a UI with no physical constraints, but of all places to add more distractions. I’d like to believe that the lack of chips will lead designers to think — does this need a screen? Does this need a chip to manage controls? Can it be done physically? I know the more likely outcome is another World War to control supply, or countries colonizing planets for materials à la _The Expanse_, but as someone who is primarily a UI developer, maybe I should be happy for the job security. The robots will fight the wars, right?

Weeknotes for the week ending October 31, 2021


Writing this while manning the trick-or-treat duties. Not a lot of kids so far this year[^3], which is surprising. Last year we had a decent turnout even with COVID and it being below freezing.

![Our house, decorated for Halloween](/assets/images/2021/halloween-door.jpeg)

### Y, the First Book
I started re-reading _Y: The Last Man_. We’ve been watching [the TV series](https://press.hulu.com/shows/y-the-last-man/) on Hulu, but I’d forgotten the exact plot beats of the comic. _Y_ was the first comic I got into when I got _back_ into comics as an adult, and I’m enjoying how the TV series is going deeper into some character’s backstories, being _more_ subtle about others[^1], and splitting other characters into multiple characters (and going deeper into the backstories of both!). I’m glad it’s getting the treatment it deserves.

### Elfa on the shelf
I ripped down a bunch of builder’s favorite Closetmaid shelves in our house this week, and replaced them with Elfa shelving. They aren’t cheap, but I do like that you can set the entire thing up with 6 screws in a headrail, and then make infinite[^2] layers of shelves in-between. The only complaint is that every piece has a sticker on it, and about 84% of the installation time is peeling stickers and getting rid of packaging.

### etc
Lorelei is back home with a pile of candy. Small turnout this year so… I think I’m gonna help myself to <s>one</s> <s>two</s> a few of these candies we bought to hand out.

Oh and if you’re curious, my Halloween candy power rankings:

1. Butterfinger. They are way too sweet and I would never eat one outside of Halloween but that once a year sensation of jamming them all up in your gums is _chef’s kiss_.
2. Kit Kat. Also not a candy I enjoy outside of Halloween, but I appreciate that they’ve optimized for sharing.
3. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups/Bats/Vampires/Mummies/whatever. I’m old enough that I find Reese’s peanut butter horrifyingly sweet, but again, once a year, gimme gimme.
4. All of the sour / fruit flavored stuff.
5. Everything else. Not because any of them are bad, but because we live in such a land of plenty that anything that isn’t immediately consumed has to quickly fight with Thanksgiving pies and then Christmas candies and then on a day in the deepest, darkest part of February you’ll find a leftover Snickers in the cupboard and eat it and it will bring you no joy, only despair in the knowledge that time marches ever onward, and even the sweetest treats can be reduced to a stale, tasteless lump of its former glory.

Happy Halloween!


[^1]: No spoilers, but the comic starts off by throwing a bunch of theories at the reader as to why all the men died, and the TV series is very much keeping one of them a secret!
[^2]: Or like, 8, max. It’s still a clever system.
[^3]: By the time I finished writing this we were at about 20 trick-or-treaters, closer to average for this house.

I’m just glad I’m not the oldest person at this show yet.

Weeknotes for the week ending October 24, 2021


### Get in the pit
![Days N Daze at the Middle East in Cambridge](/assets/images/2021/days-n-daze.jpeg)

Went to a concert for the first time since COVID. The show was [Crazy & The Brains](https://crazyandthebrains.net) (first punk band I’ve seen use a xylophone), [Bridge City Sinners](https://www.bridgecitysinners.com), better explained in their own words:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_tCvb39Lt7k" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

And [Days N Daze](https://daysndaze.net), short one member, but made up for with some mouth trumpet and backup from the previous bands.

Two notes:
- I think this was the biggest crowd I’ve been around since the last show I saw at the Middle East, in January of 2020. Go big or go home, I guess.
- I adore that no one in Cambridge cares about other people _at all_. It’s already pretty on-brand for New Englanders to ignore other people, but when a person in a skull mask, leather jacket with studs, and a kilt can walk around with no one saying anything, that’s perfect.

And shoutout to Dan for getting the tickets and convincing me to leave the house. We both acknowledged it’s a lot harder these days.

### Professional
An iPhone 13 Pro showed up this week. I wasn’t planning on upgrading my XR (it was fine), but the AT&T trade-in for a decent amount of money only to be mind-controlled by them for the rest of your life[^1] was hard to pass up. Also, the number of cameras. My XR was definitely lacking in [Fuck Everything, We’re Doing Five Blades](https://www.theonion.com/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades-1819584036) energy.

So far that camera has been great for taking pictures of my child who finds the most adorable faces to make.

![Lorelei smooshing her face](/assets/images/2021/smoosh-face.jpeg) 

### etc
Just posting this for posterity, so some day my kid can find this and know that I was good at video games (some times, when other people are bad).
<div style="padding:75% 0 0 0;position:relative;"><iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/638454126?h=c6695513d2&amp;badge=0&amp;autopause=0&amp;player_id=0&amp;app_id=58479" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" title="fortnite-endgame.mov"></iframe></div><script src="https://player.vimeo.com/api/player.js"></script>

[^1]: I was just pushed an update (over 5G, of course), that informed me this is not true.

Even Zecora knows to wear a mask!


![Zecora from My Little Ponies saying she needs to wear a mask to prevent infection](/assets/images/2021/my-little-pony.jpeg)

From [My Little Pony - Friends Forever #21](/assets/images/2021/my-little-pony.jpeg) from… October of 2015. Also worth noting when the find the cure, no one (not even Applejack) makes a fuss about how they can’t be forced to take it.

Which reminded me we watched [Six Degrees of Separation](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108149/) last week, and there’s a scene where Will Smith’s character talks about how his father (who he pretends is Sidney Poitier) is going to make a movie version of _Cats_.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TImaL1TzlFk" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

History repeating, and what not.

They finally remade my 2013 Macbook Pro


The very first blog post on this blog is about [why I decided to get a Dell instead of a new Macbook Pro](https://www.builtwith.coffee/blog-posts/2018/02/dude-you-got-a-dell). I’m glad to see the new M1 Pro/Max fixes everything. I already bought an M1 Air but someday this touchbar/butterfly workbox will get replaced with one of these, so there’s that to look foward to.

Also, that Dell I went with was fine. I ended up getting rid of it because I don’t game on PC any more. You’d still be better off with any Dell with a dedicated GPU than a Mac for gaming, even if it will pull down 400 watts of power to run.

You can have the things you want a long time from now, and the things you don't want now.

Weeknotes for the week ending October 17, 2021


Let’s start with a riddle:<br />
Q: What do a couch and a baby have in common?<br />
A: If you want one now, you have to wait 10 months.

### The Jordan’s HyperMegaSuperstore
We purchased an Ikea sectional when we moved into this house not many years ago. It was fine, it filled the space we wanted to fill, but lately it’s become spine-tinglingly uncomfortable[^1]. We went to the Jordan’s superstore which is… definitely not one of my favorite places on Earth, but the combo of nice weather / COVID / and the fact that every scrap of furniture upholstery is sitting in a cargo ship currently lost in the middle of the Pacific meant there was hardly any one there. We ordered some new couches and a chair and they’ll be in our house (<span role="image" aria-label="fingers crossed">🤞</span>) before I die.

Since it was pretty empty, we took Lorelei to do the [crazy indoor ropes course thing](https://www.beanstalkatjordans.com) they have there. The excitement of it was enough to get her into the harness and up to the first level, but after a few crossings I got two big thumbs down while she held on to one of the landing posts.

![Lorelei running across the ropes course](/assets/images/2021/ropes-course.jpeg)

After that she came down and did the _much closer to Earth_ version a few thousand times.

### Oktoberfest
The team got together in Woostah on Monday. This is the third time I’ve seen them IRL since starting at Chewy. The entire team has joined during the COVID <s>lockdown</s> <s>year</s> era.

![A bunch of dudes sitting on a porch.](/assets/images/2021/sausage-fest.jpeg)

### Getting into the Spirt of the Season
Growing up we had a few people in the neighborhood I trick-or-treated in who would take things too seriously. Like, put on a hockey mask then hide in a leaf pile with an actual chainsaw seriously. So, I’ve always been a fan of more sedate Halloween decorating. A few pumpkins, maybe some sugar skulls, a couple of leaves I failed to rake blown about. Lorelei had a specific request for spider webs this year. Sure, why not. I had to go to Home Depot anyway, so I brought her along, thinking they always have a seasonal display with some decorating stuff in it. Well, apparently the “season” appropriate for October 15th is Christmas. But! It’s 2021, and “thanks” to COVID there are hundreds of empty retail stores out there for [Spirit](https://www.spirithalloween.com) to sink its creepy claws into. So we found one of those, which, amazingly I don’t think I’ve ever been in. They had an entire rack full of decorative spider webs. The store had probably the most people I’ve seen in a retail establishment since the beginning of the the COVID <s>lockdown</s> <s>year</s> era. We passed on the 7+ foot animatronic [Baphomet](https://www.spirithalloween.com/product/decorations/animatronics/7-6-ft-baphomet-animatronic-decorations/pc/1005/c/0/sc/1011/222779.uts) but man for $300 that puts the animatronics in some local theme parks to shame.

### etc
- [Johnny Decimal](https://johnnydecimal.com). I like the idea of it, I’ve been getting better about keeping folder structures the same in any given context, e.g. Things has areas and projects under it, my notes app has the same areas and same projects, the folders under iCloud have the same areas, etc. I like the idea of adding numbers in, if only to remind you that you need an upper limit on how many things you can keep in your head.

[^1]: Or, I’m getting old. Or it’s both. 

Welcome to ~spooky~ puzzle season. A release at work, the trouble with manuals, and moving notes around.

Weeknotes for the week ending October 10, 2021


### Ship it!
![Screenshot of the new design on Chewy.com's Connect with a Vet feature, which I worked on.](/assets/images/2021/cwav.png)

Big release at work this week; it all went well, and our application is much more accessible now, so it feels pretty good! Remember if you ever need an on demand video or text consultation with a veterinarian, [Connect With a Vet](https://www.chewy.com/app/content/connect-with-a-vet)!

### RTFM (if it exists)
Three only slightly related thoughts, that mean something to me because I used to write technical instruction manuals for a living.
1. I installed a blower fan in our gas fireplace this weekend. The description online said it was “pre-wired” and all you had to do was plug it in, but the comments said no, there was more. Some research showed there are three main ways gas fireplace wiring is found: a junction box with cables in it, a junction specifically wired for gas fireplaces (we had this, more later), or just a normal power outlet. The “pre-wired” bit made sense for the normally wired power outlet, but the junction box in our fireplace had a fan outlet which didn’t have power unless two leads were getting a signal from a thermocouple, so the fan only has power when the fireplace is hot. But again, this unit was “pre-wired” so the thermocouple controlled the unit _assuming it had power_. Anyway, the diagrams included were not helpful, the comments online were not helpful, in the end after pulling some wires apart and realizing that was dumb, I also realized the outlet under our fireplace also had a plug labeled “REM/AUX” which has... always on power. So all I had to do was plug it into that.
2. For a while I’ve thought it would be nice to associate notes with workouts that are recorded by my watch and saved in Apple Fitness. I’ve had some hacky solutions like sharing the work out to my notes app and adding content there, but I realized this weekend that [HealthFit](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/healthfit/id1202650514) the app that I’ve been using _for years_ to sync my Apple workout bike rides to Strava... has a notes field.
3. I got a physical copy of [Metroid Dread](https://metroid.nintendo.com)[^1] this week. Whenever I open a physical game I expect there to be something inside, but there was nothing but the game. Instead someone had to design and code the first (at least) 30 minutes of the game explaining things to the player, instead of just giving them those details in a book along with the game. I’ve played literally every Metroid, I’m just here to shoot blobby aliens and turn into a ball, let me at it!

### etc
- I said last week it’s spooky season, it’s actually puzzle season. Finished two this week.

<div class="two-up">
<img src="/assets/images/2021/frida.jpeg" alt="Frida Kahlo puzzle completed."><img src="/assets/images/2021/mystery.jpeg" alt="Mystic Maze puzzle competed.">
</div>

[Frida from eeboo](https://eeboo.com/collections/puzzles/products/viva-la-vida-1000-piece-puzzle) and [The Mystic Maze from Magic Puzzle Company](https://magicpuzzlecompany.com).

- I’m trying out [Craft](https://www.craft.do) as a replacement for Bear (at home). I do love Bear but I also have a ton of notes that could use lightweight table markup, or rollups, or just putting two things side-by-side, or a quick preview of a PDF... the list goes on. Bear was a replacement for Notion for me, after Notion got too annoying to use offline. Craft borrows (or, steals) a lot from Notion, but it’s a Mac Catalyst app and it works offline, and you can even BYOS (bring your own storage) and save your content in iCloud instead of their cloud[^2].

[^1]: I don’t invest in cryptocurrency but I _do_ invest in physical copies of Nintendo games. I think I’ve picked the right horse, assuming the course is a few million miles long.
[^2]: It’s worth noting since I’m comparing the two that Bear already uses iCloud. It’s also worth noting that Craft has an entire [support page](https://support.craft.do/hc/en-us/articles/360019706978-iCloud-Troubleshooting-for-External-Storage) on dealing with iCloud because while it’s stable and secure, there’s also a good reason almost every other app has rolled their own cloud storage solution.



Weeknotes for the week ending October 3, 2021


It’s October. The wife and I had Friday off, and thought maybe we’d get lunch in Salem. We didn’t really think October 1st, a full 30 days away from Halloween would be an issue, but people take October being spooky season seriously. Instead we ate lunch in town, which is another town that used to be part of Danvers, which is where the “Salem” Witch Trials took place, but don’t tell the tourists that.

### A Leaf on the Wind, and The Good Lord Bird.
Before attempting lunch on Friday I went out for a bike ride. One of my favorite things when mountain biking is unintentionally sneaking up on wildlife, slipping through the trees quickly and quietly enough that they don’t notice you until you’re close, and then they jump and run off. Happened with a few deer, but the treat was a Pileated woodpecker jumping off a tree and flying in front of me for a few hundred feet.

![Deer in the woods. Seems hungry.](/assets/images/2021/deer.jpeg)
_Find the deer. Someday I’ll have a phone with a telephoto lens._

Related, an article I read this week about the [Ivory-billed woodpecker being declared extinct](https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22700280/extinct-animals-birds-biodiversity-loss). As a kid I had a t-shirt that was treated so that when it was cool the silhouettes of dozens of animals were on it, and when it got hot, they disappeared. This wasn’t even a commentary on global warming, it was just — hey, stop tearing down the places these animals live. But, they’re probably all gone now.

> By some estimates, populations of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish have declined by almost 70 percent on average since 1970. It’s the reason you tend to see fewer bugs on your windshield when driving cross-country and hear less birdsong when hiking through the forest. 

Also how many animals died to make a t-shirt treated with some heat sensitive chemical. I am not a biozoologist but I want to say the Earth having almost 70% fewer types of things living on it is bad.

### Everything is crap

> There’s just so much crap being offered for sale or rent today — so much that we’re expected to spend money on and like even though it’s incompetently or carelessly made.

From [Snake and Ladders](https://blog.ayjay.org/criterion/) by way of [Rhoneisms](https://www.patrickrhone.net/10797-2/). We’ve been looking at furniture lately and:

1. You can’t even get it because [supply chains are fucked](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2021/supply-chain-issues/).
2. It’s nearly impossible to distinguish crap from not-crap. Furniture brands are spun up out of the ether to repackage the same item at different price tiers, and with so many of the stores going all online, the details of the quality of the fabric, stitching, construction, are passed off to the reviews of previous buyers, who may or may not be real.

I take back that _everything_ is crap, but the [paradox of choice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice) only serves to make me think that, by default, something is crap unless proven otherwise.

### etc
If you follow me on RSS (or, simply look at the post below this one), you might have seen some odd things pop up. For a while I’ve wanted to be able to post to here “like Twitter”, i.e. from my phone and as easily as possible. The entire site is driven from Markdown files in Git, so I hooked up a [Netlify function](https://functions.netlify.com) to take in a JSON POST body and send the picture to an S3 bucket and the content to Github as a new commit on `main`, and an iOS Shortcut to export a photo from Photos and allow me to append some text to it. And it works! Mostly! I don’t delete my mistakes, so if you click on “permalink” on the post below it, uh, goes nowhere. Once it goes somewhere I’ll write up some details on how it works.

General complaints about software updates and specific excitement about snake updates.

Weeknotes for the week ending September 26, 2021

### iOS 15
I upgraded all of my iDevices to iOS15 (or… whatever their equivalents are called. tvOS/HomeOS _something-point-oh_). A few quick notes:
- **The hassle of micro-services, in your own home!:** I had a home automation that was set to turn the lights on at 7:30am. When I set it up, it worked! Later, it stopped working. The lights would turn on at 10:30am. Clearly a timezone issue, but from what? Not my phone, the Hue app and hub seemed to think it was in the same location as us. I checked the HomePod, also EST, updated it and it started working at 7:30am again. Until this week, when it went back to 10:30am. I finally figured out that the Apple TV was set to its original Cupertino time zone (why, though?) and depending on some magical cloud logic the Homepod and Apple TV would switch off being the “home hub”.
- **Don’t remind me:** I used to run the iOS betas on my iPad. I used to use Apple Notes and Reminders. That is, until one iOS update required redoing the Reminders database, and the Reminders app was out of sync between my devices until a new version of iOS and MacOS were released. That was years ago, and yet that remains a problem today. You added tags to your reminders and made a smart list? Neat, you can see them on your Mac in a few months. Maybe, assuming MacOS releases on time. It’s worth it to use 3rd party replacements for both of those apps because you’ll at least get major updates across platforms all at once. It is insane to me that Apple still ties minor software updates to major OS releases. I will acknowledge that they gave us Safari 15 early, but the system browser being tied to the operating system was a bad idea 20 years ago so let’s not be too impressed.

Beyond those gripes, there’s a ton of low level quality of life improvements. The new maps font is nice. Widgets on the iPad are great (although I wonder why it took an extra release to get them), and the redesigned multitasking UI makes it much more usable. The UI team working on the Weather app is amazing.

### Hitchin’ a ride

![2014 Subaru Forester with the bumper removed for a hitch install.](/assets/images/2021/exhausting.jpeg)

I put a trailer hitch on our Forester on Saturday. I wanted a hitch mount rack for the [new bike](https://www.builtwith.coffee/blog-posts/2021/09/weeknotes-for-the-week-ending-september-05-2021) - it’s way too long and heavy for me to easily get on and off the roof rack, but that necessitated having a hitch to put the hitch rack on first. I decided to do it myself because sometimes I enjoy working on cars, and I found a [version of the install that](https://www.subaruforester.org/threads/no-drill-curt-hitch-install.374929/) that involved no drilling, only wrenching. Some thoughts:

- I used to work on cars a lot. I used to be under my first car (a Subaru WRX) all the time, to the point where almost nothing on that car was original. I used to throw it up on jack stands, hip check the car to make sure it wouldn’t fall off, then dive under it. I would never, ever consider that these days. Somewhere between that car and this car I had cars where I did work on them because it was “cheaper” and messed things up (in occasionally catastrophic ways). These days I stick to easy bolt-on or rewire improvements.
- If you’re not someone who works on cars: modern cars are a frame and 40,000 plastic clips holding the body on and that’s it. I had my daughter come out and help put the bumper back on, at first she thought I had broken something (not a bad guess), then she assumed it was much too heavy for her to pick up, then she picked it up and noticed that it was “wobbling all over!”. I let her slap it into the clips along the edges and use a socket wrench to put in the two (!) bolts that hold it on.
- I ended up getting a [rockymounts MonoRail Solo](https://rockymounts.com/products/monorail-solo.html). Like everything bike related there were a ton of options and most of them weren’t in stock. I like this one because it only holds one bike. For some reason bike rack designers think everyone rides with friends and they drive to the trails together.

### Stop, don’t shop
- I’ve given up on Stop and Shop. I go there because it’s close, and during the pandemic they had lots of self checkout lanes so you could get in and out pretty quick. But now they’ve done something to the self checkout lanes that basically goes like this:

	1. Ring item.
	2. Open bag to put place item in.
	3. Place item in bag.
	4. Error that there is an unscanned item in the bagging area.

It’s… it’s the bag. Why would I put something in the bagging area and not put it in a bag? I don’t know what shit update they pushed recently that made this start happening but the only solution is to either pile everything into the 2’x1’ bagging area and bag it at the end, or get someone to wave their card at the machine every time you add a new bag.

And before you’re like “well it’s Stop and Shop, what do you expect” let me tell you the developers who made that change and the ones who write car automation software differ only in ambition, not intelligence.

### etc
- Alice Bartlett (whose weeknotes inspired these ones) had this [wonderful description of a particular website this week](https://alicebartlett.co.uk/blog/weaknotes-160):

> At some point I’m going to write something about how being a Tech Director for 6 months has gone. It’s gone well so maybe I should just leave it at that and save the rest of the psychopath’s playground (LinkedIn).

- We’ve had a little snake hanging out in our backyard. Lorelei and I went out this evening to see if we could find it. We didn’t, instead we found… baby snakes! 

![Baby snake](/assets/images/2021/baby-snek.jpeg)

If only I’d made a styleguide for the site instead of throwing everything together as I thought of it.

A fresh coat of paint


With Safari 15 supporting browser chrome colors, I thought I’d throw a fresh coat of paint on the site. I made dark mode work again as well, although I think there are some pieces missing. If only I’d made a styleguide for the site instead of throwing everything together as I thought of it.

This week, summed up in two short scenes with my daughter.

Weeknotes for the week ending September 19, 2021


This week, summed up in two short scenes with my daughter.

### Reading is fundamental
_Scene: Local restaurant, on the outdoor patio. A rare family dinner outside the house because the grandparents were visiting before they set off on a cross-country train ride._

<span role=“image” aria-label=“Me”>👨</span>: What do you want to eat here?<br />
<span role=“image” aria-label=“Daughter”>👧</span>: Hot dog!<br />
<span role=“image” aria-label=“Me”>👨</span>: Are hot dogs on the menu?<br />
<span role=“image” aria-label=“Daughter”>👧</span>: I dunno?<br />
<span role=“image” aria-label=“Me”>👨</span>: Read the menu and see if you can find hot dogs.<br />
<span role=“image” aria-label=“Daughter”>👧</span>: I can’t read!<br />
<span role=“image” aria-label=“Me”>👨</span>: Yes you can, look at the menu and pick out something.<br />
<span role=“image” aria-label=“Daughter”>👧</span>: Pizza! Ice cream! Waffles!<br />

_Later, outside after dusk. My father and daughter are talking about stars in the sky._

<span role=“image” aria-label=“Daughter”>👧</span>: Can I see your phone, I want to know what star that is.<br />
<span role=“image” aria-label=“Me”>👨</span>: _Opens [Sky Guide](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sky-guide/id576588894), hands over phone._<br />
<span role=“image” aria-label=“Daughter”>👧</span>: Oh, it’s Jupiter.<br />
<span role=“image” aria-label=“Me”>👨</span>: How do you know?<br />
<span role=“image” aria-label=“Daughter”>👧</span>: _Points at screen._ Ju-pi-ter. It says Jupiter.<br />
<span role=“image” aria-label=“Me”>👨</span>: _Picks up daughter by shoulders, turns her 45 degrees._<br />
<span role=“image” aria-label=“Me”>👨</span>: What about that one over there?<br />
<span role=“image” aria-label=“Daughter”>👧</span>: Venus!<br />
<span role=“image” aria-label=“Me”>👨</span>: So you... can read?<br />
<span role=“image” aria-label=“Daughter”>👧</span>: Noooooooooooooooo

### <span role=“image” aria-label=“shark”>🦈</span>

_Scene: at [Stage Fort Park](https://essexheritage.org/attractions/stage-fort-park-gloucester-visitor-center), down on the “boardwalk” looking at the ocean._

<span role=“image” aria-label=“Daughter”>👧</span>: Look, a shark!<br />
<span role=“image” aria-label=“Me”>👨</span>: I don’t think there are sharks here.<br />
<span role=“image” aria-label=“Daughter”>👧</span>: It’s right there!<br />
<span role=“image” aria-label=“Me”>👨</span>: It’s probably just a ro… oh it is a shark.<br />
![Sandshark in the water near Stage Fort Park in Gloucester](/assets/images/2021/shark.jpeg)

### etc
- I’ve used [Magnet](https://magnet.crowdcafe.com) for window management on MacOS for a long time, but it turns out there’s a free option called [Rectangle](https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle) that works just as well, and you can install it via [Homebrew](https://brew.sh), which is extra great because I have zero interest in using Mac App store apps on my work Mac.
- I went too long before getting my coffee this morning (we picked up breakfast on the car ride over to aforementioned shark park), and the coffee was weak compared to what I make at home. Took a while to recover. Maybe I should have gotten `onlyfunctionalwith.coffee` instead.

Blarg. That’s my high level recap of the week. Nothing bad happened, just a lot of blarg. I think it’s a bit of recovering from the whiplash of going from “school is about to start” to “September is almost half over”.

Weeknotes for the week ending September 12, 2021


Blarg. That’s my high level recap of the week. Nothing bad happened, just a lot of blarg. I think it’s a bit of recovering from the whiplash of going from “school is about to start” to “September is almost half over”.

### First grade
So far the reports from Lorelei about First grade have been more about her friends and what she does during the day than her Kindergarten reports, which were mostly about what they had for lunch and how she didn’t get lost at any point during the day. It’s nice that we’ve gone from like, hardened Mafia crime boss who won’t say a thing to low level goon looking to maybe give us enough to let them go.

### Take the skinheads gaming
Recently I’ve had a semi-regular “gaming night”, and I was thinking the other day it’s a continuation of “semi-active, semi-social nights” I’ve had in the past. For a long time I was in a bowling league (one in Connecticut, one in Boston), and after / concurrently with that I played in a co-ed softball league. There’s a lot of similarity, you want something that requires some (but not too much) skill, has a few breaks to catch up with the people you’re playing with, and (this part might be crucial) isn’t impeded if you chose to drink alcohol the entire time you’re doing it.

Every once in a while I think “I miss playing softball”, but tonight I took Lorelei to a local park and was watching a game being played on a nearby field, and saw someone slap a line-drive at the second baseman off a carbon fiber bat and I immediately went to “oh no I don’t miss that”. Bowling, on the other hand, I occasionally look at what it would take to open my own lane.

### HEY MAN NICE BIKE
![Tallboy at Gordon College](/assets/images/2021/gordon-bike.jpeg)

Took the bike out this weekend and on the way back someone felt the need to yell, “HEY MAN NICE BIKE” at me from his truck. This is not the first time this has happened, and I don’t understand why! That said, two hours in the woods was a pretty good way to beat the blargs.


### etc
- Finished [The Girls' Guide To Hunting And Fishing](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780140293241). Also added a “Recommended” tab to my [books](/books) page if you want to separate the wheat from the chaff.
- I hit play on [Spark Up! by Ball Park Music](https://music.apple.com/us/album/spark-up/1502463960?i=1502463964) while writing this and Apple Music started a pretty good playlist for me.

Weeknotes for the week ending September 5, 2021

### First day of first grade
![Lorelei wearing her first grade crown.](/assets/images/2021/first-grade.jpeg)

Started another school year. We’re doing in person this year, and Lorelei (and we) are much happier about that. The town didn’t have open arguments about mask usage, and the kids don’t seem to mind wearing them, and most of the parents seem reasonable around here, outside of some S-tier dumb-assess who showed up to the meet-and-greet day wearing AR-15 apparel[^1]. 

If you think of everything in seasons, this Fall feels more optimistic than last Fall. Less “this isn’t what I wanted” and more “this isn’t what I expected” which is par for the course of life.

### NBD (new bike day)
![My new 2021 Santa Cruz Tallboy.](/assets/images/2021/nbd.jpeg)
_Last time it’ll ever be clean._

I’ve been biking nearly as long as I’ve been walking, and mountain biking only a bit less than that, but for the last few years I’ve been without a mountain bike. The last one I had was a Santa Cruz Nickel frame that I had slapped hand me down parts on, which was a nice enough bike, but it went into storage for a while and when it came out I realized a lot of those parts needed to be replaced, and if I was going to do that, wouldn’t it make more sense to buy something newer with bigger wheels? Sure. So I sold it, and then put off finding its replacement thinking, well, there’s house projects that need funding, and how often do I really have time with a kid, and all other excuses. I finally decided to look at getting a new bike in 2020 but… they all quickly disappeared. This Summer I finally said I’m going to find _something_ and kept tabs open at all the local shops and online, and found this 2021 Tallboy on [evo](https://www.evo.com) that’s likely a hold over shipment from last years orders. I’ve been out on two rides, and it’s a lot like the Nickel but with bigger wheels, so in the end I got what I wanted. I will add, mountain biking has gotten harder in the last 4 or 5 years that I’ve been away from it. Like, the mountains [^2] got bigger, or all the rain this year really washed out a lot more roots. It’s definitely not me being older or more out of shape.

### etc
Finished [A Children’s Bible](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781324005032) by Lydia Millet. Years of Catholic schooling has left me a fan of ominous, religious literary fiction. This book mixes a few themes: the failings of the generations who came before us, global warming and the changing climate, the separation (or lack thereof) between religion and science. It doesn’t pull them altogether in one driving plot action, but neither does the Bible, so I think that’s the point.

I mentioned [last week](https://www.builtwith.coffee/blog-posts/2021/08/weeknotes-for-the-week-ending-august-29-2021) I re-did my [reading list page](https://www.builtwith.coffee/books) to pull from the Notion API. I just realized that while it works wonderfully on localhost, the images don’t actually show up here. Something to add to the todo list.

[^1]: One had a particularly dumb slogan on it, so I [looked it up](https://www.lionsnotsheep.com) and… yeah. Let me tell you I never feel like a FREE person until I put on my $35 sloganized t-shirt. I’m sure they do some great advertising on Facebook. 
[^2]: “Mountain biking” in seacoast Southern New England is a bit of a funny term. “Small hill filled with tree root biking” would be the better term.

Weeknotes for the week ending August 29, 2021


Small update this week, as I spent most of the day on the Mass Pike. I forgot it’s “move in” weekend for the local colleges.

### 10 years
The main update for the week, Friday was Andrea and I’s tenth anniversary. We went out for dinner. We had (have had) grand plans to travel for… close to two years now, but having little interest in travel in never-ending pandemic times and with our town popping up a strong supply of new restaurants, we instead sent the kid down to the grandparents for the week and just enjoyed free time in our own town for the week.

![](/assets/images/2021//a-and-j.jpeg)

_Babies on our wedding day_.

![](/assets/images/2021//10-years-later.jpeg)

_Ten years later_.

Andrea is pretty great, and we’ll definitely give this _at least_ another ten years. We recorded an episode for her podcast this morning about our relationship. She might not run it because I mumble too much, but she might! Her accepting that I don’t quite meet her high standards has really helped keep this ship afloat ❤️.

### School supplies
School starts this week. As a kid I remember being dragged to the store to pick out new binders, folders, etc, but since Lorelei was at the Grandparents Andrea and I went to pick everything up. That might not _sound_ exciting but we both geeked out over pens and now have probably more than we’ll ever need, but, pens! Including some of these adorable [G2 Minis](https://www.pilotpen.us/brands/g2/g2-mini/?product=1504).

### Notion API
I spent a bit of time this week mucking about with the [Notion API Beta](https://developers.notion.com). I’ve used Notion on and off for a long time, it does a lot of things really well, and it for other things (writing, quick notes), it’s a bit annoying. But I’ve always wanted a quicker way to update my want to read / [read book list](/books). So far I find the API pretty good for dealing with databases — I migrated my “reading” list to it. It’s not ready for prime time for written content like using Notion as a blog CMS, but I think it might be there soon.

### Before the coffee gets cold
Finished [Before the coffee gets cold](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781335430991) this week. The local library recommended it on [Libby](https://www.overdrive.com/apps/libby/) under a magical realism category. It’s an interesting narrative device, there’s a cafe where in one seat you can go back in time (but there’s a list of rules, centrally if you want to meet someone else they have to also have been to the cafe, and you can’t change the future or past). There’s four related stories, they’re all a bit Hallmark-y, and I read it while drinking a lot of iced coffee so maybe it was the wrong season to read about coffee going cold, doesn’t get a recommended from me.



Weeknotes for the week ending August 22, 2021

A minor change this week, I’m going from bullet points to headers. This week was either chill, or I forgot to write down a bunch of stuff.

### Hurricane more like Hurrican’te
Lorelei was supposed to spend the week with her grandparents, but since they live in Connecticut <s>hurricane</s> tropical storm Henri threw a wrench in the works. It looks like this might all blow over (pun intended) and she’ll get down there later this week.

### Arts Fest Beverly
We either missed (or intentionally ignored) the arts fest in town in 2020, but since we weren’t shuttling the child off to another state on Saturday, we took a walk into town to check it out. We didn’t pick up any art this year, [unlike the last time we went in 2019](https://www.builtwith.coffee/blog-posts/2019/06/arts-fest-beverly), but we did get books at the [local book store](https://www.copperdogbooks.com) and jewelry. On the way back we stopped at [Backbeat Brewing Company](https://www.backbeatbrewing.com) which, even though it’s less than half a mile from our house, we hadn’t been to yet. Decent food, impressively good drinks, outdoor patio, A+++ would recommend. Highlight of this year was that we can all walk to town and back now.

### Bunny cupcakes
Lorelei watches this show called [Bread Barbershop](https://www.netflix.com/title/81288010). It’s weird, but this morning the episode she was watching the “barber” made kitty and bunny cupcakes, and rather than the plot being more of, “here’s how you do this as a barber” it was like, a real recipe. I realize that sounds odd if you’ve never seen the show, but stay with me. Lorelei asked if _we_ could do that, and I said yeah, sure, maybe. I had to go to the store anyway. This is what we came up with:
![Cupcakes decorated as bunnies](/assets/images/2021//bunny-cakes.jpeg)

Carrot cake cupcakes, obviously. They’re bunnies.

### Fortnite vs. my free time
I played Fortnite this week for the first time years, and it’s fun. I didn’t get it at first, but I played solo games and got it. And then I realized that the Battle Pass for this season has a dance that’s a ska dance, with a matching ska song about aliens, which feels waaaaaaay more targeted at my generation than who I assumed played Fortnite, so I had to pick it up (pick it up, pick it up… you get it), and then set out to win a few rounds, skanking on the graves of my defeated enemies.

### Bonus: Balancing things on a cat
![Maggie with a flower on her head](/assets/images/2021//maggie-balance.jpeg)

I’ve had a lot of cats in my life, but Maggie is the best one I’ve ever had for putting up with people putting things on her head.


Weeknotes for the week ending August 15, 2021

- We had a writer in residence this week, so while my wife was off doing [cool and fun things](https://www.copperdogbooks.com/event/virtual-event-jodie-slaughter) I was going full Dad with my daughter, enjoying a couple of pints of ice cream and crushing levels in a [new video game](https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/moving-out-switch/)[^1]. I consider this slightly more appropriate than what my dad used to do with me when my mom was out, which was watching 80s action movies on HBO.
- One night the ice cream was accompanied by crying. When I asked Lorelei why she was upset (seemingly out of nowhere) she said she was sad because if she got older, eventually she would die. It took a bit of back and forth to tease out that these ideas had maybe come from a TV show she likes (_Last Kids on Earth_), but I pointed out that I was much older than her, and still alive, so it was at least not a thing to worry about at the present moment. Certainly it could wait until the ice cream was finished.
- Related, I started reading [_Four Thousand Weeks (Time Management for Mortals)_](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780374159122). The 4,000 weeks comes from the average life expectancy in weeks. Rather than calling this post “Weeknotes for the week ending August 15, 2001” I could title it “Week 2038 (out of, hopefully, at least 4000)”. If you want the TL;CRAWB[^2] Burkeman’s [last Health & wellbeing column in the Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/sep/04/oliver-burkemans-last-column-the-eight-secrets-to-a-fairly-fulfilled-life#comments) covers the highlights.
- I finished [_Rainbow In the Dark_](https://www.builtwith.coffee/books/2021/rainbow-in-the-dark), Ronnie James Dio’s autobiography. It’s good, but a bit niche. I didn’t get into Dio my first go round with metal; I think someone convinced me _Heaven and Hell_ wasn’t a “real” Sabbath album (in hindsight, fuck them). It was the [Killswitch Engage cover of _Holy Diver_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR7dG_m3MsI) that made me go look up everything he ever did. 🤘🤘🤘 out of five.
- Our kitchen project is entirely done. I got to put the new vent hood through its paces tonight (grits and collard greens). For someone who cooks multiple times per day, the hood and the huge workspace-style sink are the things I like best. It looks good, but oh baby those functional upgrades.
- Spent a lot of time in the yard this weekend. Saturday I got a good outside nap in, today we went out for a walk early. We spotted a praying mantis in the yard.
![Praying mantis](/assets/images/2021//mantis.jpeg)

It seemed annoyed by us. We also walked to the beach. There’s a new rule here, if I have to carry home a pocket of seashells, they have to be used for _something_.
![Seashell art](/assets/images/2021//she-glues-seashells-from-the-seashore.jpeg)

[^1]: A very cool thing about _Moving Out_ is that you can can adjust a bunch of properties that affect the game difficulty. So we found a setting where we both feel like we’re playing the game but it’s still a little challenging for each of us.
[^2]: Too long; can’t read a whole book.

How do they know the load limit on bridges?

Weeknotes for the week ending August 8, 2021

> Released code at work this week which was a huge refactor that had (🤞) no noticeable changes to the existing application. 
- I said that [last week](https://www.builtwith.coffee/blog-posts/2021/08/weeknotes-for-the-week-ending-august-1-2021) then learned, well, there were noticeable changes for the end user, mainly in that the old code gracefully handled 500 errors that should not have been thrown in the first place. It drove good conversation around how to do things better in the future (and an investigation into where/why those 500s even exist), but it was a week where being a developer felt a bit like this:

![A Calvin and Hobbes comic strip where Calvin’s dad explains to Calvin that they figure out the load limit of bridges by driving larger trucks over until the bridge breaks](/assets/images/2021//calvin-bridges.gif)
- I made muffins yesterday morning. That’s the whole story. It was [this recipe](https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/classic-deviled-eggs-recipe-1911032) if you want a much longer story. And if you want recipes without long stories, I recommend [Paprika](https://www.paprikaapp.com). Over the years it’s becoming the app with the longest runtime on my devices.
- I’ve been reading [_Bullshit Jobs_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs). It’s unlikely I’ll finish it before the library demands its digital copy back, but it’s putting words to how I felt about my career as a Quality Assurance Specialist in Biotech. That role, which I fell into by by way of being a technical writer who understood how to file the appropriate paperwork appropriately, falls into the “box tickers” category, or, people who “who create the appearance that something useful is being done when it is not”. I could not better describe how I felt about filing regulatory paperwork that would never be read again. I acknowledge that the long trail of filed paperwork proves useful when something goes awry, and there are plenty of examples where regulatory compliance gets us amazing and reliable results, like the COVID vaccine. But that wasn’t a thing I saw in my day to day work, which is the sentiment the book attempts to put a more scientific eye to.
- There’s one quote in the book that jumped out at me:
> I managed to maneuver my way into a desk with its back to the wall, so I could spend as much time as possible surfing the internet or teaching myself computer programming.

It stood out because I did the same thing at my last biotech job. We had a week where my team was in-between offices, and rather than our usual dedicated bullpen space, we all had to squeeze into a conference room. Which sounds awful, but I’d get in early and grab the head of the conference room table. That seat, with a wall behind me, was the only time I’d ever had a space “to myself” at that job, and I spent the entire week running JavaScript files in Firefox to learn how the `canvas` element works.

Weeknotes for the week ending August 1, 2021

- I took Monday off and the week flew by. Also, it’s August?
- Released code at work this week which was a huge refactor that had (🤞) no noticeable changes to the existing application. Another to add to the list of “big red diff refactors” I’ve done. I think I enjoy doing them, but much less than adding features that users get to use, so if I could instead figure out a way to, Terminator style, go back and prevent devs from thinking they need to immensely overcomplicate a handful of asynchronous API calls before building the project that I eventually work on, that would be even better.
- Got two rides in this week. One where I had a vague idea of where I wanted to go, went a few miles off course, absolutely abused my poor Masi cross bike, ended up with a flat and had to walk the last mile and a half. Hard to say if it was the rock gardens, riding over a thicket of thorny bushes, or missing an enormous pothole on a dirt road and ramming the back rim of it so hard I almost went over the bars that caused the flat but I appreciate that the tube held out until almost the end. Not the first time I’ve ended a ride walking [^1], but it’s a uniquely dispiriting experience pushing a broken bicycle and while other bicyclists pass you by.
![Masi bicycle in the woods](/assets/images/2021//masi.jpeg)
- Second ride was a much calmer ride with my daughter which was measured in “would you rather” questions per mile [^2]. Must be a thing the kids are into at Summer camp this week.
![Lorelei by the gate house at Bradley Palmer state park](/assets/images/2021//lorelei-bp.jpeg)
- The tilers came to tile our kitchen this week, it looks great, but I learned that while you might buy _x_ number of boxes of tile, if they’re from different batches, they might not look as similar as you would think. A few last minute shuffles of where the tile would go took care of it. Agile home improvement, I’ve been calling it.
- The weather this weekend is unbelievable. We had touch up painting to do yesterday and opened all the windows and doors to let the breeze air everything out. Our extremely indoor cats have no interest in leaving the house but they do appreciate the smells and extra clear bird chirps.
![Maggie relaxing in the sunlight.](/assets/images/2021//relax-cat.jpeg)
- I updated this blog’s version of [react-markdown](https://github.com/remarkjs/react-markdown) and cleaned up how it was implemented, the main effect of which is now I can use [^3] footnotes! 

[^1]:Nor the worst: I once rode too far for the shape I was in, and my right quad stopped working. I had a fully functional bike but couldn’t physically pedal it any further, and was a few miles and about a thousand feet of elevation away from my car.
[^2]: Hundreds, easily.
[^3]: Abuse, really.

Weeknotes for the week ending July 25, 2021


- I set up a suite of tests on a project I’m working on at work that uses [Cypress component tests](https://www.cypress.io/blog/2021/04/06/cypress-component-testing-react/). This might be the most perfect testing solution for me. I like Cypress for e2e tests, and the component tests allow you to use the syntax but mount slices of your application for testing. Not only does it mesh nicely with e2e tests, it makes testing pieces of your application visually without having to invoke the entire application on a dev server a piece of cake.
- Finished [The Light Fantastic](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780062225689) by Terry Pratchett. Not my favorite Discworld novel but we got it from a library book sale for a few pennies.
- Our kitchen has a sink again! It’s big and wonderful and I never want to see a double basin sink again.
- We took up a trip to Vermont for the weekend to see my parents who, intentionally or not, live up there in the Summer. Long trip up in the dark, but we had beautiful weather all day Saturday so I’m glad we didn’t wait until Saturday morning to make the drive.
- We took a “hike” at [Sentinel Rock State Park](https://fpr.vermont.gov/sentinel-rock-state-park). It’s maybe a half mile through a field from the parking lot, but it was a good distance on a lazy-day.
![Trail at Sentinel Rock State Park](/assets/images/2021//sentinel-rock.jpeg)
![Old foundation at Sentinel Rock State Park](/assets/images/2021//sentinel-rock-foundation.jpeg)
- My daughter spent a lot of the morning and early afternoon catching (and releasing) bugs. It’s absolutely crazy how many fewer bugs there are up there then there used to be. My dad remarked how when we drove up in the 80s and 90s, the car would be covered in dead bugs. Now? I think I hit two.
![Moth on a sock](/assets/images/2021//sock-moth.jpeg)
- It’s our 10th wedding anniversary (soon) so we wanted to stop by the place we were married.
![Me and Andrea in front of the Newark Union Church](/assets/images/2021//10-years.jpeg)
- As I said, beautiful weather on Saturday…
![A nice view from the house in Newark, Vermont](/assets/images/2021//newark-day-1.jpeg)
And then much less beautiful on Sunday.
![The view from the house in Newark, Vermont on a rainy day](/assets/images/2021//newark-day-2.jpeg)
Which is fitting, I think, since we had a beautiful day on our wedding, and then the remnants of Hurricane Irene blew in the next day and it was windy and gross.
- I planned ahead more than usual for the drive and we stopped at better restaurants on the trip up and back. [The Common Man](https://www.thecman.com/common-man-windham/) on the way up, and [Dos Amigos](https://www.dosamigosburritos.com) on the way back, with a stop at [NH Doughnut Co.](https://www.nhdoughnutco.com) for some post ride treats.
- Traveling with an unvaccinated kid is more stressful than it  needs to be because you have no idea who actually has or hasn’t gotten vaccinated. Leaving Vermont we passed some clown show setting up that was demonstrating for keeping the government out of their veins or whatever bird brain idea they had.
- I had a little project waiting for me when I got back. The wired mouse had been driving me crazy, so I ordered a new wireless one and figured while I was there, why not color match the mouse to the keys on my keyboard.
![](/assets/images/2021//keeb-before.jpeg)
![](/assets/images/2021//keeb-after.jpeg)


Weeknotes for the week ending July 18, 2021


- 🌧🌧🌧🌧☀️☀️🌧
- This week was busy, with the general things that makes life busy, plus two social gatherings, which is an increase of 200% from the… entire year before. I said I would take it easy this weekend but it’s _real_ hard to be at home and not do house projects. Now it’s 7:30 on Sunday and I’m ready to relax — right after I do this… and those other things I was thinking of doing….
- Lorelei started (what we’ve been calling) school camp this week. Since she’s adamant about not wanting to learn how to read, and a mostly remote year didn’t help that, she’s spending the mornings doing “Summer school” activities then going to “fun” camp. The change seemed to affect her absolutely not at all, which is the best we could have asked for.
- Another child note, she likes to knock on our bedroom door in the morning, peek in, then walk away. It’s a subtle “I’m hungry and I might not be able to prepare the food I want today”, but it’s also a decent alarm clock so I don’t mind it. For a long time, when the door cracked open my brain tried to pattern match “child or cat”. The other day was the first time it went for “child or small burglar”. She’s still on the short side for her age but she’s doing a good job of catching up this Summer.

## Album a day
I’ve stopped, for now. Might switch over to one finding one song to appreciate every day. For now, please enjoy this song, which has been stuck in my head all week, thanks to the aforementioned child of mine. I listened to a lot of Michael Bolton as a kid, we took long cars rides every weekend in the Summer, and _Time, Love & Tenderness_ was one of the very, very few tapes we had. We later picked up a second tape, the 1991 classic… Brian Adam’s _Waking up the Neighbors_. Joke Michael Bolton songs couldn’t have a target any better than this elder Millennial.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OH6IBef79HA" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>


Wherein I get mad at computers and retreat to my yard.

Weeknotes for the week ending July 11, 2021


- I spent too many hours dealing with an issue where a previous employer off by one’d my social security number. Double check it! Also, I wonder who this person who is me shifted once is.
- Safari will be the death of me. Our app at work was using IndexedDB to store state, and I saw this in my timeline: 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Ran into a spectacularly awful Safari bug in the latest Safari (14.1.1 on macOS and iOS 14.6).<br><br>Opening an IndexedDB database fails 100% of the time on the first try. 😩<br><br>If you refresh, it starts working.<br><br>Bug report: <a href="https://t.co/I61x27obtv">https://t.co/I61x27obtv</a><br><br>cc <a href="https://twitter.com/webkit?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@webkit</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/chris_dumez?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@chris_dumez</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Apple?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Apple</a></p>&mdash; Feross (@feross) <a href="https://twitter.com/feross/status/1404568122158313474?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 14, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

But, ok, that’s fine, we were refactoring the app and saving less state in browser storage, and we were going to use localStorage instead because cross-tab communication is easier but haha fuck me right?

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">😬 localStorage is broken in Safari 14.1.<br><br>Tabs end up with seperate localStorage for reading, but the same localStorage for writing. This will likely result in data loss for users. (h/t <a href="https://twitter.com/forresto?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@forresto</a>)<a href="https://t.co/5Ljxl4vvbH">https://t.co/5Ljxl4vvbH</a></p>&mdash; Jake Archibald (@jaffathecake) <a href="https://twitter.com/jaffathecake/status/1389493762129375232?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 4, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

I use Safari on a day to day basis because it is fast, but also because there’s no better way to find out what dumb things are broken in Safari that will break your app than seeing it broken in someone else’s app. Oh and forget Google Lighthouse, you want to know if an app is good just open it in Safari and see if you get the “this page is consuming significant energy” warning.
- Being generally mad at computers due to the above I’ve gone back to taking notes on paper again. I have a stack of index cards on my desk and I write what ever pops up and deal with it later. I have nice [Zebra highlighters](https://www.zebrapen.com/mildliner/) to go over the notes at the end of the day and flag things that are important.
- Our [backyard patio project](https://www.builtwith.coffee/blog-posts/2021/06/weeknotes-for-the-week-ending-june-20) left us with a stack of extra cobblestones and a pile of extra pea gravel, so I dug up some more of the yard and made a nice border around our garden bed.
![Pea gravel and cobblestone border around our garden bed.](/assets/images/2021//garden-bed.jpeg)

This used up exactly all of the material, and the grass there is now pleasingly geometric so we’re done with that part of the yard.
- I was drinking coffee on the back porch this morning and the air had an intense low-tide smell. I know it’s like 1% salt and 99% dead plants and animals but I love it. I took out the bike and rode down to beach, and it was one of those days where when you get to the road that runs along the beach you can feel the air change, it was colder and denser (and… the smell!).
- I dream of car-free Sundays in town. If you get out before 10 in the morning there isn’t a tremendous amount of traffic but being able to roll down any street without having to check for cars would be 💯.

🦅🇺🇸🎆. Or not, we’re just bumming around the house. If we’re lucky we’ll see some fireworks from the back deck.

Weeknotes for the week ending July 4, 2021


- 🦅🇺🇸🎆. Or not, we’re just bumming around the house. If we’re lucky we’ll see some fireworks from the back deck.
- Our new kitchen cabinets went in this week. There’s so much room now! The finishing touches (sink, hood, counters, tile) are still a few weeks out so it’s exciting but mostly non-functional.
![My daughter wondering where our old island went to.](/assets/images/2021//island.jpeg)
_My daughter checking out the new island, I guess wondering where the old one went to._
- We had some electrical work done in the kitchen as well, and it occurred to me how the piece of paper taped to the inside of our circuit breaker panel is like code comments, most of them are wrong and you can’t trust what they say, but they might help you narrow down what you’re looking for a tiny bit.
- I also learned that electrical code now requires you to have [AFCI circuit breakers](https://www.afcisafety.org/afci/what-is-afci/) which are good because arc faults are _bad_ but I also learned that some household appliances inherently generate arcs (brushed motors, mostly) and those can trip the circuit breaker. Which is why using the “brush roller” feature on our vacuum cleaner would trip a few of the outlets in our house, but not others, but now the entire downstairs is on AFCI breakers so it trips anywhere if we use that feature.
- We watched [The Queen’s Gambit](https://www.netflix.com/title/80234304) this week. I guess everyone else watched it last year? It was really visually interesting, you can play a fun game of “find the chess boards in the set / costume design” while you watch. I enjoyed chess as the narrative frame for a coming of age story, although in my wife’s words, “all I understand is that if you take drugs you can play chess”.

## Album a day
Getting a little lazy with this. On the plus side, though, I realized the other day that the 3.5mm jack on my monitor is a line-out, not a line-in, so listening while at my desk got a lot easier. Why did I ever think it was a line-in?

- July 4: [‎Butterfly 3000 by King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard](https://music.apple.com/us/album/butterfly-3000/1569279719)
- July 3: [‎On A Friday Evening (Live) by Bill Evans Trio](https://music.apple.com/us/album/on-a-friday-evening-live/1571413349)
- July 2: [‎Home Video by Lucy Dacus](https://music.apple.com/us/album/home-video/1559506368)
- July 1: [‎Below by Beartooth](https://music.apple.com/us/album/below/1555808295)
- June 30: [‎Swimming by Maple Glider](https://music.apple.com/us/album/swimming/1558456316?i=1558456318)
- June 29: [‎Date Night: Chromeo Live! by Chromeo](https://music.apple.com/us/album/date-night-chromeo-live/1566230235)

built with coffee ☕

2022

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