My partner had surgery had the end of January, so her and I have been taking it easy.
Bread and beer
I had a bread making class right at the start of the month at ProCook in Tottenham Court Road. Like everyone, I tried making sourdough bread during a lockdown. The crust came out perfect, but inside wasn’t cooked. I didn’t want to make a fresh loaf of bread every day so there wasn’t much point in trying keep a starter going. We made 4 different types of bread, so this weekend I tried making bread again and it came out fantastically. Expect more bread chat in the future.
Straight after the bread class I met some ex-Deliveroo folks for drinks at one of our old haunts. It was nice to catch up with people and see familiar faces. I worked there for 5 years and some of those people I haven’t seen since they left, or when I left in 2021. I also highly recommend showing up to the pub with a rucksack full of freshly baked bread to share with people. You’ll be very popular.
Cabin fever
Now that I’m working from home 100% of the time, I’m starting to go a bit spare. Being at home so much over the last few weeks hasn’t helped much either. I’m trying to get out of the house and Walthamstow at least once during a weeknight and at the weekends too. It’s hard to work anywhere except my home office as the product I’m building at CastRooms needs a decent Internet connection for me to test video and audio. Doing a mic check in a café might not go down too well.
Our founder and I went to an electronic music conference called AVA at The Printworks. I loved the conversation with David Rudnick. He’s one of my favourite designers working right now so it was a nice surprise to see him on the lineup. I’ve been at The Printworks for some events and even a conference and work afterparty. It’s a cool place, but such a huge cavernous warehouse used for dancing crowds that a few people sat on deck chairs left the space extremely cold. We left early to go and sit outside a pub in the Sun to warm up, even with it being 4 degrees celsius outside.
Travels
We planned a holiday to Vietnam, but we’ve had to cancel it. Luckily we’re getting a full refund so we aren’t down anything to cancel it. Immediately after we were meant to get back I was flying to Portugal for Elixirconf EU. Instead, she’s going to fly to Lisbon and meet me. We’re going to spend a lazy week hanging out in Lisbon, which will be lovely.
Busy, busy
I’ve started a big burst of tech debt tackling in work, which I’ll be writing about soon. I’m getting to use SvelteKit and Elixir, because I get to decide what to use. It’s a learning experience for sure, but a fun one.
I want to write more here, which I failed on this month, but on advice of Andy Bell, I’m trying to find some process that works. Collecting ideas and setting aside time is my first attempt, so I’ll see how that goes.
Read
- 10 years of Meteor - a look back at 10 years of this interesting JS framework that had amazing ideas, but got eclipsed by so many of its’ peers.
- An introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer - many of my friends of been laid off and some of those are joining unions, so this article was a great read.
- The Window Trick of Las Vegas Hotels - I’m an architecture and psychology nerd, so using one to trick the other is super interesting to me.
Watched
- Welcome to Chippendales (Disney Plus) - I had no idea how much crime was involved in the story of a male stripping empire. A great watch, and listening to the podcast after it was fun too.
- The Last of Us (NowTV) - It’s fantastic. Bella Ramsey is great.
- The Gold (BBC) - The true story of the biggest robbery in the UK by the 80s. A fun watch of cops and robbers trying to outsmart each other.
Played
- Lots more Elden Ring. I want to write up my experience when I finish the game.