Notes – Page 6

Note #27145

Looking forward to the school run starting again next week… so I get a bonus excuses for walks around our beautiful village!

Hexagonal Cheese Scones

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The cheese scones from
My local supermarket
Are hexagonal.

It’s not for packing.
Their film-covered rectangle
Leaves corner gaps.

Are perhaps they made
In honeycomb baking tins?
Baked by bumblebee?

Or else it’s branding.
A visual identity.
Trying to sell more.

A six-sided scone
Does not taste better to me,
Nor warm up faster.
The butter doesn’t care
For the shape of your scone,
Mr. John Sainsbury.

Last month, my friend Gareth observed that the numbered lists in my blog posts “looked wrong” in his feed reader. I checked, and I decided I was following the standards correctly and it must have been his app that was misbehaving.

So he contacted the authors of Unread, his feed reader, and they fixed it. Pretty fast, I’ve got to say. And I was amused to see that I’m clearly now a test case because my name’s in their release notes!

Bagelicious

Maybe I’m just hungry, but this morning’s breakfast bagel with brie looks especially scrumptious, right?

Scaredypup

A moderately-large house spider dropped down and startled my dog as she napped in her basket, so now she’s hiding under my desk and refusing to return to bed. 🙄😂

Hammocking with the Dog

Finished work. Figured I’d chill in the hammock for a bit as it’s so nice out.

The dog decided she wanted to lie in it too.

So now I am a pillow for a dog.

Part of the Internet, or connecting to the Internet?

Some time in the last 25 years, ISPs stopped saying they made you “part of” the Internet, just that they’d help you “connect to” the Internet.

Most people don’t need a static IP, sure. But when ISPs stopped offering FTP and WWW hosting as a standard feature (shit though it often was), they became part of the tragic process by which the Internet became centralised, and commoditised, and corporate, and just generally watered-down.

The amount of effort to “put something online” didn’t increase by a lot, but it increased by enough that millions probably missed-out on the opportunity to create their first homepage.

Note #27001

In the event of a fire on my bus, I’m concerned that the head of the man sitting in front of me is flammable.

Note #26999

In my first few weeks at my new employer, my code contributions have added 218 lines of code, deleted 2,663. Only one of my PRs has resulted in a net increase in the size of their codebases (by two lines).

I need to pick up the pace if I’m going to reach the ultimate goal of deleting ALL of the code within my lifetime. (That’s the ultimate aim, right?)

Regions Unlocked

Thanks to the community’s invention of a “Region unlocked” achievement, I’ve been able to instantly (and retroactively!) tick another one off my geohashing list, for my expedition on Trinidad early this year!

(Possibly I’ve achieved it other times, too: I haven’t yet determined whether anybody successfully hashed in County Mayo or County Galway before I did last year, on account of both counties spanning multiple graticules and so requiring more research!)

Order of the Beast

Went to Wagamama. Accidentally made the “Order of the Beast”.

(Plus a similar side, for those who read binary.)

Note #26938

Seventy years ago, residents of this part of London would take shelter from V1 and V2 bombs in a tunnel beneath my feet. And today, I’m going down there to take a look!

Note #26931

I got kicked off LinkedIn this week. Apparently there was “suspicious behaviour” on my account. To get back in, I needed to go through Persona’s digital ID check (this, despite the fact that I’ve got a Persona-powered verification on my LinkedIn, less than six months old).

After looping around many times identifying which way up a picture of a dog was and repeatedly photographing myself, my passport, and my driving license, I eventually got back in. Personally, I suspect they just rolled out some Online Safety Act functionality and it immediately tripped over my unusual name.

But let this be a reminder to anybody who (unlike me) depends upon their account in a social network: it can be taken away in a moment and be laborious (or impossible) to get back. If you care about your online presence, you should own your own domain name; simple as that!

Bagel Holes

I’ve eaten “doughnut holes”, but I’ve never seen anybody market “bagel holes”. Untapped opportunity? 🤔

Firstup Day 1

Off to my first day at Firstup. Gotta have an induction: get my ID badge, learn where the toilets are, how to refill the coffee machine, and all that jazz.

Except, of course, none of those steps will be part of my induction. Because, yet again, I’ve taken a remote-first position. I’m 100% sold that, for me, remote/distributed work helps me bring my most-productive self. It might not be for everybody, but it’s great for me.

And now: I’m going to find out where the water cooler is. No, wait… some other thing!

Kind: Notes