Burgers and AI

10/24/2021

We launched two sites recently, pretty much on the same day, for two very different companies.

Grumpday

10/17/2021

It's been another week of it. My back and hip and knee are getting better so slowly, it's depressing. I basically can't sit down, which is annoying. Made some good things, and had some ideas for some other nice things. And rage-bought a new watch because I'm an idiot. If you're looking for some consultancy work for your website/project strategy, help me finance my poor impulse control.

Jokes I don't have time for freelance.

Do you ever get this, where you look at the things you love and you feel such overwhelming joy that you couldn't possibly feel more full, more successful, more contented than you do? And then you look at those same things and you feel like a complete charlatan; so undeserving, like an impostor walked into someone else's life unnoticed, and you're waiting for someone to detect your unwelcome presence and all that's left is to watch everything you know you don't deserve come crashing down at your feet. It seems unfair that you can swing from one to the other so easily, without even noticing that anything happened. Especially as frequently as this. This is maybe not the best outlet for this.

A Washed-up Buoy

10/04/2021

We were drawn to the beach for an unobstructed view of this moody sky, and when we got there there was a buoy on the beach.

The Dispossessed

10/03/2021

It takes me so long to read a full book these days. Motivation and time converge so infrequently. I have been reading this book for one year (with an 11 month hiatus, granted) and I have finally finished.

Guarantees

10/02/2021

I can pretty much guarantee that if I make a change to this site, it will make me want to add some content, but the weather will be gross and I can't be bothered to go outside.

I have had an unpleasant week. Everything that could have gone wrong, has gone wrong. Even some things that had no business going wrong went wrong. Every day it was something different. By this morning I felt like I was going to have a panic attack.

I hate when life makes me feel like I suck at what I'm doing. I know I'm OK at it, just sometimes the world gangs up on you.

So I spent this evening making something to remind myself that I can do this and I do enjoy it.

Something we struggle with at my Wednesday night badminton, is who's going to play matches. You add a club (in case you play at multiple), you add all that club's members (and mark them as absent if they're away that session), then you're ready to create your matchups. Enter 2 for Singles or 4 for doubles and it'll generate a game for you. If someone sits out, you can mark them as absent for that selection round, and maybe you can change to singles.

This is going to require a fairly modern browser. It's only tested in Chrome and Mobile Safari and that's really the only intended users for it, so either use one of those or don't use this! Everything is stored in your browser's local storage so nothing you enter is sent to my server, and it never will be.

There's a couple of things missing:

  • The first player in a game is chosen at random from all available players. Their opposition is also chosen at random. It would be nice if your opposition was chosen from players who had never shared a court.
  • It would be nice if you could manually set x number of players in a match, then opt to automatically fill them in. That's potentially a lot of UI, though, so I want to make sure I do it in a minimalist way that is also usable.

By the way I love React. I know it's not what people use now but I'm always a late adopter for this stuff.

The same thing three times

09/27/2021

A completely scientific study

The new iPhone is good

09/25/2021

I got the iPhone 13 Pro. So far, most noticeable improvements are the screen and the camera. The animation is so smooth it's really starting to feel like the things on the screen are real physical things that you can touch. I don't have much to compare because I only use Apple stuff but I love their screens. Everything looks great on them. The stills from the camera are excellent as well. I feel like it's a noticeable improvement from the 12 Pro, which is the first time I've noticed that.

I've been watching Mad Men a lot. It's really incredibly beautiful. I know you're supposed to identify with Don Draper, but I wasn't prepared for how much I would identify with him. Life has changed since the 1960s, but in many ways it really hasn't.

I'm just finished with season 4. One thing that strikes me is how people have always used other people's lives to figure out how they're doing. It's so depressing. I often feel tempted to talk to Charlotte about this show as if these are people I really know, and as if this is something that's relevant right now. "Charlotte, you'll never guess Don is engaged. I know."

That's the mark of a truly exceptional piece of art, in my opinion. It's one thing for reality TV to present real lives to us, but it's something very separate to present fiction so convincing, so real on a meta level, that it's almost disappointing that it's not real.

I'm not an ad man. I'm not a salesman of any kind like Don. But I am Don. The episode I watched today, someone said "I hope she realises that you only like the beginning of things" and god I felt so attacked. Who doesn't like the beginning of things? Everything is so pure and uncomplicated (I refuse to use the phrase "pure and simple" in earnest).

I don't feel like I can honestly describe why I love Mad Men so much without offending someone in my life. It is a truly beautiful, and timeless commentary on society, masculinity, femininity, love, culture, work, family. This is art made by people who can communicate more exposition with a single frozen frame, than many can with seasons of TV. This is something expertly designed to make you feel something, and to question how you treat people, and your attitude to everyone who isn't you. It's designed to show you things that you do, and then show you how stupid those things are. It's really one of the most elegant and compelling pieces of storytelling that I think I've ever seen in my life.

And just quickly in closing. This is a TV show that runs for 7 seasons, about one doomed man and how he almost pathologically hammers nails into his own coffin. The number of times I've said "are you kidding me with this" whilst watching this show, is ridiculous. But also, the number of times I've cried, as Don sabotages his own life, or really profoundly hurts the people around him, exceeds maybe anything I've ever watched.

This is one of those shows I don't think I will ever stop watching, pondering, and learning from. I know everyone has already seen it but it's so incredibly perfect in every way that I feel like I want to tell you to watch it again.

09/18/2021

Ah no I spent so long waiting to take some pictures to post that I forgot and now I have to do this like always. Still there's something nice about looking over the last few weeks and remembering that you actually were alive and doing something with your time.

I just got my PAC from Three via SMS, then signed up for a new contract with EE online. I worked at Phones4u when I was 18 and this process used to be an absolute nightmare. I dread to think, the amount of time I've spent on hold to networks to get a customer's PAC just so the sale didn't walk out the door.

No, I am not cut out for sales. I know this. I can't imagine me doing it either, but someone had to pay for my Marlboro Reds and hair bleach.

Long walks for snacks

08/30/2021

If we're going to get some junk food, I like to exercise on the way there. I kinda feel like if I walk 10km to get some ice cream, that this is at least a token junk-food-offset.

There's loads of new music out today. I like days like this where there's a few records out from bands you like. Funnily enough, my favourite is from a band I've never really liked, doing something I never heard before. Turnstile - Glow On is such a weird mix of things that shouldn't work but really does. Then there's Jinjer - Wallflowers, which is another refinement and technical progression of an already very polished sound. Then finally there's TesseracT - Portals, which is a very accomplished live album, and a good mix of TesseracT's career. If you're new to them but familiar with the genre (how?), it might sound a bit samey, but I'm enjoying it.

As a bonus, something that came out a while ago that I can't stop thinking about is Alexis Marshall - House of Lull House of When. Incredibly bleak and unsettling. A really coherent, borderline jazz direction of the sound on Daughters' latest record, which is still (and may always be?) my favourite live music experience ever.

A little walk, and a couple of snaps

08/26/2021

You're not always going to come back from a walk with an SD card full of winners, but sometimes you're just out for an hour and the light is golden, and you're looking at everything and framing it and everything looks beautiful and the photos you come home with don't really matter.

Foxes

08/26/2021

There's a family of lovely foxes at Charlotte's allotment. I've always wanted to take pictures of a fox from a reasonable distance. This was a real treat for me.

Every time we feed Sudo, we ask "is it dinner time?" and since revisiting Donald Glover, it always reminds me of this song, which has been stuck in my head for about 3 weeks. It'd be annoying if I didn't love this song and its video, I suppose.

Little Keyboards Reviung41

08/23/2021

I've wanted one of Little Keyboards' kits for ages, but they were always a bit spenny. This Reviung41 Comptroller case was actually pretty reasonable. Especially for the quality.

One of my favourite things to do, when I've written a long blog post, is to go back through and edit it to remove the 500 occurrences of the word "really". No idea why I use it so much. I wonder if I do that in speech as well.

Bromsgrove Summer 2021

08/15/2021

Going away anywhere is strange and makes me feel nervous pretty much constantly, but we managed to have a really nice few days away visiting family and friends for the first time in absolutely ages.

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