February

For the shortest month, it feels like loads happened! F1 dads went to the World's Raceway - this was actually right at the end of January but missed inclusion in January's newsletter because I was very tired.

I went to Germany to visit Sven and his family, and go to see Silent Planet in Leipzig. It was an extremely relaxing week; I love being there.

I started a daily photo project again. I'm not linking to each one - that's a hassle; I'll just link to the start of the month.

Bit more happening on media diet this month (though I have done almost no reading), I watched Megalopolis, Invincible season 1, Airplane!, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Interstellar, Zombieland, and finally finished the incredible Station Eleven.

music

Spent a lot of time down memory lane this month. Sven had never listened to Underoath, which made me want to listen to them. Then Vexed and Like Moths to Flames were great so I listened to them as well. We were also talking about the time I saw Coheed and that made me want to listen to Fightstar. That's aged pretty well - they remind me of Finch.

Extremely pleasant surprise, Heems put out new music last year that I just found out about. I've enjoyed everything I've heard of his - Das Racist, Swet Shop Boys, Eat Pray Thug all get a lot of play in our house so was really glad to hear he's making music again.

links

  • Moving on from React - this is super interesting. I quickly got sick of React. There's a lot to like about it but I mostly just found myself fighting with things that should work but don't, or making an entire feature in fundamentally the wrong way, not realising until you're nearly done, then having to start over. I know that's a symptom of a lack of experience, but it's still annoying. I much prefer well-organised Stimulus as a far less-opinionated way to have more interactive UIs.
  • Snacks - I love Cabel, and this huge list of snacks made me hungry.
  • This article about debanking might be one of the best things I've ever read online. Patrick writes about a fairly dry topic with so much humour. This took me absolutely ages to read, but it was so good that I reached out to him to tell him how much I loved it. I'm sure he needed to hear that! Some highlights:

Arguments aren’t soldiers; the truth is the truth.

It will often say that this decision is final. The decision is probably not actually final. That is an opening negotiating position, like “We don’t negotiate salaries.” If you don’t argue the point, it has achieved its objective.

Do you have a favorite axis of disadvantage?

Suppose you are an internal advocate for crypto at a mid-sized bank in the U.S. When you bring your proposals to management, one of the things that will cause a chilly reception is the regulatory environment, certainly. Another one is that management can read the newspaper.

After a day it is an outage, after a week it’s a human competence issue, but after a year it ferments into sparkling tech strategy.

Democratic governance necessarily requires at least some people to have agendas.

Telling people what you want is a necessary step in getting what you want

bikes

I watched a tonne of Probably Riding this month, and it made me really want a new bike. I don't need a new bike; what I should actually do is put some new bars on my current bike so it feels like a new bike.

Nevertheless, look at these beautiful bikes:

youtube

And that's it! Hope you have a great March.

01/03/2025

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