The latest episode of Core Intuition (496) resonated with me, especially the discussion about settling and sharing creative works near the end. I know this is something that I personally struggle with and would like to get better at this year.

I think I’ve settled on my word for 2022: finisher. Someone who finishes what he starts. This is something that I’m not super good at. I find it easy to start, but I rarely follow through all the way. It’s not in the list of words but I think it’s a good one to go for.

It’s interesting to see the technical knowledge and priorities of a software development team come through in the product they work on. Case in point: the syntax highlighting options for a code block in Confluence include ColdFusion, Delphi, Java FX, Groovy and Scala; but not Go.

Yet another reminder to myself to write things down when they come to me. I had the perfect word for a post, but when it came time to write it I couldn’t recall what that word was. I know that I know it; I was turning it over in my head a few days ago. Should’ve written it down.

There’s a lot I don’t like about all the “web3” stuff going on: bad actors and environmental impact being on the top of the list. But even if this is set aside, it just doesn’t sound like an appealing way to spend my time. As far as I can tell, it’s just a bunch of projects and people doing the exact same thing seen on the web before, but with an extra layer of trading, hustling, fundraising, etc. completely driven by personal interests. It all seems so distasteful, and even a little boring.

I’m adding some photos to last year’s journal in preparation for turning it into a book. I’m honestly trying to avoid rushing it and just saying “ah, that’s enough”. Any effort spent now will be paid back in kind once the book is printed and I’m looking through it years later.

I’m also glad that I’ve made Feed Journaler to import blog posts. Looking at the posts made earlier in the year, I can see that many are missing, most likely because they contain images that were not imported. I’ll need to import these manually.

We haven’t had any decent rain for several weeks now. So with the Bureau predicting rain today, I’m looking outside and at the rain radar like a roulette player waiting for the wheel to stop spinning.

Back at work today, conceptually if not physically. The hardest part of coming back to work after some time off is the feeling that you never actually had any time off.

That silly maxination countdown site is live again as I’ve just booked my Covid-19 booster shot.

I only just realised how good the company name Square was. It’s not just the shape of the RFC reader, it’s also in the saying “we’re square” when payment have been settled. Having multiple, subtle meanings to a name like that makes it valuable.

Block on the other hand…

I’m seeing many bloggers in my RSS feed talking about how they’re reading “Four Thousand Weeks.” I’m sure like many others, thinking about my own mortality is quite uncomfortable. It might be that it’s worth my while to read it, and confront it head on. Maybe not today though.

Now that we have decent cameras in our pocket and virtually unlimited space, there’s no reason not to take as many photos (and video) of things like buildings and objects that are personally important to you, in addition to people and events.

Make sure you get photos of every room, from as many different perspectives as you can. Consider perspectives that you are likely to experience yourself, and try to capture them. Don’t forget things like floor patterns and light fixtures. Also consider the externals and outbuildings, like garages. You probably have photos of the front and back, but also remember to take photos of the sides, and other areas you’d occasionally find yourself. Quality is secondary to coverage: take good photos if you can, but sometimes a single bad photo of a particular area is better than no photo at all.

Think of it as a form of personal historical documentation. There will probably come a time when you can no longer see that building — either it’s sold or pulled down — and a decade later, you’d like to reminisce. Memories fade, and any photos you do have you’d be happy you took. You’d always wish you have more though, so unless you’re pressed for time and storage, always remember that there’s no such thing as too many photos.

Got around to releasing Feed Journaler v0.3. Headline feature: option to enable launch on login, so that there’s no need to remember to do so manually just to keep journals up to date with blog posts. Also some more bug fixes around post content.

Ugh, should’ve taken today off.

Well, I feel like a bit of a turkey. I just spent two weeks researching technologies that will help us aggregate messages at scale, only to have a 30 minute meeting demonstrating that we didn’t need aggregation at all. 🤦

At least I learnt about Apache Flink.