Weeknotes 7

October 3, 2020
  • I’ve continued to work from the Outlandish office in Finsbury Park. It’s still very quiet with at most 4 other people on a busy day. Having a comfortable set up, fast internet connection and a quiet environment makes a huge difference.

  • Paul offered to work with me on a project we have with Oxford University. I’ve really enjoyed (remote) pairing and learned a huge amount about React. It’s made me want to find opportunities to work with other people more often (and Paul again).

  • F- turned 6 months this week. Things are getting slightly easier now N- is able to go to nursery. A couple of weeks ago we started helping F- to sleep on his own (a euphemistic way of saying “sitting outside his door crying while he cries”) following the method in The Happy Sleeper. It had got to the stage where neither A- nor I were getting much sleep at all, and F- was noticeably angry at our usual attempts to rock him to sleep. Within a few nights he’d learnt to fall asleep quietly on his own.

  • F- has also had a snotty cold. It’s a bit odd seeing him so grumpy as he’s usually of a very sunny disposition. Case in point, here he is in an unusual situation, with bright lights shining in his face after being given the explicit instruction not to smile:

Smile

  • I’m still getting a lot of enjoyment from the Kelly Lee Owens album I mentioned a few weeks ago. Her song “On” was recently featured on the song exploder podcast. I enjoyed her talking about leaving in some “mistakes” generated by her analogue modular synth and how those mistakes tie into the broader themes of the song.

  • I opened a news app this week to be confronted with a face I recognised. The spokesman for a far-right German political party was caught on mic talking like a Nazi. For some reason this surprised the party and they’ve sacked him. He was a class mate of my housemate when I lived in Berlin in the early 2000s and we’d spent quite a lot of time together. At the time he was active in the liberal party, but the last 20 years have clearly radicalised people both here and in Germany. My old housemate and I comforted ourselves via WhatsApp. We’d always thought he was an Arsch anyway.

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