Author: Josh

Merry Christmas!

Decided not to take today off to keep the Monday-Friday schedule going. I’ve found that a regular schedule really helps me to achieve consistency, for a number of reasons, including that my brain is weird that way.

Also, after some thinking, I’ve decided to lump the What I Blank sections into one larger Inputs section, since it was starting to stretch to force a Listen To in at times when it wasn’t as prevalent or notable. Instead, you’re getting 3 or so Inputs, from various sensory sources.

Inputs

1: Spent some time last night skeeting¹I don’t like it either, but that’s what the community has decided to call the Bluesky version of tweeting, so, that’s what you get. through my favorite Christmas movie, A Christmas Story. It’s a yearly tradition of my own making which I moved over to Bluesky this year after the general fall and crumbling of Twitter.

Feel free to give that thread a readthrough if you’d like my general thoughts. Also because I can’t imbed Bluesky messages here yet, I don’t think. Plus, Bluesky hasn’t reinvented threading yet.

2: Watched the new ep of Summoning Salt’s speedrunning series on The History of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out World Records. Speedrunning is one of those weird internet things that was sort of a thing in an analog world, but became a much larger community and constituency with the advent of live-streaming, recording, and digital interactivity. A high score on a physical machine was a bragging right in one arcade or pizza parlor. A high score in the networked era is a constant fight for ephemeral renown.

Speedrunning has grown to encompass multiple yearly conventions that raise millions for charities, research and expose hundreds of interesting faults and cracks in video games, and bring lasting life to games released decades ago. We’ve come a long way from Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell.

3: Ended up making a Beef Wellington for Christmas dinner again this year. Last year was definitely a better effort, but I can recommend the method from Joshua Weissman’s video. It’s a recipe that seems daunting in name but really comes down to proper mise and some small, stepped preparations that result in a day-of cooking experience that only involves some egg wash, some flaky salt, and some time in the oven. Just be sure to have a proper thermometer, and be sure you’re buying actual prosciutto and not, as somebody managed to, prosciutto-wrapped mozzarella sticks.²Me. That someone was me. It was not pretty.

Projects In Progress

Not a lot of progress today on things, outside some general reading and learning of tangential things. I did do a bit of noodling on some various stories I’ve been collecting notes for, with some plot points that might help things flesh themselves out into actual stories and not just interesting ideas without movement.

One of the things I need to get better at is the development of characters who live naturally in stories I’m looking to tell. Developing the people who are the engines of plots is something I generally struggle with at first, and improving there is one of the larger opportunities I see in myself and my growth as a fiction writer.

Notes:

• 1
  I don’t like it either, but that’s what the community has decided to call the Bluesky version of tweeting, so, that’s what you get.
• 2
  Me. That someone was me. It was not pretty.

We have arrived again at Friday, the end of a week, and the end of a week before a long Christmas weekend. I’ve successfully hit around 80% of the seasonal traditions this year, between hanging lights on the house, getting the tree up, to making cookies, to watching a number of Christmas movies, but it still doesn’t quite feel like the holidays. It might be the 42° weather and the absolute lack of snow doing it. It might be me missing the family I’ve lost over the past several years, and that connection they meant to my wider family as a whole. It might be general loneliness and the wider human disconnection we’re feeling as a people these days. Hard to say for sure.

What I read

Speaking of feeling like Christmas, I read Ray Ratto’s recent rant on Christmas Day NFL games, and how we got to this point. The NFL is a vampire squid, wrapping its tenticles around every day of the year, whether in season or not. Of course it colonized Christmas. If it could, it would barge in on Saturdays during the college football regular season as well. Only national legislation keeps it at bay.¹Literally! The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 prevents professional football from occurring on Fridays and Saturdays during the college football regular season, and is the reason we have Thursday Night Football and not Friday Night Football. The NBA has done its best in recent decades to be the Christmas event of choice, but the NFL will find any open hole in the sports calendar and jam more games in there. Christmas being on a Monday only means it aligns more smoothly with the existing Monday Night Football timeframe.

What I watched

Caught the RoofClaim.com Bowl²I’ve long harbored a wild desire to sponsor a bowl game myself, mostly because, given who currently sponsors some of them, it doesn’t seem like it can be THAT expensive. last night, where my USF Bulls trounced Syracuse 45-0, for their first shutout of an FBS opponent since 2005 (also, coincidentally or not, Syracuse). After an up and down year for the team, it was great to see them not only thrash an opponent, but do so with a roster that will mostly return next year intact. Byrum Brown was without question the best Freshman QB in college football and the lack of national recognition of his performance was entirely about a football press that ignores anything outside the P2, while asking facetious questions about why FSU gets excluded from the National Championship race.

What I listened to

Listened to a live stream from Paul Hudson, “Create your first app with SwiftUI and SwiftData“. As I’ve learned Swift and SwiftUI, Paul’s books, videos, and reference documents have been immensely helpful. He organizes his content in a way that meshes with my brain, which is not always the easiest thing to accomplish. He doesn’t go off on unnecessary tangents, but isn’t afraid to add detail where it’s useful, a hard balance to maintain in a field like teaching programming languages. If you’re interested at all in learning Swift, I can’t recommend his stuff more highly, which you can find at his site Hacking With Swift.

Projects In Progress

Webapp: Some struggle with the state of modern development, given my initial learning stems from the days of FTPing files to and from places to make things work. It’s better, but it’s different, so taking some getting used to. But, progress!

Notes:

• 1
  Literally! The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 prevents professional football from occurring on Fridays and Saturdays during the college football regular season, and is the reason we have Thursday Night Football and not Friday Night Football.
• 2
  I’ve long harbored a wild desire to sponsor a bowl game myself, mostly because, given who currently sponsors some of them, it doesn’t seem like it can be THAT expensive.

I picked up all of the supplies to make peanut brittle but the weather refuses to cooperate. The secret family recipe doesn’t really work right without either very expensive equipment in a commercial kitchen (which I obviously don’t have) or the right weather outside. In other words, it needs to be cold out.

This has been one of the warmer Winters of my life, with temperatures for Christmas forecast up into the 50s. It’s to a point I’m considering reopening my woodworking for a week or two, if only because it’s too nice to keep the garage in indoor parking mode for no good reason.

What I read

The latest in John Scalzi’s December Comfort Watches series, on A Knight’s Tale. Scalzi is the reason I started blogging in the first place, and the impetus behind the naming convention I went with. I’ve been reading Scalzi’s work since he started out and his voice, and his journey, have been an inspiration to me as a fledgling writer.

A Knight’s Tale is a common favorite for me as well, in that it’s a movie that refuses to take itself seriously while taking itself seriously. It puts effort into the action, the movement, the sets and costumes, and yet is happy to throw David Bowie tunes into the middle of a period dancing scene. It’s filled with actors that appear to be enjoying their work, including the Czech extras who mostly have no idea what’s being said but fervently cheer at the saying.

It’s a damn fun movie, as are most of the movies Scalzi has highlit¹Per longtime friend Justin Freiberg, one of the perks of gaining a degree in English is that you are officially permitted to make up words. You’ll find I exercise this right at my whim. in his series. Give it a read!

What I watched

Caught up on the latest episode of Slow Horses. The series came out firing from the first episode and continues apace, with characters as fully fledged as the books they emerged from. Gary Oldman fully becomes another character in a history of incredible characters he’s generated throughout his career. While not as jarring as a Drexel or as historically bound as a Churchill, Jackson Lamb is Oldman owning every scene with as much presence as either, or any other of his roles.

Past Oldman, Jack Lowden’s work as River Cartwright shows fantastic capacity to play to the small screen with as much aplomb as he carried in his origins on the stage. For a man constantly being beaten, tied up, shot at, and thrown around as he chases or is chased through the landscape of southern England, he’s still got all the presence of a man under a spotlight, speaking out to an audience beyond the orchestra.

Two full seasons and a third in progress on Apple TV, and hopefully many more to come (the source material, Mick Herron’s Slough House series, has 12 books in it at present).

What I listened to

Caught the last of the final appearance of Charlie Munger, on the Invest Like the Best podcast alongside Stripe’s John Collison. Collison is already an interest of mine, given he and his brother’s work to democratize online payment systems by caring about things that don’t scale individually, but do scale if done on behalf of others. Payment systems are vital infrastructure for the internet and Stripe is a business that’s way out in front in a number of fronts.

Munger recently rereleased his book, Poor Charlie’s Almanack on Stripe Press, thus the interview, and he’s not lost any of his wit even unto his final days on Earth. While he can get a little old-man mumbly at times, he’s got interesting insights to share, much of which are consolidations of his writings and other speeches, and others which are insights Collison pulls out of him on topics of interest.

Projects In Progress

Webapp: Working through a tutorial on Node.js at present, to try and run the backend on this thing. Also mocked up some more wireframes for UI, mostly to help me consider all of the various interactions that will need to be respected in the configuration. The big part I need to get my head around will be related to communicating with third-party APIs, key exchanges, and storage/retrieval from databases. Some of the fun stuff that people fuck up regularly and which I would prefer not to.

Notes:

• 1
  Per longtime friend Justin Freiberg, one of the perks of gaining a degree in English is that you are officially permitted to make up words. You’ll find I exercise this right at my whim.