Category: Writing

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.

Weird one today, in that interstitial week before Christmas, especially when it falls on a Monday. Felt unrooted, drifting. One of those days.

What I read

Re-read/re-watched the Joshua Weissman recipe video for Beef Wellington before hitting the store. I made this last year to considerable delight from the family, so gonna take another whack at it this year. Takes a few days of prep, but well worth the effort, and wasn’t, in the end, all that difficult.

What I watched

Caught up on the SNL Weekend Update between Che and Jost. The pre-Christmas joke-off is always delightful, but this year they feel like they’re really investing. A guest star for reaction shots was a masterstroke by Michael Che. Worth catching, if only to laugh groan with your whole body.

What I listened to

Mostly grocery store Christmas muzak, as I wandered around collecting bits for Monday’s dinner. I did queue up the new episode of Script Notes, the podcast by John August and Craig Mazin, with their guest Christopher Nolan and do a deeper dive on the Oppenheimer screenplay. Will probably have finished it by the time this posts (barring unexpected events).

Projects In Progress

Not a ton of progress on anything so far today. Going to take the post-dinner period and try to lock back in and move things forward. And if not? Well, then that’s how it went. Trying to also learn some self-forgiveness here, which I’m not historically very good at. Some days are just gonna be like that.