Wow, August was busy – I’m struggling to remember how to relax after a few weeks of holiday, juggling work, various family members visiting, and all the events going on. It’s been a good month, but it’d be nice to find some semi-semblance of routine among the daylight hours again.
The first half of the month was holiday. Fantastic to finally show our boys the heights of the Alps (“wow”) and the sights of Paris. Highlights were:
- Getting a cable car up from Les Houches to the ankle-hills by Mont Blanc
- Zooming down a small-but-fun luge coaster at Chamonix
- Surviving a 15 minute drive round the edge of Paris, including 5 minutes of wrong direction and getting honked at
- Going up the Arc de Triomphe and looking down on all the traffic (although oddly not too much – Paris is feeling fresh when it comes to cars)
- Seeing and going up the amazing dome of the Galeries Lafayette. Last time I was there it was December and grey and empty, and I accepted a new job from the rooftop. None of that this time.
- Pastries, pastries, beer and pastries
The week after that I caught up with some work while the family went to the Eastbourne air show. My folks were over for a few days, and we tried out the new Hail Mary games diner cafe which has a blend of games, arcade machine, and bigger table-top wargaming / roleplaying.
Got a new kitten. This is keeping us a little busier but definitely way easier than a dog. After a few days of everyone veto-ing each other’s name suggestions, we finally carried on a family tradition of basing it on our dinner. So “Scampi” it is. Say hi, Scampi.
Had a few days with son 1, and went to an evening concert with a string quartet and pianist covering Studio Ghibli tunes, set in the wonderful St George’s Church. I didn’t have the set list and couldn’t see the musicians playing, but did enjoy just closing my eyes and listening, and trying to place the films. An interesting exercise in how musical styles really reflect the setting and tone of each film.
Work has been the usual August juggle, but with some good progress. I finished hooking 75 WordPress sites up to Wordfence central and MainWP for a client, meaning we now have a couple of security templates we can apply in seconds, and all the maintenance and update control you’d expect. MainWP doesn’t have quite the control I’d like (such as applying automatic updates to sites with a particular tag), but does do a lot, is self-hosted, and has the option of a lifetime license.
I can continue to tighten up security overall across the sites, want to make processes clearer, and put secondary systems in place that alert us to where systems aren’t hooked up yet (and automate the config as much as possible). It took a few months of grind to get everything in place initially, so it’s nice to get into some of the peripheral and planning work. But yeah, sometimes you just got to do the grunt work, right?
I’ve also been finishing up converting an old Firebase install to the latest version, including switching it over to using Node modules. This has been a great learning project, as my web devops tool chain knowledge took a bit of a back seat when I was focusing on team and company leadership. It’s been slightly odd asking people about things like Browserify, and feeling “old”, but other devs – and a general sense for long term / permacomputing thinking – have kept me sane. I see lots of people go mad and burnout trying to keep up with life, and web tech seems to have been at the forefront. Definite sense of satisfaction catching up on the last 10 years in a couple of days.
A rainbow happened.
✍️ Updates:
- Finally wrote up my self-hosting infrastructure
- Updated my “now” page
📚 Reading:
Continuing my graphic novel binge, including:
- Batman: the Neighborhood – decent read, not sure I’ll carry on the series.
- Batman: Fear State – oops, didn’t realise this was the last in the series until I was halfway through. mixed.
- Batman: Dark Knights: Metal – excited to start this series. not usually a fan of the wider DC-verse and “traditional” super heroes, but this was great.
- Batman: Haunted Knight – this was a lot of fun, with three spooky tales based on different traditional stories (such as Alice in Wonderland, and A Christmas Carol)
- Uzumaki – been wanting to catch up on some proper Junji Ito and this didn’t disappoint at all. I love the simple line art that explodes into grim, detailed scenes at the turn of a page, and this scratches a real “cosy horror” itch for me. Pick of the month.
I also read:
- Other Minds about cephalopods and alternative evolutions of consciousness. A fascinating topic, but the book was quite haphazard and I rushed the second half.
- Numero Zero – big Eco fan here, so was intrigued by his last, and much smaller book, which delved into propaganda, and the power of media. Felt like a very relevant book to today’s world with an intriguing core to it, but ultimately misses the depth of weaving that The Prague Cemetery brought to the table.
🎮 🎲 Playing:
Nothing too energy-intensive in video games. I ended up uninstalling Rocket League to focus on some others, and didn’t manage to get back to Cryptmaster yet, sadly. But did enjoy:
- Powerwash Simulator – so mind-numbingly relaxing and menial, plus a local lot to boot. I can really imagine just hanging out with people while cleaning playgrounds – maybe even business meetings? 🙂 Just wish it had proper crossplay.
- The Whiteout – Playdate Season 2’s narrative game which I enjoyed, but not as much as I hoped. I may go back for alternative endings, but the challenges weren’t very challenging, and characterisation and story didn’t land quite enough to justify the simplicity.
- Family classics Mario Kart 8 and Boomerang Fu on the Switch. We finally picked up the MK8 course booster pack – given I got the original MK8 on the Wii U after the Switch came out, it seemed apt to get the DLC now that the Switch 2 is available.
We played some lovely tabletop games – I should do quick posts about these, but we’ve been merrily enjoying:
All very small boxes to carry around on a day trip, and perfect for 3-4 family fun.
📺 Watching:
- Mostly Blippo+ on the Playdate, which has built up a little narrative over the last couple of months – but more than that, it’s developed its own sense of fun around that. One day I’ll post about some of the content, but in the meantime it’s coming out (in colour!) on Steam and Switch later this month.
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