Month: September 2020

One of the reasons I’ve begun to keep an online diary is because my episodic memory is so poor that I can’t remember things very well after I’ve done them. This is just par for the course with me – I struggle to remember much of anything I’ve ever done.

I quickly discovered that this amnesia applies, though to a lesser extent, even at the end of the very same day so I began to take notes to jog my memory as to things I could write. I did not do this for Monday, September 28, and so my memory of the day is muddy.

I know that I spent most of the day working at a relatively slow pace as I was looking after my 2 year old while Mrs C went out on another 30+ mile epic bike ride. I paid my employees and I also bought them all a £50 Amazon gift voucher each just for the fun of it. Beyond that, the day is somewhat a blur, so I’m going to write it off here.

Tea was some roast chicken, and I made some gravy and bought some gluten free Yorkshire puddings to go with it.

Weekends have a way of flying by for me lately.

This weekend was dominated by my signing up for Geoguessr Pro. Geoguessr is an online game where you’re presented with different locations on Google Street View and you have to put a pin on a map where you think the location is. You get more points the closer you are to the location.

So I spent a fair bit of time playing Geoguessr including with my middle daughter who found it exciting to play a custom made level of our town and attempt to identify numerous locations close to us. She’s pretty good at it, except for actually placing the pin on the map!

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I took the same daughter to her special dance lesson some 50 miles away on Sunday morning as my eldest was doing her “eleven plus” exam, a somewhat antiquated exam used in various areas of the UK to get into selective grammar schools, which we still have in this area. It seems likely she will make it in.

Due to the rule of six, I didn’t attend the usual family Sunday dinner at the in-laws, so I instead went to my office and dismantled some shelves and moved some boxes around as we’re downsizing from three offices to two. We don’t even need two really, but we’re taking things in baby steps. After that I enjoyed the hot tub, made myself a pie for tea, and enjoyed watching the prison episode of House.

One of the cats has had diarrhea for a couple of days after being let out in the garden for most of the past week. He’s such a glutton that he’s eaten a ton of random plants which have clearly flushed him out. Tidying up a big pool of brown stinky water multiple times a day is officially not fun.

Another full day of work. Friday is perhaps my busiest day each week as I have four newsletters I’m directly responsible for, plus one other I give the OK to.

A man turned up from the company that will be building our new conservatory. He was scheduled to do a “test dig” to figure out the quality of the foundations on our existing, and collapsing, conservatory. I wasn’t expecting him, however, as we’d already committed to having the foundations redone from scratch, but he wanted to have a look anyway despite it chucking down with rain.

Our cats seem to have lost all sense of taste after having been let outside for the first time this week. They no longer seem to enjoy the taste of their usual food, but still beg for it. Going outside after being inside for several months must be a bit mind blowing, I might go off my favourite foods for a bit as well.

I really enjoyed this time lapse video of a flight from Singapore to Paris – it’s amazing what you get to see along the way.

Had a good chat with Corey Quinn of Last Week in AWS fame about the banal realities of running newsletters as a business.

The weather continued to get worse today with lots of wind, heavy rains, and the true force of autumn making itself known. Similarly bad weather is forecast for the entire weekend which is fine by me.

Had some sort of Moroccan meatballs in tomato sauce with pitta bread for tea. I wasn’t convinced it was gluten free but Mrs C says it is. I shall find out in a few days.

A relatively boring day today, mostly made up of work on our Ruby Weekly and Node Weekly newsletters. The Node space is rather quiet lately and it has the sense of being a technology whose excitement has plateaued, though I don’t see it going away any time soon.

Once I was up and ready I rode my scooter to the local shop to grab a caffeinated drink and spent most of the day working.

I’m becoming concerned with our email service provider (Sendgrid) and overall deliverability issues we’re having, so I’ve begun to investigate the possibility of running two ESPS in tandem, both Sendgrid and Amazon Web Services’ SES system. This is easier said than done, however, as both systems work differently and require separate integrations to work. This work will take me a little while yet but an initial test worked out OK.

I wrote the diary for yesterday at the dinner table as it appears I have already begun to fall behind!

I finally finished reading the Prison Doctor book I’ve had sat around for months. It’s an OK read; quite matter of fact without any real overarching themes to chew on. A doctor tells her story of retiring as a GP only to be lured into the world of being a prison doctor at a variety of places including Wormwood Scrubs. If you have any interest in what that might be like, it’s worth a read, but it’s reasonably depressing as it highlights the sorts of problems prisoners face and how it’s just a never ending problem.

Started Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop and only made it a chapter in before I had to go to sleep. I’m a bit out of practice at reading novels, and particularly ones with language as flowery as this. I did encounter a cute bit of 1930’s slang, however, with “foregonners” which is their time’s equivalent of saying things like totes emosh, I guess.

Had sausages and chips for tea.

After 2 particularly summery days, today was cold and rainy, but it felt apt as it was also my 39th birthday. Luckily autumn and winter make up my favourite half of the year, so I had double reason to celebrate as autumn formally began.

The winter put Kristina off of coming to my house to give me my birthday presents from work so I went to hers briefly instead to drop off the payslips (I am far too disorganised to hold on to them for long) and pick up my haul which included an Adidas bag, Adidas face masks, and some similar things to help me in my quest to become a walking Adidas commercial.

I spent £8 on a “Positive SSL” certificate for this site, so now you can access it at https://petercooper.org.uk/ for a pointless amount of increased security. I took this route rather than begging the provider to add Let’s Encrypt support specifically because I wanted to see how typical users of this host deal with the situation. The process was a little convoluted and felt rather old fashioned in these Let’s Encrypt times but the host took care of things pretty well and it will work for another year without me having to touch anything.

My parents came to visit for a few hours and brought me a variety of Blurays of older films including The Italian Job and Midnight Express. The 60s and 70s remain relatively undiscovered for me in terms of movies (although A Clockwork Orange is in my top ten movies ever) so I’m looking forward to doing some catching up there.

Another gift I was particularly impressed by was a bobble hat with a built in head torch which you can charge up via USB given to me by my sister-in-law and her husband. Every small piece of electronics should be USB chargeable IMHO.

We went as a family to have a meal at an American restaurant called The Ranch in Louth where I devoured a fantastic 16 oz ribeye steak, before drifting off to sleep quite rapidly on my return – care of a mild dose of antihistamines – while reading The Prison Doctor by Dr Amanda Brown.

Attempted to find a way to host this diary today, but ultimately felt that plain text files was the way to begin. Setting up a clean blog without a pile of crap on it or an absolutely terrible design isn’t easy nowadays. Eventually I changed my mind and threw up WordPress on one of my random domains instead, and so here we are.

Went into the office as we’re now all going on each Tuesday (and Tuesday only) but I forgot my office keys as I’m not used to carrying them anymore! Got let in, socialized with staff, and ended up going home again quite quickly via B&Q and then the local second hand book store and the music store.

At the book store, I met the proprietor who was a well dressed, well spoken man clearly with eclectic tastes. We spoke about books generally and I invited him to find me a book that was considered edgy in its time but would now merely seem comedic. I came away with Scoop by Evelyn Waugh which I shall begin soon.

I also purchased a book where someone visits the various areas announced in Radio 4’s Shipping Forecast. The bookshop owner seemed quite excited by this book and confessed that he has recordings of the Shipping Forecast on cassette tape at home.

At the music shop I didn’t buy music but DVDs and Blurays. Blurays for the kids and a few trashy DVDs for myself to watch when I want to get away from it all and sit on the landing with the only TV that actually has a DVD player. I picked up CKY2K, Reservoir Dogs, a documentary about the Gumball Rally and a few other things.

Toilet rolls appear to be subject to hoarding again as the idea of a second lockdown roll in. Given we somehow go through one a day, keeping on top of this is important in my household.

I’ve finally found a use for the ridiculously expensive Surface Book we bought – it makes a good stand for my MacBook Pro when it’s overheating as it wicks away the heat. I’ve realized this isn’t a great idea long term so I’ve purchased a block of aluminium off of eBay for £35.

Last year I purchased my father a National Geographic magazine membership and they’ve sent me my FINAL and VERY URGENT reminder to renew this in the form of a set of documents upon which they expect me to write my credit card details and return it to them in the post. They must be having a laugh. I’d renew online but I’m not sending my financial details in the post.

Dinner was a vegan burger and some potato waffles because most of the family were out at various dance classes.

Yesterday we watched the Tom Hanks movie Big. It was unable to fully hold the kids’ attention as it’s not animated, noisy or a musical.

Laura went on another epic bike ride with her cycling club today, so I spent much of the day in my easy chair reading the remainder of The Diary of a Bookseller which has inspired the creation of this diary of my very own.

Microsoft bought the Bethesda game studio today. It made me think just how little I generally care about game studios as an end user. I’d much rather games were associated with creative individuals who vouched for them, as with directors and movies. There are people who are associated with games like John Carmack and Sid Meier, but this seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

I spoke with Corey Quinn of AWS and Twitter fame for a podcast interview this evening. He was his usual amicable self and we talked about things like how character and persistence are important in the modern world of online media.

Pasta bolognese for tea.

And, do you remember? It’s the 21st night of September.