I mentioned in a previous notes post that I didn’t want to pressure myself if I didn’t feel like sharing what happened in the week before, but I think I overcorrected a little. If there is one thing I’ve learned as part of my recent commitment to get my shit together, it’s that sometimes you still need to push yourself a little if you want the habit to stick. I know, I was just as shocked as you are right now when I learned this.

2 years ago, Camille and I went to a Half Alive concert, a band I mostly listened to when Camille put it on, at home or in the car. The concert helped me realized how much I loved them and it’s since became my top listened to artist. They’re doing another tour this year, unfortunately Vancouver is not included this time. The good news is that Seattle is and that I love (taking the train to) Seattle, so a couple of months ago, we bought tickets. Sadly, earlier this month we decided not to go and (try to) sell our tickets.

Being a very privileged cis/straight/white male, it took me a while to catch up on the fact that traveling to the US was scary these days. I asked a few friends from the USA, from France and from Canada and everybody is at different levels of worry. While I would probably be fine, there is a growing part of me that doesn’t want to risk it. Hopefully Seattle will still be there in a few months, Half Alive will tour North America again and we’ll eventually hop back onto a better timeline.

I missed my run on Saturday 8th. I slept poorly the night before and couldn’t find it in me to head out in peak Vancouver weather. Fortunately, I had a track night the next Tuesday so I wouldn’t feel like a lazy piece of crap and I did go on the 15th… during which it rained as well. I honestly don’t think I would have been any less wet if I’d jumped into the ocean. It was still fun. Running 18km under the rain became strangely meditative.

I’m still deep into Resident Evil 4 on the Steamdeck and honestly? This game is incredible. I played it a long time ago on PlayStation (2, probably?) but there was a bunch of things I didn’t remember, either because I never finished the game, they changed a bunch of things when they remastered it or I simply forgot. The fun thing is that this game allowed me to practice my Spanish, as the enemies will scream “¡Matalo!” as they try to kill you. I originally thought they were also saying “somos tomatillos” (“we are tomatillos”) but after checking with my Spanish colleagues, turns out they say “somos tu martillo” (“we are thine hammer”) so I guess I still need to practice. I don’t want to embarrass myself next time I have to save the president’s daughter from Spanish-speaking zombies. I’m pretty sure I’ve reached the ending based on who I’ve been fighting (and who killed me) last night, so I’m starting to think about what my next game should be. The good news is that after a quick check, there are still a few Resident Evil games that are compatible with the Steamdeck that I haven’t played yet.

I read on Robb Knight’s blog (honestly one of my favourite blog to follow these days) about this mastodon post from Kevin who keeps a blank letter-sized Pixelmator doc open to snaps images. I truly loved that idea so I’ve started doing the same, except I’ve been using Freeform, because I like the idea of an infinite canvas, grouped by weeks. (And I like Freeform.)

I’m currently in my second week. I’ve been mostly copy/pasting fun bits of chats (nothing that could incriminate any of the participants in 10 years) and fun pictures I’ve run into. I never know what to leave on my laptop’s screen when it’s plugged into an external monitor, but know I do and it’s a constant reminder to keep track of the fun stuff.

I’m curious to see how big I can make the board until it becomes a problem. The board can be exported as a PDF file, which is good enough for now if I decide to switch apps in the future. I don’t expect Freeform’s file format to be easy to parse, but that’s something I’ll probably look into when I’m very bored (although I do hope that someone will have looked into that before then).

Our 15 years old cat has been extremely frustrating to deal with in the past 2 weeks, waking us up at 5ish in the morning and refusing to let us sleep. Unfortunately we ended up caving and giving him food, which has reinforced this behaviour and… well it’s an endless circle. Starting this week we’re hoping to bring him back toward a more manageable schedule, rethink his diet and feeding hours… it’s going to be a fun few days.

Some cool stuff

I have to thank Jen Schiffer for making me wanna write this blog post in this free flowing way, so it’s only fair I recommend her blog this week. I’ve also mentioned Robb Knight so I’ll mention him again here, because his blog has been a constant source of inspiration for me ever since I subscribed, a few months ago. Finally, I’ll just give a shout out to Pivot To AI, his author David Gerard, has been extremely prolific in documenting a lot of the bullshit going on in the AI world these days and I’ve been enjoying it.