It’s probably because I’ve had a pretty stressful couple of months, but I’ve managed to get a really heavy cold (not covid if the tests are accurate), which is sticking around. I feel behind with everything and overwhelmed, but hopefully it will pass soon.
I just noticed that an order for keyboard components I made includes Kailh MX hotswap sockets, not the Choc version, which is fairly crucial. Good job I noticed before all the rest of the components have arrived! That would be a bit frustrating.
Ali by Vieux Farka Touré and Khruangbin
This is a fabulous album if you like desert blues. 🎵
New post: Goodbye Bella (2006-2022)
😿💙
New post: Keyboard layout updates and Meow
More fun with keyboards and Emacs.
It was annual vaccination/check-up time for our two cats today. Bella was still asleep when it was time to leave, so she hadn’t yet had her breakfast. There was also a barking dog in the waiting room. The result after vaccinating and claw-trimming two cats was: one extremely hangry, stressed, and wriggly cat and one growly/hissy one; one bsag with multiple minor lacerations to hands and arms and clothes covered in fur; one miraculously unscathed and still patient vet.
There are so many terms and sayings that come from printing: getting the wrong end of the stick, typecasting, stereotyping, cliché, mind your p’s and q’s, etc…
Yesterday I learned that uppercase and lowercase comes from the practice of typesetters keeping their type in cases (shallow drawers in a vertical cabinet), with the capital letters kept in a separate case above the lowercase ones.
I’m staying in a beautiful place in Sussex for a few days. It has such a lovely feel and is deep in the countryside ❤️. Aaannddd relax…
New post: Work Clean
My review of Dan Charnas’ book ‘Work Clean’ on adapting the working practices of professional chefs to other kinds of work.
Ooof. I just got the ‘Barbecue Meatbag’ achievement on Carrot weather with the current 36C temperature. Do not want. 🫠
New post: Sprucing up the design again
I’ve had a tidy up on the blog, added dark mode and search!
New post: Setting up a development environment with Nix and Home Manager
Paging @NatHarari and @patbak who expressed an interest in this 🤓
I somehow persuaded myself to try using Nix to to manage my dotfiles and command line environment again. Things have changed since I last tried it, and so far I am finding it magical. Two different Macs (with different architectures) set up identically just like that!
Day 31: Despite the smiley clippy, marking exam scripts is a bit of an endurance test. 📷 #mbmay
Day 30: fish 📷 #mbmay
I’ve currently got zsh set as my login shell, but when I start a fish shell using an iTerm profile, I obviously don’t inherit $PATH etc. as I would if calling fish from a zsh shell. But I don’t want to duplicate that stuff if possible. I’m not sure of the best way to handle it.
I have a question for fish shell users: do you use fish as your login shell, and have you encountered any problems with that if you do a lot of scripting with external tools?
Day 29: Thankfully only one of those stripes! 📷 #mbmay
Day 28: The weather was very fair that day. 📷 #mbmay
Day 27: written. One of Eric Ravilious’ lovely dust jackets. 📷 #mbmay
Day 26: May’s schedule has been very busy. 📷#mbmay
Day 25: Not quite a mountain, but the closest we’ve got in the Midlands - British Camp on the Malverns. 📷 #mbmay
Day 24: This nerve plant has an intricate pattern of veins. 📷 #mbmay
Day 23: Today the rain in Spain Birmingham has been falling mainly on the plain. 📷 #mbmay
