8th April 2019 – 14th April 2019

A busy week between work, childcare and tiredness.

Client work

Last week I managed to mix in a lot of the work on my client’s new server that was actually done this week – an easy mistake when working across the weekend then only writing up my notes half way through the week. So, on top of the mixed in work, I managed to get the last bits of the sites set up and tested, some database queries optimised to make a report page work correctly again, and the old server switched off so the client won’t be paying for two running with only one doing any work.

Otherwise it was all investigating situations to find bugs, fixing minor bugs, getting Laura to work on bigger tasks with me testing them, and lining up potential future work.

My Projects

Not enough progress to talk about this week. Must do better next week.

Productivity

Thanks to friends and family, I got a lot more work time than I expected, with Tom visiting people for at least part of the day every day Katie was working. That let me get on with client work, and some tasks for home as well on Thursday.

One thing I forgot from the notes last week was I woke up with a migraine during Friday night, which didn’t help my productivity as I had to work that Saturday. This week I again woke up with a migraine during Friday night. Fortunately both were weak, with this one weaker than the previous. I think the cause of both was some food I got from the Street Diner street food market in Brighton, which is the only common link across the two days before the migraines. Most likely the sauce they added to the food was the cause, but I’m not interested in experimenting enough to work out if it’s that or something in the marinade the stall was using. Shame as the brisket they serve is lovely.

Learning

Still not enough time on this, I’m hoping to get some done this coming week as I’ve got a bit more time for work than this week, around some more family care time.

The Farm

In the Caxton Arms this week, and numbers up a touch to 14, and another good night, although I spent a bit too long talking to one person, although he is new and I thought he did need a bit of help trying to slim down what he is trying to do (although he may have felt otherwise.) My general notes were…

• Handling clients who use technical language incorrectly
• Automation
• Hacking Notepad
• Looking forward to a meeting
• Reasons to learn Assembly language
• Smaller services being bought by Amazon/Google/Microsoft/Apple
• Commenting code
• Putting out educational material for self promotion and profit
• Oauth
• How to narrow down what to learn next
• Searching Google when there’s not much material on a topic
• Training a machine learning system

Family

We headed to Nymans Gardens on Sunday so Tom could take part in their Easter Egg hunt, which this year was finding hanging letters and poems scattered around the gardens. A very nice, relaxing trip that let me dust off my old Canon bridge camera and take some photos.

Reading: Still on A Scanner Darkly by Philip K Dick. It’s decent, but a bit confusing when I’m tired.

Watching: Solo the Han Solo origins Star Wars film. A decent addition to the franchise, I’m not sure it really needed to be made but it was enjoyable and nice to see another Star Wars film not built around The Force.

Writing with: Mainly a Papermate Inkjoy 0.7 gel pen. Another smooth, consistent writer from Papermate, in common with their other gel pens this one is rather ink hungry, but as it gives a thick, dark line that isn’t a surprise.