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w/e 2021-04-18

This week I have been listening to Noname’s 2018 album, Room 25 which I enjoy the sound of (contains bad words):

I can’t remember where I first heard her although watching her Tiny Desk Concert prompted me to have another listen.


§ I spent a fair bit of time this week writing more tests for the Pepys website, which I thought I was last doing maybe three weeks ago but apparently it was nearly two months. Time flies when you’re doing whatever it is I’ve been doing for the past two months.

Test coverage was at 59% which, given the tiny number of tests I’d written, targeting very few bits of code, only goes to show what a nonsense code coverage percentages are I guess. I’m now up to 74 nonsense percentage points. Obviously, I am aiming for 110%.

It’s tedious writing all these tests, and feels a bit pointless given most of the code has been running successfully for years, but the aim is to feel happier about blindly updating stuff without breaking anything or thinking too much about it.


§ A couple of weeks back I did a big sigh when Heroku said it was updating some Redis thing that I use for a cache on a couple of personal sites and a client’s site and it required some configuration and code changes to keep working. I use Heroku precisely because I have little interest in configuring or thinking about this kind of thing.

I followed their instructions for one of the sites and got application errors. I fiddled around for longer and eventually had to go back to how it was before. Dull story slightly less dull: they’d got their documentation wrong and I had to send them (a) the name of the python package they meant to use (different to the one they named) and (b) the correct configuration code.

Their support guy was very helpful, with long responses discussing things in great detail, which was very good. But I don’t want to spend £15 a month to host a sprawling-but-low-traffic website, only to spend a couple of hours fixing documentation errors.


§ I was pleased and surprised to read that Google are moving FeedBurner to “a more stable, modern infrastructure”. Given Google’s penchant for shutting things down I assumed the same would happen to FeedBurner, given it hasn’t noticeably changed for years. I never wanted to even mention it anywhere, in case someone at Google saw a tweet and said, “What’s this FeedBurner thing we own? Oh, turn that off!”

I shouldn’t have got my hopes up too high because a different announcement explains the service is going into “maintenance mode” rather than heading for a glorious renaissance. They’re “turning down” a few things, including the ability for people to subscribe to RSS feed items by email. Which makes some sense – running a mailing list service is quite a thing in itself – although also seems like odd timing given the recent surge in popularity of email newsletters.


§ As nice as Adriene is I must have recently hit a patch of yoga sessions involving even more chat, special breathing, and breaking into song than usual, because my tolerance was wearing thin.

Thankfully, this question on “the green” – “yoga makes me homicidal…” – prompted some useful responses and over the past couple of weeks I’ve followed a few of Paula Lay’s videos (Yoginimelbourne on YouTube) and have been enjoying them.

A quiet moment of settling into things and then straight to Doing Some Yoga, with no singing, catchphrases, or other superfluous chatter. I think Adriene is probably a little better at explaining what to do – I hardly have to look at the screen – but otherwise this is a welcome change for me, for now.


§ We watched the second season of Better Call Saul this week which continued to be enjoyable. It’s kind of odd having the two largely separate narratives – Jimmy (Saul’s real name in this Breaking Bad prequel) and Mike. I often found myself wanting to only watch Mike’s story, Jimmy’s sometimes feeling a bit drawn out.

Last night we watched Adult Life Skills (2016), directed by Rachel Tunnard, starring Jodie Whitaker as an almost-30-year-old ex-twin living in her mum’s shed. It was good. You need a certain tolerance for British quirkiness/tweeness/whimsy to get into it (my tolerance is high) but I think its emotional weight helps it get away with what would otherwise be annoying. Fun, silly and touching.


§ I forgot to say last week – I finished reading W.G. Sebald’s Rings of Saturn which left me with the same feeling as his other books: I feel like I’m supposed to like them a lot more than I actually do. They’re fine! But I got a little bored and I don’t feel like it left much impression on me.


§ We popped into Abergavenny the other day to get a few things, the first time I’ve walked through a town/city centre for a few months. One jab done and I still feel super cautious and nervous, attempting to steer wide paths around oncoming people, keen to get out of shops as quickly as possible… I’m having trouble imagining going back to normal, unfortunately.

Still, it’s been very nice to have some sunshine. I hope you have some sunshine.


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