Mark Carroll's Journal

My programming at work recently has mostly followed a familiar sequence. For each component,

1. figure out how to make it work


2. for a missing piece, write its code, rinse and repeat


3. test and debug it.

Having finished that third step on Wednesday for a new page in a webapp, I am now in the midst of the second step for a related backend service.

The second step is hardest on my sleep when I think about detail of what to do next and just want to get up and do it. It is also the most interesting with its rinse and repeat in that, even if I do not start with a complete picture, if I keep filling in the next piece that I see that I need then eventually I end up having done them all. Sometimes, I find myself building a scaffold of increasing abstraction, such that I build pieces that enable other pieces to be built more easily: earlier pieces make the shape of other pieces clearer and simpler. Fortunately, it always seems that if any pieces remain to be done then at least one of them has a clear path forward, so they all get done in the end.

It made sense to complete my work on the webapp component first because the product and user experience people can test and improve it while I work on the less visible and interactive facets of the project. Further, the component I am working on now isn't strictly required for launch as long as it follows soon afterward. I expect to be able to finish it this coming week.

I was taking a look at what reasonable but cheap telescopes exist these days. Some of the marketing is funny, e.g., the SkyWatcher Evostar range is probably better for objects rather nearer to us than stars. Among the first things I noticed in looking at Celestron's products was how many modern telescopes now come wireless-enabled with apps to control them. I would be less sure of finding them still usable decades later, compared with say, my father's refractor from the 1960s.

I would also be sceptical of software quality partly because, back when I worked on software used by professionals who pay many thousands of pounds for their microscopes, it was clear that the microscope hardware was often of far better quality than the software with which the manufacturers lumbered their users. Goodness knows I am not easygoing when it comes to user experience, hence my grumbling ever since smart telephones and televisions became dominant, so I am cautious when it comes to buying software-dependent products.

R. fancied seeing Wicked (2024) and we get £5-each tickets at Odeon for having sold our souls to Jeff Bezos so off we went into last night's wind and rain. I didn't know what to expect: I don't have much memory of the original story, perhaps some memory of Tin Man (2007) which hardly hewed closely, and I am not much up on modern musicals. It turned out to be better than I expected: I found myself engaged and I thought that the green lady sang very well. Given what I know or guess of what constrains the plot of the followup, I am curious to see where it goes.

Listening to Radio Scotland tonight, they did well for me in choosing songs from big albums from 1984, then followed up with a show which seemed to threaten folk songs in Gaelic. Giving it a chance, I've been surprised to find that I mostly like the music, at least as background. (Typically, British and Irish folk I'd avoid even more than I would country music.)

We recently had a storm pass over Britain, not that it much affected us here in Glasgow. A high pressure system is following it, tomorrow should be pleasant, just in time for not-the-weekend of course. I took the day off for Thanksgiving so perhaps we'll be able to take a nice walk with L. This evening, we drive out to the supermarket to pick up the remaining items for Thanksgiving, including a turkey crown. The traditional meal with the turkey, stuffing, pies, etc. is the kind of food I enjoy, just as I also enjoy the traditional English meals like a Sunday roast. In unrelated news, I remain overweight.

Recently, R. made us some pan de coco. She wasn't impressed with the yeast or the coconut but I thought the buns came out well. I miss living in Maharlika Village where we could walk over to the market with the people with the, er, coconut machines, and R. could select a coconut and instruct them as to what she wanted, then we would come away with our fresh, er, grounds and fluids.

I try to drink plenty of liquid each day, typically glasses of room-temperature water and hot tisanes, sometimes various tea and coffee also. About the only use I have for ice is for making a bowl of very cold water in which to cool boiled eggs rapidly.

With our colder weather, something new has happened: no longer do I find glasses of cold water appetizing. It would take plenty of tisanes to get me what feels like enough liquid. So, inspired by a colleague back in Dundee who used to drink plenty of warm water, I've now started doing likewise: it's okay. So, that's the new pattern, at least for now.

R. recently commented on forecast wintry mix. We certainly had it this morning, not that the precipitation fazed our dog L. when I took him out this morning. He is more willingly wearing his larger jacket, which is an improvement given that he was initially trotting away at the sight of it, as a kind of gentle protest. The ground had plenty of icy wet slush. Drivers seemed cautious, perhaps with it being one of the first such mornings of the season.

Several weeks ago, we found the Forge Shopping Centre, took quite a while for us to notice it given how long we've now been in central Glasgow. It's fairly linear with a fair range of stores, including an integral Asda at which we shopped this morning. There's a cafe in the concourse called Sisters which serves good food at a good price but enough of the staff are variously unfriendly that it isn't worth the mental cost. I get the impression that they'd prefer us not to bother them by ordering things. There is also quite a range of unlabelled dessert items, leaving me inclined to order only those things I can more precisely identify both to them and to myself.

I held my diet for seven weeks, weighed myself, and had lost only a kilogram, which dispirited me enough that I've eaten more freely since, though at least without gaining much. I don't know when I'll actually start my journey back to what I weighed when I moved from Tennessee.

( I was busy with a family visit. )

( The rented Volvo was a little annoying. )

I have also been involved with a major product launch at work and have been somewhat covering as colleagues have also been taking some days off. At least work stuff has gone fairly smoothly and I have enjoyed getting back to writing some code. My work-life balance is back under control, at least to a first approximation.

Given the above activity, last weekend was my first reasonably free one for quite some time. I spent the Saturday with family visiting from Dundee. Now we are to ready the flat for relisting for sale through a different agent. Among all that, we will try to find another weekend for camping, not that the current weather is encouraging.

( Our dog's a good weight, I am finally dieting to improve mine. )

( Money's tight at the moment. )

A nice aspect of not using a large ISP's mail provision is that I get to see the mail server logs. In particular, if somebody did not get an e-mail from me, I can see evidence of that their system accepted the message (or not) then pursue the matter accordingly. It occurred to me that, as I use Gnus for my e-mail client, which is very programmable, it ought to be possible, for each sent message, to grab relevant server logs before they expire and store them alongside the message itself. A bit of elisp and ssh and grep would probably go a long way in my case, though still more than I will get around to implementing myself. Still, I expect that many others would also like such a feature, so it seemed odd that I had not noticed other mention of it.