Michael Camilleri

After eating far too much terrible food over the Christmas break, I’ve started time-restricted feeing again. While I think it would be better to just eat healthier, of all the adjustments I tried making to my eating habits last year, this was the one I was able to maintain and that resulted in consistent weight reduction.

One difference from last year is that I’m using the app Zero to track how successful I am at completing my fasts. I don’t know if I’ll actually use this data for anything but like a lot of ‘quantified self’ stuff, it seems helpful to have it.

I almost bought a Mac Mini after seeing a top-of-the-line 2011 model on Craigslist for ¥30,000. I’ve been thinking of getting a Mini for some time and while I had intended to wait until the current line is refreshed, the price got my attention. Why ‘almost’ then? Well, the seller cancelled on me at the last minute on Thursday and didn’t respond to an offer to meet on Friday. We’re supposed to meet today but I’m now only 20% sure this is really going to happen.

I can’t believe that Rise of Skywalker didn’t use these designs for the Star Destroyers. Some might consider the tweet contains mild spoilers so avoid if you’re still waiting to see the film.

I’m very late to this piece by Ian Bogost about Untitled Goose Game but you really should read it if you haven’t already. Bogost takes what in lesser hands might be some interesting observations about a pretty niche game and turns it into a deeper meditation about the relationship between games and work.

Speaking of deep meditations, Kurt sent me a link to ‘Dark Ecology’, a piece in Orion from more than seven years ago. I disagree with it but found it a stimulating read nevertheless.

I guess Friday is now my day to listen to new music because this week it was Fazil Say’s new release of the Complete Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas (Apple Music). Yes, that’s more than 10 hours of a man alone at a piano.

Eri, the kids and I spent Australia Day meeting for lunch with another Australian here in Tokyo and his family. We didn’t end up doing anything particularly Aussie but then perhaps that was the Australian thing to do? Speaking of which: this tweet.

I read the most incredible philosophical essay this week. ‘Kant’s Untermenschen’ by Charles Mills argues that the racism of egalitarian philosophers like Immanuel Kant shouldn’t be swept under the rug as a minor anomaly but understood as being central to their worldview. That all sounds really heavy but it was also one of the funniest essays I’ve read in some time.

I also loved the blog post Alexis King wrote about type systems. The central point of the post is well argued but the postscript at the end is the real gold. The main cause of type systems ‘getting in the way’ of programming isn’t whether something uses a static type system or not; it’s whether the type system is structural or nominal.

Finally, I felt like I learnt more about typography from this post by Frank Chimero than anything else I’ve ever read (admittedly a low bar).

Oh, and I might have finally discovered why the album is called Kid A.

I started working on a blog post about the Apple Watch Series 5 but haven’t finished it. I want to write something more substantial than ‘the display is always on!!!1!1!111!!’ but that’s really the meat of it.

I spent most of Friday listening to music by NF. I described him to David as a younger, slightly less angry version of Eminem. What appeals to me is the same thing: the wordplay and the use of language to make complex rhythms. The song that drew me in was ‘Paid My Dues’ (Apple Music).

I took John out on Sunday and it was one of the first times I’ve gone out with just him on a spur of the moment thing. Emma and I used to do things like that all the time but I haven’t done it so much with John as it always make more sense to bring Emma along too.

I’m not sure how successful I’ll be at keeping this up but as the number suggests this is the first in a (hopefully) series of notes about my week. It’s inspired by/shamelessly stolen from Paul Mucur.