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I didn’t mention this last week but I went to one of the regularly scheduled observation days for Emma’s primary school. It was nice to be able to see her in class but mostly the experience just made me feel old. The classroom had a gigantic TV behind the teacher’s desk that appeared to be running a touchscreen interface connected to a laptop. This wasn’t in use in this particular lesson (mathematics) but it really felt like I’d stepped into a classroom from the future.
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I also didn’t mention that it must be a day ending in Y because I’ve started dieting again. This time I’m trying to reduce caloric intake. I downloaded FoodNoms (again) and signed up for the yearly subscription (again). The good thing about being a week behind in posting about it is that I have had more time to see how it’s going. My discipline has already started to wane, I’m sorry to say, but I am still finding it helpful as a means to limit snacking. Or at least curb snacking.
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I don’t think I’m going to renew my Spotify subscription. I’ve not really used it since signing up, mostly because I don’t like the interface. It’s playlists are undeniably much better but (a) the degree to which it pushes podcasts is obnoxious and (b) it still feels like it conceives of everything as a playlist. Although speaking of better playlists, I have been wondering if part of Apple Music’s problem is playlist discovery. I stumbled across Apple Music’s ‘Table Tennis’ playlist (Apple Music) during the week and what does that title even mean? If you tap through, you discover it’s really ‘Music for Older Millennials Who Especially Liked Alternative in the 90s’ (i.e. me). Now I found it because I was specifically hunting around for a playlists section of the Apple Music app but how would an ordinary person find it? And even if they did find it, why on earth would they think this was a playlist they might like?
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With all the talk of Row v Wade in the past couple of weeks, I started to forget how to correctly verbally cite a case in Australia. Fortunately, the University of Queensland has my back. In Australia it would of course be ‘Roe against Wade’.
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My memory isn’t great so for all I know I learnt this, was surprised by it, forgot it and am surprised to learn it all over again but Ben Stiller is Jerry Stiller’s son? How am I just learning this for (possibly not) the first time in 2022?
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On the topic of ‘surprise’, I started coding again (!). And not just that, I released a new Ruby gem (!!). Bestliner is merely a wrapper around the bestline C library that programming dynamo Justine Tunney put out last year so this achievement is less impressive than it at first appears. Still! What prompted this unlikely return? Well, I don’t know if this will flame out like previous attempts but I decided to try my hand again at making a Lisp by following the Mal self-study course. I’m up to step 4 as I write this and will be sure to note the point at which I give up.
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[This paragraph contains spoilers for the end of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.] I finally caught up on the remaining episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds that I had left over for this season. I remain very disappointed about the death of Hemmer in the second last episode. I was really enjoyed the vibe of the entire ensemble of this crew and feel like there’s so much they could have explored. I’m still very positive overall on the show; this is easily the best Star Trek show since DS9.
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I linked to the ‘Table Tennis’ playlist above and it’s where I had occasion to hear Lit’s ‘My Own Worst Enemy’ (Apple Music) for the first time in quite possibly decades. Feels incredibly 90s.
