Weeknotes #312

We made it to 2026. And what’s this? The date of this post isn’t a lie? Yes, I decided to start the new year off with an acceptance of reality: Friday has become the actual day I write these updates so I’m shifting the publishing date of my weeknotes from Monday/Tuesday to Friday. We’ll see how diligent I can be.

Donald Trump, in flagrant violation of international and U.S. domestic law, ordered the abduction of Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro (Wikipedia). I know the U.S. has a long history of meddling in other countries but this is wrong and we should say that it’s wrong. Yes, Maduro is a dictator but a might-makes-right attitude is not to anyone’s benefit. I live in hope that the broader U.S. population will reject this madness before it it’s too late.

At the risk of giving away the answer to a security question on some website I no longer frequent, my uncle’s name is Sam. And yet, as best as I can recal, it wasn’t until this week that it occurred to me that Uncle Sam and Uncle Sam are, you know, the same thing. At least lexically. I consider this an example of how the things that you grow up with are like water (in the David Foster Wallace sense).

Emma remarked last week that we hadn’t visited Disneyland at all in 2025. I suggested we could try to squeeze in a visit on New Year’s Eve if the weather held up. It kept its end of the bargain, so I kept mine and we managed to get everyone out there via a couple of trains. Eri took Emma on Splash Mountain and the Haunted Mansion while I rode on Star Tours for the first time in 32 years. It was perhaps the combination of the 3D and the motion, but I actually started to feel nauseous towards the end of the ride but I’m still glad to have done it.

We finally moved Rowan downstairs to the lower bunk bed. He’s only slept there the past three days and on two of those days, he woke up distressed to not be next to Eri or me.

I continued to spend time working with Claude Code on various projects, primarily Grapple. This week I concentrated on trying to expose Janet’s built-in debugging functionality. I’m a long-time print debugger and while I still find that the tool I most readily reach for, I want to get better at using a proper debugger. I’ve not succeeded in building that ‘muscle’ but perhaps this will be the time when it finally sticks.

My weight went back up over 71kg. As I write this, I’m about 24 hours in to a 42-hour fast and I’m hoping I get back into the regular rhythm of doing that.

My favourite thing I watched this week was T1J’s video essay on Kevin Can Fuck Himself. The essay is an hour-long and spoils key parts of the two-season show but after watching it, I went out and got the episodes to watch myself anyway. That’s now been added to my ever-growing queue and—knowing me—may not be something I ever get around to but I genuinely hope that’s not the case. The concept alone is that good.

I was disappointed to see that the version of ‘Such Great Heights’ that Ben Folds played for Triple J’s ‘Like a Version’ segment back in 2006 isn’t available on Apple Music. There is a version from 4-disc version of The Best Imitation of Myself: A Retrospective (Apple Music) but it’s not as good. Fortunately, it is on YouTube and you can listen to it there.