Weeknotes: 2025-W06

Published: 10 February, 2025, updated: 10 February, 2025

Summary

Bit of a lazy week, with lots of different types of precipitation and less getting out than usual. Work was mostly on admin and chores and other back-office things (like setting up the coffee station outside my basement office), and I made some progress on my game idea both during some weekday evenings and on the weekend.

Photos

(Based more on time of processing than time of taking…)

Woody debris at Lake Washington T Dock

Trametes versicolor in Frink Park on my morning walk

Good moarning or mourning?

White edging on some sort of brachyglottis

Enjoying

Reading:
- Onyx Storm (Empyrean #3) by Rebecca Yarros (★★☆☆☆)
  - The setting is still enjoyable enough to want to learn more about, but the characters and other aspects of writing (pacing, plot progress/payoff, …) just don’t live up to it.
- The Pariah (Covenant of Steel #1) by Anthony Ryan
  - A good start!
Watching:
- 📺📅 Doc season 1
- 📺🏃 Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 7
- 📺🏃 Angel season 4
Playing:
- 🖥️ Stationeers

Newly discovered

Paul Stamatiou’s photosets

Paul Stamatiou’s photosets look to be a treasure-trove of both good photography from around the world but also vicarious living through the stories being told. My own ambitions aren’t nearly so high, but I’d been thinking of this sort of presentation format recently (as evidenced by my first video in last week’s weeknote).

Highlights

We are destroying software - Salvatore Sanfilippo

We are destroying software with an absurd chain of dependencies, making everything bloated and fragile.

We are destroying software telling new programmers: “Don’t reinvent the wheel!”. But, reinventing the wheel is how you learn how things work, and is the first step to make new, different wheels.

We are destroying software by always underestimating how hard it is to work with existing complex libraries VS creating our stuff.

We are destroying software by always thinking that the de-facto standard for XYZ is better than what we can do, tailored specifically for our use case.

We are destroying software, and what will be left will no longer give us the joy of hacking.

– “We are destroying software”, Salvatore Sanfilippo

I’m intrigued how many of Salvatore’s items stem from attempting to reuse relatively simple things in a way that adds up to something more complex than doing it yourself. (Not surprised that complexity is the main theme…)