This post comes a day late due to a valuable lesson: editing a reusable WordPress block after inserting it into a post will cause it to be completely reset and lose everything upon page reload, autosave be damned! 🙃
It’s a strange kind of season. As if on cue, the leaves started to turn yellow-red on Sept 1, yet it’s still bloody hot during the day (for me). The cooler mornings and nights are very welcome, though. I forgot how oppressive the summer heat can be. It’s kinda taken me by surprise this year. The lack of shade around our new neighbourhood has kept me indoors through most of July and August. I’m starting to prepare myself for next year, where I intend to spend more time outdoors despite the uncomfortable heat.
🏠 Remote work
My workplace is pretty chill about “working hours”, so I’ve decided to take advantage of it and make a slight change to start and end an hour early. I’ve become more of an early riser over the years, so I’m hoping it’ll help me get some focused work done in the morning. More crucially, I’m hoping that ending at 4pm will give me a bit more time to run any personal errands before the mad rush hits at 5. It’s a struggle to stop work, though. The momentum is strong, and I’ve always found it hard to transition from the certainty of work-related tasks to the big mess that is the rest of my life. My strategy right now is to add a reminder first thing in the morning for a simple personal task to complete exactly at 4pm, like “do dishes” or “take out organics”. Anything that can be done quickly and won’t be so overwhelming that I’m tempted to keep working. It’s been helpful for the few days I’ve been doing it!
📚 Readwise Reader
I got an invite to the beta of Readwise Reader, and I love it. It’ll definitely replace Pocket for me. Maybe if feed management gets better, and if it gains the ability to pull in full articles from excerpted RSS feeds, I may ditch Inoreader too. The workflow Reader aims for is perfect for me. Intake everything quickly (via their extension or mobile apps), then either process immediately, highlighting for future spaced recall as needed, or send to “later” or “archive”. There’re keyboard shortcuts for everything important. Cross-device sync, including reading position, just works. It’s great! One tiny feature that I didn’t know I needed is the ability to navigate an article paragraph by paragraph using up/down keys. Maybe it’s just the novelty of it, but it feels good to progress through a long article.
🌊🛹 Surfskating the Bentway
Got out with C+A on Sunday to surfskate The Bentway. I can’t believe I’ve never been there despite living a walking distance away for years. It’s a lovely little public skating spot for beginners. No rails or bowls here. Just a flat, evenly paved figure eight of a track, with plenty of seating, and an indoor bathroom (important!). It wasn’t nearly as crowded as I expected, and the vibe was chill. Will definitely be coming back in the future.
💠 Misc
- Totally stealing the idea from Winnie Lim, I started keeping a changelog for the site itself. Will probably link to it from the footer next.
- Reading
- Finished The galaxy, and the ground within. It was as lovely as I hoped for and expected. I tend to pendulum between fiction and non-fiction, so I may skim Accelerate next.
- Watched
- Rings of Power / House of Dragon. These are feel-good / feel-bad, respectively. I’m not particularly invested in either, but they’re good entertainment to share with my partner.
- Played
- Still enjoying Death Stranding. Haven’t been able to play it very much lately, but whenever I do I always have a great time. I kinda want to savour it!
- On the other hand, I’m probably going to play Horizon: Forbidden West on Story difficulty. I want to fast-forward through the frequent and repetitive combat, which I find kind of cruel, possibly due to my tendency to anthropomorphize the mechanical creatures. Like, really, you want me to shoot off the wings and talons off this majestic bird before looting its short-circuiting, glitching, smoking corpse? 🤮
- Surprisingly, I found a Zelda game that I like: Link’s Awakening! 🛡️ The tilt-shift camera and glossy, rounded character models make it appropriately cute for the story and setting.
- Also enjoying Luigi’s Mansion 3. I’ve only played an hour, but all I want to do is hoover up all the things!