Update for 11/18/2018

TV

🙂

Sunday my friend Tim made his customary visit, and we watched the first episode of the 1994 Middlemarch miniseries to go with the book group I’m in at work. I was surprised at how well the episode captured the plot and characters, assuming I wasn’t just reading everything into it. I don’t know if it came across as well to Tim, who hasn’t read the book. I can at least say I wasn’t disappointed, as I was with the Ender’s Game movie.

Futurism

🙂

This month’s futurism meetup was about copyright and all its annoyances. It included a very good video by CGP Grey. Occasionally I hear about old works that are passing out of the copyright time frame to enter the public domain, so I did some searching for sources of this info and found Public Domain Day. 2019 will be a big year for it. “For several decades from 2019 onward, each New Year’s Day will unleash a full year’s worth of works published 95 years earlier,” starting with 1923. The Public Domain Review will tell you what’s good.

Programming

🤓

In last week’s software development TTS listening, I finished Pattern-Oriented Software Development, Vol 1 and got through Clean Code. I’m about a third of the way into the massive Code Complete 2. At work I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around some of the books from my list so far and to begin to use them in my current programming project.

My main task is a pretty easy one, creating a simple plugin to get Sublime Text to interact with our in-house command-line tools for ebook production. So based on some earlier research with execnet, I did that and in the process applied a few software development techniques I’m learning.

Then I decided the plugin was good enough for now, and I switched to exploring architectural changes we might make to our tools. pyplantuml has been helpful for mapping out our existing structure.

Spirituality

🤔

I listened to John Ortberg’s little book How Do I Know If I’m Really Saved? so I could discuss it with a friend who wrestles with that question. I have mixed feelings about the book. On the one hand, it’s a nice overview of the Dallas Willard perspective on salvation, and it was thought provoking and motivating. Unfortunately it’s also disorganized, as if Ortberg’s writing process was to sit down at the keyboard and let his mind wander. I’d have to rearrange the contents to make sure they answered the key questions. Maybe sometime. The book also reminded me that Ortberg is a pastor of a church, Menlo Church in San Jose, and a search revealed they have a podcast feed, so I’ll probably listen to a few of his sermons.

Health

🙂

Due to a little pharmacy supply chain SNAFU, a little over a week ago I went on an accidental hiatus from my ulcerative colitis supplementary medicine. So I took the opportunity to watch how bad my symptoms would get. It turned out I didn’t need it till a week after I ran out. Fortunately I had the refill by then.

So now I’ll experiment with my schedule of doses. Maybe once a week works, maybe a little more often. In any case, it’s probably less than I’ve been taking it, which is good news, because it’s annoying.

Christmas

🙂

Last week on my secret project for creative Christmas labels, I successfully stuck to my schedule and achieved the intended milestone despite an unexpected bump, so this week I’m on to the next phase. I’m kinda proud of myself.

Thanksgiving

🤔

Thanksgiving snuck up on me this year. I haven’t made any plans. If nothing materializes, I’ll repeat last year’s plan of visiting the local botanical garden. Last year I ended up doing both.

Life maintenance

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I’ve been pondering what project to do after the Christmas labels. As usual it’d probably be something to prepare for future projects. I settled on making my life better in general by continuing the housekeeping projects from my move. That is, unpacking and tidying. Yes, my stuff has been mostly in boxes for the past two-and-half months. But at least my current furniture is in place. Maybe I’ll use this phase to buy the remaining pieces.