Author Archives: Jonathan

S12E04: Fatigue

A lot’s happening all at once. On the 20th I need a draft literature review ready as a dry-run for my thesis. At this point, my advisor will tell me if there’s enough in my project, or if I’ll need to pivot to something else. The musical I’m helping with is getting stronger all the time. The characters we’ve been focussing on are leaping off the page, their desires and their priorities now so clear that the story spins itself. At work, I’m digging into authentication and authorisation, and rolled out the metaphor I used last week. It seemed to work. And other little corporate things are picking up too.

But I’m still getting over a lingering illness, and so is my partner; and so it means sleepness nights and fuzziness of the brain and being awake at 2am, cuddled under a blanket with a cat, and thinking about the great wide sky.

There’s a lot of technical stuff this week, and no clear thread. Just a feeling of pressure and impending deadlines.

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S12E03: Design as politics

We’re designing a web-based API this week, and it’s reminded me that all design is inherently political. Specifically, we’re thinking about what data we expose. We can expose all of it, and let the people receiving it decide what to do with it. Or we can curate it, with the hope that the people receiving it have a better experience.

Which is better? Which is right?

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S12E02: Back to strength

This week I’ve been supervising folks writing code for our system, and reflecting on what would have been useful for me to do before then. I’ve also been narrowing down thesis topics. They’re all broadly security-related, and now I just need to read a lot. With luck I’ll find a paragraph at the bottom of a paper that says “We really wish someone would do this research”.

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S12E01: Pen-pals

I’ve acquired a pen pal, and every time I receive a letter from her I burn with new envy. Her stationery is an absolute delight, and each letter I receive reduces me to a Bateman-esque character, almost swallowing my tongue as I congratulate her on the exquisite shade of green ink she’s picked; the elegant understatement of the paper; the personalised stamp.

Everyone should have, in my opinion, no more than three lovers and no fewer than one nemesis at any one time. I am pleased to say that I am currently achieving both of these benchmarks.

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S11E26: A quiet week

I’m the sole developer on my team this week, which very sensibly means I’m not making any significant changes to the platform. It’s given me a decent spell of time to do mid-year review things, documentation things, thinking things. A bit of a tidy up.

I’ve achieved none of those things, of course, because the heat saps my will to do anything. I am incapable of motion or thought in temperatures outside my zone of comfort, which is 18.7 to 19.3 degrees centigrade.

So these weeknotes will be short.

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S11E25: feedback is a gift

I was reminded this week that feedback is a gift and, friends, the best thing about a gift is that once the giver has left your house you can yeet that hideous gift into the trash where it belongs. Is it a symbol of that fact that they don’t understand you? Bin! A book that’s far too complex and you’ll never read? Bin! A mirror that shows you your truest self? You better believe that’s going straight in the trash.

Only God can judge you, and she once yeeted an angel out of heaven for giving feedback on the whole ‘human’ project. So she’d understand.

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