Paul Davidson
Weeknotes 169: Gigantonormous
The Week started with Piglet offering me one of her vitamins so that I could be nice and strong for a day of pseudo-pat leave with the Wee Free Man. The Chef was off to Wetherby for a spa day with Uni friends. If you thought that meant sticking on Braids while he napped and attempting to setup up a Linux server on top of a kitchen cupboard using an old netbook and a 4 TB hard-drive, you’d be right. Sadly, 32-bit Linux is too old for Jellyfin and I quit that route and spent some vouchers on a Raspberry Pi. Surprisingly easy to sort when it arrived. I’ve now got a steady rip-transcode-share DVD workflow and all our DVD are available on the TV. WITHOUT WIRES. It went so well that I’m looking for other little projects to run through it. Hit me up Rapsberry Pi enthusiasts1.
The only moment’s sadness we had all day was when I closed the front door. His heart breaks every time we don’t head out. Up there with having his toothbrush taken away as the worst of life’s injustices.
A relaxed Chef opened an impromptu daycare on Tuesday with extra children arriving at our house for reasons. Wee Free Man thrilled to have play buddies.
I took one glance at the frost and snow and decided to work from home. After last week’s mini-rant, I checked out Giles’s archive and nabbed a few things to better articulate my arguments. It worked more than acceptably and I felt compelled to buy him a tree. I’m sticking with a sort-of New Year’s Resolution to watch more nerdy videos and read at least one academic paper a week in the optimisation space too. Trying out ChatGPT to help. It’s been great for summarising abstracts and explaining technical jargon with examples, but it feels the same way as I do about the more gnarly maths in most of the papers. A sassy refusal to remember anything post-GCSE.
This one isn’t a nerdy video (YMMV), but how good is the phrase, “I have no writer’s block, but I have tremendous reader’s block”? That is my writing problem in a nutshell. Prolix in the first draft2 and then a blank refusal to go back and edit. There’s a resolution in there if I ever go back to read it.
I’m unsure, but the sound-mixing for Bluey is different on Disney+ versus iPlayer? The treble sounds higher on the Beeb and I can hear the characters without jamming the TV up to 30. I’m hitting middle-age though, so it’s possible I’m imagining all of this.
On the topic of sound mixing, the Wee Free Man has a crocodile xylophone that I’m sure is tuned to the minor key. It’s an achingly wistful row row row your boat.
In Piglet’s world, she did her first colour by numbers to spec this week. She usually chafes against the dogma but this time, as a treat to herself, wanted to see what happened if she followed the rules. We’ve not seen a repeat.
Mid-week, while doing bath penguins3, she stopped singing the Demi Lovato version of Frozen4 to inquire, “Does your anus have a ring? You know, like Saturn.”
Friday night ballet has strong, small, pink girl-energy. Drama and ballet are proving more of a hit than rugby.
By close of business for the week we were playing the, “Is it foot and mouth? Is it impetigo? Is it something else?” game. Can hardly wait to find out!
Fellow parents, why is it, after a week of waking them up for school, your kid is standing too close to your sleeping face asking to play before dawn on a Saturday? The extra kicker is her declaration that she has no intention of getting out of her pyjamas for the day. Looking forward to nicer weather and kicking her out of the house more often.
Better itinerary for Sunday. An early swim with her BFF, followed by lunch at theirs. I think she was invited? Then on to a classmate’s party. Before Grandma and Granddad’s for tea. It was all we could do to stick her back into (clean) pyjamas and yeet her into the bed.
Wee Free Man is still not crawling. To encourage we keep leaving things out of reach, but Piglet keeps reflexively moving them closer with a big smile and reassuring noises.
The day with the Wee man was spiffing. As was The Chef’s spa day.↩︎
Yes, even longer than what gets published.↩︎
Drain almost all the water out and fling yourself back and forth on the remaining puddles. Retention of teeth looks distressingly optional.↩︎
No idea why. It robs me of belting out the puntastic bridge. Ah. OK. I think I know why she sings the Lovato version.↩︎