The Week #130

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  • Hard to believe that this is the last full week of 2022. I haven't yet gathered my thoughts for the year or made a roundup post as I usually do, but I'm relatively pleased with how the year's gone.
  • I finished work for the year on Wednesday. I think this might be my first big break since this time last year. Otherwise it's been days off here and there because someone needs to watch Leo or we're sick with Covid. I felt like I really needed this break a couple weeks ago, which means I waited too long to take proper leave.
  • The big event this week was the double-whammy of Christmas and my wife's birthday. We celebrated at the in-laws house with a small feast and cake on Christmas Eve. I went full American and made some rosemary-garlic roasted potatoes, a shredded carrot/apple/raisin salad, and cheeseball(!!). The cheese ball was only possible because my dad sent heaps of ranch dressing mix packets along with the heaps of Christmas cookies. So good. Much fat.
  • As we're planning to visit American we decided not to get presents for each other, but as usual, Leo scored. Santa brought him the Adventures with Mario Lego Starter pack. It's about 10x cooler than I had anticipated. The Mario actually takes batteries which powers some scanners in his bottom. He audibly/visually reacts to the color that he's standing on, e.g. on red, he makes noises like he's in lava, and blue like he's in water and so forth. Even cooler though is the goomba / ? blocks / Bowser Jr. have a barcode block on them that Mario reads and he makes sound effects, or gets an item. If you lay him down his gets sleepy and falls asleep.

    From mom and dad he got a Jet Kids carry-on luggage. It's cool as he can carry his stuff, but it can be placed in front of his seat to turn it into a kind of bed. Then we found out that United doesn't allow them to be used on any of their flights... As long as he's in the window seat, I don't think it'll be a problem if we use it (unless they explictly call it out when we board, otherwise I reckon we can just feign ignorance).
  • Side-project wise I merged that big refactor of Tanzawa's internals and it's working as anticipated – great. 

    I also added consumption scraping to Sunbottle. This means I can now see how much electricity I actually use again. I've started using it to show how much I generated and how much I consumed the previous days and it's quite handy. This feature sets the groundwork for me to start on the "billing" code, so I'll be able to have a page that shows how much my usage would've cost without solar.

    But as the billing code is a bit too much like work, I've shifted focus to another Tanzawa feature I stated as a goal at the start of the year, didn't start because of tech debt I've recently paid off ( aforementioned refactor and moving from Gunicorn to uWSGI): Strava integration. It's coming along nicely and I think it'll get in before the end of the year...which leads me to...
  • I've been subscribing to Apple's Fitness+ for ages, not on purpose, but because it's included in Apple Ultimate (or whatever the tier is called that gives you everything for cheaper than increased storage, music, and apple tv). I went for my first run using Time to Run, and it's great.

    Usually when I'm running I'd pick some music and a timer for 30 minutes or so and just go. You're left asking / deciding "what do I want to run to today?" or running into slow songs as the worst time. It's difficult to explain with words (and that won't stop me from trying!), but it is...like a coach in your ear and a tour of a city at the same time but it doesn't matter than you're not in that city.

    At the start of the run the coach explains the run (3 difference paces, repeated twice etc..) / the city/course that this run is based on. The music is set for the location, pace, and cut to match the different sections.  e.g. The first city was Miami, which has a large Cuban/Latino community, so all of the music was in Spanish and there was a nice 2 minutes of up-tempo song when it's time to run fast, slower songs when it's time to slow down etc..

    Just as important is the reminders between each section for what to focus on. Focus on your breath and keeping it steady. Use your arms, keep them close and use them like a second set of legs. 

    I've only used it once, but it made a 33 minute run fly by. Not having to select music is one less thing for me to think decide when running. Having story and photos of the location pushed my watch while I run is entertaining. The couching and encouragement while running, even if it's from an audio recording, is somehow quite motivating during the run.