Category: journal

• Social movement theory.
• I saw Gordon Brander has a list of well-connected nodes in his pattern library.
  • I like the idea. Stats relating to links and connections feels more in line with a relational ontology than just having counts of nodes, etc.
  • So I’ve been looking at adding a list of nodes in my garden that are well-connected.

• I’d like to know why the outputs of my little bits of executable code blocks aren’t getting correctly generated when my garden gets published to the web.
  • org-mode inline src blocks not publishing
• Digging: Proem – She Never Cries
• Digging: Frog Pocket – Hurrah Sapphire Moon!

• Read: Doughnut Economics
• Reflecting back and seeing them published on my website, I realise my work notes each day are a little mundane.
  • I imagine most people aren’t that interested to see them.
  • But, I do like the fact that they stimulate me to publish to the garden even on days where outside of work I have little time for it.
  • And I find them a helpful piece of reflection.
  • So I think I’ll experiment with putting them off in links from the main journal post. So people can read them if they want, but they won’t be right up in your face with visual noise.

• Reading: Doughnut Economics
  • I like the emphasis on an economics that is distributive by design and regenerative by design.
  • Also like the occasional references to biomimicry. Not convinced yet how applicable to economics it is – but I just have a general interest in it from Evolutionary and adaptive systems days.
• Listened: Hotel Bar Sessions: Late Capitalism
• Today at work I:
  • Responded to a personal message from a community member.
    • We have a community and friends within it, and sometimes personal messages come via my work channels.
  • Scheduled in some things for when I’m away.
  • Did the daily inbox trawl.

• Perceptions of degrowth in the European Parliament
  • Looks good. Only skimmed it, but they mention ecosocialism as one of the positions held.
• Today at work I:
  • Did the daily inbox trawl.
    • A lot of the emails are automatic alerts that take up a lot of my time checking. I kind of need to see them though.
    • I wonder if there’s a way of flipping it so I only see them if something has gone wrong.
    • The trouble then, though, is you don’t realise if the alert itself has stopped sending.
  • Responded to questions from the team on Slack.
    • Schedule tasks/actions in as a result.
    • Either as ‘unplanned’ work for the day if it needed doing today.
    • Or for a future date if not urgent.
  • Quickly added a cache around a slow endpoint.
    • It was (a) meaning some automatic tests were very slow to run.
    • (b) possibly crashing the app when the tests were running.
    • I patched it quickly in on live (naughty, but needed) and now need to properly add it into the repo.
  • Tested app-to-app connection between app and WP site API as part of migration tests.
    • I always app-to-app connections and APIs. Prefer them to user interfaces 😀
  • Attended team meeting.
  • Did some layout/content tweaks to our main website.
    • Fiddling around with CSS and layout is not top on my list of fun things to do. Always takes longer than you expect.
    • Some yak shaving to be done based on npm install failing. Haven’t got the time to shave that yak right now.
  • Do some quick estimates of how long potential pieces of work should take.
  • Cross-posted a social post on Mastodon.
  • Kicked off a new sprint in Jira (late, as I was off on leave when it technically started).

• Patient privacy fears as US spy tech firm Palantir wins £330m NHS contract | …
  • Absolutely gutted by this. Despite all the campaigning by Foxglove and Just Treatment, fucking Palantir still awarded the contract with the NHS.
  • Makes me sick. This is not the kind of organisation our health service should be in partnership with.

• Listened: Hotel Bar Sessions: Revolutionary Mathematics
  • So far, discussing frequentism and Bayesianism schools of thought in probability.

• When I’m working, I don’t log a lot in the journal, I noticed.
  • So experimenting with logging thoughts on work activities.
  • Not much detail on specifics, more reflections on activities and process.
  • I quite enjoy it so far. Useful to reflect.

Today at work I:

• Did the usual inbox trawls and day planning.
  • Day planning I do with org-mode, org-agenda and org-timeline.
• Prepped for the meetings for the day.
  • Mostly with mindmaps.
• Did some strategic planning for next year.
  • Mindmaps and freeform writing.
• Some rote work
  • processing incoming applications for things, updating website accordingly
  • always good to think with this stuff how processes could be streamlined
• Minor website content change.
  • Minor change, but thinking about the UX of it is always interesting.
  • And how it affects client agreements/expectations, too.
• Planning and assigning work for my team.
  • Bit of mindmapping combined with going through Jira.
• Reviewing new features.
  • Code and functionality. Code review is in Github.
  • Testing I tend to build the feature branch locally.
• Meetings.
  • Sometimes I jot things down on mindmap.
  • Somethings I record things straight into knowledge base.
  • Sometimes I log things straight into org as TODOs.
  • It’s a bit haphazard to he honest. Could be improved.
• Emailing external partners.
  • Always interesting the amount of work that goes into crafting an email to get across all the nuances of your position on something.
• Distracting myself with Slack threads not really related to what I’m doing.