Posts

Posted Dec 30, 2022

I've just been migrating an old WordPress blog into this Jekyll one. Here are some notes from the process...

Posted Dec 30, 2022

Tom's funeral is today. It's something that we've all been dreading yet needing to happen. We have no idea how many people will be coming to Amersham Cemetery, but I'm guessing it will be a very large number: Tom was a lovely lad, full of life and loved by everyone who met him.

Posted Dec 28, 2022

I'm trying to get my daily pattern back on track, with a certain amount of success. This has been day two of not eating badly, and I usually find that's around the point where it starts to get a bit easier. I do hope so. While I didn't get quite as much sleep as I would have liked, it wasn't catastrophic either, and I can tell tonight will be better (as it is still the right side of 10pm rather than the wrong side of 11).

Posted Dec 27, 2022

Less words, more code today. I've been playing with getting search working on this site, and have made a bit more progress. There is now a behind-the-scenes function that can perform a search on the site and return a list of matching pages, complete with a snippet of what has been found.

Posted Dec 26, 2022

Boxing Day morning was a leisurely affair, after a busy Christmas. The weather was beautiful so after some breakfast we popped down to Amersham Old Town for a short run. Beautiful, but did I mention it was cold?

Posted Dec 25, 2022

Notice the date? Yes, that'll be Christmas.

Posted Dec 24, 2022

Today has mostly been a day of preparation for Christmas. I've managed to cross off some of the more persistent entries of my Amazing Marvin task management app ... a fact only slightly offset by the observation that I've added even more items to the end.

Posted Dec 23, 2022

Today's blog time has mainly been spent working on some of the technology stack for this blog: I'd like to get search going. As of now, the first bit of this is done. Unfortunately that's the invisible bit: watch this space for updates over the next few days. I'm planning to use the lunr library for this, as it looks like just what I need.

Posted Dec 22, 2022

I've had a pretty good stint thus far on blogging daily. Writing a blog entry is on its way to becoming a daily habit, so now I think some thought is required to figure out what it actually is I'm trying to achieve.

Posted Dec 21, 2022

Now that we are all at home, today has mainly been a day of jobs. Nothing earth-shattering, mostly things like getting some of our decorative LED lights working, fixing a daughter's window, posting letters and so on. The most involved one was assembling a bed - which was, in fairness, quite involved.

Posted Dec 20, 2022

Today was my last day at work this year (apart from a bit of twiddling with admin etc). Not my finest day - I am continuing to feel a bit poorly, and this didn't help. Nevertheless I did manage to round a few things off. So obviously it's a great time to head home, have a nice early night and prepare for the holidays.

Posted Dec 19, 2022

Today has been more of a "doing" than a "thinking" day. Probably too much so. For that reason, this is going to read a bit more like a journal than anything.

Posted Dec 18, 2022

Today has been a rather in-between kind of day. After feeling a bit better last night, I woke up feeling not so great this morning, so lost a chunk of day that way. It's also been really miserable, cold and wet, which has put a literal damper on things.

Posted Dec 17, 2022

You might have noticed the lack of a blog post yesterday. In fact I was rather under the weather: here's what happened.

Posted Dec 15, 2022

This evening was the final orchestra rehearsal of the year. We spent the first hour playing through some repertoire - basically sight-reading our way through some nice music for fun. Today's choice was Mozart's symphony No 41 in C Major. Then the second half was more of a "social", with some mulled wine and mince pies etc.

Posted Dec 14, 2022

A brief post today, as I've been working rather long hours. I have things on my list that need to be no longer on it - and as of now, I think I've knocked them off. Phew!

Posted Dec 13, 2022

For a while now I've had some issues with my Achilles tendon. It started a few years ago, at a time when I was upping my running in preparation for a half-marathon. Since then, it's been somewhat "on and off".

Posted Dec 12, 2022

It is said that:

Posted Dec 11, 2022

Another really chilly day here, and the forecast is for snow in the morning. I'm currently deciding whether to go to boot camp at 6:30 tomorrow morning, but I'm thinking it could well be cancelled and I could probably do with the sleep.

Posted Dec 10, 2022

Today has been mostly about being really cold. This really kicked off at parkrun, at which point it was a sunny and frosty -4C.

Posted Dec 9, 2022

Our household energy status is in something of a limbo right now. We changed supplier a couple of days ago, but our smart meter doesn't seem to have caught up yet. Or at least that's my assumption, as I can't think of any other reason why our gas would be showing up as being free.

Posted Dec 8, 2022

A short post today. I'm very tired, I think I've accumulated a few nights of insufficient sleep and now it's really hitting me. We're all still shattered by the news of our friend passing away, and that's pretty exhausting too. So - time to sleep.

Posted Dec 7, 2022

Today was the office Christmas social, which was fun! It was a whole-day event; in the morning we went to volunteer at Core Arts. They have a new plot of land they are turning in to a garden to support mental health. We basically dug, moved earth, put up fences, assembled furniture and generally helped them get the project going. It was cold, but honestly great fun!

Posted Dec 6, 2022

I worked in the office in London today. Honestly I quite enjoy the travel there and back on the train. I went in with Ellie for a change, which was entertaining (and we managed Wordle in two attempts). The office was fairly quiet, but the people who did come in were talking about our work Christmas social tomorrow - we are spending the day volunteering for a local charity who create communal gardens.

Posted Dec 5, 2022

Our house was built around 1930, at a time when investing in cavity walls sounded like crazy talk. With some foresight the builders might have realised that the real madness heading our way could take the form of fuel bills for heating said house. But no, this was a problem left to later owners, such as us. So when we saw an offer for a new boiler that we would be crazy to turn down, we placed an order with British Gas to sort our heating.

Posted Dec 4, 2022

It has really struck me today, looking at my children and the stages they have reached in their lives, that some sort of generational milestone has been passed. Specifically, I can see that my children are now hitting the exact point that I was at when I launched into what I would now refer to as my adult life.

Posted Dec 3, 2022

I will remember this day for the rest of my life. In the morning we received terrible news of the death of our son's best friend.

Posted Dec 2, 2022

Today's work disruption went to plan nicely. I managed a very early start, and had got the bulk of what I needed to get done out of the way in time for my boot camp at 6:30am. Then after I got back I continued the process.

Posted Dec 1, 2022

Only a short post today, due to a change of plans. At work I received one of those "good news / bad news" messages. The bad news was that: a problem came up at work today that means something needs to be done tomorrow; the person who would have done it is on holiday; and my name is next on the rota. The good news, though, is that doing this thing fulfils my rota responsibility and next week it will be someone else rather than me in the hot seat. Nice!

Posted Nov 30, 2022

In hindsight, my work today feels a bit like I faced an ordeal and came out the other side.