Hacker's Diary

A rough account of what I did with Emacs recently.

May 23

Woof, time flies etc. Ok, so we're unfortunately now pacing Mrs. Maisel through the final series, which means we've gotta wait for episodes to show up. It's mostly good, but there are a few places where Abe just goes over into unfunny territory, and they keep going and it doesn't help.

We started watching Silo and so far it's been impressive both in the realisation of the book it's based on and how much of the storyline they seem to be sticking with, although I'm not sure how they're going to slice it and I'll be kinda disappointed if this winds up being one of those shows where they don't pick up a new season because The Algorithm Said So.

I have, of course, gone back to the books to refresh my memory of the story. I'm also reading a series of Qubecois detective novels, and for good measure I'm picking my way through a series of short stories by Connie Willis, whose Time Travel books I have found utterly brilliant.

Nerdery: I have a pair of old kindles here vending bus time tables, as I mentioned previously. Their source of times recently got a revamp, and then the old API was dropped with much publicity, and it seems like the new API can't quite keep up or is more aggressively throttled than it was when I started poking at it; in any case I'm having to code a bit more defensively against it.

I'm doing some stuff at work that entails learning a bunch of things that work's customers have been using for years. It's interesting and frustrating by turns; much of the latter is to do with how it meshes with internal systems, but also the fact that I'm using a programming language I'm not particularly keen on, and a very large API that isn't always obvious or sufficiently documented for my personal taste.

May 12

Wrapped up on Goliath - good strong finish, not perfect but definitely put the crappy middle seasons to bed - and an excellent opening episode to season 5 of The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel.

May 9

Goliath season 4 is somewhat less terrible than seasons 2 and 3, but the writers' room still appears to have been heavily drugged.

Recent reading: a friend pointed me at Connie Willis' work, and oh my. I have devoured a bunch of her books. I love the time travel ones: they're intricately built but also the historical research evident in them is fascinating in its own right.

May 5

Goliath season 3: done. This one was ... kinda terrible, and barely redeemed itself at the end.

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