Weeknotes 2024 W01

Week one

I still have the Japanese NHK app on my phone which I occasionally use for watching and reading content and catching up on sumo highlights. This week it’s been buzzing non-stop with earthquake warnings and some dire news of the people affected by the natural and man-made disasters. A thoroughly distressing start for the nation. Information if you wanted to help.

I’ve been busy tinkering away at my Eleventy website rebuild. I’m so utterly close to a soft launch but self-inflicted scope creep keeps pushing the clock back. I’m struggling a bit with permalink: false which is the last piece of the puzzle. I’m hoping to get that fixed today and launch so I can start the next week fixing all the bugs that I didn’t catch.

Almost everyone was at the Clearleft for our annual partner day. It was so interesting being a workshop attendee rather than leading it. Lots of lightbulb moments and ideas for what comes next.

I’ve managed to maintained a 100% journaling streak this week. I’ve got a check in and out workflow in Obsidian which records a few data points; physical and mental health numerical and emoji value, more emojis for emotions and an open text field for thoughts at the stat and end of the day. It’s really interesting comparing the two and seeing what affects my mood. Another habit checkbox is to prompt me to record 1 second of video everyday. I tried the project a couple of years ago but the streak was broken and was eventually dropped. So far so good this year.

Reading list

I signed up to an extended trial of Readwise just before the festive holidays. I was looking for a solution to creating endless bookmarks in Obsidian and never doing anything with them. I’m really enjoying the separate Reader experience.

More importantly it’s helped me consume more information and make use of spare time between meetings, on the bus or enjoying a lazy weekend morning with a coffee. My next step is syncing it to Obsidian vault to export the notes I’m making. Here’s some of the content I’ve consumed this week.

• Exploring Regenerative Ideas at The RSA - Questions About Questions – Highlight of the week was without a doubt the regenerative design talk by John V Willshire, Andy Thornton, Lizzie Shupak and Dr Robert Phillips. It’s piqued my interested in the subject and can’t wait to read their next newsletter.
• Keeping it real when writing with AI – iA Writer's Oliver Reichenstein – Andy Polaine and Oliver Reichenstein’s chat about AI, IA Writer, plagiarism, PMKs, and approaches to a story and presentation.
• Falling back in love with the humble RSS feed – Hard agree with everything Fiona MacNeill writes about RSS. I’ve been eagerly awaiting for the RSS reboot and I’m over the moon that it’s back.
• NFC business cards, Business Card Notebooks, Let a hundred flowers blossom, Omnibus 02023 – I’ve been binge-reading Optimal articles on all sorts of topics. Brian and co are some of the most interesting thinkers and makers in in my feed atm and their content never disappoints.
• These are my Jams – Another great thinker-maker, Paul Robert Lloyd build his own version of the This is My Jam on his website.

Away from the screen

• I bought a tiny conifer tree for £3 which I’ll try to bonsai later this year.
• I cooked my very first ramen which turned out pretty good.
• I stared reading Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s In a Grove, the short story that Akira Kurosawa’s film Rashōmon was based on.