Weeknotes 2024 W02 W03

It’s been a very busy 2 weeks at home and work so here’s a bundle edition of weeknotes.

I’ve ended up dropping a lot of habits over the last 14 days but now have a new one thanks to my slowly degrading MacBook Pro. The 2016 TouchBar model I have is prone to a design flaw, dubbed ‘flexgate’, which affects the display. Apparently, over time the opening and closing of the lid wears out the cable joining the computer and display. It started with a permanent ‘stage lighting’ effect at the bottom of the screen, then the computer no longer recognised the camera. Now, depending on how I open or hold the laptop, there’s an occasional ‘lights out’ on the entire display. A temporary fix is to open and close the lid, as if in an act of extreme apologetic bowing, until the wires finally kiss and make up.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how the objects around me have been constructed. Not only because of the aforementioned frustration. One of my current projects is working with a well known global manufacturing organisation. The focus of the discovery project is focused on their bonding portfolio and I’ve been learning about the complex world of joining materials together. It’s been surprisingly fascinating and I now look at the world wondering “How has that been constructed?”. Then a Bloop by Remy Sharp appeared in my timeline that was a prompt for some critical thinking.

As an advocate for Right To Repair and recently being turned onto regenerative design there are some questionable applications of these contemporary bonding methods that have a cost on the freedom of consumer repairability and in some instances act as a catalyst to the increasing digital waste.

In our weekly Clearleft meeting Jeremy shared that the Patterns Day festivities will be extended into the weekend with IndieWebCamp Brighton on the 10th and 11th March. It clashes with one of the many yearly Clinton’s Cards events, in this case Mother’s Day. I really hope to be able to join this year. Previous years have been a very relaxed and fun affair.

I somehow resisted the urge to deploy my 11ty website rebuild on a Sunday evening so decided to start week 2 with the official relaunch. I’m really impressed with how much faster it builds compared to my Jekyll build. I also decided to make my quarterly sumo bingo card on my website rather than using Figma. It was a great excuse to play with flexbox and JSON in more depth. the end result is inelegant and has zero cross-browser testing but works for now.

I ended the week by joining some origami enthusiasts at a Japanese cafe to fold dragons to celebrate the year of the dragon. It was a lovely excuse to get away from the computer and do something creative. Everyone there was incredibly welcoming and I’m looking forward to making it a monthly habit.

Worth your attention

A roundup of some interesting content I’ve consumed over the last 14 days.

• I’ve been enjoying listening to the ANIKI Youtube channel while in the kitchen this week. They have some really well researched and presented stories of the history of the Yakusa and Samurai. I love how broad the storytelling goes into all sorts of facets of Japanese history and culture: form sumo to biker gangs, teenage delinquent gangs to video games.
• I also really enjoyed STEVEM’s most recent video essay on the death of classic anime. As someone who grew up watching 90’s anime I have a real nostalgia for cell animation. It’s an interesting take on the shock of the new of digital and explores how a new medium’s imperfections can lead to interesting experimentation and ultimately become a nostalgic identify.
• Remy Sharp’s post documenting how he hacked together a Doggy Loggie device for monitoring sound.
• Another fantastic post on the pros and cons of using (G)AI images by the folks at IA Writing.
• It’s really interesting to see how banks, in this case Monzo, are fighting the ever-increasing scammer calls.
• I loved Anh’s refreshing take on writing weeknotes as a comic.
• Emma Boulton’s Getting Started with Research Ops shared some valuable advice on how and where to get started on supporting people who do research, happy birthday Emma!

This week(s) in pictures