(For information on “now” pages, see Derek Sievers’ original writeup on them.)

2024 — 03 — 25

I have dates for my viva! 05-08 is the big day. It’ll be a couple of hours in the afternoon — I’m sure it’ll feel like a couple years in the moment.

There’s lots to do.

I’m still thinking lots about Aspect-Oriented Programming, about composing model components, about the relationship between model building and hypothesis testing, about how AOP’s been misconstrued in the literature to date…whether I’ll get the opportunity to get into all these details on the day is likely another matter!

2024 — 03 — 11

Time’s moved quickly lately. Prep for summer trips; wait for viva dates; Marta’s finally had some appointments we’ve been waiting for after what’s felt like aeons; winter’s finally begun to leave us, my enjoyment of cooking’s returned, a little passive burnout’s stayed. Refuses to shift. The city feels like it’s opening up to us, finally, which is both satisfying and a relief.

I’ve done my best to keep on top of things the last few months, but a couple things — especially catching up with friends — have really fallen by the wayside, particularly since the sprint to wrap up my thesis.

However, work’s yielded some success! The project I’m working on (chrompartments) started with some rather slow struggles to get things to build, which have mostly resolved. Some kind of cosmic mercy. Now I can get started on the task at hand and play with V8. We’re looking to provide some security (/performance?) enhancements to it using CHERI, and while getting it to compile we’ve had plenty of ideas as to what those enhancements can be. Now it’s time to play with them — finally! — fun.

I’ve been playing with photography more, trying to find ways to improve and to have a little more fun with digital…but I keep moving back to film. Frustratingly, my film photos rarely turn out how I’d like (which I’m blaming on my OM-1n’s broken light meter), but I enjoy the process so much more that I struggle to care. The practice is about having an excuse to see the world differently anyway.

Only halfway through Craig Mod’s Things Become Other Things. It’s fantastic…but I keep getting distracted by John Berger instead. His notes on an interview with Bresson — page 157 of this .pdf on archive.org — or his notes on the theory of narrative — page 117 of the same .pdf — are just lovely, and always provoke some moment of clarity for me. Worth a read!

2024 — 02 — 07

Improbably, I’ve begun playing a little chess. I’m probablytom on chess.com.

Also, Bluesky just enabled public registration…! I’m @tom.coffee there. The mechanism they have for domain name verification is clever and simple; I love it! Not convinced I’ll actually end up using it, though. Is there any replacement for the Twitter of 2009? Or is that warm memory more a product of nostalgia than of the quality of the community there? Mastodon and micro.blog didn’t land any more successfully for me…maybe the problem’s less the services, and more how we use them.

2024 — 01 — 23

• Juggling! I’ve got a regular three ball cycle and reverse cascade pretty much down. Practising for consistency and getting under-leg throws working.
• Getting back into running — after a particularly nasty fall in September I couldn’t run for months, and got out of the habit…
• Reading a little — I’ve just finished Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running and started Katherine Rundell’s biography of John Donne. Top of the list is also Craig Mod’s Things Become Other Things.