Update 09 '24

September is here, it’s getting darker on my way home from work earlier and earlier. I had a good summer, stayed by Lake Garda in a small commune for a while. Went to Paris for a couple days but mostly stayed in London and hung out. When the seasons change it’s also the most ideal time to make any changes in your life. I’m trying to reduce my screen time, cut out Instagram (successful so far) and remove reliance on my phone in general - I find that I listen to the same music over and over again and want to rediscover finding new music. I bought a MP3 player, compact camera and notebook.

At work a piece I’d been working on for a several weeks was published. It was on the war/famine/ethnic cleansing in Sudan specifically about the city of el-Fasher which is under seige. It’s a war that’s consistently underreported - so I’m proud of it being a part of the cover package. I’m also now working on the US election congressional forecast. By making my way through the list of requirements, paying close attention to design, usablity, edge cases, readability has been very satisfying work. So much of front-end software development is about having design skills and it’s amazing to me how they have been separate fields for so long only now becoming more closely connected (though I think this is because of economic anxiety and competitiveness of the job market rather than anything else). Do CS programs have design modules? It reminds me of the separation of the sciences and humanities, we act as if they’re fundementally completely different things.

As a side project I’ve started on a online archive called the ‘Undersea Transmissions Archive’ which aims to document imagery about underwater internet cables. It took a while to sort the backend in other stuff but I got there and now can focus on finding materials for it.

I’ve also been organising and sorting out my notes - I’ve lapsed in keeping regular diary entries so will try and keep that going into the winter months.