Week in review 2024-19
Saturday, May 18, 2024
Aurora’s above Kilkenny, SV Charlois and dinner parties
Notes on the week
I love space. I am fundamentally aligned with the idea that humanity should become an interplanetary species, and that the need to explore the unknown is hard coded into our DNA. I remember when I was very little, being in the back of my parents car driving home from visiting friends, looking up into the night sky and being scared. I couldn’t tell you why for certain, but I was probably beginning to get a grasp for just how tiny our little blue drop in the Universe truly is. Now, many years later and a little bit more informed as to just how infinitesimally small we are, oddly when I look up at the night sky I feel nothing but wonder and awe.
This is all a long winded of saying, when the Space Weather reports forecast a once in a lifetime Coronal Mass Ejection aimed straight at Earth I was raging that I had made my plans to travel home at the end of May, and not the start! The Aurora Borealis, visible above Kilkenny! I have never felt so jealous of, and at the same time so happy for, my family that they got to see it. My sister happened to be home that night and the pictures they got together under the Northern Lights were incredible to see.
I’ve joined a football club. Kind of. SV Charlois is the nearest football club to our new flat, and as part of an attempt to integrate more in the community, get a little fitter and have a bit of fun before my knees truly pack it in, I decided to check out if they have a very ‘amateur’ team. Turns out they have dozens of teams, across all age ranges from kids all the way up to ‘walking football’ for seniors. I went to watch their Sunday morning men’s team play this week, and the standard is exactly what I’m looking for, a little slow on the physical side but fully committed on the competitive end. The season is just coming to an end, so I can’t join properly until June ahead of the next season, but I’m going to go watch more games over the coming weeks.
We had guests for Dinner! Elle invited a couple of the girls from college around to our flat for dinner, and it was really nice! We definitely need more dishes and cutlery if this is going to become a recurring thing, I ate out of a piece of tupperware with a plastic fork (the guests got priority when it came to real dinnerware). The weather here is amazing at the moment, so we had our balcony doors open to let the sun and summer breeze in, and Elle made an amazing pasta dish that went down a treat. We also got asked the ultimate neighbour question, to keep a set of our friends apartment keys in our house in case they ever get locked out. I think we’re properly settled in now.
Links
Personal Computing paves the way
India’s AI war rooms during an election year
The drinking fountain button is tragically misunderstood
How to keep fit in Lunar gravity
Woodworking as an escape from programming
Reading
I’m intentionally taking my time with Wuthering Heights, and just taking a chapter a night before bed. I’m really enjoying it, and doesn’t feel anything like the chore that Moby Dick was. It’s one of Elle’s favourite books so I’m really looking forward to getting deeper into it and chatting with her about it. Before reading the book, I was aware of the name ‘Heathcliff’ but knew literally nothing about him, I wonder where his character goes throughout the novel, but so far he’s not exactly the gentleman that I had in my head.
Listening
The Kendrick/Drake beef is all the music world can talk about right now, but beyond even the tracks released by the artists themselves, the highlight has to be BBL Drizzy, an AI generated song by King Willonius