Rather than a weekly update, I’m taking a look back at the month as a whole. It’s been a busy one.
Notes on the month
Back in Ireland
People are returning to the office in their droves, and I’m no exception. With a couple of days on-site every week now mandatory, the great Dutch adventure has come to an end (for the moment at least). With the news arriving at the end of the year, and amongst a number of “life things” happening in a short period of time, the transition was a little stressful, but we’re making the most of it. On the positive side, being back in the office more often is nice, and it’s been great to catch up serendipitously with folks that I don’t cross paths with when working remotely. With my business hat on, I can clearly see the benefits of large groups of smart people being under the same roof, but that hat can be tough to wear when it’s turning your life upside down.
I don’t see Elle and I living in different countries for the long term, and I’ve been exploring options within my company to move back. This might mean taking on a different kind of challenge, in a role that I’m less familiar with, but I’m always up for trying something new! The benefit of working for a major player in the Telco industry is that we have a pretty global footprint, hopefully I’ll be able to take advantage of it.
On the personal side, being apart from your person is obviously challenging, but we’re doing the best we can. We’ve booked lots of little trips and thanks to one Mr. O’Leary, travel costs back and forth are pretty manageable. The silver lining to all of this, is getting time to spend with family and friends at home, without which this whole experience would be practically unbearable.
Paris in January
Due to the aforementioned move home, I missed Elle’s birthday and she missed mine. To make up for this, we planned a trip to Paris for the end of January. She took the train from the Netherlands, I flew in from Dublin and we met in Gare du Nord. It all sounds a little like the start of a rom-com from the early 2000s. We stayed in a little AirBnb outside the Jardin des Plantes, on the left bank, with excellent Metro connections and a bunch of restaurants around the corner.
Rather than trying to tick off all the items on the list of “Top 10 things to do in Paris”, we had a shortlist of things that we need to see, and a longer list of what we’d like to see if we have the time/energy. Top of the the need to see was the Museé de Cluney, and the Lady and the Unicorn Tapestries within. This series of tapestries is one of Elle’s favourite pieces of art and they are truly stunning. I couldn’t believe the sheer scale of them - imagine your living room floor turned on it’s side, hung from the ceiling, and covered in 14th century depictions of mythical beasts. A little trivia here for Harry Potter fans, recreations of these tapestries are used as the wallpaper for the Gryffindor common room in the movies.
We also got to visit the newly re-opened Notre Dame, spun by the headquarters of the FIA to see their paltry “Hall of Fame” (with all the money they’re making from fining drivers they could really build something more impressive), walked the Champs Élysées, took in a sunset under the Eiffel Tower and ate meal after fantastic meal. We spent basically an entire day (the only rain affected day of the trip) in the Louvre, and put up a step count that should get us through our 10k a day for the rest of the year. The trip ended where it began, back at Gare du Nord, where I took the RER out to Charles de Gaulle (and marvelled at the renovated terminal 1) whilst Elle rode the train back North.
Next up is a trip to visit Elle’s sister, and plans are underway for the Summer 2025 Mega Trip of Adventure and Long Haul Flights™️. The goal is to get those Flighty stats up to a complete circumnavigation.
New phone, who dis?
I got a new phone. After 3 years, work started updating our fleet of handsets and we were given the choice of a Galaxy S24, or an iPhone 16. No prizes for guessing which model I chose. Coming from a 3 year old iPhone 12, I was really excited to get hands on with one of the new phones, and see what the upgrade is like after skipping a number of generations in between.
The first thing I noticed is that the feel of the phone in the hand has improved massively. I loved the appearance of the flat edges of the 12 series of phones, but holding them was a deeply unsatisfying experience. Apple have addressed this by gently rounding the edges of the phone and this has made it so much nicer to hold. Unfortunately work has pre-applied some variety of tempered glass screen protector that leaves a frustrating ‘lip’ between the screen and the body of the device, but besides that the whole thing feels lovely to hold.
In day to day usage the next major change is battery life. Coming from a 3 year old phone that had reduced to about 80% battery health, this is a huge upgrade! My old phone had degraded to the point where it was no longer a question of making it through the day or not, rather just when I was going to have to enable Low Power mode to make sure I made it home. This new phone just lasts forever. I’m easily getting over 24 hours between charges, and the peace of mind this provides, especially on travel heavy days is priceless.
The cameras feel suitably improved from my aging 12, and I now have Cinematic Video mode, Macro mode and Photographic styles to play with. It’s kind of shitty that ProRAW support is only available on the Pro models, but third party apps like Halide can make up for that. The most noticeable improvement with the camera workflow is the dedicated camera control button, which I found myself reaching for by instinct within days of using it, and is a very reliable option to quickly launch the camera app and snapping off a quick shot. The extra functionality on the button (zoom, focus, style etc), are less reliable to trigger - the double tap and swipe gesture are a bit hit or miss.
All in all, a massive upgrade from the iPhone 12, and this should keep me going until Apple’s inevitable foray into the foldable market. Oh, and one last tiny thing - this phone is LOUD, and I mean really loud! The first time I accidentally played a YouTube video at full volume I was shocked!
Links
Regex Chess: A 2-ply minimax chess engine in 84,688 regular expressions
I Live My Life a Quarter Century at a Time
ORIGINS - The Story of Irish Hip Hop
The Gentrification of Video Game History
What do you love when you fall for AI?
I’ve acquired a new superpower
The 2024 Stratechery Year in Review
How Madrid built its metro cheaply - Works in Progress
How a BBC navigation bar component broke depending on which external monitor it was on - Josh Tumath
The Legacy of Red Vienna | Jenny Uglow
Reading
Since the start of the new year I’ve been devouring the "Dungeon Crawler Carl series of books by Matt Dinniman. This is my first time reading something in the Lit-RPG genre - a style of writing that puts an merges traditional storytelling with video game conventions of character progression, like XP levels, items, quests etc. It appears that I’m a fan of both this style of writing, and the ridiculous, bombastic, apocalyptic world that Dinniman has crafted as I’m already on book six of the series! Definitely not for everyone, but if video games, sci-fi, fantasy and sardonic AI’s are your thing, you’ll love it.
The conclusion to the first arc of Brandon Sanderson’s “Stormlight Archive” came out just before Christmas, and whilst I technically didn’t read this in January it’s worth a mention. Going by the reactions of critics and fans, “Wind and Truth” is probably the weakest entry in the series to date, and whilst I tend to agree with them, it’s more in a Pablo Honey is the worst Radiohead album, rather than a The Godfather III has cast a blight on the whole series kind of way.
Once I get through the remaining two Dungeon Crawler books, I’m moving on to “Babel”, a book about that I know very little about other than it takes place at an alternate history version of Oxford University, and deals with themes of Language, Oppression and Colonisation. Elle got me this book for Christmas, and I can’t wait to check it out. After "For All Mankind" I’m on a bit of an alternate history kick.
Listening
Music
Over the Christmas break I was introduced to Valtos - a group that make a kind of Scottish Folk / Trad / EDM hybrid. What started as a bit of a curiosity has become a constant rotation and they’re well worth checking out.
FKA Twigs new album came out. It’s incredible.
Elle introduced me to Doechii with her appearance on NPR’s Tiny Desk series. This album is brilliant, refreshing and reminds me of so many 90’s hip-hop influences whilst retaining a strong sense of originality.
Podcasts
Every episode of the Acquired podcast is more or less a guaranteed banger, but this 3 hour deep dive into the history of the Mars chocolate company was especially compelling.