I enjoy reading monthly updates from people I follow (via RSS), they’re always so interesting. So I figured I’d try writing my own. It’ll be good to 1) get me into a regular writing cadence (I want to write more, here and elsewhere, this year), and 2) maybe someone will find mine interesting (jk I don’t think people read this blog). Anyways, let’s give this a try!

general

Fuck, April just kind of disappeared. I don’t even really know what happened, but here we are at the end of the month. Work’s been a bear, work adjacent things have been chewing up a lot of available free time too. Hoping May will be less intense.

I’m looking forward to some warmer weather. We’ve gotten bits of it, which has been nice for commute biking and running outside. Hoping to some good runs and rides in soon.

using

I’m on a big stationery kick of late. Fountain pens are a focus, but in general cursive writing has got my focus. So lots of journaling and just wanna fill up every notebook I own. A good problem to have, I think, just gotta find the time for it.

I’ve nearly finished one of my Zebra Sarasa gel pens (in blue-black, 0.7), which I am quite excited about. I really want to whittle down my stash, but this has been one of my favorite gel pens so it will be hard not to pick up a refill and keep it going.

I have been experimenting with coding agents again. I still do not like them - I think they are unethical, a way for <5 companies to control programming ability, putting chip manufacturing under significant strain such that normies can’t purchase computing equipment at a reasonable price, are ripe for a price increase such that their current use will be unreasonable, are causing brain drain and further distancing each other from real human interactions, and generally not that great - but I still think I need to be at least knowledgeable of their capabilities. They do ok at small, focused tasks. Or as a super-powered search engine. Or throwing a bunch of server logs at it and unraveling what’s going on. I think my next move is to try out pi, as that’s maybe more aligned with how I work - a bit more minimal, so it will rely on me to build out a bit more tooling but I think that’s better than Claude Code at this point. But I still very much do not want to become reliant on these things, because I have a feeling prices will hike very soon and they won’t be economically viable for many any more - see the Claude Code price hike go/no-go fiasco (I can sort of stomach $20/month for my usage, but I absolutely do not get $100/month value out of it).

reading

Book book reading has been down this month (see above). I started This is How You Lose the Time War, and despite it’s length I’m still less than halfway through it. I’m enjoying it…just haven’t the time.

Humanities in the Machine: makes me wish I had taken more humanities courses in college. Also makes me want to read more philosophy and lit books now.

Why I don’t destroy snowmen: I really like this outlook. It’s something I’ve heard hinted at in other places as well. But I think it’s super important - let’s not let these things take even more humanity from us.

watching

We finished Father Brown - it was a nice series and I’m glad it’s still running. Series 14 has been confirmed so we’ll have that to look forward to next year.

Brokenwood Mysteries has returned for a new season, and it’s a delight as always. I’d put this one in our top 5, it’s just consistently good year over year, and has many years of proof.

listening

It’s been about a year since I saw Alcest live, and on a whim I put an album on at the gym. That spiraled into listening to them pretty much exclusively for the past 2 weeks. It’s a chiller blackened shoegaze to Deafheaven, and I guess that’s what I’m looking for right now. Especially loving Spiritual Instinct and Écailles de lune (some of the guitar work in Écailles de lune – Part 1 is just sublime).