I’m writing this from M’s parents’ house up in the mountains, where we’re going to spend a week of vacation. I’m going to try my best to actually relax, and not get too distracted by things I want to build!
This month, I migrated both of my blogs (blog.joewoods.dev and notes.joewoods.dev) to WordPress under the same banner. I wrote about this in two places:
I also wrote some other blog posts:
I’ve been having a lot of fun hanging out with the OMGLOL folks — you can check out my profile here: tjwds.omg.lol
Work continues on my AWS-based “microblog” framework, which lives here; this month, I added:
- Post editing
- Tagging and filtering by tag
I think this framework is getting pretty near the point where I’m going to want to start spinning up new projects using it, but we’ll see!
I also built a tool to take images and turn them into flag emojis. It’s not perfect (yet?) but I think the results aren’t too shabby. That code lives here; here’s the script as applied to the flag of Richmond, Virginia:
Music
Here’s this month’s installment of the playlist! I hope you enjoy it. Here’s the article, and here’s the playlist on Spotify:
Reading
I finished off Use of Weapons a little over halfway through the month. Like I mentioned last time around, this was a re-read for me; Use of Weapons is definitely not the best Culture novel, and this time it didn’t really give me the same feeling that the other books in the Culture series do. Now, the dilemma: do I read The State of the Art, or jump straight into Excession, one of the greatest novels of all time?
Next, I read Colson Whitehead’s new novel, Harlem Shuffle. I strongly believe The Underground Railroad is going to be taught in high school English classes as both an important literary work and a view into American history; I think Harlem Shuffle should probably end up being taught in American lit survey classes at universities. This is to say: I enjoyed it slightly less than The Underground Railroad and a bit more than The Nickel Boys, and I thought The Nickel Boys was a phenomenal literary achievement. Harlem Shuffle pulled me in really early, and I was going out of my way to find time to read it — I highly recommend it.
I started reading Matrix by Lauren Groff, but it really wasn’t up my alley, so I moved on after about a third of the novel.
failbetter
This month, failbetter published “Bird Call” by Kati Eisenhuth and “Flood” by Louise Wilford.
Stats
- I typed 810,000 keys and clicked 126,755 times.
- I listened to 1260 songs.
- 2 albums escaped from the Album Gauntlet.
- I wrote 23,888 words in my personal journal.
That’s it! Thanks for reading. Feel free to get in touch with me any time at joewoods@fastmail.com.
