Although I did not do the 100 days consecutively, the expectation to write one hundred blog posts within a calendar year focused the mind somewhat. I wrote about things that I’m sometimes hesitant, for one reason or another, to post here — or that I sometimes include in commentary over at Thought Shrapnel.
As I documented in the first weeknote of this year, my past year review of 2021 led me to a decision to avoid spending time on Twitter and LinkedIn. This was mainly to do with how they make me feel; in the case of Twitter it makes me angry, and in the case of LinkedIn it makes me sad.
Mastodon and the Fediverse I feel more neutral about. Posting there seems like a good place for semi-ephemeral thoughts, but there’s nothing like publishing something in a space that you own. In addition, writing something on a blog lends an expectation of coherence and attention to spelling/grammar that isn’t always there on social media.
So, as with much of what I write here, this is a note to myself to lower the bar for the kinds of things that can appear here inbetween my regular weeknotes. It’s useful, for example, to be able to immediately respond with a blog post when someone asks how to plan a workshop. Or to remind myself how I felt a year after a friend died. Or perhaps to remind myself that side projects are worth doing.
Is there anything that you, increasingly-rare visitor to this forest clearing, would like me to write about? Let me know in the comments below 😊
WAO kicked off four projects this week, one of them completely new, and the other three a continuation of previous work with clients. I had a fun chat with Stephen Downes about some potential work we might do around critical literacies. Team Belshaw celebrated our youngest’s 11th birthday, and normal(ish) life resumed after the festive period.
Hannah, quite rightly, has asked to spend more time in the home office separate to our house. This makes sense as not only is there a sit/stand desk in there but also she tends to work until 17:00 most days, whereas I’m usually done by 16:00. Her office, such as it is, sits next to our bedroom in the loft conversion. It’s very light and warm, but when the kids are home from school unavoidably suffers from the noise of the house.
Laptop musings
While I was up in that office room at the top of the house earlier this week I tried connecting my laptop to her 4K screen. While it technically worked, everything was so slow. It didn’t matter whether I used my beloved 2017 Google Pixelbook or trusty 2012 Lenovo ThinkPad X220. As a result, I realised it was probably past time that I bought myself a new laptop.
I bought Hannah a MacBook Pro M1 last year through my business, but I much prefer using Linux to macOS. So I was looking for something that ticked various boxes. Long story short, the one that ticked all of them was the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano. Unfortunately, the prices for that currently start at about £1,700. As I’ve already got a desktop and two other laptops, this felt a little extravagant.
Some research and the inevitable spreadsheet later, I’d realised that a refurbished MacBook Air M1 is currently £850 on the Apple store. While the work of the Asahi Linux team (and others) means that great strides are being made towards making Linux work on M1 Macs, it’s not ready for primetime. And virtualising Linux would just feel janky.
What this did do, however, was reset my expectations on how much a machine should cost that can do what the MacBook Air M1 does. Some more investigation led me to the Asus Zenbook 13 UX325 which I ended up ordering yesterday and, serendipitously, arrived at our house just as I started this paragraph!
I’ve ended up sacrificing a UHD screen, but the Zenbook at least has an OLED full-HD display. The rest of this weeknote is going to be written later, because despite being 41 years old, I also have no self-control and absolutely must open this parcel right now…
<sometime later…>
OK, I’m back. It’s nice. Pop!_OS, my distro of choice, works like a charm. I’ll have to make some typing adjustments, but it seems the laptop is going to be pretty great for how I’m expecting to use it. Regarding the screen, it’s pretty amazing and I can’t really tell the difference between the resolution on it and an external 4K screen. I guess it’s all about the DPi.
I particularly like that I’ve got the Linux equivalent of Windows Hello (called Howdy) working. This means that in reasonably-lit environments I can unlock the laptop and run sudo commands by authenticating using my face instead of a password. It’s great.
Next week
It’s time to dive properly into all of the work projects next week. We’re trying to ensure that we schedule half-days for each of them. I’m also going to plan a potential walking-and-camping trip along Hadrian’s Wall in April, as I’ve scheduled the first three weeks of the month off.
Here we are! The first week of 2022 is officially here and I’m not sure what to think of it. Considering life in years based on calendars is, of course, entirely arbitrary. As far as I’m concerned, we’re still in the month of Nivôse in the French Republican Calendar…
Since last writing a weeknote, it’s been my birthday, Christmas, New Year, and I’ve returned to work after a lovely trip to Devon to see the in-laws. I say “returned to work” but the day I had planned to work (Wednesday) was actually filled with a delightful walk on the England/Scotland border with Aaron Hirtenstein. Aaron recently moved from Oxford to just the other side of Northumberland National Park so hopefully it’ll be the first of many.
After taking down the Christmas lights and decorations with the kids on Tuesday, I performed a Past Year Review (PYR) while they played a lot of video games and Hannah returned to work. The PYR process was incredibly helpful in finding things that I have energy for and things that I don’t. I’ve printed out the results and stuck them next to the desk in my home office:
✅ Do these things in 2022
• Watch sun rise • Side projects (use SOFA principle) • Holidays • Kayaking • Growing plants (tomatoes, other) • Wild camping • Going out for family Sunday dinner • Mountain biking • Date night
❌Avoid these things in 2022
• Job-seeking • Admin • Work-related drama • Atheneum consulting • Twitter • LinkedIn • Organising events • Staying in same room as family • Anti-vaxxer nonsense
On Thursday I had an impromptu catch-up with my fellow WAO co-op members and experimented with Xero Projects. I’m going to run a proposal in next week’s meeting to experiment with it for one month with one client and I’m hoping it will pass. I think it could help streamline our workflows a bit. Things kick off properly with clients next week, so I just set things up, tinkered around a bit, and wrote a long-overdue post about learning resource discovery.I
Although I didn’t go as far as the detailed spreadsheet comparisons I made when purchasing a smartwatch and camping gear last year, I did do some background research before buy a Boox Note Air 2. As I mention in this post, it’s a curious device — an e-ink tablet that runs Android. It’s pretty much the only device in its class, and I’ve been using it every day since receiving it on Tuesday.
As ever, I experimented with doing something different with Thought Shrapnel but in the end just published three things as usual on Friday. I’m going to get back into the rhythm before sending out another newsletter. Yes, I know it’s been a while!
Other than the above, there’s not too much to report other than I made the trip to The Bike Place in Kielder with my daughter this weekend to buy her a bike for her birthday. They sell ex-hire bikes and, due to the pandemic, the ones they have on offer are very lightly used! She’s delighted with getting a better bike that she would usually be able to get, and I’m delighted with the savings.
Next week, Laura and I are onboarding John onto our main client projects, as he quit his job at the end of last year. He’ll be helping us not only with project work, but is also taking over as Co-op Secretary and bookkeeper now that Hannah is working full-time for NHS Digital. I’ve already told my fellow members of my plan to take as much of April, August, and December off in 2022 as possible. This is not only for my own physical and mental health, but also to spend time during the major holidays with my holidays, and potentially to kick off non-remunerative projects.
