Note: this entry covers the past 2 weeks.

Making Bread

I had the idea recently that I wanted to see if I could bake bread from scratch. Nothing too elaborate or requiring any special equipment or techniques. But my goal is to be able to quickly throw together the typical ingredients (flour, water, salt, yeast) in the right ratio, cook in my airfryer, and then have decent bread rolls.

I'm using no real recipes, apart from a quick ratio I found on my first google search. I've since tried 4 times, with varying cooking times, temperatures, and also liquids (Stella Artois has worked the best so far).

So far they've not been perfect. Edible, but not perfect. If I ever make a really good one, I'll share a photo.

PokeGuessr

I wanted to do some programming, and thought I could make a fun little game. So I made a guessing game in Node.JS where you can try and guess all 151 original Pokémon.

Find it on GitHub

Chocolate

Like most people, I've just taken part in the yearly exchange of overpriced chocolate. Which means I now have enough chocolate to last me for quite some time.

Laptops

My work laptop has reached it's ripe age of 3 years, which means I'm able to purchase my laptop at a discounted price of £427. Obviously I don't have to buy my laptop, but it's a good way to get a cheap laptop and to also force a replacement.

A good condition 16" MacBook Pro (M1 Pro) with 500GB storage and 16GB memory for £427 seems a good price to me, so I'll be starting the purchase process shortly. I expected I'll just resell with the same price to someone in my family.

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I wrote a short post the other day about my ideal work laptop.

Needless to say, I want my next work machine to be very intentionally built and customised. I want to build the most efficient machine for my work.

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As for my personal laptop, I still haven't ordered my new Mac. Which, like I said on Mastodon, increases the likeliness of me ending up with a Framework machine instead.

Minecraft

This may become a trend. Here's an updated view of my current humble base in Minecraft.

I have decided that in this world, I won't build any elaborate strucutres or designs that much, instead it will just be practical buildings that may also look nice.

I've been going through the process of replacing my laptop at work recently, and it made me think about what my ideal laptop would be. If there were no restrictions regarding company policy, support, etc.

For the record, I'm currently using a 16" MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro chip.

Forgetting the hardware aspect, when I really thought about the software I used at work on a day to day basis, it really came down to these primary applications:

• Mail
• Chrome
• IntelliJ - 99.9% of the code I write is Java, IntelliJ is the best IDE for this.
• DingTalk - Think of this as a Teams/Slack alternative. This is where we have our real-time communication, calendar, video calls, alerts, reports, task management, etc.
• Ghostty - My current terminal application.

In a dream world, I'd have a laptop setup so minimally, that each of these were always open, set to be used on their own workspace, and have nothing else installed. This sort of setup would be ideal for a Linux machine, where I could have a real control over how everything is configured, minimising distractions, etc. ^[1]

However, our main application, DingTalk is only available on Windows and macOS...

I have been tempted to switch to Windows, mainly because it would enable me to use Linux via WSL. But I just can't do it.

That leaves me with macOS...

I wouldn't say it's full of bloatware, but depending on what you want your machine to do, it can feel like it sometimes. Or at least it can feel like the system is fighting you whenever you want to use your machine in the "wrong" way.

One example is how workspaces (Spaces/Desktops in macOS) work. For example, you can't natively see what space you are in, moving between the spaces isn't instant, and if you make an application full-screen, it moves to a newly created space. So I have to use Spaceman to keep the space number in my menu bar, and make sure I don't use the native full-screen option. On Linux, all of this would be available and customisable.

However, as I've discussed above, macOS is my only option for work at the moment. So while I won't make any big changes to my current machine, when my new one comes, I'm going to be very intentional about my file structure, software I use, key bindings, etc.

I suspect some of this may overflow into my personal machine setup. But the benefit of my work machine is that it only serves a few purposes: communicating with my team, writing/reading documents, and writing Java code.

Hopefully that means building out my next machine should be relatively straightforward.

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1. This is the main reason why I'm still not 100% on what my next personal laptop should be. I'm 99% sure I will end up with an M4 MacBook Pro. But while I haven't ordered it, there is still a chance I'll fully try out a Linux machine, such as a Framework laptop. ↩︎

My search for a new laptop bag is back on...

Last week I was pretty set on getting a new small laptop backpack for work, seeing as my plan was to downsize to a 14" MacBook in the near future.

However, after talking to our IT department last week, I was told that we have 2 models to choose from. The base model 14" M4 MacBook Pro with 16 GB memory, or the base model 16" M4 Pro MacBook Pro with 24 GB of memory. Needless to say I settled with the 16" model, as it will have to last me a few years.

It will be a bit harder to find a backpack that holds this laptop, but at the same time is as small as possible. Most of the options that fit a 16" laptop seem to built around fitting your entire life in a single bag.

Some changes at work

It's an interesting time at work, since I've now got a new manager. There was an internal rotation of managers between 2 teams, and now we need to go through the various phases of handovers between managers, planning for the future, and also the short-term changes that both managers will want to implement. I'm sure my new manager will want to put her stamp on how we do things, and I eagerly await what it will be.

Yellowstone

Yep, I'm still watching Yellowstone. I completed season 2 last week, and I'm already stuck into season 3!

And I've only just discovered two prequel series, 1883, and 1923 which I will queuing up once I've completed Yellowstone.

Minecraft not so forever

So I've been playing this Minecraft world for a while, but I got to a point where I had some resources collected, some basic farms, an okay base. But I died just a few too many times. So I decided to make another forever world, and start again from scratch.

I'm trying something new to this blog, a "weeknote". Nothing formal, or even guaranteed. But just a collection of some thoughts I've been having over the past week, anything I've particularly enjoyed, and maybe a few personal updates where interesting.

I've seen a few other bloggers use this format, and I enjoy reading them, so hopefully it works out.

New Laptops

It's looking likely that I'll be replacing both my personal and work MacBook within the next few weeks. I'm currently on the base model M1 Pro for both, with my personal machine being 14" and my work one being 16".

I don't have much choice with my work machine, although I can choose the size. So my likely replacements are going to be:

• Personal: 14" M4 Max, 1 TB, 36 GB, Nano-texture display
• Work: 14" M4 Pro, 500 GB, 24 GB

For my personal machine, with my use of AI growing, and also that I want to run games at a decent level, I think the Max chip will be more than enough.

For work, my main choice is that I want to "downsize" to a 14" machine, simply because of the size and weight.

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That leads me to my next purchase that I'm currently looking into, a backpack to carry my laptop to and from work.

Similar to why I want to downsize to a 14" model for work, I want my bag to be as small and light as possible. That's helped by my new monitor at work which supports powering my laptop over USB C, so all I literally need to take into the office is my laptop, work badge, and sunglasses for the rare occurrence of sunshine in the UK.

My initial problems were that if I searched for minimal or small laptop backpacks, most of the products were around the £150-£200 mark, and designed around fitting as much as possible in a small container. Whereas I want the smallest bag possible that has no room for anything else.

My current favourite is this model from Johnny Urban.

It's a good price, looks plain enough, and is probably the perfect size at just 15 cm deep. Any smaller and it will look like I've got a laptop sleeve strapped to my back.

Entertainment

I finally started watching Yellowstone, and I wish I started it sooner, but still enjoy the fact that I get to binge. It's an incredible series, and in just a few days I've completed the first season, and I'm just starting the second.

The American ranch life definitely appeals to someone who works a 9-5 in front of a laptop all week.

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I've also watched a few episodes of Last One Laughing UK, which is okay. It'a a group of comedians locked in a house trying not to laugh (as you can imagine by the title). There are funny moments, but I wouldn't say they're the funniest comedians. But it's a bit of fun, so I'm sure I'll finish the series at least.s

Gaming

I don't play many games anymore, but when I do get the chance it's Minecraft. I have a survival world I've been playing in for a while, and I'm trying to build a "forever" world. One where I slowly improve things, expand to new areas, experiment with new builds, and maybe even defeat the Ender Dragon at some point.

Even though I've been playing Minecraft since it was in Beta, it's incredible how fun it is still.

I've been playing around with Cursor^[1] recently, and while I haven't started the paid plan yet, I am starting to think I will. I don't think it will replace any of my typical development, but it's well-suited for quick prototypes and small changes that I don't want to write myself.

One recent example was the sidebar design on the left of this blog. That was initially generated via Cursor.

Anyway... Yesterday I was thinking about the MCU, trying to work out what films I've seen, and if I've missed any out, based on the timeline. So I thought, surely I can just get Cursor to build me a basic timeline? Sure enough, it could.

Once I had a basic timeline, I wondered if I could use this as a challenge to see how far I could go with this site, purely using Cursor and not writing any code myself. So I've spent just a few hours, asking Cursor for new features, design tweaks, and small corrections to the actual source data when it missed a film or two.

As for the final result, you can find the code on GitHub.

The overall functionality is simple, it displays all MCU films (inc. multiverse, and related films like Venom), and lets you track which ones you have watched.

But there's also a grid mode for easier viewing.

A section for upcoming films.

And some overall statistics.

As you can see, it's not exactly the most complex site. But for a personal tool, I think it's perfect. And this type of quick project is one of the main reasons why I expect I will continue using Cursor.

Which leads me to my recent thoughts about this type of AI-powered programming. I'm starting to imagine a future where this type of code is not generated like I did here, which is to keep feeding suggestions until a result is delivered, before using that as a "product". But rather, these types of tools/UIs can be built dynamically and in real-time.

This shifts from asking to 'build a website showing all MCU films...' to simply saying 'show me the MCU films,' with the timeline UI being generated and displayed in real-time. In the future maybe we won't have developers generating code via AI tools, maybe people will use AI, and the AI can provide relevant visualisations/results directly.

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1. An AI code editor. ↩︎

The more I use AI tools, such as Cursor and Perplexity, it becomes even more incredible to me how terrible Siri is.

This probably isn't revolutionary, but I've been thinking about this for a while, and I think I have a perfect use case for AI. And that is property searching.

I heard Rory Sutherland^[1] talk about property searching a while ago, and he was explaining how the tools used to search for properties, and the housing market in general, isn't fit for purpose. Primarily because your search is built around what your perfect house is, e.g. you can look for houses in a good catchment area for schools. But he proposes that a better way of seearching for a house is to work out what can you live with, that other people would hate. His example was living near a railway line, he would enjoy this, most people would hate it.

This example alone got me thinking about AI. And especially tools like Perplexity, as you can explain your exact scenario and what you're looking for, but also what things you absolutely can't live with, and what you could live with.

For example, you could say "We are family of 4, I require school access, but as I work remotely, I don't require any particular transport links" or something like "I'm a single man, working in London, with no need for school or transport links, as long as I can get to work within 1 hour, and I don't mind being in a noisy area as I go to bed late".

There are probably better examples, but I'm sure you get the idea.

I think if you had an AI model that had full access to a property database, with enough information that it could understand the fine details of each property, placing a prompt-based interface on top of that would be perfect.

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1. British advertising/marketing genius. Wikipedia ↩︎

A younger version of myself would laugh at what I'm about to say. But if there's one thing that I can take from last year, it's that becoming a parent is the greatest thing a human being can do. Who would have thought?

When I think about games that had lasting effects on me, there’s honestly hardly any.

For starters, I have to give games like Pokémon and World of Warcraft their own category. I’ve played them both for massive chunks of my life, and even if a sequel isn’t great, I’m playing it. They’ve probably both affected me somehow, but in a more longer-term way that’s hard to measure.

I guess I could also say the FIFA and Call of Duty games are similar, in that it’s not really about the quality of the game, the benefit is really the experience playing live with other people.

The game that had the biggest “wow, this is incredible” was Firewatch. It was a really good length, the story had me hooked the whole way through, and the whole gameplay experience was great.

But there is one game that I seem to have a lot of nostalgia for, and that is The Last of Us. I can’t put my finger on the exact reason. Was it the gameplay, the story, or just my life at the time? I don’t know.

But when I think back to playing the game, or see photos on social media, all I can remember is being completely immersed, taking everything one step at a time, never wanting to miss a single second. I really want to play through it again. But I wonder if it just won’t have the same feeling as the first time.

One thing is for certain, I want to start playing more games. And I don’t just mean endless hours on Call of Duty or World of Warcraft. Real games, with enthralling stories, that leave something behind in me.