Kerry Buckley

Brr.

First week back at work. A not insignificant part of Monday was spent trying to work out why a handful of tests were failing on my machine that weren’t before Christmas. It didn’t help that the first time I ran the full test suite was after upgrading to Elixir 1.18 and fixing a few new compiler warnings, but then when I went to bisect from main I realised that that branch was failing too. After clearing various caches, build products etc with no luck I slowly narrowed it down to certain integration tests not receiving expected completion messages, then to a couple of specific background tasks that didn’t seem to be succeeding. After running them manually, I eventually spotted that they had a two-minute sleep that was required in production but had been stubbed out in test. Because these are TCL expect scripts called from the main Elixir code, making them behave differently based on environment hadn’t been as simple, and I’d done it (a while ago) by checking for an environment variable that was only set in production. And guess what I’d been playing with last thing before finishing for the year? Yup, trying out some setup for a new production environment, in the process of which I’d set some environment variables in my shell profile, including the one that caused it to do a real sleep. As Dan pointed out, the mention of environment variables was a bad sign. I’m not sure the hack I’ve currently replaced it with is any better, but at least it works for now.

I also managed to soldier on to the end of the exercises in the Factor chapter of Seven More Languages in Seven Weeks ready for the study group on Tuesday, but no-one else bothered, and I can’t say I blame them. Definitely not my favourite of the random languages I’ve dipped my toe into.

In my usual style of finding things on TV that everyone else has been watching for ages, I’m currently about two thirds of the way through Man Like Mobeen, and enjoying it.

I’m also over halfway through my Christmas cake. I’m not sure it’s doing my “lose a stone before London” diet much good, but I have at least started to build my running distance up again (80 miles so far this year). Sunday was the Stowmarket cross country – my first race of the year – and it went better than expected, so that’s vaguely reassuring.

Happy New Year! I must admit I’ve not been a particularly fervent celebrator of the occasion since the overhyped (and one year early) celebrations in 2000, but it is mildly terrifying that that was somehow already a quarter of a century ago.

This was the second of my two weeks off work, and as predicted I’ve done virtually none of the tasks that I really need to get round to one day. Back to work tomorrow, which may be something of a shock to the system, although at least I don’t have to physically go into the office until Tuesday.

The vet was happy with Nobby’s progress. Although his respiratory infection has cleared up, he prescribed another week of the antibiotics in case the kidney issue was also an infection, and he has to go back for more tests in a couple of weeks.

For the first time in a few years I bought a couple of games in the Steam sale – the old Tomb Raider trilogy (one of which I already had), and the slightly odd (but cheap) Firewatch. I’ve finished the first Tomb Raider, and just have the final battle to get through in the second, and I finished Firewatch today (it’s a pretty short game). This may go some way to explaining the lack of chore accomplishments.

As is traditional of late, on New Year’s Eve a bunch of us cycled to Felixstowe, had a run along the prom, got very briefly in the sea, then cycled home again via a couple of pubs. We were pretty lucky with the weather, although obviously the sea was a bit chilly.

The next day saw a bonus parkrun, and Justin organised another of his not-parkrun runs to make it an unofficial double (now the real thing no longer happens). I ran to the park and between the two, but the heavens opened as we were feet from Justin’s door afterwards, so I wimped out of the run home and got a lift back.

I went to the shops on Thursday and noticed that the seville oranges were in, so I stocked up and made two batches of marmalade. I’d had to buy one jar before Christmas to tide me over, so I might need to make one more batch to be sure.

I didn’t scrub the pan properly after the first lot, and the peel stuck to the bottom a bit the second time, so that batch ended up much more caramelised than the first (also slightly over-set). I’ve sampled a bit of each though, and they both taste fine!

I bought a cheapish second-hand (but as-new) drone from eBay, but the weather hasn’t really been suitable to fly it yet, other than a quick play in the garden to make sure it all works. I have a feeling this might be one of those “why did I buy that again?” purchases, but we’ll see.

The weather’s been odd this weekend. Sub-zero temperatures for parkrun yesterday, then I woke up at around 4am and looked out of the window to see what looked like about half an inch of snow. By the time I got up properly though it was raining and hardly any snow remained, and by the afternoon the temperatures was back up into double figures. It’s a good job no important world leader positions are about to be taken up by anyone determined to wreck any last slim hope we might have of addressing climate breakdown or anything.

Looks like I’ve correctly incremented the week counter in the weeknote titles all year (or at least made an equal number of mistakes in each direction). Also I’m told today is Sunday, although of course at the moment it’s impossible to tell. Yesterday was apparently Saturday because there was parkrun, but then I’m sure it was Saturday on Wednesday so maybe not. I didn’t even bother trying to remember which bin to put out when.

I’ve been off work all week, and all I’ve managed to achieve from the infinite chore backlog is finishing the TV aerial cabling and tidying away all the access equipment that had been up for weeks, and vacuuming (which I’m told most people do often enough that finally getting round to it in a week off is not news).

Oh yeah, I also marzipanned and iced the Christmas cakes. I’d forgotten that I needed more eggs for the marzipan, and combined a trip to the greengrocer to buy some (plus a couple of other shops for bits and bobs) with a short run. I probably should have rearranged my rucksack when I nipped into the little Sainsbury’s to get apricot jam and caster sugar – by the time I got home I had a slightly sticky back, only 11 intact eggs and a bag very much in need of a wash.

Christmas Eve saw the annual 6k-ish fun run in aid of Suffolk MIND at the Royal Hospital School. The bottom bit of the course is usually a bit muddy, but this year was the driest I can remember. I was slower than last year, as seems to be the pattern these days.

Christmas day, also as usual, began with a bonus parkrun (my 52nd of the year with one to go – once again I missed one). Then home to cook my traditional excessive lunch.

I tried to be a bit creative with the inevitable leftovers, including making a chicken & bacon pie (I’d made too much pastry for mince pies) and a “pigs in blankets in the hole” which I thought I’d invented but actually seems quite popular.

Nobby seems to have been feeling better this week – he’s been eating more-or-less normally, and the antibiotics seem to have cleared up his respiratory infection. The blood tests showed poor kidney function though, so he has to go back in for more checks and may need to go on a special diet.

I watched the new Wallace and Gromit, which was excellent (I may need to watch it again and pause to check out all the background details), and Doctor Who which was … meh. I’m not sure what it is about the way the Netflix era show is shot and lit, but parts of it somehow seem to fall into the uncanny valley from the opposite side (real people sometimes look offputtingly computer-generated).

On Saturday I took a train to Colchester to see Ben Brown, Generation Feral (who was one person last time I saw her, but now seems to have acquired a drummer and guitarist) and Pet Needs (yes, again!) celebrating ten years of the Three Wise Monkeys. According to setlist.fm that’s 11 times I’ve seen Pet Needs in two years, and they’ve recently overtaken Frank Turner as my most-seen band/artist (it took me ten years to see him nine times).

The next photo isn’t mine (it’s stolen from Jonathan Dadds), but it’s a great shot despite me accidentally being in it.

I finished work on Friday, and now I’m not going back until the 6th, which feels very decadent. It seems the Christmas/New Year “I have no idea what day it is” feeling has crept in already, as it doesn’t feel like Sunday evening (despite it having been a fairly standard weekend).

Last Run for Beer of the year on Wednesday, and we went to Bin 93 again to avoid the pub crowds. They did us a deal for a wine or beer (or two soft drinks) and basically all you can eat cheese and biscuits for a tenner, and I missed a trick by picking a relatively cheap beer, then accidentally choosing one that was twice as strong and twice as expensive for my second. Neil had the same two in the opposite order, so his expensive one was included with the cheese and he paid for the cheap one. Schoolboy error on my part.

Nobby cat’s been a bit ill this week. He’s been a bit snuffly on and off for ages, but got worse and stopped eating, so I took him in to the vet on Friday. They’ve taken some blood for tests and prescribed some antibiotics for the infection and some mirtazapine to stimulate his appetite. He’s still looking poorly, but his nose and eyes seem to have mostly stopped running and he ate some food today, so hopefully he’s on the mend (he’s sitting next to me as I type this). He’s 16, so no longer a spring chicken, but still put up a struggle while having his mouth examined, and managed to leap up on top of the high kitchen cupboards when we got back!

The very drawn out installation of the TV aerial continues – the aerial itself is up now, and the cable’s fixed to the soffit down to the edge of the house, so just the easy bit to do tomorrow (it seems like every time I start there’s only an hour or so of light left!). While I had the roof ladder up I replaced a slate that’s been broken for ages.

Work Christmas do on Monday, which consisted of an escape room (which we were distinctly average at) followed by a meal at the Botanist. Then I decided to add eight miles or so to my cycle home by doing 15 loops up a hill to take the local legend for a Strava segment off Robin (don’t worry, he went and did seven loops later in the week to regain it).

More early Christmas celebration on Thursday, with the festive edition of the TTT (neither tempo nor ten miles on this occasion), running round a few local pubs.

I arrived late to parkrun yet again. Fortunately one of the timekeepers had a brief technical glitch which bought me a minute, but I still started a little way behind the tail walker. I managed to work my way from 157th (ie last) to 28th, which is a surprisingly high position for a not particularly stellar run (although admittedly it was quite tough going in places).

Another long run on Sunday, visiting nine of Ipswich’s parks. Holly and I were joined by Maria this time, for her debut run over the Orwell Bridge, just after slipping in some mud. The distance was less than last week, but I felt just as tired by the end.

I still haven’t got the TV aerial up, but I have at least got the bracket for the TV aerial up, which is a start. I would have finished the job this afternoon, but ran out of daylight.

It was good to see Phoenix LiveView 1.0 released, with a last-minute tweak to Heex allowing interpolation with {...} in more places that used to require the old-style <%= ... %> (and a corresponding formatter enhancement to automatically convert code to the new style). The 1.0 tag indicates that everything should be stable from now on, although to be honest we’ve been it in production since 2019, before it even had a version number, and haven’t had any issues with instability or major deprecations or changes. It’s still my web framework of choice to produce dynamic web apps without having to stoop to writing Javascript.

On Wednesday I cycled straight from work to Kesgrave community centre to give blood, then (having possibly not answered the question about doing exercise later entirely honestly) straight to a track session, and from there to the pub (if you’re going to ignore one piece of post-donation advice, you might as well go all in, although sadly there was no opportunity to get a third by spending time in the sun and getting too hot).

Annoyingly, the button on my front bike light has broken. I eventually managed to get it to turn on for the ride home on Thursday, but turning off was a different matter. The only option seems to be to let it discharge, then charge it up and turn it on, at which point it keeps going until it’s flat again. This is not entirely practical, but fortunately I found an old one to use for the moment.

Friday was the club social run/pub crawl/quiz/meal in Felixstowe, which we didn’t win.

The weekend weather has been pretty miserable, with the edge of Storm Darragh passing through (people further west got it much worse), but I still managed to fit in a parkrun on Saturday and my first long run for a while (London’ll be here before we know it!) on Sunday.

It was very tempting to write off the five whole pounds I’d paid for a ticket to the Washing Machine Christmas Party at the Hunter Club in Bury St Edmunds and stay home in the warm and dry, but I’m glad I dragged myself out, and I didn’t get too wet cycling and walking at either end of the train journey. Pet Needs were headlining and in excellent form as usual, and there were not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR other local bands – Nicolas Rage vs Pianardo DiCaprio, The O7s, Manic Stanley and Fleas. It’s a lovely venue too, which I’d not visited before.

I still haven’t put the TV aerial up, despite getting the ladder up on the roof ready about three weeks ago. Maybe one day there’ll be a dry weekend day without strong winds!

December!

It did actually catch me a bit by surprise – I checked the numbers and figured today’s cross country (with a warmup) would be just enough miles to tip me over 100 for November, which feels like a bare minimum of miles, even if I’ve been slacking off somewhat with training for the past month. Then after parkrun I realised my mistake. Oh well, it’s good to break that kind of streak, otherwise it can lead to madness.

The new Beans on Toast CD arrived on Monday (which is odd, as it wasn’t supposed to be released until today). It feels like it’s almost unusual to get a CD that’s not signed these days – and, yes, also unusual to be still buying them, but the artist gets a lot more money that way than by streaming – but I think this is the first time I’ve had one that’s also signed by the singer’s six-year-old daughter!

I went ten pin bowling on Wednesday for the first time in ages, with a bunch of the coffee runners (plus a couple of partners). I was predictably terrible, but it was fun, even if the bowling place has changed a bit since I was last there – it now has an even worse selection of beer at the bar, and apparently you just wear your own shoes these days.

The aforementioned cross country was in Woodbridge (well, Sutton Heath, near the eponymous Hoo) this month. It’s on a mixture of heathland and farm tracks, with a surprising number of puddles on the latter, given that I haven’t noticed much rain lately. I ran round some puddles and round others, then happened on one that suddenly got a lot deeper than the others had, lost my footing and fell in quite spectacularly. Fortunately Phil was on hand to record the whole thing for everyone’s amusement!

On time this week (assuming I keep typing and press publish before the evening’s out).

It finally got cold, barely getting above freezing for a few days, then suddenly hit 17°C again on Sunday. I turned my heating on, then turned it off again (to paraphrase the old Aardman ad, although I don’t “heat electric”).

On Monday morning there seemed to be a lot of noisy magpies in the garden. Then while I was making coffee Badger cat dragged one of them in through the flap. I initially assumed it was dead, then it started hopping round the kitchen and perching on chairs. It seemed like it might have had an injured wing, but maybe not too seriously, so (mindful of Dave’s tale of being on the brink of dropping a rock onto what he thought was a fatally injured pigeon when it flew off) I caught it and released it over the fence into next door’s garden to give it a fighting chance.

On Thursday we had an office volunteering day at the Suffolk Owl Sanctuary, digging out a load of sand and wheelbarrowing it away. It wasn’t all hard work though – we got a flying display, and got to see all the owls, plus meerkats and armadillos.

Sunday was the Hadleigh 10, with Storm Bert in full effect. Fortunately we only got the wind though, and no rain. The race was a slog, and several minutes slower than when I last ran it a couple of years ago. I need to somehow find some form over the winter in time for London!

I still haven’t put my TV aerial up, but figured I should probably leave getting up on the roof for a weekend without 50mph gusts.

Oops, nearly forgot. Only four days late.

I got an email from Anglian Water saying there’s been a “small increase” in my water usage, and they’re increasing my payments “to match”. I had been paying £7 a month, which admittedly did seem a bit low, but apparently it’s now increasing to £36! I looked into it, and last month I only used 14% more than the same month in 2023. I think what happened is that they read the meter after a long gap, and adjusted the payment accordingly, but I suspect they’ve gone too far in the other direction and I’ll end up building up a credit balance. This is why I specifically sought out a gas and electricity tariff where they just send me a bill each month for the amount I’ve used and I pay it by direct debit, rather than faffing around with trying to guess the monthly average across the year.

I had the week off work, and as usual did hardly any of the things on my notional to-do list. I did finally remove and saw up the two fallen branches from the apple tree though (after only a couple of years), although I’m yet to get rid of the logs and branches. This has returned about half what I’ll optimistically call my lawn (it took longer to get the brambles out of the way than it did to remove the actual branches), but I still have a way to go to clear enough space to finally put the greenhouse up.

I glanced up while eating breakfast on Wednesday and there was a woodpecker in the remains of the apple tree. I only managed to get a terrible photo though.

On Saturday I went on another of the Camra “Real Ale Runabout” bus tours, this time to Aldeburgh. It was a fun day, even if there was quite a wait to get served in a couple of the pubs, and the choice was basically down to which Adnams beer you wanted. We got the back seet in the bus too!

Sunday was my birthday, but I decided to treat Saturday as the celebration so I didn’t really do anything, other than a bit of solo trail running.

Not content with waking up on Wednesday to the news that the US was about to reelect the worst president of modern times (this time without any pretence from half the country of not knowing exactly what they were voting for), Duolingo then decided to troll me with this:

On a less depressing note, here’s a better photo of the fox, from one of his daylight visits:

Sunday was the Stowmarket Scenic 7, and after feeling ridiculously out of breath on a very slow run on Friday I wasn’t expecting much. It didn’t go too badly in the end though – only a couple of seconds slower than last year. I ran most of it with or just behind Holly, then unchivalrously out-sprinted her to the line, which I think I’ll be getting stick for for a while!

The YouView app on my TV updated itself at some point, undoing my downgrade and removing the Channel 4 app again (although the actual programmes are still available if you search). I guess I’m going to have to put an aerial up after all. The only plus point is that from my research on which one to buy it appears that reception here has vastly improved since last time I looked (we used to be in a sector of the output from Sudbury that was attenuated to avoid interference with the continent).