And again
At some point, it is probably going to bug me that I started this in the middle of a month and my season and episode labels are not synced with the month start and end. Maybe a break will help reset it at some point. Or I’ll just never care. Either way, I’m back for week 2 and still enjoying this. I’ve wanted a weekend reset routine and I’ve slowly added small things but nothing really felt like a wrap up of the old week and a setup for the new. This has a nice chapter end, back on the shelf, next book cracked kinda feel to it.
This week’s is long, and I have a feeling they’ll be a little long for the moment until I can level out and find a more succinct way of talking about the week. I’m enjoying writing too much at the moment.
What did I do this week
Programming Certs
Given how much of my programming knowledge I’m having to drag up from the depths right now with some of the projects I’m working on, I started looking at getting up to speed on some of the areas I’m rusty and realized I could pretty easily get some very basic certifications for the languages I’m familiar with.
I was pretty sure it was going to be quick work, and then realized that there have been a LOT of updates across the board and it might take me a minute to get everything. I realized I might as well just start from the ground up and get certified on the little stuff and work my way up. It works for review and updating and getting those foundations back in place after a long time with no practice.
There’s a nice synergy between working on writing projects and coding.
Personal Data Server
I’ve wanted to get a PDS set up as sort of home server, using the harvested parts of some old PCs I have on hand to get something set up, and dame’s launch of cred.blue this week reminded me I hadn’t done it. There’s no immediate need for it, and I likely won’t move my Bluesky data over to one just yet due to how much of a hassle that can be, but I started doing the research this week to get one set up anyway. While I could go the cheap route with my existing hardware, there’s a more-than-likely chance I’ll wind up running into my own host of issues with connection stability given I live in an apartment complex and not my own house. It might just be smarter to go with a cloud-based solution from Digital Ocean or Vertu. I’m looking into it.
Website Progression
Last week I was pretty sold on an initial, easy setup for the website with a separate subdomain for weeknotes to act as kind of logical break between the two areas I was focusing on. I don’t remember what day it happened, but I broke stuff and lost basically a weekend’s worth of work.
Taking that as an opportunity to reset my plans a bit and widen the scope of what I could do from easy launch to more intentional design choices, I scrapped the two site idea and went back to the Figma project to start adjusting the design. And I like where I got to this week. I have a basic design kit and brand guidelines, a story powering the reasons for why I’m making the choices I am, and a more solid idea of what I want the final product to look like.
Now the only obstacle is learning the more advanced stuff I’m not familiar with and time.
What did I learn this week
Etymology – Rampant
While I was familiar with rampant’s use in regards to heraldry and the figure of an animal standing on its hind legs, I wasn’t aware that it had a slightly different meaning originally.
Rampant comes from Old French and ‘ramper’ which means ‘to crawl’ or ‘creep’. It has earlier roots in Latin with the meaning of ‘to find’ or ‘to discover’ and in French had a very figurative interpretation of something that is creeping or crawling, spreading. As it made its way into English in the 1400’s, it gained the meaning of moving in an uncontrolled or unchecked way, like with spreading ivy or a plague.
With this understanding of the earlier meaning of the word, it makes rampant much more aggressive and sinister, and I kind of enjoyed that mental image that has now been added to my understanding of the word.
Git and Github
I used Github years ago and never fully understood how to take advantage of the platform. I have more of a need to understand it now given my projects, and I spent a good chunk of time this week getting up to speed on how Github functions as a repository and how it works with Git, the software, to create a strong versioning history. I really want to use Github for everything now.
Significance of 4 and 5
While reading this week, I ended up spending a bit of time digging into the meaning, spiritual and psychological, of the numbers 4 and 5 and how that differs within eastern and western thinking. Surprisingly, or maybe not, there are interesting intersections between the two ways of thinking.
Four, in western thinking, typically represents stability, established foundations, a home, or something you can operate from safely. We often think of it in relation to a map and the four cardinal directions. In pagan religious thinking, this ties directly to the four foundational elements. It’s a state of being more self-aware than you would have been moving from a rapid growth process in a 3 state.
In eastern thought, 4 is often seen as unlucky, due to how it sounds in Chinese languages and the similarity with the word “death”. Japanese culture also carries this idea but also gives it more of the western thinking of foundation in the Shinto system. The context of stability and foundation carries a cautionary message of remaining in one place for too long that it becomes unhealthy, or stagnant, when the cultural synergy is mapped. I liked this.
The number 5 is seen as a step away from stability into what can often be change, imbalance, and chaos. Necessary and/or just expected when you leave the safety of stability, but also has a feeling of adventure, exploration, or expansion to it. Eastern thinking also sees it as a step into balance, shifting away from stagnation to full embrace of your 5 senses.
SSH
Coming back around to the tech side of learning this week, I spent some time really diving into the history of SSH and the reasons for each update over the last… 40 years? It was good to take a very “normie” understanding of the security protocol and deepen it with a little history.
Milestones this week
I hit 100 downloads on my podcast this week. I almost missed it, to be very honest, as I haven’t really been paying attention to the metrics. Can’t get obsessed with something that can turn unhealthy if you just ignore how often your work is being consumed. But I got an email and found it kind of nice to have hit this little milestone. The next is 200, and it’d be nice if I hit that in 6 months rather than another year. I’ll have fun either way.
What did I listen to this week
Apple released a Severance music playlist that is 8 hours long. It’s called Music To Refine To and has a lot of ODESZA. It seems to repeat every hour, which can be a little funky, but I got a lot done with that in the background. I’ll probably go back to my Hyper Potions and ODESZA mix next week.
Science Quickly, a new podcast in my rotation, had a great episode on where curly hair came from and some cool insights into how hair has been used in our evolutionary journey. Some of it was surprisingly obvious when you think about.
I think my current comfort thing (yay autism) is the This Might Get Weird podcast with Grace and Mamrie. For a long time it was old episodes of Taskmaster, but I’ve been on a solid relisten the last couple weeks on TMGW, so all signs point to it being the comfort space.
What did I play this week
Literally nothing new this week. I have had less time to game and more time being creative, so I was on Marvel Rivals when I had a few minutes. They release Human Torch and The Thing this week, and Jonny is a lot of fun to play.
Week in emojis
🏝️ ❄️ 🖥️📦♻️🇺🇦⌨️
Weekly link
https://pierrelouis.webflow.io/ – This guy designs some of the cleanest interactive websites and games that I genuinely enjoyed poking around in this week. I love the internet.