Last Week

Life

Life’s been a mess. I’ve decided to skip two week’s of “Last Week” posts because, well, I just plain forgot to do them. And navigating through browser histories is a mess.

I’m working on moving to a new apartment, as well as getting over food poisoning, as well as trying to find time to actually work on the secret project (it’s been about 3 weeks untouched). So I’m pretty drained. Moving shortly isn’t going to help with the energy issue. But the ultimate pay off should be getting somewhat out of a rut, getting rid of some anxiety, and just generally feeling calmer. So we’ll see.

Work

Started one feature ticket, almost completed before end of sprint. It carried over as there’s a small part to finish on it. I also implemented a documentation generator for our PHP/Symfony code, and that will soon run on our nightly builds along with an existing JS documentation generator.

Entertainment

• Watched Smokey and the Bandit 1 and 2. I saw them referenced in one of those “Underrated Films You Should See” lists, so decided to watch.  (Honestly, I watched the third too but it was baaaaaaaad…)

On the Internet

• [Space] NASA discovers 7 Earth-sized planets orbitting a “nearby” star.  (Where “nearby” is about 40 lightyears.) It’s interesting because all 7 are located close enough to that sun to be in that “might possibly have life” area.
• [Development] Evolution of a Python Programmer is a funny read on how you can take one simple function and how it can be drastically rewritten depending on whether you’re a beginner or an expert programmer.
• [Development] If you love geeky, in-depth bug diagnostics stories, the Cloudflare memory leak incident of last week is interesting, but the details of tracking it down and how it was just a tiny simple code fix are fascinating.
• [STEM, Cute] “Watch: 7-year-old Noelle explain how this new gadget she created works.” is about as adorable as you can imagine. And I love her explaining it too. So many great future engineers out there!
• [Cute] 10+ Animals That Look Like They’re About To Drop The Hottest Albums Of The Year. Because we all need stuff like this in our lives, right?
• [Cute] Keeping Up with the Kattarshians is a super adorable live stream of some cats and what happens in their household. (which, honestly, is mostly sleeping)
• [Engineering] A Pennsylvania Town Came Up With A Low-Tech Solution To Keep Cars From Killing People. it almost seems ridiculously simple, but putting a container of flags at stoplights, and grabbing one and holding it as you cross the street has made cars more aware there’s people there. And fewer accidents have occurred. So low-tech, and so smart.
• [Nerding] I learned that some British researchers came up with a formula for how high your shoe’s heels should be given a particular situation. The formula ( h = Q*(12+3s/8) where Q = P*(9+y)*L /(t+1)*(a+1)*(y+10)*(L+£20) ) is definitely not a simple one. I sort of love how they turned something fashion-related into a math/science thing.