Weeknotes 5

I haven't done much this week. Or maybe I have? Like a tree in the forest, my writing it down makes it seem to exist more. Unsure what that means. We continue.

I tidied the hackspace

I've been going to my local hackspace for a few months now. I love third spaces and I love the hackspace.

On Thursday I went, and it was just me and one other person there. I've been considering the community-run nature of a space like the hackspace, in terms of actions being taken and things being done only when someone takes them or does them (crazy concept). But, what I'm getting to is that there is no-one "in control", as it is a community space.

With those thoughts, I decided it'd be fun to do a tidy up. Especially as there were only the two of us there, so it was easy to move tables, chairs, and miscellaneous objects around and get brushes around the room.

It felt good and now the space was tidier and more organised, which is a benefit to everyone including me. Community!

I started a blog post

I've been wanting to write a blog post about the Humber Bridge for a few months. My favourite style of blog is one I spend a lot of time thinking about and creating, which tends to mean I easily get distracted from blogging as I've made it quite an involved process. That's partly why I enjoy weeknoting as it can be much less organised. Case in point this paragraph that has diverged fully from the original point.

Anyway, as I was literally on the train going past the bridge, I planned it out and wrote a bit. It will be coming to your RSS feeds soon™.

I played Factorio again

Grand! Scheduling! At the start of the playthrough, we said "no external blueprints", so everything that was made should be designed on the save. One player took this idea, said "okay", and made a blueprint on the save, but by themself, and brought it back when we played on Tuesday. This was a surprise, and we were conflicted as to whether this was an "external" blueprint or not. In the end, it was just a pretty funny "workaround".

I played We Were Here Together

The We Were Here game franchise is very fun. They are games you play as two, and you have puzzles to solve. You can talk only one at a time via the radio, and you have to describe what you see in front of you, so you can together solve the puzzles and finish the game.

I've been playing through the games with a friend. We play another every few months (whenever it goes on sale, pretty much) and when we remember.

This week we played the third game, We Were Here Together. It took maybe twice as long as the previous two games. Maybe this is because there is more game. Maybe it is because we were worse at the puzzles. Who's to say. Either way it was great fun :)

I bought a ticket to EMFCamp

EMFCamp is a festival with a field full of geeks, the field of which has power and Internet. I've never been, but it sounds a blast. I've read about workshops to create Geiger Counters, the festival having its own radio stations, postal service, and old-style phone system.

This year it conflicts with the UK Games Expo, which I've been to for the past two years. But, I've spent more time in the past year hacking with electronics, machines, printers, drills, and saws - and generally hanging around with geeks - than I have playing board games (the curse of moving to a new city and having to find enough friends again for board game evenings...), so I am more interested in EMFCamp. Plus, it happens only once every other year, so I can always go to UKGE next summer.

I'd like to host a workshop, or talk, but I'm not sure what about. Maybe I could do a workshop where I help people make their own font. I'm not an expert but I have done it, and I think people would be interested to go away with something they've made.

Otherwise, I remain simply excited to hang around with infinite geeks for a weekend!

I met up with someone from SpareRoom

I've only ever used SpareRoom to find a house in a short timescale. However, I've felt for a while that there are lots of interesting and cool people on there, and I will be looking for a new place to live soon. So, I messaged some people, and yesterday I met up with one for coffee. They were very cool! I'd like to build up some good friends that I can start house-sharing with at some point soon. Then eventually... I'd love to start a housing coop of some kind. That's a bit more nebulous as to how.

I've been reading a book about surveillance capitalism

I've been reading Stolen Focus. It starts off as a book about reducing attention spans in the modern age, and helplessness of people to deal with this. But, the interesting bit I'm getting to is about how Silicon Valley and the tech giants are marketed such that reducing focus and attention spans is great for their model. That's a bad summary of the book, but if you want a better one: read the book :)

I explored Hull Zine Library

I visited Hull Makerspace for a couple of hours on my trip to Hull. Recently they've become the home for Hull Zine Library. This is a very cool collection of zines. I spent a while leafing through and reading some. I'd like to find a similar thing in Sheffield. There's Sheffield Zine Fest, but I can't tell if that's still active or not.

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