This week has zoomed past. The pass-the-popcorn PHP security alert was exciting - handled expertly at work but I must admit to a bit of FOMO. I used to work somewhere with a large PHP estate and it might have been fun to be in the midst of the crisis. For some definition of fun.

The weird thing about being back at work is that I’m being more productive than I was when I had all the time in the world. Perhaps that’s not so strange - what’s the old adage: ‘if you want something done, ask a busy person’. I’ve made real progress on side projects, all niche. My RSS reader is coming along, my Nile graphics renderer is finally able to render the Ghostscript tiger at a reasonable speed, my D&D sheet generator has been tidied up. This week I have a hankering to work on my Peeko Computer clone and my don’t-call-it-Blood-Bowl gridiron game. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.

I like having multiple things in-flight at once though in the past it’s always been hard to switch between projects and the guilt of so many started-not-finished things builds up. I’ve found AI to be very helpful in this regard. Being able to open up a project and say ‘where did I get to last session?’ is a crutch I wouldn’t want to give up. I think it’s more important to me than its coding ability, and certainly less discussed.

Like Orestes, I’ve surrendered myself to the will of the bot. Let’s hope I avoid his fate, screaming and hallucinating, driven insane by the Furies, and cursed to survive it all. It remains a possibility. Though the people rendered mad by AI at the moment seem to be the ones resisting it. I have a lot of sympathy for them. It’s inhumane not to be conflicted about the technology.

I met up with my old D&D buddies in the Free Press this week. When I was at college we used to call it the ‘fascist pub’ because it had banned smoking and crowed about it. In retrospect this seems harsh, but then I saw that in the loos they’d printed out some press coverage from the time of their ban and I was indignant once again. It was nice to see them all and made me think about joining a game again.

It’s getting a bit cold. Thinking about making a new quilt.

Grab-bag