February 2024

Doing

Learning

Just finishing up a unit at Uni on Ethics in Information Technology. It was really interesting. About to start another unit on Cloud Computing, looking at AWS.

Creating

Lots of HTML, CSS, JS, and markdown for this website. Playing around with it. Experimenting with different things. Sometimes backtracking. It's a lot of fun.

I also took my first foray into GitHub actions and built a CI/CD process for this website. It was a little frustrating at first getting familiar with how GitHub actions work, but I'm pretty pleased with the end result. I can now use this understanding at work.

Working

So, so busy at work. Trying to stay across everything the team supports and staffing and new tech and decisions. Huge learning curve and very challenging, but also very satisfying.

Nesting

I've been neglecting the house so much due to work and study that I've begun soothing myself with James Clear's minimal gains theory - just 1% improvement here and there is enough! Did some gardening, straightened the kitchen, that kind of thing. No new renovation stories to add, big or small. Perhaps next month.

Consuming

Reading

Not a lot of reading due to study, but I did finish a run of Australian crime novels at the start of the month. Two were Shelley Burr's WAKE and Ripper. Both were pretty good, but in between I picked up Maryrose Cuskelly's The Cane and loved it. Some years back I'd read Jane Harper's The Dry and loved the heavy, hot summer feel as that book plodded along. It felt just like summer in outback Australia. I got a similar feel from The Cane. That slow movement of a Queensland country cane town as the story played out.

Watching

So much YouTube. I'm subscribed to a few faves there and must do a post about them. Most are renovationg properties in Portugal. A few are gardening or homesteading related. Also a few Minecraft channels for tips and hints.

On telly I watched The Bloodline Detectives, a documentary series about using genealogical dna to solve cold cases. I also had a rewatch of Our Flag Means Death S1 & S2 - such a FANTASTIC show and I'm so sad it didn't get renewed for a third season.

Listening

Some time back I made the move from Spotify to Amazon Music, purely to save some $$. I've sinced moved to YouTube Music and put us on a family premium plan. It's seriously good. The reccommendation engine in it is the best. I often can't tell when my playlist has ended and the auto play has started as it's picks are perfect matches. Very impressed.

The only drawback is that you need to use Bluetooth to play on the Amazon Echo, but that's also a positive as anyone in the house can do so and isn't locked in to whatever accounts are hooked up to Amazon.

This Now post is inspired by Derek Sivers and the NowNowNow movement.