Paul Mucur

Taking inspiration from Rowan and Alice, I’ve separated my weeknotes (and solitary yearnotes) from my other, less frequent posts (e.g.

After reading Duncan Jones’ script for “Full Throttle”, I replayed the original 1995 LucasArts adventure game using ScummVM having copied the files from my original CD-ROMs.

I haven’t seen snow like this in years.

I built a snowman.

As 2020 draws to a close, I performed the annual cleansing ritual of formatting my laptop and upgrading to macOS Big Sur.

After last week, we decided to decamp to my parents’ house for the foreseeable future.

While preparing some chocolate chip cookies, E asked, “there’s one left from the last batch, shall I KitKat it?”

It has been a trying couple of weeks so we have been in need of uplifting television shows.

This week, I’ve been trying to make Shopify BuyButton.js play nicely with Turbolinks.

I worked on two projects with Chris for Go Free Range, the first of which involved working with a React form to record numbers given by the user.

A year ago—one week before C was born—wearing rubber gloves and a face mask, I pulled out all of our kitchen appliances and stuffed every crevice with steel wool.

It has been a year since my first weeknotes.

Two weeks ago I wrote about choosing between two 12” pizzas and one 18” pizza by comparing their surface area but Tom pointed out this only works if you care about sheer quantity of pizza.

After realising our DNS sinkhole was causing the BBC iPlayer app for the PlayStation 4 to crash (presumably because some essential telemetry was being blocked), I switched it over to use Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 and discovered two whole series of “Hey Duggee”…

C had his 1 year vaccinations which meant we had to top him up with a cherry-flavoured paracetamol suspension to keep his fever down.

I thoroughly enjoyed Anna Shipman’s “Meeting everyone on a new team”: When I joined the Financial Times as Technical Director for FT.com, I inherited a team of around 50 engineers.

It was C’s “settling in” week at nursery this week.

We’re back in London after two weeks up in t’north of England.

“We’re going to pull the alarm now and a lot of people will come into the room but don’t worry.”

In the past two weeks, C has begun insisting we hold his hands so he can toddle around.

I met a former colleague at a local pub and we sat out front to catch up.

I made no notes this week.

C has a set of “First Word” books that he often wants to read.

Following the success of our trip north, we met up with my parents for the first time since lockdown began, having a picnic together so they could see their grandson in person after months of only FaceTime calls.

Working from home with C in the house can be a strange experience.

After feeling “out of sorts” last week due to the monotony of life during the pandemic, I decided to go for a walk with C every lunchtime this week.

The Double Fine Productions remasters of classic LucasArts’ adventure games “Day of the Tentacle”, “Full Throttle” and “Grim Fandango” (as well as Double Fine’s own, more recent adventure game “Broken Age”) are all free on the Mac App Store this weekend.

Since getting “Animal Crossing” over a month ago, I’ve gone through phases with it: at first, learning how to play then relentlessly plundering other islands for resources then checking turnip prices twice a day and having a bad time on the Stalk Market.

Nikita Prokopov’s “Time to upgrade your monitor” finally convinced me to upgrade to a 4K display after over a decade of staring at less than 100 pixels per inch on an old BenQ monitor.

While making coffee with C in my arms one morning, he suddenly lunged for the Chemex, spilling a slurry of hot water and coffee grounds as I shouted “no no no no no!”

I’ve been researching how best to generate unique, human-friendly codes for a new project.

Thom May’s “Sinkholing with PowerDNS Recursor” made me wonder why I run both a Pi-hole and our own Unbound DNS resolver.

The stress of buying turnips may have impacted the quality of last week’s notes.

I successfully completed another full orbit around the sun.

After publishing last week’s notes, E and I noticed a high pitched whining noise coming from our kitchen.

Following radical candor and radical sensibleness, I propose a new thought technology: radical competency.

E and I started watching series 3 of “The Great Pottery Throw Down”.

I waffle.

I spent part of the bank holiday weekend adding a new section to every post’s byline showing how long it has been since it was published, e.g.

In the spirit of repairing things, I took apart C’s broken toy arch, cursing to myself as I pried open the stubborn end caps with a palette knife.

I was somewhat amazed to see Jamie Oliver’s “Keep Cooking and Carry On”, a cookery show made with Coronavirus (COVID-19) in mind.

Now we are staying at home and have little outside space of our own, we’re having to get creative when it comes to getting fresh air.

I would typically euphemistically refer to “current events” but let’s be plain: COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has dominated our lives this week.

Following recent events, I’ve been working from home all week.

I followed Andy Baio’s recommendation and enjoyed listening to Reply All’s “The Case of the Missing Hit”.

Thanks to all who helped with my job search.

My father-in-law was on The One Show discussing why a multi-storey car park in Liverpool burnt down, destroying 1,300 cars.

The job search continues.

After thoroughly enjoying my parental leave, I am now looking for contract work so if you know anyone who could make use of a former CTO/Technical Lead with 14 years’ experience developing Ruby and JavaScript in teams, please get in touch.

Three days before attending a “starting solids” workshop at a local health centre, E made several batches of soup as I pressed a whole clove against the back of my mouth.