Week Note Nine - Spring
Week reboot
After taking time off last week to have a much needed headspace, I have been catching up on many things like working with Docker, checking out what has changed with WordPress, mooching around doing DIY (6 hours of it in a day...), and generally trying to relax.
It is weirdly stressful in places where it felt like there were nowhere to go and stay in the local area. Spending quality time with family is a must as long our mental health is healthy.
The UK Government is going to start relaxing the lockdown by easing over time and there seems to be a mixture of reaction to the plan. Being a cautious optimistic, it can work as long people sticks to the rules providing their attitudes and behaviour are better this time around. Yet human beings are so unpredictable.
In other news, the vaccine is now starting for over 50s and 40s. No prize at all which age group I belong to and don't be cheeky...
Turn on the subtitles
Being Deaf means that we have to use a range of tools that helps improve our daily lives. After discovering Turn on the subtitles, it is a pleasant surprise that it is being promoted everywhere.
From my @craigbutcher twitter thread:
It really helps with your children’s literature, and no matter what’s the noise level, it is always going to be there. And most of all, it will accelerate their learning and opens up a new world of foreign films. For example, putting on My Neighbour Totoro with the original soundtrack (Japanese) and put the English subtitles on. Everyone gets a truly authentic experience.
What has been an interesting experience was when my sons pointed out the grammar errors in the subtitles and often some missing words or spelling mistakes. I do look forward to the day when they will check out live subtitles. Especially, when training auto captioning that went slightly ca-ca.
Prelude to Foundation
Spoilers ahead if you have not read the book!
A quick mini review of this book where we see Hari Seldon first starts to devise psychohistory. It's a great backstory to the main character and some great plot twists that leave you thinking about the Robot Series. Next up is Forward The Foundation which will complete the entire series of Foundation and the feeling of that completion is going to leave a weird sense of "what next to read?"
Maybe I could jump onto The Expanse next to get ahead of the final season of the TV series.
And finally...
The MacBook Air M1 has been astonishing after two weeks of uptime. The Intel version of the MacBook Air has been unstable after two weeks where slowdowns are instantly recognisable in places.
While discussing about the M1, the following sentence was mentioned:
It is incredible that this is the first slowest Apple Silicon to be launched.
This is a clever statement in itself. We all know that this is the first Apple chipset to come out and instantly beating Intel and AMDs on all benchmark tests, then we know that this is a two years transition period where all Mac products will have the new chipset. What specs will be is going to be heavily speculated at this point!
Stay safe, forward the vaccinations!