Romantic Note

• This isn't really a romantic note. I did brave a fancy bakery for me and R, bought myself a lovely pastry I did, but they didn't have what I had in mind for R and I panicked and bought the only underwhelming baked good they sold. Happy Valentine's day. We still love each other though.
• I haven't been keeping up with the learning bird song thing but did see a gold crest and a few redwing for the first time. Are there more varieties of birds here or is it that I'm paying more attention?
• WhatsApp and Instagram are out of my life! I may be estranged from my family and friends but I get to be smug and superior now that one fewer of the tech giants has me in their sweaty, grasping hands. Joking aside, people are increasingly available on Signal and I'm happy to call/text others old-school, it doesn't feel like a hardship. I will miss people's pretty Instagram photos but Facebook really is quite icky.
• At work I helped find and resolve a serious vulnerability this week. Spending the best part of the day with a colleague speculating on how the systems we maintain could be vulnerable and how that could be exploited, if at all, was exceptionally fun. The exploit we fixed involved an understanding of how Github uses git to handle Pull Requests and how Bower is implemented too. It's worthy of a blog post from the team.
• On the topic of work The Culture Club, an organising committee for product and tech socials, has a new helper. Me! I'm confident my natural energy and enthusiasm for fun will be constructive and of the utmost helpfulness (little sarcasm there, I'm really counting on you to read in my voice a lot of the time).
• Happy lunar new year! I made massively long noodles. Nom nom nom. Flour, water, salt, love, time, and baked baking soda. Baking baking soda changes it from sodium bicarbonate to sodium carbonate, which I gather is more alkaline, and gives noodles springiness (I wanted to fact check that before spreading a lie and now I'm thinking I need to make pretzels with baked baking soda).
• Heydon has a new Webbed Briefs video out, Why The IndieWeb? Love them! If you do too and are able support on open collective or liberapay.
• I watched The Thing (the 80s one). How old do films have to be to be a classic? If it's not already a classic it will be one. The scary, trapped, isolated, cold genre of film is really ticking my boxes of late. Especially whilst wrapped up warm inside with popcorn and a drink. Let me know if you have any recommendations.