Mark Carroll's Journal

Yesterday, I had a headache all day which obviously wasn't great. I still went shopping in the town center with R. but was more content being a beast of burden than making any choices, also for busier or more cramped shops I was happy enough to wait outside in the space and the breeze. My headache finally improved somewhat in the evening, after some paracetamol. I don't think that my head was affected by fasting for Ramadan, the previous day and today were fine. One of our errands was to pass by the newer Asian grocery store (our neighbourhood has many Middle Eastern and South Asian people) to pick up more fast-breaking dates. At this latitude, I could get used to these winter Ramadans.

My annual appraisal at work went decently, especially given that it includes a period of my finding my feet. At the moment I'm working mostly in my comfort zone, on somewhat mathematical/algorithmic code that does not require figuring out other complex aspects of our system. I'll probably help out with some other random thing too, this coming (Agile) sprint.

I finally bought a cross-trainer, a JTX Strider-X8. It's smaller than the previous NordicTrack Audio Strider 500 from before moving to the US, it just about fits in the flat, and the flywheel's also rather smaller so maximum resistance gets it up only to being just about worth bothering with, but it's somewhat affordable and far better than no cross-trainer. I look forward to planning it into my weeks.

We've been bad at festivals again. This weekend featured excellent meatloaf yesterday (it happened to be just to my taste) and a variant of kedgeree today, thanks to R. as usual. At some point, we will get around to eating Asian round things for the Chinese New Year and pancakes for Shrove Tuesday, but delayed as usual. As we're not exactly observant of the wider context of these, such flexibility doesn't exactly detract from whatever authenticity there is in our celebration.

I discovered only recently that, before France fell to occupation by Nazi Germany, their cabinet had rejected a substantial Declaration of Union proposed, probably rather too late, by the British cabinet. I wonder what such a union would have looked like and what it would change about modern Britain. Especially, what minimal edits one might have to make to history in order to make such a union actually happen in an effective and long-lasting way.

I sometimes wonder about quite how they organize Glasgow's subway system. For example, I had guessed from service frequency that they often have as many as four trains running on each circular line. Is one train allowed to leave a station until the train ahead has arrived two stations ahead? Or, maybe it need only depart the next. I don't know how they guarantee separation. I have also wondered how they manage various situations, for example, what if a train breaks down? I suppose maintenance is centred partly on ensuring that they don't in a manner that unexpectedly blocks the line and strands the passengers. It's hardly a wide tunnel.

I have noticed that it's not uncommon for the outer line to pause at St Enoch while the driver pops out for a minute. There's also talk of a depot, one morning (last month, I think) the subway wasn't running because the line from the depot was icy, suggesting some track that isn't underground. Recently, I happened to spy an exciting clue: travelling on the outer line from, I think it was, Ibrox to Govan, I glimpsed a line branching off along another tunnel then rejoining a little later. I wonder what other side tunnels there are.

A bit of googling suggests that they can have as many as six trains running per circular line, though I wonder how typically that actually happens. It also suggests that the tunnel I saw may be a branch to the not-submerged depot so perhaps the inner line also has a branch in the same segment.

Incidentally, Glasgow has an excellent transportation museum which includes a couple of older subway carriages and is packed high with exhibits. Last time we visited, it even had Imperial military folks from Star Wars happy to pose for selfies with visitors. Dundee's transportation museum is funnier in offering modest but quite random mystery tours on an old bus.

We have a couple of cats, B. and J., who were rescued as kittens. ( Excretory developments. )

The weather forecast for this weekend wasn't great but we got to walk our dog L. a little around the neighbourhood today, which is something. We avoided the parks, they will be muddy. He's still too reactive when seeing other dogs at a distance.

Now we're back home, the Winter Olympics makes for pleasant background on the television. R. heated a roast chicken we found discounted in the local Tesco Express. I should sort and file some accumulated routine mail, and perhaps we'll be able to give L. a decent walk again tomorrow.

Given the short winter days this far north, I commute largely in darkness. The railway carriages are well-lit and variably heated. After I settled into my seat for my journey home this evening, I glanced around to see who else is around me. In the window, I saw the reflection of a lady a couple of seats ahead of me.

Curiously, looking in my actual carriage, I couldn't see her at all, she could be seen only in the reflection.

It turned out that there was a train at the platform alongside, I suppose she was seated on that one instead and I spied her directly. At least, we've now set off and I no longer see her!

I am most pleased by our recent acquisition of a ( rather intimate helper. )

That addresses another thing I was missing with our not living in Southeast Asia any more.

At work, I've been trying to finish off a non-trivial task that I started last month. There are plenty of aspects to get right: I am trying to improve the performance of a part of our code that comes in different flavors, is called in different ways, and can utilize various constituents. Generative AI assistance has been helping me along. Perhaps I have finally got it all to a good state, we will see what the coming week brings. I start next week by filling things out for our annual performance review cycle. I look forward to working on my next task which is a smaller, more usual one. I have been putting some extra time into the meatier task because it's important and has already lingered plenty; it will be a relief to finally tie a bow around it, here's hoping.

Our couple of small road trips down into England afforded some success though plans were a little derailed by sites having holiday closures that weren't previously obvious. Fortunately, my plans include fallbacks so, among other things, our dog L. had a good time running around on Bamburgh Beach in Northumberland (near the impressive castle) and Roanhead Beach in Cumbria (near Morecambe Bay). He also got to see swans at Annandale Water from as close as I dared let him get. Roanhead Beach turned out to be enormous: by coincidence, we arrived at around low tide when there is an awful lot of walking along the sand that one can do before getting near any sea. I also learned to avoid Windermere: narrow roads full of tourists.

L.'s been suffering some gastrointestinal issue over these holidays; there has been an infection going around. They now seem to be on the mend but it slows us down and distracts us while we focus on making sure they're okay. We actually left Northumberland early to make it to an appointment with our regular vet. With luck, we won't need a second appointment.

After a quiet New Year at home, we'll go to visit family in Dundee then be back at work. R. works tomorrow too, at least from home, helping to fill out the support rota.

Today is my first day of leave from work for over the Christmas break. This morning we sent the boys off back home to Asia to visit family, now it's just me and R. I am relaxing on the sofa with our dog L. while R. brings some sanity to the kitchen storage. I already feel my headspace increasing and have been getting some small postponed things done. Many more await.

I am quite good at sleeping. Given the opportunity, I can do plenty of it. This morning, I dreamt we lived somewhere else and I spied a sizable swirly unnatural-looking Weather Thing approaching, and turned to R. to strongly suggest that we leave the house now and drive elsewhere.

Again, I thought back to high school where one of my math teachers figured Cartesian coordinates for the vertices of a regular dodecahedron and, looking at one, I wonder what the straightforward strategy is for doing that. I like to think that enough staring and turning would help make it clearer. Now, this is where I wish I had a large desktop system with lots of PCI-e slots for used RTX 3090's or somesuch: it's the kind of thing I'm happy to try idly chatting to some opensource LLM about. It's not as if anything's riding on the answer. Perhaps they're rather better at classic book suggestions than anything analytic though.

I also got to wonder about mobile telephony. ( How might routing work? )

My mention of idly chatting to LLMs reminds me, I have three sizable pending purchases in mind: such a desktop AI system, a small laptop for use while commuting, and a cross-trainer. The interesting question is how to prioritize them though clearly the first there should actually be last while I cross my fingers for the bubble bursting. Also, I'm reluctant to spend too freely until I'm more ahead of the higher-interest debt.

In the meantime, I've found that, as usual, BBC iPlayer didn't exactly help me discover that there's recent Later… with Jools Holland to provide me with a somewhat alternative musical backdrop, albeit a considerably mixed bag of such. I've been enjoying ex-BBC's Stereo Underground recently which is also nicely varied. Given that it often plays the music of my childhood, it makes me wonder: I think of all the energy of especially some of the more punk-ish songs, and how exciting life seemed to me at the time, especially with books filling my head with new intellectual worlds to wrestle with. There's something there I'd be interested to recapture, about possibility and choice, about who I am and what I pursue. I may not quite know which destinations make sense but one of the many wonderful things about R. is how supportive they are.