It was nice not to be travelling this week. And with it, back to the regular routine of work, children, pets, cycling training, and what-not.

On Sunday, I managed to pick up my new iPhone 11 Pro. Apple’s new start-up process on iOS (maybe it’s new, not sure) makes the download of the new updates compulsory. It’s a non-skippable step. I’m sure Apple has a big, fat, wifi connection in each store but mine still took over an hour to download and install despite the relatively few queues on a Sunday morning at 11am. The woman serving me said yesterday (Saturday) afternoon, one poor bloke was in there nearly five hours as their wifi was maxed. Surely Apple could set up a LAN to connect to with these installations running over a different local network. Either that or make it clear that, if you are doing the installation process in-store, then you could be in for a bit of a wait.

For a little while, we’ve had pet fish. It all started when the girls asked for a puppy and I negotiated them down to fish. Of course, we did get a puppy in the end. For ages we’ve had freshwater fish – goldfish, minnows, that sort of thing – until Emma killed them all by replacing half their water with straight-out-of-the-tap-full-of-chlorine-death-water. Not her fault really. All but two albino catfish died. And there sat our tank for a couple of months until last week when I decided to get a few tropical fish (and a heater). We have some guppies, tetras, and some other fish.

I ordered a book that looked pretty good.

Along with most of the population it seems, I think binge watching serialised on-demand TV has broken my viewing habits and expectations. With nothing floating our boats, Emma and I started watching Succession. So far, so good.

We live in a pretty old house in Wales, and this is a time of year I look forward to because it means we can start lighting fires. We have two log burners; a monster 14kw burner in the main open-plan room of the house, and a smaller 7kw burner in the snug. But logs need wood and we’d almost run out. This year, I’ve ordered some firewood alongside a more sustainable source: highly compressed sawdust heat logs. These things are amazing. They last hours, chuck out lots of heat, smokeless and virtually disappear when done. Of course, the worst part about ordering palettes of wood is moving it from here to there. Got to watch my back and legs.

Emma is currently presenting at NUX in Manchester on her work with ResearchOps Community. Of course, I’m her biggest fan and she’ll be amazing. I wish I could be there.

Mark started writing weeknotes. You should read them.

Andy wrote about his modern CSS reset.

There’s a great (and long) Netlify video on freeCodeCamp. Worth a watch.