Barry Frost

Barry Frost -

No title - 2025-05-06T21:09:51Z

OpenAI buys Windsurf for $3B. Not bad for "just" a VSCode fork. As an early Windsurf paying customer, I'm curious but wary of what comes next.

Week 193 - Repair - 2025-05-04T21:01:51Z

• It's been shorts weather. Lovely.
• I decided to invest in our backup setup at home. Although our Macs and photos are backed up to a 2TB iCloud+ account, I wanted local backups with Time Machine. So I've set up a Synology DS223J NAS with two Seagate IronWolf 4TB drives in RAID 1. ChatGPT wanted me to go for a beefier Synology model, but this is perfectly adequate.
• We had our annual call with our financial advisor, seeing where we are financially for the future. Thankfully, despite the markets tanking recently, all looks fine. While in my head I'm barely an adult, it surprises me to see how we're ever closer to retirement.
• The flush buttons on the downstairs integrated toilet were suddenly ineffective. Fearing an expensive plumber call-out and wall damage I had a go, removing the faceplate and panel inside, then gently pushing down the float which had become stuck with limescale. For once my amateur DIY worked.
• I normally spend Saturday mornings watching my oldest son's football; this time it was his brother's turn, playing in a little tournament for his club's under-7s. The coaches charitably paired him with the four strongest boys but let's just say he didn't quite match them for skill - or effort! His team won, but he was more concerned about getting home to play Minecraft.
• Returning home from the football I wheeled out the barbecue for burgers and sausages in the sunshine. As is the way, we cooked and ate far too much, and after clearing up we had a well-deserved snooze on the sofa.
• I've been watching a fair amount of the snooker. As I write this I have one eye on the final. While I'd love Mark Williams to win it, Zhao Xintong is playing beautifully and deserves his (current) 11-6 lead.

Week 192 - Smell - 2025-04-27T20:11:54Z

• Poppy the cat had a couple of accidents this week. First, she wee'd on my pants left in a washing pile in our bedroom. The smell was too unpleasant (I promise, it was cat wee!) and I had to throw them away. She followed that up with vomiting in the doorway of H's bedroom. The stain has thankfully mostly gone after several rounds of wet-vacuuming. Poppy is now firmly banned from upstairs.
• I've started a new project at work which includes colleagues in Asia and the US. Unfortunately this means there is no time where our working days overlap. I joined an 11pm 😳 meeting with our CEO this week, but I'll need to stagger future calls or ruin my sleep.
• I had my first lunchtime walk since twisting my ankle. I'd missed getting outside and getting some exercise in the fresh air. After enjoying a few Easter eggs I need to get back to a healthier routine.
• My parents visited on Saturday for lunch and to watch H's football team win 5-3. This was his last league match of the season and also his last match for his team: he's been accepted at another nearby club in a higher division. It was down to his mum and me to deliver the awkward news to his coaches.
• Sunday was a wash the car and kick around a football in the sunshine kind of day. Apparently Liverpool secured the Premier League title? I wasn't watching.

Week 191 - Egg - 2025-04-22T11:07:03Z

• It was the second week of the Easter holidays for our boys, and thanks to Good Friday, it was also a shorter working week for me.
• H played in an under-9s football tournament in Hemel Hempstead. His team moved on from the tough league stage into the Silver Cup draw which they went on to win. He scored in the final and was a very happy boy, posing with the trophy.
• For the Easter weekend we stayed at my in-laws' house in Wiltshire. L's brother and his family were also visiting, so it was a rare opportunity for the cousins - all boys - to play together. They made full use of the garden and countryside to play cricket, football, build Lego, ride bikes and gallop around the house like a herd of elephants.
• L organised an unprecedented three Easter egg hunts for us all. First she hid plastic eggs around the garden for the children to find, then everyone had to find their boxed eggs, and then teams of three looked for their team's coloured eggs.
• In between Creme Eggs (my favourite) I've been enjoying some stunning first round matches of the World Championship snooker. It's perfect to watch gently and (so I'm told) have a snooze on the sofa.
• The extra bank holidays and our trip to France have meant I'm barely able to remember what it is I do in my job. The mental whiplash of being back to work is real.

Week 190 - France - 2025-04-15T11:27:30Z

• We came back on Monday from a week's holiday in France, which is why these weeknotes are a little late. Sorry about that.
• We stayed at a Center Parcs, this time Le Lac d'Ailette near Laon. This park was much bigger than their De Haan site we've visited the last couple of years, but it's just as well-suited to our two energetic sons. It was busier at the weekend but never overwhelming.
• Our cottage was by the lake, with a big deck facing the water. We watched swans, geese and many ducks splash around in the glorious sunshine. It was a beautiful location for a holiday and that's without the big water park and other facilities nearby. We all swam/slid every day and also used the climbing structure, mini-golf, indoor football and cycle hire.
• Correction: I didn't cycle; my ankle was (and is) sore from my footballing mishap last week. I should have spent more time resting it but I was determined not to miss out on the other activities.
• I managed to practise my French skills which, 28 years after my A-Level, are still just about passable in conversations about broken lighting and meals. I was pleased that locals didn't switch to English and humoured me. My family were even very mildly impressed.
• On our only day-trip away from the park we visited nearby Laon. It wasn't worth the effort. We drove to the top of the hill, walked around the cathedral, wandered the streets, found a playground and then drove back.
• I brought my Apple TV box on which I'd pre-installed NordVPN for watching region-locked TV when the boys were in bed. Actually there was one very big reason: Arsenal v Real Madrid on Tuesday. The coverage mostly worked - the connection to Amazon Prime Video kept timing out - but the result (3-0!) massively compensated for any frustrations.
• And it should be noted that it's effortless and cheap driving an EV on fairly long journeys (~300 miles) from the UK into France. We topped-up using Tesla Superchargers at Folkestone and Saint-Quentin while using the toilets and having a coffee. Easy.

Week 189 - Injury - 2025-04-06T19:49:12Z

• We had another leak from our bathroom into the server/fusebox cupboard below, caused again by the bath's shower wand dribbling into its housing and through the floor. Thankfully, unlike last time, no electronics were damaged. I'd like to disconnect the damn wand entirely but it looks like that would require ripping out the bath.
• Next door have started building their own garden room level with mine. So far their builders have been reasonably quiet while they laid the foundations. I'm just hoping there's no subsidence to my room caused by digging so close.
• I watched the Nintendo Switch 2 announcement. Of course I want one. There's not much fun in the world right now; thank goodness for Nintendo.
• While on a work Zoom call I had a missed call from my elderly neighbour. I assumed he wanted to talk about our hedge or the bins. And then the window cleaner arrived so I needed to go down the side to unlock the gate. It was then that I heard my neighbour call over the fence that he'd had a fall. It had only been ten minutes since his phone call, but I did feel guilty, lifting him back up onto his feet. Thankfully, just a small cut and no real harm done.
• And then it was my turn for an injury. Playing football in the sunny park with H, I twisted my ankle in a crater in the goalmouth. I heard a crunch and feared the worst but I was able to hobble home across the road. I've been following the RICE method: Resting, Icing it, wearing a Compression sock and Elevating it. The swelling has reduced but I'm still limping. Annoying.

Week 188 - Mother - 2025-03-31T08:43:33Z

• I had holiday to use up before the end of March so I took Friday off.
• L and I drove into town for some shopping before a disappointing Full English brunch. The thick-cut bacon was burnt, they used refried instead of baked beans, the poached eggs were watery, there was not enough toast but way too many garlic mushrooms. Of course I paid and thanked them.
• Much better was having a couple of pub-garden pints back in the village. We moved inside when the sun disappeared, but it still counts as our first outside drinks of spring.
• Everybody has new trainers. These are mine.
• We wrapped up watching some TV series: the end of Breeders, then Reacher, and then I remembered I'd not seen the last two episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I enjoyed the fond farewell with the flashbacks/guest appearances in the courtroom, and the heavy nod towards the last Seinfeld episode. Let me not be the first to say it was pretty, pretty good.
• The clocks went forward, losing L an hour of her Mother's Day lie-in. I made excellent bacon sandwiches. The boys gave her the presents they had made at school, and then the presents that I had bought for them to give to her. When H was back from a friend's birthday party we all went for a no-coats, sunny walk across the fields to Spokes for coffee and massive flapjacks.

Week 187 - Singing - 2025-03-24T12:28:50Z

• The interviews have been better after last week's fake-candidate fiasco, in that we have real people turning up.
• I treated myself to a Stream Deck for my desk. I don't stream, but I do like the convenience of having 15 programmable buttons at my fingertips when I'm on one of many, many Zoom calls. I'm still experimenting. Most handy are actions to toggle the Zoom microphone and camera and controls for my AC via Shortcuts.
• It was C's turn for a school assembly, the focus of which was his class singing catchy loops of Jambo Bwana accompanied by a dozen glockenspiels and clapping. Very cute, but I've had an ear-worm ever since.
• We've started researching local secondary schools for H. It's begun.
• I firmly thought I'd seen their last gig together in 2004, but I'm so happy to see that Gene are reforming this October for at least one night together.
• This weekend I've shared the house with a sick son and sick wife. C has been (physically) sick a couple of times, while his mother has a major cold. They've both had to cancel fun plans and activities and so are a bit miserable. There has been a lot of screen-time.
• To escape the Sunday funk I drove my healthy son to Smyths Toys. He spent his saved-up pocket money on a Lego Lamborghini and Kirby and the Forgotten Land. We also returned home with medicinal chocolate bars for the invalids.

No title - 2025-03-20T18:27:01Z

My favourite band, Gene, are reuniting for their first gig in 21 years 🎉 I was at their last one in... 2004. See you in Hammersmith 🤩

Week 186 - Fake - 2025-03-17T17:56:11Z

• I've started interviewing again at work this week. We're hiring software engineers to work remotely in the UK. However, it's been a bumpy start. One candidate was clearly using a GenAI tool to answer our questions, but more concerning was a fake candidate claiming to be at home in Stoke who I strongly suspected was joining the video interview from a cubicle farm in the Far East. Scammers gonna scam.
• I tried baking a rye loaf in the new bread-maker this week. It was very dense and didn't rise like other bread, but it did go nicely with some peanut butter. The day after I did my normal white loaf to satisfy younger tastes.
• We spent three evenings gripped/terrified by Adolescence on Netflix. The series follows a teenage boy who is accused of murdering a girl and who we discover is submerged in incel culture. The stunning acting and one-take cinematography are impressive, but it's the storyline that hits home as a father of two boys. It's bleak, but watch it.
• L had a well-deserved day out at a spa with friends on Sunday, so I had a quiet day with two slightly sickly sons. We played some original Super Mario Kart, watched football on TV and went for a short stomp around the village to buy treats from the shop.

Week 185 - Pancakes - 2025-03-10T17:09:56Z

• L was working every day this week so I walked the boys to school before returning to WFH. Plenty of extra steps 💪
• This also meant I took the boys in on World Book Day. JK Rowling's bank manager must (continue to) be a happy person: in the playground, by far the most popular costume choice for the boys and girls was characters from Harry Potter. C was the evil wizard boy, H went as The Diary of a Wimpy Kid.
• On Pancake Day, the boys ate pancakes at school and then L cooked more at home. My paltry 1½ pancakes were at least traditional, drowned in lemon juice and sugar as is proper; theirs were spread with Nutella.
• The boys came home asking what they should give up for Lent. I told them not be daft. I understand the lesson and agree that religion should be taught, but there's no need to concern impressionable young minds.
• While L was out one evening I found 24 Hour Party People on my watchlist. The film charts Tony Wilson's story through Joy Division and Happy Mondays, two bands whose music I like very much. But it was sadly all a bit flat, even with Steve Coogan starring.
• I bought tickets for Andy and I to see The Beta Band in October, one of four gigs I've got upcoming this year from bands that split up years ago and presumably now have tax bills to pay.
• There were weekend draws in the unseasonal sunshine for both the Lions U9s and Arsenal. After, H and I took his football across the road to the park where his nippy, technical skills were matched by my speed (longer legs) and strength (bulk).
• While the sun shone I gave my dirty, salty car its first hand-wash and vacuum of the year. Satisfying and physically challenging work. It now looks new again and my back hurts.

Week 184 - Cat - 2025-03-02T20:58:43Z

• Poppy, our elderly tabby cat, has been poorly this week. She seemed her usual self during the day but we found morning puddles of sick by her bed in our utility room. There were red spots in one so I feared the worst, but the vet wasn't alarmed when I took her in for a check-up. She recommended less fibrous food to settle Poppy's stomach and so far it seems to have done the trick.
• The conversation about death with the boys will happen eventually but I'm glad it's not this week.
• Meanwhile, the Ofsted school inspectors arrived this week, meaning L was called in for supply work every day. The pressure on teachers is intense and seems unfair, even if they knew it was coming eventually. Whatever the outcome, the boys love their school and we're happy to send them there.
• The clouds parted and the sun shone this week. You can sense that spring is on its way. Being able to walk around in the sunshine without a big coat and gloves makes all the difference to my mood. And I had my first Creme Egg and hot cross bun of the year 😋
• It was a rare home game for H's under-nines this Saturday. Even better, it was an 11:15am kick-off which meant for once I wasn't up at an ungodly hour driving him to his match. The Lions won 3-2 and he scored a tidy goal he made for himself.
• I then spent a surprisingly satisfying afternoon with L clearing out cupboards and rearranging the utility room to make space for a dryer and replacement washing machine. The delivery men from AO took away our kaput washer and connected up the new Bosches which are now quietly humming away.

Week 183 - Loud - 2025-02-23T21:10:51Z

• It's been half-term holidays for the boys. It's been nice having them around while I've been working from home the end of the garden.
• I went into London on Thursday to see Mogwai at Brixton Academy with Andy. I'd seen them twice before so came well-prepared with earplugs. It was loud. My Apple Watch was furious throughout the gig at their 95dB wall of sound that it told me was causing permanent hearing loss. My ears were protected but the music was sadly a bit too muffled.
• They finished later than expected after a three-song encore so I had to hotfoot it across town to catch the last train home. Swapping lines from a delayed Victoria train to the Piccadilly line at Green Park was smart and I made it with minutes to spare. Sometimes I miss living a bit closer.
• Two bits of AI-assisted coding this week using Windsurf and Claude 3.5 Sonnet. First I wanted to export my Last.fm gigs into a Yaml file. After the agent incorrectly used a deprecated API method it switched to scraping the data. A bit of coaxing was needed to separate headliners from support bands, but I was happy with the results after about 10 minutes of prompting. Next I asked it to help me add dark mode to Micropublish. This took a bit longer. Once I had pointed out the areas it had missed (dialogs, panels and the tokenfield), I had a passable dark theme in a fraction of the time it would have taken me.
• My parents visited for lunch on Sunday. They came with presents for the birthday two (see last week), we ate chicken pie and talked about new laptops (them) and washing machines (us).
• Dad helped me attach a mud flap to the driver's side of my car. The original one had detached itself reasonably cleanly after a misjudged turn over a kerb, but the replacement still required expert Dad Skills to apply the right level of force to pop in its securing pins. Success.

Week 182 - Celebrate - 2025-02-17T17:37:54Z

• So much birthday-celebrating this week.
• First, C had his early birthday party at DJ's Jungle, starting with soft play, then party food, Happy Birthdays, and finally, laser tag in the dark on the soft play equipment. The last 15 minutes the parents were also given laser guns for an (outnumbered) parents vs kids match. The grown-ups lost. The most fun I've had at a children's party.
• On Valentine's Day we joined Andy and Emma at The Lamb & Flag for drinks on the way to Wyndham's Theatre for Inside No.9 Stage/Fright. Reece and Steve were excellent, as was guest star Phil Daniels who was kidnapped by mistake. There were a few moments that made you jump along with clever writing and comedy. It was so good. I'm very pleased to have booked our tickets a while back.
• Thought: I must have seen more Phil Daniels live cameos than any other celebrity. I've seen him several times with Blur doing his Parklife bit and then this week in the first half of the play. He seems to be enjoying life. Sitting in our row in the audience for the second half he was cackling away.
• The day after was C's birthday so L quickly put up decorations and arranged his presents when we got back. He's still obsessed with Harry Potter and Lego which made present-buying straightforward. He went to bed very happy and exhausted after a trip to the cinema and McDonalds.
• Thanks to L's parents staying another night to babysit we went out to celebrate her own birthday early. We ate dinner at a busy Cowshed in nearby Tewinbury.
• I got her jumpers, books, framed photos of the boys and a big print to go on our bedroom wall. Art is so subjective so I asked her for a few choices from a selection so it was a semi-surprise. I even hung it on the wall.
• We finished things off with a Sunday roast at The Lytton Arms and then a family walk I'd found around Old Knebworth. She then spent a happy evening on her phone with a glass of Prosecco pretending to watch TV.

Week 181 - Eggs - 2025-02-09T20:31:14Z

• I caught the early train into London on Wednesday for a breakfast meet-up. Joel had kindly invited a group of people he's coached to Dishoom in King's Cross for networking and spicy eggs. It's reassuring to talk to peers, swap war stories and remember everyone has similar challenges in their jobs.
• The early start wasn't actually too bad: I caught one of the recently-rescheduled non-stop trains from Welwyn North at 8am and was at the restaurant just half an hour later. London's not so far away when the fast trains run.
• H's Lions narrowly won their under-9s football match 1-0 against St Albans with a very late winner. I may have had a little jump in the air in celebration.
• Saturday brought a rarity: both boys were at play dates at the same time which meant pub time! We had two lovely hours in The Goat before picking up a Thai takeaway on the way home to watch Children of Men.
• I did some Sunday hacking, adding support to Micropublish for IndieAuth Server Metadata. I just about remembered enough Ruby to write the code and tests. It felt good to build again.

No title - 2025-02-09T14:42:03Z

I've released a new minor version of #micropublish that supports the new2022 IndieAuth spec change to support Server Metadata for endpoint discovery as an alternative to the existing (legacy) headers/body methods.

Week 180 - Substance - 2025-02-03T16:31:59Z

• I watched a few films and plenty of TV this dark, wintry week.
• For some reason I hadn't seen Dead Man's Shoes, despite reading glowing reviews and listening to a podcast where Paddy Considine talks at length about it. L was at her circuits class on Tuesday and the kids were in bed so I took the opportunity. What a masterpiece. It's bleak, chilling and very violent but utterly gripping.
• Another film on my watch list was The Substance. I knew less about this one, just that it was crazy. I really wasn't prepared. We watched it together on Saturday evening and both turned to each other wide-eyed. From the A-list nudity to the gore and the insane ending... Wow. It's lived with me ever since.
• Everyone's watching Severance, right? I really can't half-watch it while scrolling on my phone. My full attention is needed. And then after I dive into Reddit to catch up on the fan theories.
• My two sons and I had a boys' gaming afternoon on Sunday while their mother was out shopping. I hooked up the Switch to the big living room TV for three-player games of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Super Mario Bros Wonder. For the first time we could race competitively against each other. I won the Grand Prix but then they ganged up on me to win the Battle Mode games. It really won't be long before they thrash me every time.
• Talking of thrashings, we all enjoyed Arsenal 5-1 Man City for some well-earned payback.

Week 179 - Loaf - 2025-01-26T17:35:17Z

• It's been a very quiet week, Monday especially so with my US colleagues off work. Of course there was a change in president over there. I'm trying to avoid doomscrolling but it's inevitable we will feel the effects here and in Europe.
• We spent a lot of time ferrying the boys around various clubs and activities. I took C to his first football training session at nearby Knebworth where he was happy to find three other boys from his school. He did well in the freezing cold. I then watched his big brother's team win 5-2 in Welwyn before taking C for an indoor rugby session on Sunday morning.
• I've been baking more overnight bread in my new bread-maker. Coming downstairs to the smell of warm bread is an excellent start to the day. It's really quick and gratifying. I need to be a bit more adventurous, though. So far I've not deviated from white/brown loaves with poppy and sunflower seeds. Maybe I could try banana bread?
• This week I had my last leadership coaching session with Joel Chippindale. He's an excellent coach and I've benefited from his expert guidance and reassurance over the last year. If you're thinking about similar coaching (do it!) I'd strongly recommend Joel.
• The Fantasy Premier League rivalry is growing in our home. I introduced it and must take some of the blame. H is outraged that both his mother and his little brother are beating him. It's even reached a point that when the latest scores are being read out on TV everyone is calculating what it means for each other's teams. I'm still top of all my leagues (for now).
• I've been playing with Cloudflare Pages and Astro's Server-Side Rendering (SSR). It all fits together very smoothly. It might even be a solid choice for a new website. Hmm.
• We finished watching the latest series of The Traitors. It's been one of the few things we've watched recently in realtime (apart from sport) and has been a guilty nightly pleasure. It's all nonsense of course, but very watchable. I'm sad it's over but I won't miss the participants' habit of referring to each other as yourself, e.g. "I've voted for yourself, Joe". Why?!

Week 178 - Maximum - 2025-01-20T15:42:24Z

• I finally felt better after post-Christmas stomach cramps. I had the same pains a year ago so there's a pattern: I wouldn't say I feasted like Henry VIII over the festive period but my body says I should take it a bit easier this December.
• I visited the office for the first time this year. It was a long day of meetings so I had to drive home in the dark and was reminded why I hate doing so. My cross-country route takes me down unlit roads where oncoming headlights from SUVs constantly dazzle me. It's exhausting concentrating so hard for so long. Bring on Summer.
• I've finished reading The Wall this week. It's just my kind of near-future dystopian novel. There's a clear message about climate change and the guilt of the older generations that has stayed in my thoughts. And it's a very readable, unique story. Recommended.
• Saturday I had another day out at Ally Pally, this time for my annual trip to the first of the Masters snooker semi-finals. We watched eventual winner Shaun Murphy cruise past Mark Allen, including Shaun's 147 break (you can just about see us in the crowd at the 3-minute mark before he pots the final black). There was a debate on the greatest individual feat in sport but the 147 must be close. We're booked again for next January.
• Unsurprisingly I'm drawn back into the latest series of the Traitors. The Faithful are so frustrating which of course makes great TV. Also gripping us: The Day of the Jackal. It's a little long but very watchable.

Week 177 - Freezing - 2025-01-13T20:30:32Z

• Back to work. I'd had almost three weeks off for Christmas, and felt a few night-before nerves similar to the ends of school holidays years ago. And after lots of lovely lie-ins my first day back started with an 8am global kick-off call, mercifully a cameras-off broadcast.
• As one of the inevitable tasks after being acquired we're being moved across to our new owner's IT systems. From the warm embrace of Google Workspace with Zoom to the icy slap of Microsoft 365 😭. I'd forgotten how utterly terrible the Microsoft ecosystem is.
• It's been freezing cold. Everyone has the sniffles it seems, including Stewart Lee who cancelled his comedy gig at Leicester Square Theatre on Friday night. Andy and I had tickets which were refunded rather than rearranged. The whole run is sold out so no Stew for us.
• Before Christmas my car windscreen was chipped. I did the sensible thing and got Autoglass to fill the chip with resin but it then developed into a full crack and so the whole windscreen needed to be replaced. So this Saturday I spent five tedious hours sitting in Autoglass Luton's waiting room while they installed and calibrated the many sensors and the camera. Cars are far too complex these days.
• At least I had the Arsenal v Man United FA Cup tie to save the week, right? Nope. H joined me at The Emirates to watch Arsenal lose in the third round for the second year running. It was 5-3 on penalties to United after extra time. At least there were no tears from H this time, just disappointment at losing after sitting in the cold for two hours. And he learned a few new words from frustrated Gooners leaving the stadium which I hastily encouraged him to ignore.
• 2025, please do better.