zkbro

🗓️ Weeknote 2025-W30

2025-07-27 17:10

🏃 Ramped up my running again, getting in some gruntier hills and clocking some bigger distances. I felt it though. The legs are very tired. I got to some of my favourite trails up behind Queenstown, and a good social run with a mate on Sunday. I've thrown my stats down the bottom of the post this time.

🧠 On my mind - As my holiday to Vietnam approaches, and possibly triggered by the fantastic read Thinking of Stonehenge in Manhattan by Andrea at Comma Directory, I've been thinking about how I'm going to have to put aside some ways of thinking so I can make the most of my trip and simply enjoy the experiences. They're silly thoughts, maybe childish, but probably keeping me back from... something. I don't really get tourism. I'm a bit of a negative nancy to be honest, seeing most tourist attractions as just some thing that happened in the past with a trillion other things, and mankind has decided to make a big deal about it, monetising it, and blowing the thing out of the water.. castles, temples, kayaking with dolphins, ancient architecture... boooooring... I need to shake that thought, try and emmerse myself a bit. Maybe there's something there. Understand our ancestors better, or hopefully just enjoy the company I'm with. Usually when I plan trips I seek to simply do my usual thing - sleep, eat, coffee, run, dinner, sleep, eat, run... but settle into the place I'm in.. meet locals, get some pointers for where to eat, sleep or run, maybe tee up a coffee, drink or run with said locals... get a better feel for living as one does there in that place... walk or get public transport. Read the local paper (if it's English), study topo maps for surrounding natural landscapes then find my way there. Maybe I'll still get a chance to do a bit of that, though this time I'll be with a guided tour so I'll be doing the itenerary planned for me. I don't know. Just freaking out a bit. I've printed both Andrea's piece and The Loss of Creature by Walker Percy (of which Andrea says Percy toys with ideas on how to reclaim experience, eluding cliché, disappointment, and cynicism). I'll take these with me for some positive nudges if I start to drift.

🏢 Work - It's been a hectic 8 months in this new career I've chosen. The biggest challenge for me is working around poor communication from 4 of my 5 colleagues. I'm a bit exhausted from all the dribs and drabs of information (changes not communicated, requirements only partially delivered etc.), and understanding English as a second language from one colleague (I need to not only change my delivery so I'm understood, but also decipher the broken English that returns.) It's a challenging place to learn, but I think I've done well considering. Still, I'm looking forward to my break so I can take a bit of a breather.

💻 I know I said I was going to use my pika page for travel logging while overseas, but I couldn't help myself and managed to git clone my website in Termux on my Android, along with ability to build and deploy with zola and neocities CLI. Using terminal tools on my phone isn't great, and to include photos is not going to be worth my effort, but if I really had to, it's nice to know I can. I'll probably still stick to pika though, or maybe even just have a complete break.

💻 Website - Improved how my elevation profile header gets updated. It's now automated whenever I blog or update the website. It stitches together the latest 10 GPX activities from a folder which is also getting updated automatically every time I plug my watch into my laptop.

💻 Tools

📺 Watching South Park Season 27 - Finally! Episode 1 was a banger. They went to town on the current state of (political) affairs. Let your hair down for this one. So good.

🕸️ Currently reading across the web

From earlier in the week, when diving into note-taking again:

Some more appeared which were still in-line with writing and note-taking.

I guess, blogging is that. A way to document our perception of reality, as mess up as it might be. And maybe, even if we don't want to acknowledge it, merge some of those for a shared experience.

At least that is how I feel when I read posts and blogs I follow. Not only getting a glimps, but somehow sharing an existence with them. Knowing they exist in this day and time, along side me. Somehow that makes me feel less lonely with my thoughts.

Blogging, true blogging as it was intended, for me, it's that. Sharing our perception of our world in order to feel less lonely.

Ok, I better leave it there.

Activity Stats

🏃 Run [4] 6:28:17 - 56.6km - 2298m
🤸 Pilates [3] 1:06:26
💪 Strength [1] 0:19:54

🏁 Total: 8 activities - 7:54:38 - 56.6km - 2298m