Breath is most valued when it is hard to find
After a very successful week of cycling last week, this week tapered off dramatically when I came down with flu.
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OMG its hot
Temperatures over 30 Celsius means more cycling, as moving on the bike is an excellent way to keep cool.
Practicalli tasks this week:
- Attend Clojure Dev Call 26th May (Missed, watch video)
- Fit Dell monitor to arm, with RogueOne laptop
- Fit LG monitor to arm, with RangerOne laptop
- Check OBS setup for creating screencasts
- Review scripts for Neovim screencasts
- Update book publishing workflow to use Zensical
Bike maintenance tasks this week:
- Bianchi flight controller adjustment
- Bianchi new bar tape
- DONE: Ribble deep clean chain, cassette & derailleur
- DONE: Ribble fit Fulcrum wheels with Vx disc brake rotors
- DONE: Ribble adjust brake disc calipers with Vx disc brake rotors (the back rotor is good, getting Erick to sort the front)
From cold to hot
A cold but sunny start to this week should turn into a mini heatwave by the weekend (maybe). No excuse to go cycling several times this week.
Practicalli work this week was on the Sustainable Life and Cycling books.
The Megalinter GitHub workflow generated a failing issues on the Practicalli Journal repository yesterday, indicating it failed because it couldnt find something to check.
Its an opportunity to review linters Practicalli uses to support quality of docs and code.
Took the Bianchi in to get a new bottom bracket fitted. The bike has lasted 20 years and a lot of kilometers. Unfortunately there wasn't a Strava back in 2006 when i got the Bianchi bike, so most of the distance on the bike was never captured until 2019.
Resiliance is coping with chaos
The week started full of promise but quickly fell to pieces 🤣 By the middle of the week I was starting to get some traction again and things were good again by the weekend.
A fairly pragmatic view of 'AI' tools was discussed in the DevEx Summit 2026 online conference.
After a false start, I have a fully working road bike again and am back on the road again. A nice long and hilly ride to end the week and a lazy Sunday recovering and organising camping gear for the Dragon Ride trip.
May the Forth be with you
May the fourth (be with you) is a celebration of Star Wars.
As it also happens to be a public holiday (bank holiday) in the UK, a few friends and I did a celebratory cycle ride to Chiddingstone cafe for some delicious cake.
Here comes the sun
Feeling exhausted over the weekend and think I had a virus slowing me down. I dragged myself out for a few rides and by the weekend I was feeling much better.
To keep my mind busy whist riding up very large hills, I have been thinking about what I would like to see from the official Clojure website.
Training Training Training
The weather is much nicer this week so more training for the Dragon Ride in June. A typical ride at the start of the week with a huge 180km ride to Brighton and back mid-week.
Added the Practicalli install scripts for Neovim to the Neovim and Engineering Playbook websites.
A focus on personal health
A four and a half hour walk to Crystal Palace physiotherapy clinic on Tuesday for a steroid injection in my palm to alleviate my trigger finger. No side affects noticeable so far.
Debug kaocha and Portal
When testing updates to the Practicalli Neovim config with Practicalli Project Templates, I discovered an error when using Koacha test runner via a REPL connected editor when Portal wrap-portal middleware is included in the REPL startup. The issue was resolved in the latest Portal release.
Tested the Debian Linux post install scripts on a spare laptop. Apart from the Zsh install script failing and a couple of TUI tools that need the output files renamed, everything seems pretty good.
A couple of nice rides over the Easter weekend in the UK and one just before the weekend, already has my distance for April at 288 km (and 3,480 meters climbing). There are some sunny days this week, so its looking good for 1,000 km distance this month.
I travelled 753.6 km in March this year and have a current total distance of 1,943.5 km for 2026.
To relax over the long weekend, I started a Netflix subscription after hunting through websites to see if there were enough shows on Netflix that I actually wanted to watch (not that easy a task as all streaming services are very secretive about what shows they actually have).
- Resident Alien - mainly because Alan Tudyk is awesome
- The Good Doctor
- Squid Game - I havent seen season 2 yet
- Better Call Saul - never saw this after Breaking Bad (which I may watch again)
- One Piece a Pirate adventure which I enjoy for the silliness of it all, a good way to unwind after a long cycle ride
- The Umbrella Academy - I've only seen the first 2 seasons I think
- Stargate SG-1 - very enjoyable military sci-fi with a heart and humour
- Arcane future sci-fin anime - catch up with season 2
I was disappointed that season 2 of 3 Body Problem wont be release until then end of 2026 and with fewer episodes (6 rather than 8).
Movies
- Kung Fu Panda 4 is the latest in the film series, seeing Po become the reluctant mentor. The best part of the film is the authentic Chinese music version of "Crazy Train" by Ozzy Osbourne.
- K-Pop Demon Hunters visually stunning although not that deep a story line, enjoyable to watch anyway.
- The Electric State is a fun Sci-Fi adventure with Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt.
- The Uglies a coming-of-age sci-fi movie with an interesting plot. Seems to be part one of a two part film, but unclear if the sequil will be made as it took 18 years to get around to making the first one.
Rick and Morty Series 9 should be released on May 24th on Adult Swim, so I'll keep an eye out for it on Channel4.com from then on.
Neovim Config updates and testing
Continuing to migrate to Neovim 0.12 and AstroNvim version 6. There was a brief concern about nvim-treesitter repository being archived but it seems that project will become part of Neovim 0.13 release.
Continued my cycle training for the Dragon Ride in June. Designed some more routes to build up distance and hill climbing endurance.
Unfortunately an engineering manager role I applied for did not progress. The sub-text suggests they already had a candidate they wanted whilst I was being interviewed and although they liked my experience they decided to go with the other person. Its all useful experience and they seemed a good company.
Neovim
I was never quite happy with using Markdownlint as the rules were very strict. Overriding the rules added complexity to the Neovim configuration and there wasnt much information on how to make it simpler.
Whist I still have Markdownlint as part of the CI workflow, I've switched to Marksman. The Marksman tool doesnt have strict format rules and it does provide in-page anchor links as well as links to other files.