✍️ Lockdown Diaries #2

We are only now starting to work in a way that is working for everyone in the household. Whilst it's been 35 days since UK lockdown measures began, the booking.com EMEA offices were declared "Partially Operational" much earlier on 12^th March. That's nearly 7 weeks of adjustment — so many arguments have been had since the honeymoon period.

I'm trialling a new way of working this week; early morning through to the afternoon, with a gap to the evening and a couple of hours work in the evening. This seems to be working quite well so far; I appreciate that time with my son getting to do activities and fun things, then being weirdly super productive in the evening. Quite a few people at work I've told are interested in this way of working 🤔

Fun with Electronics

I gathered some components from Amazon, and hooked up an I2C-enabled character LCD to my Raspberry Pi via GPIO;

It's currently sat in the state shown above, disconnected. Sadly I hit a bit of a stumbling block as I have nothing to mount the screen to. I was considering something in acrylic, or simply to revert to creating some cardboard fascia but can't decide. I can't see the entire family being overly pleased with a piece of cardboard in the living room with an LCD sticking out of it 🤣

I'd love to learn more about basic electronics, rather than cobbling together components based loosely on tutorials that I don't fully understand. I might have to take advantage of my Udemy access for something useful. Who needs to learn react anyway…

Games

Bannerlord ⚔️

I've been playing Mount & Blade: Bannerlord; it's early access but more than playable. Balance is off and some areas don't work, for example skills don't actually work in some cases. I've managed to make profits trading so far — trade rumours are a real help for those less inclined to memorise useless information. Updates are being constantly released, and there are quite a few streamers who can be interesting to watch if you need something to fill your time.

EVE 🚀

I managed to bring myself to log into EVE. I bought a frigate, a damned Merlin of all things. I'm possibly moving my main character into faction warfare, against my own faction of all things. That should make things interesting. The trading alt is also making no money at the moment. I have a couple of billion ISK on hand and a lot of assets to liquidate.

The Rest

I've just started to write a personal journal to try to make sense of things, and in hope of beginning a positive habit. I'm using notion.so on recommendation of a colleague. It's easy to use, flexible, cross-platform and aeshetically pleasing. It's been two days, so very early.

Not so good…

I broke my phone with a car boot, which was regrettable. Only £140.00 incl. VAT!