Weekly notes 19/2025
Table of Contents
Thumbnail image: Mary Mackillop Chapel was built in 1913 in honour of Australia’s first saint - Mary Mackillop.
What’s been happening #
With the temperatures averaging 15 degrees Celsius mid-day and maxing out at low 20s, winter is well and truly here. For most of the year, I wear shorts to the office and now it’s cold enough that I’m back to wearing jeans pants and a hoodie too because it rains every now and then. Which brings me to my next problem (in a good way…) - since starting my workouts, I’ve lost about 10 kilos or so and half my t-shirts are too big (I am okay with loose-fitting T-shirts) but my jeans are so loose that they dropping off. I don’t like low-rise stuff so after a lot of coaxing by Jo to get some new clothes (I was feeling lazy), we went over to the nearby op shops to find some pants. Most of them were slim fit ones which don’t fit me well so we went over to Chatswood to buy some new pants for me. We bought two new pants for me and a couple of flannel shirts as well from Uniqlo.
The work week has been going pretty okay. This week I’ve been working exclusively on the new project which uses Terragrunt and Terraform and I’m reminded of how bad HCL is for anything remotely complex. It’s been a lot of head-banging especially to get the variables passing values correctly through multiple nested modules and having Terrgrunt makes things even more annoying. I will be completing a project that will save us quite a bit of money and then move on to the other project of rolling out Tailscale for the team.
Another milestone for this week is that I completed 50 workouts at BBB Gym. My trainer also got me to switch to the barbell for bench press (was using dumbbells till now). Heading into the gym has become part of my routine now and due credit to Daniel, my trainer, who keeps me engaged during the workout sessions with equal parts of encouragement, motivation, banter and also helps me push myself just that one bit higher. My weight loss has stalled for a couple of weeks now, which is annoying, since I haven’t changed my eating habits. I also had a follow up appointment with my GP (it’d been about 6 months since my last consultation) and with the changes in diet and weight loss thanks to workouts, I’m in a much better position now. I look forward to the next 50 workouts 😄
Our second guitar class went well. This class, we went back to the ABCs - learning to read sheet music starting with A, B, and C notes. We also learnt how sheet music denotes the length of the note (quarter note, half note, whole note etc.) and how to read the notes for rests. Following that, we learnt how to play these notes on the guitar, following the sheet music with changes to beats, notes etc. Individually, the notes were easy to play when when you combine the notes, along with the beats, rests, and trying to make sense of the sheet music, it becomes a bit tricky. As I mentioned last week, Joseph, our instructor, really encourages us to do a lot of improvisation and it feels good when you are let loose to do whatever you want, regardless of how bad it sounds.
Following the guitar class, we went for a small walk around North Sydney, heading over to the Mary Mackillop Chapel in search of a coffee shop - which we realized was attached to the museum/gift shop of the chapel. We skipped this visit and continued to find a coffee shop nearby (St Honores Bakery) and then walked back home, stopping by the near the train station for a nice view of the Sydney skyline & Harbour Bridge.
What I’ve been playing #
I got tired of Last Epoch’s flighty and lackluster gameplay loop and decided to take a break from it for now. With the new season of Diablo IV in progress, I have picked it up. Diablo IV still plays good and pushes all the right buttons to keep you pleased when starting off, but there’s not a lot of depth in the endgame. I’ll play for a bit and then jump back to Path of Exile 2, or maybe even to some single player Civilization VII also totally ignoring the backlog of games that I have.
I also bought New Star GP on my teammate Michael’s suggestion. New Star GP is a lovely little arcade-style motor racing game with retro visuals (think ~1999 time frame). The game features a nice career mode where you get to be a new racer in a new team and winning races/getting good place in qualifying/practice grants you money to upgrade your car/get new crew etc. The game plays really well on the Steam Deck and I highly recommend if you are craving for a good racing game.
What we watched #
The Amazing Race Season 37, Episode 9: The teams fly to France and have a pretty cheesy time, jousting, driving and quizzing. A fun episode to watch, and the stage is set for a top-3 showdown.
Foundation Season 2: We watched another episode, and the series gets weirder and more confusing. But hey, we can see some light peering in through the clouds!
What we ate #
St.Honore Bakery, North Sydney: A small little bakery/cafe in North Sydney. We walked in here after a quick walk following our guitar class. We ordered a leek & chicken pie and a lamb pie along with our usual coffees. The pie pastry was pretty decent nothing great. The filling in the pie was really rich and creamy and was well worth the visit.
Music of the Week #
I came across “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers” by Stevie Wonder/Jeff Beck first on Martin Miller’s channel and then also came across American Music Supply’s version of the same. Both are incredibly well done covers, each with their own subtle tweaks (and Martin Miller and his session band feat. Mark Lettieri really go wild on their version) and are well worth listening to.
Link of the week #
Road to VR has a nice article on what makes Beat Saber fun. Beat Saber is the only VR game that I truly enjoyed, and for me a large portion of it was because it gave you a really good boost for very little effort (in terms of having to figure out what to do) and combined with the face that it had really good music and you could upload custom music (albeit doing so wasn’t that straightforward) - made it even better.
Thanks for reading. #
Thanks for reading and have a great week ahead.
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