Week 237

Late weeknotes this week.

Apparently, in the USA they consider Sunday to be the start of the week, despite it clearly being part of the week-end. Go figure. And before you say “yeah, but there’s two ends, the front-end and the back-end”, I say to you that there is only one end, and what you’re calling the front-end is just the start, and you’re confusing everyone.

Thankfully the physical and to some extent spiritual home of GFR is in the UK, which considers Sunday to still be part of week 237¹, and so the weeknote gods have been satisfied.

We started week 237 with a solid block of work on FutureLearn; lots of small stories appearing to address last-minute concerns from various peripheral stakeholders, as typically happens at five minutes before launch. I spent a bit of time writing some load testing scenarios, which Chris kindly tidied and completed, and a handful of other security-related barbs were filed smooth.

In the rest of the week, some scattered showers of Harmonia improvement work, with an unfortunate misunderstanding between Tom and I about de-scoping and feature flags, and a conversation with James M about strategy which I strongly suspect left him feeling more than frustrated. Sorry about that.

And, spot of GFR admin: the profit calculations that I’d thrown together a few months ago didn’t include any costs. I am good at businessing, honestly. These are the numbers by which decisions about distribution of effort are (or should be) made, and so it’s generally considered better for everyone if they are grounded in reality. Which, thankfully, they are now. I hope.

The London GFR² had the monthly social spread over lunch and a post-work-pint on Wednesday, which I was sad to miss, but then I’m drinking all the time here, hard moonshine from my own still, sippin’ it from a jar, sat on my rocking chair on my stoop, with my rifle on my lap and some straw in my mouth, staring into the distance.

– James