Hello, Weeknotes

After much delay and deliberation (with an extra dose of encouragement from @joel), I’ve finally decided to put writing week notes to the top of my to-do list. And being a perfectionist, I “had to” get everything, bar the actual writing part, sorted before I could focus on writing (or should I say typing). So off I went and happily created a new Hugo section (page kind) called weeknotes, made a new dedicated Atom feed, archetype template, and list view template. I felt fulfilled by the new additions because this time, while working in Hugo, I actually understood why and how to do most of the things without relying fully on guides or forum posts.

In case you don’t know what week notes are—they’re like a weekly, public dairy entry where one can share their ups and downs that week, what they perhaps learnt, completed, or anything really! From the examples in the IndieWeb community, weeknotes seems to be a fairly flexible, personal, and is a sort of rough-around-the-edges type of format. It is uncharted territory for me, and a bit uncomfortable I have to admit, as I don’t like the thought of “light-hearted” or “unserious” work. But this has been a conundrum for me since secondary school and into my working years—I’ve been told by many that I’m always too serious. Will writing slightly less-polished, more carefree posts help? I have no clue. We will see.

I have not decided on any framework or format yet (because that’s just another excuse to not write), so I’ll just try something generic for my first week and see how I get on. If you write weeknotes too, send them my way! Or try sending me a webmention.

Completed

• Got my flu shot (a recombinant trivalent one) and by some wicked fate, when I booked into a random clinic to get the shot, I was assigned to a GP that is the younger sister of my childhood doctor! I am not that good at maths, but the odds of that must be….! Just dumbfounded.
  • Anyway, if you haven’t had your influenza jab yet this year, consider it (especially if you’re in the higher risk groups) because flu tends to peak around winter and your body needs at least two weeks to build up the protection after the jab. In HK, cases are still rising from the summer flu season and current activity levels suggest it may even overlap with the winter flu season causing more cases of infection.¹ Take care!
• Ticked off “start weeknotes” that’s been on my blogging to-do list for a long time.
• Changed the canonical URL from www to non-www. I think it looks neater!
• Optimized this site to get near full marks in PageSpeed. Debug Bear’s free website speed test was indispensable.

Upcoming

• Lots of draft posts created this past week, hopefully I can get at least one out.
• Will be publishing my first Git repo project and docs site soon, all firsts for me!
• Currently trying out some 3D-printed keyboard stems/tilters mimicking a keywell arc shape. Want to test it out in a budget friendly way before looking more into boards like the Glove80 or the ZSA Voyager.

Life

• I recognized a famous Hong Kong barrister while I was waiting for the underground (MTR). Mr. Franco Kuan was one of three barrister mentors in a reality TV show (article only in Chinese) recently. He is a crime specialist, ex-senior public prosecutor, and deputy magistrate. I asked for a photo and chatted with him briefly before the train came. He was awfully nice about it and was heading to a nearby university for his class. I enjoyed the show despite not knowing much about legal issues in general. There were some medical cases in there so that was nice.
• Went to a local annual coffee festival event on Friday. It seems to get worse every year—the crowds were a deterrent (I hate crowds).
• Posted two coffee-related posts to Instagram this week. I’ve been very much absent from the platform for maybe 3–4 months, which has been great honestly. I only open the app once or twice a week for under 30 min (got the timer setting turned on, and it’s off in the work profile the rest of the time); but I miss messages with friends who are not available on other platforms, unfortunately.

Link Roundup

Here’s some content I came across this week that were interesting:

• Indivisible Announces Campaign to Cancel Spotify Streaming Services Over ICE Recruitment Ads — I’m not a fan of music streaming platforms, but now seems to be a good time and reason to leave Spotify for good.
• Signal President Meredith Whittaker calls out agentic AI as having ‘profound’ security and privacy issues — It’s from March 2025, but privacy issues are only getting more pertinent and important.
• What We Talk About When We Talk About Sideloading — Follow up post from F-Droid about Google’s Developer Program. I’m really upset about this issue.
• I just discovered this alternative “Internet protocol” called Gopher. It’s a text-based World Wide Web alternative, or should I say precursor. I checked it out with Lynx. Looks super cool and still very active. It’s on my list of things to explore one day!