They say that strength training is 70% diet, and having eaten the following over three days of a crossfit competition that I watched, I can only hope they are right.

Pide and mixed skewers
A whole tub of high protein Greek yogurt, half a kilogram of berries, and two cups of oats.
Multiple apples.
Protein bars and mixed nuts.
Aloo Ghobi, lamb saag, chicken tikka, roti, lamb.
Four jumbo rolls.
Four 185g tins of tuna.
A small tomato
Not enough mayonnaise
Loaded fries with beef brisket
Most of a litre of salted caramel connoisseur ice cream
Satay Chicken and slaw on rice (was supposed to be on fries)
A whole thing of fries to make up for no fries under the chicken
Mixed nuts
Many, many coffees
A whole plate of beef shawarma, with a side of mixed grill.
Half a punnet of raspberries.

I have to leave Brisbane around lunchtime tomorrow so I only have enough time for three or four more meals...

In the final week of Spring I was putting the finishing touches into the musical playlist that I intended to embed memories of the past months in. Spring 2023 had been pleasant, as best as I can recall it now. The fading glow of Giunio 23 had carried me through Winter. My work/life balance was correcting itself. My body parts were coming together with enough cohesion that I was even able to complete a mini, late-30s equivalent of Bulktember. A more age appropriate approach. Rehab repetitions prioritised over moving weight. Balancing pain signals with progression. I suffered only moderate lower back pain.

By the end of November, despite a recurrence of my dodgy, left shoulder I was moving well, energised by technology and the future. There was bacon in the Barossa, panini on lunch breaks, lamb roasts in the slow cooker, burgers before basketball games. Lots of coffee. Flowers were blooming, the outdoors was calling, and by mid November my index finger had some blood back in it.

Life was not perfect, but I was enjoying it. It felt like, as spring turned to summer around me that in my life too would bloom into sunshine and blue skies and a semblance of control.

Alas, storm clouds approached, as spring will do. Literally, initially, as late November rain pummelled the house and got into the gym literally hours before we were to set off on a cross country road trip.

December from start to finish was problematic. The road trip that was supposed to be a break was plagued by injury, weather, snakes (actually those were cool) and actual plague. Driving long distances in the rain just to isolate in cheap motel rooms was not fun. It was becoming apparent that my wrist injury was not minor, and the Napoleon movie totally lacked historical accuracy and nuance. In fact, I was craving a return to home life and work routine by the end, knowing fate would choose that moment to at least clear out my sinuses. We returned to a mouldy, ruined gym, more rain, a sad puppy and a whole train of minor inconveniences. The final two work weeks of the year did bring some sense of normality back, and then I got covid and missed out on Christmas. By the time it was 2024 I was exhausted. And I'd felt comfortable enough with where my feelings were to share my Spring playlist that just served to remind me of happier times.

Time never stops though. And through all of this, and the continued wrist pain, insurance drama, back pain, life stress, and shoulder pain it did feel like I've done this all before. It did feel that all I had to do was keep getting through work days, keep doing rehab morning, lunchtime and night, keep going to the beach at the end of hot days, keep making phone calls, keep taking the dog for a walk and mowing the lawn after limbering up that things wouldn't necessarily get better, but they might average out. I listened to the Spring playlist a lot, and of course new music and so I added to it already aware that I was now making a Spring/Summer double album playlist. In some ways it made sense, under the influence of the narrative fallacy: Spring was a rise and fall, summer would be a fall and rise. The perfect sine wave. With gym repairs scheduled and two weddings at the end of February to look forward to it seemed appropriate that by the end of summer I'd feel balanced and I'd have a second collection of songs.

Well, it worked to an extent. My wrist still hurts most days but not that much. I have no idea if the next storm will flood some part of my house. Jobs still cause stress. But I have a Spring/Summer playlist. And I know that I will listen to it for years to come sometimes when things are going bad and sometimes when things are going well and sometimes when some things are bad and other things are good. This is life. I am accepting it. Because I can't change it. Seasons will continue to come one by one and I'll relish posting a mixtape for each one for as long as I can.

Memories of:
Driving down South Road in sunshine. Lifting light weights in the gym. Driving to a bonfire. Books about Mars, and Nipples. Taking coffee breaks in the backyard on WFH mornings. Being in the groove in front of VS Studio while looking out over the Adelaide hills. More hours on my back on the rubber mats on the floor. Long stretches of country roads. FLOWERS BLOOMING. Feeling sad. Being in the groove in front of CS Studio with the air conditioner on and the curtains drawn. The same walks around Croydon. Memories of Paris. Passionfruit. Trying to hold a plank.

There's no doubt about it. AI is going to be even huger in 2024 than it was in 2023. At least from a hype perspective. That's judging by the 16 minute wait I faced to collect my badge at the entrance of the Microsoft AI Tour in Sydney this morning. Regular haircut people of the East Coast are going to make a lot of money from this technology. I just think it's neat.

Dear Chat GPT. Please generate me a harbour side house in Rozelle Bay.

Regardless, I felt extremely hyped myself this afternoon during a short break for fresh air between sessions. This was not just from the sugar of the dozen free desserts I consumed at the event and the hotel breakfast buffet beforehand. I crammed new knowledge into my face with just as much avarice as I had for the food and coffee. I get genuinely excited by the potential of this technology the same way I get tingles every time I get a glimpse of humanity's potential and before some reality snaps me out of it. With the right amount of CPU and ingenuity the possibilities are endless. Human services, healthcare, custom entertainment, massive increases in productivity. All of it could be achieved and most of the world** could commence living like spoiled Golden Retrievers for the rest of our lives, carried through the years in the metaphorical, oversized handbag of big tech and their easy to consume, low code solutions.

Humanity will corrupt it, of course. When there's money to make and social hierarchies to preserve the packaging won't end up matching the product. The margins will ruin things.

AI is ground breaking magic. But if you want to use it in Production, you're going to need a few additional services deployed in between the model and your users.

Anyway, after the sugar rush ended and the afternoon sessions peeled back the curtains on the magic box a bit further, my expectations returned to their temperedness. There's still a lot to do. And I still have excitement about contributing to doing it. After hours of walking around Sydney and its harbour in the past twenty-four hours I am reminded that humanity has not nor will not ever be perfect. But it's far from being bad. We will probably end up living like spoiled Golden Retrievers think they live.

_{**With the exception of physical labourers and AI developers of course. And then just the developers.}

Every Monday of 2023 I made a short, coffee related video.

Coffee and my phone, basically the only two ubiquitous aspects of every day of 2023.

Napoleon's tomb, in Les Invalides on the Seine in Paris stands a compensatory 21 metres high from its base of marble to the top of the golden sarcophagus.

The big screen at Melbourne's IMAX theatre is coincidentally the exact same height.

The above is bullshit. I will not fact check it. IMAX Melbourne is showing the Beyoncé movie instead of Napoleon on the two days I'm in this town and this is the final insult that my plans for an enjoyable holiday will endure. Like the French's enemies in the first years of the nineteenth century, I surrender. I'll make the best of whatever days are left of this road trip and I'll look forward to Monday and returning to work on hopefully the first day I haven't felt like shit all month.

I have enjoyed a good run of holidays leading up to this one, so I can't feel too aggrieved. PNW, 2022 Road Trip, and Europe 2023 included no sickness or other dramas. I appreciate the privilege I have to even take a holiday. But this trip has undoubtedly felt like a cascade of drama. Sickness, missing catch ups with family, driving and sleeping only. After commenting that I would get injured just by attending a CrossFit competition I then slipped on some mud by the beach and pissed off my wrist again. No, this holiday is a dead holiday and I have been a ghost on it. Lying in bed at 8:30pm instead of drinking beer and watching the lightning over the ocean. Haunting historic Goulburn instead of quality time with nieces and nephews. Sunny days covered by sheeting rain. Not writing journal entries. Not seeing the sun set. Delicious food and coffee tainted by the ubiquity of infectious mucus. I am glad I at least recovered my sinuses in time to spend time with Steve on Monday, and get in a couple of hikes. Vanessa has not been so fortunate. It has not been fun. I would rather have been working.

Gough's Bay this morning.

And yet, there still opportunities to make the best of what is left. I'm sitting at Riverland now as the sun lights up the Yarra and the DJ plays my funeral song - hopefully not an omen, but a reminder that it doesn't matter how big your tomb or how high resolution your biopic is, it's better to be on holiday than to be dead.

And I got to see this bird.

This morning, Steve and I climbed from the saddle to the top of Timbertop Mountain in the Victorian High Country. It was a combination of many of the things that I enjoy. Walking up steep slopes. Eating cereal, fruit and yogurt. Photography. Spending quality time with brothers.

I felt sad after it was over and we'd drunk a coffee and Steve drove away. The world is a big place and it feels like it's becoming bigger. Maybe because I'm closing in on forty and time feels shorter. Maybe because I always enjoyed going to the pub and playing pool and it happens so rarely these days that when it does happen I am overwhelmed by nostalgia.

There were a lot of snakes on the mountain. A Mayfly bit my leg. The view at the top was nice. Overall, it felt good.

Thoughts over 14 hours of driving across Australia:

It feels ironic that the Heysen Tunnels cut through a landscape that Heysen was dedicated to meandering across.

The roof of the car blocking me from swallowing the last drops of my takeaway coffee is evidence of the cold injustice of the universe.

Hopefully that's the only rain I'll be have to deal with today. Don't say this out loud, don't want to jinx anything.

Hay Plain. No thoughts. Lots of clouds.

Hay

Passenger seat salad a bit disappointing. Not due to driving, just not enough hummus.

Bit more rain, knew I was going to jinx it. Ah well, not too bad.

It's always rush hour somewhere.

Why are cows black and white?

My clockwork morning poo has been perfectly, conveniently delayed this whole trip, despite 3 large petrol station coffees. Perhaps because I haven't loaded up any word-related games on my phone today.

In hindsight, the travel weariness may have been creeping in. But I blame the wide angle lens.

This is the fourth time I've overtaken this slow ute.

It sure is raining a lot. I feel like a genius for not adding 2 psi of extra air instead of 4.

Don't think about word-related games, you're almost there.

Fuck me it is raining hard.

As long as you can see the reflectors it's okay.

I did it. Time for a long word game.

Longest day trip I've ever done, I reckon.

How much do I like APIs? A decent amount, it seems. They keep me employed, to an extent, and they make it pretty seamless for me to check the weather, my email, the stock market, along with a thousand other daily use cases. They justified my work paying for me to fly to Melbourne for two days to attend a conference about them.

I don't just like APIs because of the free food and chance to spend time in airports and around lakes. I like APIs because, I think, they're just my kind of software.
Two aspects of my personality are solved by good APIs.

One, prescribed, effective communication. APIs have standard protocols and mediums. Connecting to one can be done at any time. Responses contain the data you asked for in the format you expect. There's no standing around with a half eaten pastry wondering if you should speak now. No waving back at someone who was actually waving at the person behind you. No lingering once the message has been delivered. Good APIs are elegant and clear.

Two, APIs enable maximum efficiency for tiny increases in value. You can asynchronously plug in to an operation while the main program carries on. I prep my milk and take my fish oil while I'm cleaning the blender each morning. If the interfaces of the froth button and my mouth weren't always available I'd spend more time each morning achieving the same result. APIs let me upload images while I'm creating the entry, and spam new iServer objects via a script instead of using the UI.

So yeah, I do like APIs. And free food. And even kinda airports.