Work
This week I was able to get back on track after the holiday break. We're upgrading our database versions and will be switching over next week. Also, we looked at an ADR (architecture decisions record) for email notifications.
It was a slow week due to the fact that there isn't everyone back from the team as of yet.
Extremecraft
Books
This week I read:
M. John Harrison's Centauri Device
This book is an excellent illustration of why I love the S. F. Masterworks series. It was a great read, but a bit confusing at times (or maybe I was just tired at the time) but definitely entertaining and with some interesting ideas (like the space anarchists with their spacecrafts captured by aliens). Then I look up the wikipedia article, and see that this book revolutionized the Space Opera genre by turning the prevailing tropes around!
Now I know I can look back on other books I've read to see their influence. And I know where these ideas came from.
Gaming
I bought Dyson Sphere Program this week. It was something that I had been aware of for a while, but hadn't felt the need to test it. This week I was able to feel the need to.
I've sunk 30 hours into it over four days. It's really addictive and fun. It's like solving a puzzle. When you do it correctly it's a satisfying method to build small and efficient assembly lines. Add the minor complication of wanting to make beautiful factories, but working against an asymmetrical grid on a circle (so as you move towards the poles, the gridlines shift) This adds an extra the challenge.
I'm not yet near to constructing an edsonsphere. Bits aren't working. I'm constantly running out of oil because I don't burn hydrogen enough quickly. The conveyor belts then re-enter and stop the refineries.
It's also a lot fun.
Miscellaneous
This week, I created fail2ban and an IP blocklist on my VPN. As usual, NixOS made this unexpectedly simple, and now I have a slightly better firewall.
It's not ideal because it's easy to circumvent however there's one IP that keeps trying to connect to my (whitelisted) Minecraft server, and seeing them in the logs several times a day was just becoming annoying.