Lars-Christian's website - Posts

How to use quote marks

2026-02-15T00:00:09+00:00

As I came by Pete's pet peeve that media don't know how to use quotes, I realised that I also don't know.

The first pain point is that I simply don't know how to write the correct symbols on my keyboard. In search of a quick answer, I turned to our Large Language Model overlords. Unfortunately, both ChatGPT and Claude proved entirely unable to provide assistance. They were completely confident in their entirely wrong answers, however. I guess that's something.

For the two languages in which I write, Norwegian and English, there are six relevant symbols. I use a Macbook with a Norwegian bokmål (ISO 639-1 code nb) keyboard layout. The six symbols can be written as follows with this keyboard setup:

« = ⌥ (option) + shift + V
» = ⌥ (option) + shift + B
‘ = ⌥ (option) + n
’ = ⌥ (option) + m
“ = ⌥ (option) + shift + n
” = ⌥ (option) + shift + m

Not exactly easily accessible, hence my writing them down here for future reference. The intricate key combinations also explain why many simply default to the straight quotes ". On my keyboard, I write them by pressing shift + 2.

Next up is knowing when to use which symbols. That varies from language to language. And, as we'll see, from region to region within the same language.

In Norwegian, we use « and » for first level quotes, while second level quotes (a quote in a quote) is indicated by ‘ and ’.¹

In American English, they use “ and ” for first level quotes, and ‘ and ’ for second level quotes.²

In British English, they use ‘ and ’ for first level quotes, while “ and ” denote a second level quote.³

No wonder I'm confused and find myself turning to " and ' for simplicity. But, as Pete pointed out, that is just plain wrong. As I aim to be as correct as I can with details like these when writing, I need to get my act together.

These days, I don't publish much in the way of Norwegian text on this blog. Or elsewhere, for that matter. But if I do, I will make a point to use the correct symbols for quotes. I do more than a bit of writing in my day job, and — although some text editors will replace " with « and » when your language is set to Norwegian — knowing this will make me a better and more consistent writer at work. That's a good thing.

As far as this blog goes, I generally try to adhere to British English spelling and grammar. Which means I will aim to be consistent in using single quotes (‘ and ’) for first level quotes from here on and out. Send me an email and let me know when I inevitably mess that up.

In practice, there appears to be many variations in various style guides around the country. But typographer and librarian Torbjørn Eng recommends this practice. Based on his arguments, I am inclined to agree that this is the sensible approach. ↩
Or, at the very least, that is the correct way to do it according to the Chicago Manual of Style. ↩
As recommended by the Oxford Style Guide. ↩

The Strength of the Few by James Islington

2026-03-11T00:00:08+00:00

After resurrecting this blog back in 2023, the first book I wrote about was James Islington's The Will of the Many. I gave it a solid 3 out of 5 and concluded:

…there’s much to explore still, and I’m excited to see how Islington will build on this solid foundation in the books that follow.

The Strength of the Few is the second of four planned books in Islington's Hierarchy series. It came out late last year. As Islington, to my knowledge, does not maintain a website or blog with an RSS feed, I'm not able to keep up with his writing progress.¹ Instead, I only discovered the new book when visiting a local book store with my kids. The Strength of the Few was given ample premium shelf space in the middle of the store. That was the first time I realised just how popular The Will of the Many must have been.

Later that same day I tried to purchase the e-book to add it to my library. I was sad to discover that there were no DRM free options. In fact, for someone located in Norway, Amazon was the only legal option for acquiring the e-book. As I try to avoid spending my hard earned money adding to Jeff Bezos' vast fortune, I gave up and instead bought a second hand copy of the paperback.² It arrived in my within a couple of days, and I was off to the races.

Quite literally, as the book features an actual race scene quite early on. It sets the scene for much of what's to come in this particular branch of the story. And, yeah, that's where things get a little complicated. Without wanting to spoil too much for someone who's not read the book, it consists of three stories that evolve in synchronous fashion.

Although each storyline is designated with a particular icon, it took me more than half the book to remember which was which. Instead, I relied on the actual content of the chapters to orient myself. It wasn't too challenging, but at the offset I felt like I was floundering a bit while trying to keep up with what was going on where. A key reason is that it's been a couple of years since I read the predecessor. Strength picks up where Will left off, and it is a direct continuation. The references to the events of the previous book are numerous and mostly presented without any further explanation. As I had forgotten far more than I remembered about The Will of the Many, this doubtlessly made it harder for me to properly enjoy The Strength of the Few from the get go.³

About a quarter of the way through, however, I began feeling like I had enough context to follow the story properly. And the book became much more enjoyable.

The three different stories are distinct and compelling in their unique ways. Where one is dystopian and strange, another feels intimately humane and recognisable. And both spring from a central story set in what's probably closest to the world we live in today. Islington's approach felt like a fresh take on telling an overarching story that I hadn't encountered before.

Speaking of, the connective storyline is interesting and kept me guessing and speculating along the way. While there is still much to be revealed — Strength feels like a classic middle book in that it begins and ends in the middle of the story — fantasy fans will see further homage to Brandon Sanderson in "the big reveal" we're treated to towards the end of The Strength of the Few.

I thought this book was a step up from its predecessor. The story feels more compelling, the way it is told more unique, all the while building on that which made The Will of the Many such a success. Anyone who picks up The Strength of the Few will, however, be well served by watching or listening to a recap of the first book before beginning. Or, better yet, treat themselves to a reread.

Either way, I'm really excited to see where James Islington takes the story with the next book in the series.

Contrary to some of my other favourite fantasy writers, like Brandon Sanderson and Joe Abercrombie. ↩
I generally prefer reading e-books. Though some nicer books can feel great to hold and smell, I find the advantages of e-books to outweigh that aspect. Doubly so when it comes to big, unwieldy paperbacks. ↩
This is a significant drawback of reading books in a unfinished series in my opinion. I much prefer reading through a full series where every book has been released. ↩

Two 1000 metre track races a year apart

2026-03-24T00:00:07+00:00

It's that time of the year again. Spring is in the air, and runners are gearing up for Norway's biggest running event and, according to themselves, the biggest relay event in the world: Holmenkollstafetten. This road running relay race goes through the heart of Oslo and has taken place almost every year since 1923!

75.000 runners representing more than 4.500 teams line up to run the relay, and Oslo is absolutely packed to the brim with people sharing the joys of physical activity. Though some might say that the festivities that typically follow the race is the highlight of the day. I might be inclined to agree.

Teams comprise all sorts of groups of people: Friends, running clubs, businesses, charities and whatever else that bind people together. Many businesses use this as an excuse to get their employees to enjoy physical activity followed by social bonding afterwards. That is true for my employer. They pay the entry fees and book a great location in the heart of Oslo. It is the base before runners venture out to their starting points across the city. And after the race there is a banquet with great food, entertainment and all around good vibes.

Inspired by other businesses, our running group last year took the initiative to establish an "Elite Team" where the aim is to run the relay as quickly as possible.¹ The selection process is simple. A tryout race consisting of a 1000 metre time trial to compete for ten long stage spots and a 400 metre time trial to compete for five short stage spots.

As I ran the tryouts last year as well as this year, I thought it would be fun to analyse and compare the stats from each years time trial.² Given that I'm a slow twitch runner, and a marathoner by heart, even a 1000 metre race is a full on sprint for me. Safe to say that a short stage is off the table for me. My one and only shot of a spot on the team was running the 1000 metre race.

I run with a Stryd footpod/power meter (an old version referred to as "Stryd Wind"). The power and pace charts below are both from the web version of their running tracker log data analysis software thing called Powercenter. The heart rate chart comes from the magnificent Intervals.icu, which is my go-to platform for advanced workout data analysis. I've, of course, also linked to the individual entries in my personal workout log.

2025 race

Last year's race took place on 25 March. It was a cold and crisp day, with the sun peeking out and next to no wind.

Last year I ran the 1000 metres in 3 minutes and 1 second. For the imperialists out there, that is roughly 4:51 per mile pace.

Power average for the race was 542 Watts, while peak power was 622 Watts.

Heart rate average was 181 beats per minute and I maxed out at 191! This is only four beats off my estimated max of 195 bpm.

2026 race

This year's race was delayed due to the conditions and took place on 24 March. Almost to the day a year after last year's tryouts. The weather wasn't nearly as nice, with a grey and overcast sky and a little bit of wind.

This year I ran the 1000 metres in 3 minutes and 2 seconds. It is around 4:53 per mile pace.

Power average for the race was 543 Watts, while I peaked at 650 Watts.

Heart rate average was 177 beats per minute, and I maxed out at 188. Seven beats off my estimated max, and three beats lower than last year.

Reflections on the race

As I'd been ill for almost a week not two weeks back, I doubted my fitness. Because of this, I ran a much more conservative race. Whereas I reached peak power (622W) on the first bend last year, I ran more even this year before steadily increasing the power on the final straight hitting a significantly higher peak (650W) right on the finish line.

Today's time was a second slower. Looking at the data, I should've run faster. The heart rate charts hammer this point home. Last year I spent two full minutes in "the purple zone" (185+ bpm), while this year I only managed just shy of a minute in that same zone.

That tracks with how I felt throughout the race as well. Last year I felt like I was working at my max from the get go. That I couldn't increase the pace/power much the final 200 metres illustrates that I didn't have anything left in the tank. Conversely, today I felt like I was quite in control all the way up until I turned it on towards the end of the final bend, and was able to keep increasing the pace/power right up to the finish line. Even though I felt like I mechanically couldn't increase the pace further, I felt like I could've kept it up for a while yet.

My conclusion is that I'm significantly fitter today than I was last year, despite running slower. I should've run a little faster, and at least broken three minutes. I think I executed this year's race better, but I simply left it too late before turning it on. This is extra annoying because I almost caught a guy right before the finish line, but he held me off to beat me with two tenths of a second in the end!

Points to note

Weight

At 69.5 kilograms today versus 68.2 kilograms on race day last year, I am 1.3 kilograms (1.9%) heavier this year. Knowing this going in, together with the recent illness and no race specific sessions to prepare this year, it played a part in making me think I wouldn't be able to defend last year's time. I should've trusted that my base fitness is significantly better this year.

Training load

Your fitness is determined by the work you've done over a longer time period, not just the last couple of weeks. And as my workout log shows, I put in much more work the first couple of months of 2026 than I did in 2025. And my total workload for 2025 was again much higher than what I managed in 2024. Even at 40 and at a higher weight, that translates to better fitness!

Footpod accuracy

It's also interesting to note that now that my weight has gone up a little, the Stryd footpod appears to be more accurate. The estimated distance this year is spot on. Last year, it was 20 metres short. I ran both races in the same pair of shoes (only used once in-between) and on the same track. As the Stryd only utilises the user defined weight value to determine an air resistance coefficient and multiply the natively calculated Watts/kg to present an absolute power value, it makes sense that a weight change potentially estimates the calculations.

My weight setting for both races was 100 kg. It's impressive (and a little bit confounding, given the changes in estimated distance and pace) seeing that the average absolute watt levels are nearly identical (542W last year versus 543W this year) despite the weight change. It means that the pod's native watt/kg calculation picks up the weight change very well.

Caffeine is one hell of a drug

Last year I was a regular coffee drinker at the time of the race. I did my regular race day routine of supplementing my normal dosage (around 80 milligram) with an energy drink containing about 100 milligrams of caffeine 30-45 minutes before the race. If you'll recall, my adventures in quitting caffeine commenced shortly after.

An adventure it has been, and I should write about it some time. The long and the short of it though, is that going into today's race, I've been more or less caffeine free for the past four months. I was excited to discover how this would play out when trying to take advantage of caffeine as a performance enhancer. And make a difference it did!

Although it's clearly impossible to measure the performance effects, I can only say that I've never before in my adult life noticed anything like the effects that I got from ingesting caffeine today. I've used caffeine in similar dosages before every race I've run over the past decade. Today hit different. I was wired and alert and felt almost supercharged. In fact, five hours later, I still do. Which is why I'm just finishing up this post long past my bedtime. I'm convinced, perhaps even more so than the race execution, the caffeine high contributed to the fact that I never really felt tired throughout the race.

Caffeine is clearly a performance enhancing drug. There are studies that confirm this. But I'm now convinced that someone who doesn't consume it regularly will experience greatly increased effects compared to someone who's adapted to its effect through daily consumption. The obvious caveat being that there appears to be a genetically determined difference in how people respond to caffeine, so your mileage may vary.³

I'll continue to stay off caffeine in my daily life, and only turn to it when I'm in dire need of its effects. To ensure that I get max potency when needed, but also because regular consumption is not without downsides to me.

Did I make the team?

Last year, I did!

For this year, the final results aren't in yet. But I'll be sure to update this post when they are.

Update: The final results are in, and I made it Out of everyone that tried out for the men's team, my time had me in sixth place. A whopping three seconds clear of the cut off time!

The overall approach for most teams in the race is participation, and that's what makes it such a great occasion. It would be very boring in comparison if it was mainly a performance oriented race, and the city wasn't positively brimming with people. ↩
No, really, that is my idea of fun! ↩
This recently became very clear to me when I saw my wife quit caffeine cold turkey with absolutely no withdrawal symptoms. Whereas I'm completely debilitated for days when cutting similar dosages. ↩

Fra duggens verden by Arne Dørumsgaard

2026-03-29T00:00:06+00:00

A while ago, I came across a haiku by Basho by way of a two decades old post by Jason Kottke. The poem in question was ‘the whole family’ and goes like this:

the whole family
all with white hair and canes
visiting graves

It resonated deeply and sent me down a rabbit hole. I began my making a note of it. This to ensure I didn't forget the poem. The lines made me want to read more by Basho. Upon discovering that he was Japanese, I was reminded of the quote by the tourist towards the end of the movie Paterson:

Poetry in translations is like taking a shower with a raincoat on.

That got me thinking. Ideally I should learn Japanese to truly get a feel for Basho's work. But that was not a journey I was willing to begin at the moment. Nevertheless, I thought that instead of reading English translations, it would probably be one step up if I could instead find Norwegian translations. Poetry never came easy to me. Reading in my native tongue would probably be my best chance of ‘getting it’.

I then began searching for first hand translation. Translated poetry is bad enough. I certainly didn't want to spend my time reading AI-generated Norwegian translations based on English translation. Eventually I ended up discovering Fra duggens verden at the National Library of Norway's website.

The full title of the book is ‘Fra duggens verden: Basho i norsk gjendiktning (1644-1694)’. It translates to something like ‘From the dew's world: Basho re-created in Norwegian’ and the title made me confident that the author — of whom I knew nothing — had translated the works based on the originals. That it was released in 1985 made me reasonably certain they weren't AI-generated.

My next order of business was getting a hold of the book. Yes, I could technically read the book scans, in my browser, through the National Library's website. But that's no way to read a book! Of this particular book, I wanted a physical copy. That was easier said than done. My search eventually led me to the website of a local art gallery and antiquarian bookshop which claimed to have for sale. I emailed the owner that I wanted to buy the book, and a short while later it arrived in the mailbox outside my house.

At this point I still had no idea about what kind of book this was. My idea was that it contained translated haiku poems. To my surprise, the first half or so turned out to be a biography of Basho and his struggles to become founder of what's today know as haiku poetry.

Great stuff! I love getting more than I'd bargained for.

Basho's story was a fascinating one. His frequent pilgrimages throughout Japan to get away from ‘modern society’ of Japan in sixteen hundreds and live a more modest life to connect with nature rang familiar. Dørumsgaard doesn't hide his disdain for the contemporary society of the 1980s. He wonders what Basho would think of the lives we lead today. Which in turn made me wonder what both Basho and Dørumsgaard and would make of the world as it is in 2026. As I read this book in parallel with Letters from a Stoic, it struck me that perhaps this struggle to get back to natural world must be a universal human experience.

Despite Basho's poems and Dørumsgaard formal, almost to the point of heavy, and opinionated recounting of his live, the best part of this book to me was something else entirely: The smell. There is a certain, characteristic smell of old books and this book has it in spades. The smell brings me back to my life as a boy, sitting in the attic of my grandparents' house trying to find something interesting to read after ploughing through the Donald Duck comics I'd brought for entertainment. The sensation is so visceral that, for a tiny sliver of a moment, I feel as if I've been transported through time and space. Despite having finished the book, I still keep it on the side table next to my chair, only to pick it up towards my nose and flicker through the pages.

Sometimes you get way more than you bargained for.

As for Basho's poetry and Dørumsgaard's re-creations, well, they certainly are first hand translations. Dørumsgaard has included a sizeable sections of notes on his reasoning for the translations. And while I've gained newfound appreciation for both poetry as an art form, and haiku in particular, not a single other of the poems included in this book hit me as much as that first one I came across which pushed me down this rabbit hole. Dørumsgaard's Norwegian re-creation goes as follows:

Slektens siste

Alle med stokker
og hvite i håret
rusler de stille omkring mellem graver.

I guess that's poetry for you. It resonates when the most when you expect it the least. For instance when clicking a link to a twenty two year old blog post lamenting that the work of sorting and categorising has overshadowed the work itself. Nevertheless, here are some of my other favourites. I challenge you to find them recreated in whichever language you're the most comfortable reading poetry.

Tid og evighet

Hvor vis den mann som ikke tenker
«flyktig er livet»
ved synet av lyn.

Silhuet

En kråke
På en vissen gren
i høstens skumring…

Cikaden

Den sang sig
ut av livet –
tomt ligger skallet igjen.

Lede

Ofte føler jeg at de dødes rike
må være lik en ensom kveld
ved høst.

«L'etang mort»

En gammel dam –
en frosk som sprang:
et skvulp.

Letters from a Stoic by Seneca

2026-04-04T00:00:05+00:00

If you've peeked at my reading log the last year or so, you'd be excused for thinking I'd abandoned Letters from a Stoic by Seneca. It has featured under my reading section for more than a year!

Finishing a book has never taken me this long before. But finish it I did, and I did it just the other day.

Stoic philosophy has interested me for many years. Even before it was co-opted by the ‘manosphere’ and quotes from Seneca, Marcus Aurelius and their fellow stoics became endemic to various platforms. I just never really got around to following up on my curiosity. Not until I began listening to the History of Rome podcast a couple of years back. It renewed my interest in the philosophical teachings of the age, and — having both Seneca's Letters and Aurelius' Meditations on my shelf — I decided that I needed to read these two cornerstones of stoicism.

Seneca's letters are written as musings and advice for his friend Lucilius. The 65 letters have become somewhat of a bible or, the original teachings, for stoics. They cover a wide array of subjects. Everything from the folly of the crowds to how to meet death to the point of philosophy.

Part of the reason finishing the book took me so long is because I decided to read at most one letter per day. Given the subject matter, plowing through felt insufficient. Better to let each letter sink in and process it properly before moving on to the next. I also took a fair bit of notes.

Much of what Seneca teaches resonates with me. The stoic views on death, in particular, align with my personal beliefs. Seneca closes his 65th and final letter to Lucilius:

And what is death? It is either the end, or a process of change. I have no fear of ceasing to exist; it is the same as not having begun. Nor do I shrink from changing into another state, because I shall, under no conditions, be as cramped as I am now. Farewell.

Mic drop!

Death is a recurring subject throughout the letters. The view is consistent in that death is nothing to be feared. All of our lives we are dying. (‘For death itself is always the same distance from us.’) Not a single one of us has any guarantees for when that final moment will come. We should lead our lives as if death is constantly around the corner. ‘Let us postpone nothing’, he writes.

His first letter deals with just that. Seneca opens it thus:

Set yourself free for your own sake; gather and save your time, which till lately has been forced from you, or filched away, or has merely slipped from your hands.

Seneca preaches that ‘life is long, if only you know how to use it’. Most of us, unfortunately, do not. We are not set free. We do not gather and save our time. Instead, our precious time is squandered to ‘the most disgraceful kind of loss’ which ‘is due to carelessness’.

His strong and adamant preaching that ‘nothing is ours, except time’ was a timely (hur-hur) reminder. I'm at a part of my life where the days seemingly fly by. Each day is filled to the brim. Reading Seneca's letter compelled me to take stock of how I'm spending my time. To make adjustments, sure. But, more importantly, to reach the conclusion that much of what I fill my days with is genuinely what I want to be doing.

What a gift.

Another gift was his thoughts on crowds. In the physical sense, in the sense of ‘everyone is doing it’ that is so easy to use as justification for our actions and in the sense that we need to strive for the approval of the many. This particular anecdote hit home:

The following was also nobly spoken by someone or other for it is doubtful who the author was; they asked him what was the object of all this study applied to an art that would reach but very few. He replied: ‘I am content with few, content with one, content with none at all.’

And, on the subject of attracting praise, Seneca wrote (emphasis mine):

Many men praise you; but have you any reason for being pleased with yourself if you are a person whom the many can understand? Your good quality should face inwards.

These are thoughts I've sort of held or vaguely surmised, but never truly expressed. But I could not agree more. Your compass should point towards something other than praise and adulation. Your good quality should face inwards. Seneca also talks about going against the crowds in how you act:

It shows much more courage to remain dry and sober when the mob is drunk and vomiting, but it shows greater self-control to refuse to withdraw oneself and to do what the crowd does, but in a different way — thus neither making oneself conspicuous nor becoming one of the crowd. For one may keep holiday without extravaganza.

In opposing the crowd, it is easy to default to reclusive behaviour. As Seneca points out here, however, this is not necessarily the stoic way. Instead, to be among the crowds, and to do what they do, but in a different way, is both more challenging and more instructive.

Another cornerstone of stoic philosophy are the views on material wealth. It is not that they abhor richness. In fact, they actively encourage anyone to pursue it. It, however, being something quite different than what we normally consider wealth. Nothing illustrates this more than when Seneca quotes Epicurus in a story about Pythocles:

‘If you wish to make Pyhocles rich, but not rich in the vulgar and equivocal way, do not add to his store of money, but subtract from his desires.’

Seneca believes that it is equally true that:

If you wish to make Pythocles honourable, do not add to his honours, but subtract from his desires.

And:

If you wish Pythocles to have pleasure forever, do not add to his pleasures, but subtract from his desires.

Not as eloquent as his ‘Epicurean enemy’, perhaps, but it certainly gets the point across. This view that wealth and honour and true pleasure is not defined by what you own and acquire, but rather what you desire, is something I believe deeply. Seeing it written in such plain words helped me cement that belief. Every day I now try to remind myself of this. That I can become richer, more virtuous and make life more pleasurable simply be subtracting from my desires.

To that end, I will end this post with perhaps my favourite quote from all of Seneca's letters, concerning what constitutes happiness:

…teach us that the happy man is not he whom the crowd deems happy, namely, he into whose coffers mighty sums have flowed, but he whose possessions are all in his soul, who is upright and exalted, who spurns inconstancy, who sees no man with which he wishes to change places, who rates men only at their value as men, who takes Nature for his teacher, conforming to her laws and living as she commands, whom no violence can deprive of his possessions, who turns evil into good, who is unerring in judgement, unshaken, unafraid, who may be moved by force but never moved to distraction, whom Fortune when she hurls at him with all her might the deadliest missile in her armoury, may graze, though rarely, but never wound.

Front page additions

2026-05-03T00:00:04+00:00

I mentioned in a recent note that I've been tinkering with the front page setup for a while. The previous iteration of the front page had been mostly identical since I relaunched the blog in late 2023. It showed recent posts and recent notes.

Since then, I've added a couple of content sections to the website. I add books to my reading log several times per month. The workout log is updated daily. The result is that the front page wasn't really reflecting the entirety of the activities that happen on this website. As new visitors tend to drop by the home page, I think it's a good idea to use that page to give them an idea of what's happening on this website.

To that end, I've tried several times the last year to find a way to incorporate updates from the reading and workout logs into the front page. Unsuccessfully! I've created and discarded at least five different mock-ups. Common for all of them is that I've begun with the approach of trying to lift the design elements from the two logs into the front page. As I'm happy with how both sections look, that felt like the natural approach.

The drawback is that every single time I tried this approach, the overall feel of the front page was disjointed. It came off as something haphazardly thrown together. When I tried once more to tackle this challenge the other day, the outcome was the same. But at that point, a lightbulb went off.

‘I don't have to bring the design elements from the logs to the front page. I can just bring the data from the logs and present them in the same way I do the other front page elements!’

The template was essentially already in place. Posts and notes are distinct types of content, and were already presented as such. Doing the same with two more types of content shouldn't be an issue. So I gave it a go. And, to my surprise, it worked just fine. It's not revolutionary or anything out of the ordinary. But that wasn't what I was aiming for. I just wanted to preserve the look and feel of the home page, while also showing the breadth of content I share on the site. And I think I achieved just that.

To spruce it up a little, I decided to reuse the icons from the workout log on the workout log entries. With that little visual in place, it was a short order to just reuse miniature versions of the book covers from the books I'm reading to add a little bit of colour there as well.

One unexpected result is that the posts and notes entries feel a bit flat by comparison without any visuals. But, as I want to err on avoiding anything akin to Apple's icons in menus everywhere, I think I'll leave it as it is for now.

Nine

2026-06-11T00:00:03+00:00

Once more I can't believe another year has passed.

I feel like the speed of time has increased tenfold. It was only just yesterday that I sat down with little time to spare to collect my thoughts about what should've been your eight birthday? Yet, here we are, on the day that you should have turned nine.

Your little brother and little sister and growing up so fast. Too fast. Every day they are out and about, attending one thing or another. He plays football, handball and gymnastics. She takes dance and ballet classes, and gymnastics too, of course. I do the best I can to help them navigate everything. As does your mother. Sometimes I feel like it's my responsibility to help them find their calling in life, and master it. But I know that the best I can do is be their number one fan in whatever they are doing. So I try to limit my role to that. And the driving to and driving from. And packing bags, filling bottles, buying shoes, making sure nobody forgets their hairbands (I really need to learn how to braid hair, I'm sure if you were here I'd know it already) and a hundred other little things.

That's life right now. It passes at a hundred kilometres per hour. Not so much because I am so busy, I think, but because I am enjoying every moment of it. Even if it is hard sometimes, watching them grow, physically, mentally and socially, into something resembling complete human beings is more rewarding than anything else I have ever experienced. By an infinite margin.

Thinking about how you should have been even further down the line makes me sad. Angry, too. What would you have liked, I wonder? Would you have been a sports girl, like your brother, or musical dance girl, like your sister? Who of the kids I that would have been your classmates would have been your friends? I wondered that as we all went to an end of the school year party at the school tonight, and I saw your class perform a dance.

The weather was great. I overdressed, and felt a little scorched. Your sister did, too. We didn't have time for our usual celebration of your birthday on account of the school party. It made me feel a little guilty. But your sister and I visited your grave and lit a candle. We'll do the other rituals this weekend instead.

I know you won't mind.

Miss you.

What's up, July 2026 edition

2026-07-21T00:00:02+00:00

Well, it's been a while.

It's not that I haven't had the time to post. It's just that I sort of fell off the wagon and stopped writing and posting regularly. That's something I want to remedy, because both are positive habits that make me feel better about myself. So, instead of procrastinating while waiting for the perfect ‘I'm back!’ post to be delivered through divine intervention directly to my brain (I'll be honest, I've already tried that approach for a couple of months and it's been less than productive) I thought I'd just rip off the band aid and get back to posting with a simple update on what I've been doing lately.

That said, life's been hectic. Chaotic, even! In one of the few posts that I did manage to publish recently, I wrote that ‘I feel like the speed of time has increased tenfold’ and that feels like an accurate summary of the last year. The kids keep growing up, and as they do they become more active. And as I try to keep up with them, time flies.

The odd thing is that, even if it feels like time goes by faster than ever, I somehow feel that I have more of it to spend as I please than I've had in many years. The other side of the coin of the kids growing up, I suppose. Whereas before they needed me (or their mum) present and ready to go at all times, they now keep themselves (relatively) safe and occupied longer and more frequently for each passing day. Oh, make no mistake, they are still annoying little things that hang on to our coattails in idleness as if their sole purpose was to prevent us from getting anything at all done. But then they suddenly disappear for an hour or two, and before you know it you're wondering where did the good, old days when they always wanted you around go? While these moments are just small pockets in an otherwise busy and demanding and rewarding life with my children right now, they are foreshadowing of what's to come.

Getting back to the point, I now have more time to do with as I please than I have in years. And here are some of the things I've been doing with that time in the past half year or so.

Working out

Won't go into the the details – you can find all of them in the workout log which I update every single day. If I work out on the day, which I still aim to do every day. While my overarching goal is still to stay healthy and keep my body in decent shape, I have been trying to improve my running fitness a bit over the past year.

Inspired by other people from around the web, I've wanted to see if it was possible to get back into peak running shape by training in a different way than I did during my marathon running days. So far, the answer is no. I've not been able to train with the required consistency to get anywhere close. Instead, as confirmed by a 5k race I ran recently, I've only been able to maintain fitness since last summer.

There are many things I could point to as reasons, but the cold truth is that it comes down to priorities. And the past year I've not prioritised running fitness. Other things have taken priority, in particular maintaining a healthy weight and participating in social events that disrupt the rhythm of both training and recovery. As my years of being young and promising are now behind me, I notice that these priorities come with a cost in terms of fitness.

And, being honest, it is a price that I am quite comfortable paying.

Entertainment

The reading log contains all the details of my reading. I won't bore you with all of it here.

I've been continuing to read books regularly, as I have for quite a few years now. Fantasy is still my go to for entertainment and relaxation. Right now I am reading the third book of the fourth of five trilogies (the fourth is actually a tetralogy) of Robin Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings. It is enjoyable reading. I am also trying to venture outside of my comfort zone. Reading about Basho and the history of Haiku poetry was an attempt to do just that, as was reading Seneca's letters and a biologist's diary of attempting to encounter a wolverine in the wild.

What's changed over the past year is that I've branched out from just reading books for entertainment. I've rediscovered the joy of watching movies! Some time between watching shows (and then sort of just quitting) and reading books, I lost simply stopped watching movies. Perhaps not following ‘the scene’ as much as I used to back when I had more time meant that I didn't discover the interesting movies that were being made.

Either way, at some point this winter I felt the urge to watch a movie. So I did. And it made me want to watch another. Now I've settled into the routine of Friday nights being movie nights. And I like it! A decade of barely watching movies has given me a lot of material to feast upon. Some highlights so far are Sinners (good), Triangle of Sadness (also good) and Train Dreams (fantastic).

Yet, the highlight is a rewatch. Watching Interstellar again, more than a decade after the initial release, was a profound experience. It was, and remains, one of my favourite films of all time.

As my son continues to develop his interest in football (or soccer, as the yanks say) it has rekindled my own fascination for the beautiful game. We've watched most of Manchester United's games the past season. When the World Cup rolled around this summer, our enthusiasm didn't exactly wane. Add to that the fact that Norway were finally back in the good company, and had an all time campaign as they reached the quarter finals, I've been lucky to share many memorable football moments with both my family and friends this summer.

One of the many reasons why I love sports!

Work

Two years after moving into a role as a Sales Manager Web for Obs, I transitioned to yet another new role this summer. It is my third role change in five years at Coop. I am now employed as an E-commerce Specialist for Obs BYGG.

My day-to-day tasks are much the same, while my overall responsibilities have changed a little. The new role is slightly more specialised and tailored to my strengths. Nevertheless, I found the circumstances of my previous role quite satisfactory, and the reasons for the change were mostly practical. Reducing my commute a few days per week from dreadful to next to non-existent chief among them.

I am happy that I've been able to improve my circumstance without having to change companies. Coop is a stable employer that focuses on provide opportunities for growth and contribution for its employees, and a place that I am happy to remain. A month into my new role, I now see myself staying both in the role and in the company for many years to come. Better yet, I think I'll be able to contribute to the company in a positive manner.

Social life

As I noted in regards to my workouts, I've been happy to participate in more social events than I've done previously. One of the good things about working offers plenty of opportunities to hang out with cool people, and I've take more of these opportunities recently.

I've also attended a couple of concerts this spring, and added three more to the calendar this fall. Live music is another thing that fell of the list of priorities during the most busy years with the kids and training for marathons, that I am now happy to have rediscovered. As the concert experience usually involves a couple of beers to make it even more enjoyable, it certainly isn't a boon for my fitness.

This summer, we also went on vacation with two of my best friends and their families. Making that happen involved us spending quite a few of our vacation days in the car, as we travelled to and from the chosen location. It was all worth it! Seeing your kids become friends and have the time of their lives with your friends' kids is a something special. I hope we can do it again the next couple of years.

Tech things

A few changes here and there, if nothing big. The setup for this website remains mostly the same (documented in detail through a series of posts). When I deleted my Strava account, I exported all of my data. I've imported the workout titles and notes to backfill the workout log with these details for all sessions prior to late 2025, when I began making notes here. The result is that most sessions now contain commentary.

Last year I wrote about building a digital music library. The journey has continued this year, though I've mostly purchased digital music directly. As of now, my modest library consists of 1 030 songs from 97 albums by 67 different artists. I've settled into mainly adding new (to me, I'm very unconcerned about release times) records as I discover them, my library of owned music accounts for the vast majority of my listening. That's something! I would like to write about the music I purchase and listen to, as well as add a way to showcase my library and/or my listening history on the site.

I've also splurged on some new items this year. Not just one, but two sets of headphones: Sony WH-1000XM5 and Powerbeats Pro 2. Different use cases, in theory, but I'm not sure if buying both was worth it. Especially as I found my presumably lost Airpod that prompted me to purchase the Powerbeats… Ah, well. A topic for an upcoming post!

The other purchase I've made is the Polar Loop. I've been wanting to give overnight HRV measuring a go for a while now, to see if this data can help me inform my workout planning to help me be more consistent over time. One option was replacing my nearly decade old Garmin. It was an expensive option. Then there's the fact that I also prefer to wear a plain, old ‘dumb’ watch with actual dial and hands. Polar's subscription free band was a nice and relatively cheap compromise. I definitely need to write a post about how I'm collecting and using the data.

Wrapping up

There are many additional topics I could have covered here. As I'm closing in on two thousand words already, I'm just going to leave it here. If you made it all the way through, congratulations!

Oh and by the way: If I owe you an email, I'll get right to it. Any day now. Probably!

Workout log updates… again: Tracking training load

2026-09-28T00:00:01+00:00

This is the fourth in a series of posts documenting the making of my workout log. Although not required, you might be interested in reading the first three before proceeding:

It started out, as these things often do, with a small spark of a thought.

‘I wonder what my training load right now is like compared to back when I was training to run marathons?’

My options for trying to get a proper answer were:

Find a way to backfill my Intervals.icu account with my full workout history. I began using this magnificent service on recommendation from ‘sirpoc’ early last year. True to my liking, it is an indie service, and it lets you analyse your training in every which way you could imagine. In addition to logging everything I do in my workout log I also upload everything to Intervals to track my training load.
Create the functionality to estimate training load and track how it changes over time within my own workout log.

One of these is a more exciting problem than the other. Also, much as I like Intervals, the thought of being able to track and measure ‘everything’ with my own home brewed solution still appeals. Guess I better get to work! But first, a small primer.

How do you even measure training load?

There are a whole host of different ways to do this, all with their own unique pros and cons.

As far as running goes, the most popular approach is the simplest: Track the distance you run for a given time period. Any self-respecting running log does this. Even mine! In the first and simplest version, I only showed totals per month. Then I discovered that I also like to see my weekly, yearly and overall distance totals. So I added those as well.

Distance run is a very crude measure. It doesn't say anything about whether your runs are easy or hard. Or somewhere in-between. Without the added context of time spent running, you cannot even figure out how fast (or slow, in my case) you went. Time spent running is also used as a way to measure training load. On its own it is probably marginally more informative than distance. Together with distance it starts to paint a richer picture. Especially when looking at trends.

Then there are more sophisticated methods. These typically originate from cycling, which tends to be far more advanced than running when it comes to using data to analyse and plan your training. Common for these approaches is that they aim to calculate your training load in a way that also reflects the intensity of your training. In other words, equal time at a higher intensity results in a higher training load. If you want to know more, I recommend the TrainingPeaks Education Articles. Begin with the post on TSS and work your way through.

My original idea was to compare my training load calculated in this manner against what I did a couple of years back. I already knew I was spending less time running fewer kilometres per week. But how did the increased frequency of quality sessions I am doing these days impact the weekly load?

Understanding my data

My first order of business was to determine exactly how to calculate training load per activity.

Ever since I first began tracking my workouts in 2017, I have been diligent in gathering consistent data. I've worn a GPS watch for practically every run. Ninety nine times out of a hundred I've worn a chest heart rate strap to record my heart rate. And since back in 2020 I've worn a footpod which estimates running power for the majority of my runs.

This gave me three options for estimating training load. Pace, power and heart rate. The fact that I was missing power data for activities up before early 2020 took that off the table. Which left pace and heart rate as viable options.

Both options rely on an estimate of threshold to calculate the intensity of an activity. This poses a challenge when it comes to looking at a dataset that covers a significant time frame. An accurate load calculation for any given activity would require knowing exactly what kind of shape I was in at that time.

When tracking our training in ‘real time’ you (ideally) incorporate all out fitness tests on a regular basis. And whatever your number ends up being, you use that as the basis for calculating your training load until you next perform a test.

Doing that after the fact, when looking at ten years of activities, is more challenging. While I've raced every now and then over the past decade, there are large periods for which I have no reliable fitness estimate. Enter heart rate.

Sure, heart rate comes with its own challenges. There is day to day variation based on factors like sleep, food intake, caffeine, time of day and much more. These factors makes it a less than ideal measure for modulating intensity during a workout. These variations do revolve around a mean, however, and cancel out over time. Which means that heart rate is actually well suited to estimating big picture things. Like, say, how training load evolves over time. The fact that it is also the most reliable number in my dataset, given my propensity for wearing a chest strap, makes it an easy choice.

There's just one caveat: Heart rate is not static over such a long period. Your max heart rate decreases with age. This is particularly relevant for a man who's entered middle age at the tail end of this period.

I know this from experience. Over the years I've seen my heart rate trending down for any given perceived intensity. Based on observing these changes, I have devised a way of adjusting my max and threshold heart rates: Every two years, I decrease both with a single point. My max heart rate, estimated to 200 beats per minutes back in 2017, now sits at 195 in 2026. Next year it will decrease another point. Similarly, my threshold heart rate has gone from 180 to 175 during this period, also decreasing with a point every other year.

Is this a perfect solution? Absolutely not. But it is good enough, and tracks very well with the observations I've made from tracking my heart rate during activity six days per week over the past ten years. Whether this formula will hold in the years to come, I have no idea. But my ‘fingerspitzgefühl’ for heart rate is such that I believe I will be able to pick up deviations. Especially as I plan to do all out efforts at least a couple of times per year.

My resting heart rate, another data point used in calculating TRIMP, has remained more or less stable throughout the years. So that one is constant through the entire period.

Which activities to include

The approach for calculating a training load per activity sorted, I had to figure out what to include and what to omit. The term ‘training load’ is actually a bit of a misnomer here. What I'm really trying to track is my cardiovascular training load. Or, to be even more precise, the only thing I'm really interested in is tracking my running training load.

On the surface, that points to omitting every other activity type from the calculation. But, there is some overlap. Think of all the times (ahem…) I've spent hours and hours on the elliptical. Cross training in an attempt to stem the fitness loss due to an injury that's kept me from running. Or all the roller ski sessions (cough…) I've put in to add some extra cardiovascular load without taxing my legs with the impact forces of running.

You get the point.

Determining the overlap is of course a futile exercise. I decided to take the simplest possible approach here. Apply the training load calculation as is to all activities that is cardiovascular exercise in nature. I mostly run. The bulk of my load is going to come from my runs either way.

My approach to achieve this is super simple. If heart rate is recorded, I calculate activity training load into the .md companion file that contains all the the data I want to use from the original activity .fit file. When generating the site (and workout log) the script checks the activity type against a list of specified types to determine whether training load should be displayed and used for downstream calculations.

Surfacing the training load data

Estimating training load for a bunch of activities is cool. So now every qualified activity (cardiovascular in nature, as defined by me, and heart rate data included) has a training load number. I can compare how the load differs from one session to another. Pretty great.

But what I'm really after is tracking my load over time. Enter the PMC, or Performance Management Chart. Once you're calculating training load per session, creating the PMC is fairly straightforward. And, more importantly, well documented.

My goal, as with previous features and illustrations in the workout log and this site at large, is to stick to simple, tried and tested web technologies. That means relying chiefly on HTML and CSS. For more complex illustrations, like the PMC, I turn to SVG. That means generating the illustrations on building the website. The result is sacrificing some niceties, such as user selectable display periods in favour of fixed periods. Since I am making this for precisely one user, myself, I know that this isn't a problem. I've spent a couple of years with Intervals.icu and I have stuck to the 365 day window for the PMC all the while. So I decided to display the chart for 365 days back at time of build in my implementation of the PMC.

That's not to say I'm not interested in seeing the chart for periods further back. Doing so was the thing that triggered this whole adventure, remember? I went with the obvious solution: Generate charts for every preceding 365 day period. All the way back to the first activity in my log. To navigate between the charts I reused the simple HTML and CSS tabbing solution I had previously used on the activity details sections.

Here, I ended up using a bit of JavaScript as a ‘progressive enhancement’. A ‘scrubber’ feature on the chart to show the exact values for a particular date when hovering or clicking on a date. The details box also shows the title of that day's activities, linking to the details. This easily allows me to navigate between the big picture, when looking at the chart, and the nitty gritty details on a workout level. Even so, if someone visits the PMC without JavaScript enabled, it still fulfils the basic purpose of displaying the development of my aerobic training load.

Wrapping up

Even at nearly two thousand words, I feel like I'm just scratching the surface and omitting a bunch of important details that went into making this feature. But I've been working on the post, on and off, for weeks already. And I need to just publish it. Because, believe it or not, since I began writing, I've also implemented a bunch of other ‘quality of life’ improvements to the workout log that I need to cover. In a completely separate post, of course.

Let's see if I get around to that by Christmas.

Now, let's close the loop on this post. What prompted this entire project was the question ‘I wonder what my training load right now is like compared to back when I was training to run marathons?’ The answer is now in hand. Or, rather, on the site. And you can see for yourself by checking out my Performance Management Chart and comparing my training load the past year against what I did in the period from 2018 to 2023.

The answer was definitive. I no longer have to wonder why I ran faster back then.

The more you know!

I reduced the size of my ridiculously large (123 kB) home page

2026-10-11T00:00:00+00:00

The other day I was reading Dan Luu's post on speeding up his site by 50x. Not bad, Dan, I thought. But as someone who is essentially running a hand coded static website (generated by my home made static site generator) I thought I'd have him beat in terms of page size. Even with a bit of styling!

I totally didn't. And it was never even close.

Nevertheless, when I loaded up the network tab of dev tools, I was horrified to see that my home page had ballooned to 123 kB. That might not seem like much. To someone who cares about minimising the footprint of their website, it is. Contrary to Dan, who looks at user engagement to see if his efforts have yielded positive results, I optimise for a single user: myself.

More often than you'd think, I find myself questioning why I even go through the effort of keeping this site accessible online at all. Although I know that ‘someone, sometimes’ will read something I post, in my head there are nobody else besides myself and a million bots keeping up with what's happening here. Simply keeping it locally available would be sufficient for myself 99 days out of a 100.

The answer as to why online, then, is that on that hundredth day, it is practical to be able to access it online. I also can't deny that I enjoy the odd email from someone who's read something I posted. Which, as it happens, also tends to happen about once every hundred days. Lastly, I must admit that the idea of the Internet Archive capturing what I write and making it accessible a while beyond my meagre existence is also appealing in some odd way. We'll see who goes first!

All this to say that, from a strictly practical point of view, this site doesn't really necessitate being online at all. The fact that it is is pure frivolity. That in mind, I at least owe it to myself (‘I am Jack's guilty conscience’) to at least try to minimize its footprint.

Needless to say, this required my immediate attention.

Identifying the bloat

My first task was identifying the causes of the bloat. My browser's network immediately pointed out a few outliers guilty of causing the document size to swell to obscene proportions. Common for all? They were images.

Profile picture

The intro section of my home page features a small photograph of myself. I originally added this as an element to have a profile picture on the Indieweb Webring¹. As I liked how it added a bit of contrast to the text heavy page, I decided to keep it. The only problem was the ginormous size of the image file. For some reason I at some point concluded that ‘60 kB is alright for a stamp sized image’ — presumably back when the front page still came it at below 100 kB.

Due to the changes and additions I've made to the site the last couple of years, that was no longer the case. And the size of this little photo was a main offender.

I took to my favourite image editing tool, Preview, and used all the downsizing tricks in my quiver. I halved the dimensions (to match what I was displaying on the site), switched the format from PNG to JPG and turned the image quality down from a ridiculous ‘best’ to something much closer to a far more reasonable ‘lowest’.

The result? A new JPG image file that is only 4 kB. That equates a 93% reduction in file size. Success!

Only one downside. The compression entirely removed the ‘dithered’ effect. You can compare the JPG to the original PNG to see the difference for yourself. This annoyed me. So I threw the problem to my LLM robot servant.² ‘What's the smallest storage size we can get this image down to while keeping it visually indistinct to the human eye?’

The solution was the modern AVIF image format. And for retina ready screens the file size was reduced to 16 kB. Not quite the 93% reduction, but a 73% reduction for the exact same visual appearance is something. I also made a separate file that's served to non-retina screens, where there will be no visual distinction between this and the original, that came in at only 2 kB. And, if you're on an old browser, or one that for some reason doesn't support AVIF, the JPG file is served.

This whole process has me thinking that it's probably worthwhile thinking about building functionality for converting all images in content to AVIF. A project for another day.

Book cover icons

When I tweaked the front page back in May, I wrote:

To spruce it up a little, I decided to reuse the icons from the workout log on the workout log entries. With that little visual in place, it was a short order to just reuse miniature versions of the book covers from the books I'm reading to add a little bit of colour there as well.

The problem was that I wasn't actually using miniature versions of the book covers. I was using the full sized book cover images from my reading log and simply reducing the display size. Mangling the aspect ratio while doing so. It looked… OK, as long as you didn't squint and try to see what was actually being shown. The bigger problem was that I was spending nearly 10 kB per entry ‘to add a little bit of colour’.

Ridiculous!

My first impulse was to scale down the image and make the aspect ratio square. So that's what I did. But I didn't like the way it looked. It was just a tiny, little puddle of colour. As if I'd thrown a bunch of paint on top of a little sheet of paper and let it mix. ‘Some separation between the colours would be nicer’ I thought to myself. And that got me thinking about the pixelated effect that was really popular among wannabe ‘graphic designers’ (such as myself) about two and a half decades back.

Next step was opening up GIMP and experiment a little. After some trial and error, I settled on the following:

The ‘pixels’ are fairly large in size at 7 x 7 pixels per square, for a total of 4 x 4 squares in the 28 x 28 pixel canvas. (That's a lot of factors!) I liked the visual appearance of this approach. It feels like a little nod to my attempts of saving space and bandwidth in terms of how it looks, while adhering to the original idea to ‘add a little bit of colour’ even better than the original solution.

To finish off, I used my LLM to build a small script that relies on pillow to generate these image files (as SVGs) for the books I'm currently reading when my static site generator builds my website. What a world we live in, where this step is almost an afterthought.

These new illustration images are only around 1.2 kB per image. As opposed to around 10 kB for the original book cover images I used to show. That's an 88% reduction. And, in my very humble opinion, it looks much cooler as well!

Unused CSS

My site generator is super simple. By design. It's the only way someone like myself can hope to remember how it all works. In terms of styling, it pulls a style.css file and inserts it into the head of every HTML page. It works great, because it means I have all my CSS in a single file.

The downside is that, as I've added new sections to the site the past couple of years (looking at you, workout log), the style file has grown. A lot! Upon inspection, I found that styling accounting for 24 kB out of the front page's total document size of 33 kB. 72% of the entire document was styling. Most of it completely superfluous on the front page.

The time had come that simple was no longer good enough. It had to redo the logic to reduce the amount of unused CSS included in each page.

As already mentioned, I need to keep things as simple as possible to be able to keep up with how stuff works. Given that this is my personal setup, made for myself alone, my understanding it is a priority. So I went with the simplest solution I could think of:

One global stylesheet that gets inserted into all pages
One template specific stylesheet that gets inserted into pages with that template

My setup currently consists of nine templates³. That means nine new style files to maintain. But, as I hypothesised that the global stylesheet (and my front page as a result) would be at least halved in size, I was convinced it would be worth it. For once, I had the pleasure of being right.

Much of the styling bloat was related to various minutiae in the workout log. Getting that into its own, dedicated template significantly reduced the size of the style section of the pages outside of the workout log. The style section of the front page is now 8 kB. A 67% reduction!

As an aside, the LLM I was using tried to convince me to go with a more convoluted, three tier approach for ‘more size reductions’ when I was implementing this. The proposed solution was a bit of a halfway house between the simple approach I devised myself and the most efficient (and most complex) option of pulling only the relevant style definitions per page.

Upon reviewing the suggestion, I decided that the marginal gains were not worth it. I want to simplest possible solution to maintain. To the extent that when I come back in two years time to tweak some styling without having to expend precious brain power (my supply is severely limited) trying to recollect how I should go about doing it.

The numbers

The whopping 123 kB size of the front page started this all. With the changes I've detailed here I've brought that down to 37 kB.⁴ A 70% reduction. At the price of exactly no noticeable downgrades to the user experience.

I should probably look to apply some of what I've learned here to the rest of the site as well. Incorporating an image converter into my site build and serving AVIF files all around would be a good place to start. One for ToDo.md and then we'll so what happens after that.

As I was writing this, I saw that it still pointed to a Wordpress upload. Which means my profile has been pointing to a dead photo for at least a couple of years. ↩
Yes, I realise that using an LLM while chasing ‘efficiency improvements’ (quotes to hammer the point home) at this scale is like trying to bang your way to virginity. The resources spent on my LLM conversation probably exceed the lifetime budget of this website. The point, my point, is that I learned something. ↩
homepage.html, note.html, notesarchive.html, page.html, post.html, postsarchive.html, readinglog.html, workoutgear.html, workoutlog.html and workoutstats.html. ↩
If you're on an older/non-retina screen device it's as low as 25 kB. ↩