Weeknote 2026-31

Talking about working too much, building stuff, and getting on the Turf for the first time this season...

I thought that I would kick off my Blaugust 2026 with my first ever week note. I'll try to get into a weekly cadence of these as a sort of retrospective.

Work

I won't ever be able to talk too much about what I'm working on - though I am working on a project that I'm hoping to launch in just over a week. That's important as it will decrease my workload significantly, selfishly I designed it for that reason. It is very needed as I've been working far too many hours, with the line between work and personal projects being increasingly blurred.

Projects

In addition, I've been working on a number of personal projects, which I'll probably talk about later in the week. One of which is a fitness tracker that has automated much of my fitness logging on this website, there is an RSS feed reader and archiver that very much mirrors what I want out of a reader, and there is also an encrypted note taking and project management application that I've built primarily to help me get my team organised around key projects. More on those later in Blaugust.

I've also downloaded the remaining wiki / digital garden from lee-perry.co.uk, which I have now cleared of content ready to use as my omg.lol profile page.

Exercise

One of the upsides, I think, of my new fitness tracking workflow is that I no longer publish individual activity links to the fediverse every time I train. As I aim to train twice a day I'm sure that can be a little overkill. Instead I plan to summarise here.

I've not climbed this week. In my frustration about something that was probably insignificant last week, I attempted to climb through to V5 for the first time. After though I felt thickening in my right index finger, and the swelling has only now started to subside - I'm pretty much ready to climb again and will likely start rebuilding midweek.

I've ridden a few times at moderate intensity, but it's my two runs this week that I'm most pleased with. On Monday I managed to hold onto the long (read fast) group at Trawden AC for the first time across a hilly Trawden Carry Lane route - a huge improvement on my best on that route. I did the same thing again today all by myself, taking 3 minutes out of my personal best on a hilly 11km Reedley route, and 10 minutes out of where I started the year.

The Great North Run is getting nearer now, but I'm in really good shape - I just need to increase the miles back nearer to half marathon over the next month.

Exploring

I did not make it over to Doncaster today to watch Rugby League, I've been moving hosting, domains and projects around ready for what I need to achieve at work next week for most of the weekend.

On the plus side, Oldham lost, as I thought they may to a strong Doncaster, but I was also able to make it down to Turf Moor for the last friendly before the season proper starts next weekend.

We lost 0-1, but I thought that there were plenty of positives to take from the performance. The play is more adventurous, the ball is moved with more urgency. If we could find some strength at the back and bite at the front, we'll be in a good place.

People

Vickie has been working busily at the allotment, and has harvested 900g and 1,300g courgettes! I'm sure she'll post about these over at her website once my indie web conversion is complete. In sad news one of our neighbours lost their lovely springer spaniel Milo on a walk this week, after a few days of searching it turned out that he had crossed the rainbow bridge in an unfortunate accident in the valley below.

I'll wrap up there, I'll try to get back to a more normal posting rhythm as things quieten down, to get going with this series regardless, and to try to be more social during Blaugust - which does not come easily!

Until next time...