Weeknotes 2026-W37 - new blog, more mandolin parts, The Odyssey

• # alcohol, # blogging, # film, # mandolin, # weeknotes • 731 words • 4m to read

It's been a fairly productive week for me. I also didn't write weeknotes for last week so I will cover that here as well.

Work

Work has been fairly busy the past couple weeks, but this week quietened down a little bit. That's fairly pleasant.

Last Thursday I went out for drinks with colleagues and stayed out quite late. I ended up getting home around half one at night, having had a good amount of alcohol.

On the Friday, I had the worst coldsore - actually two of them - I've had in my life. Of course it's just inflammation - lack of sleep, alcohol, sugar... but it's still bad. As such, I decided I will quit binge-drinking for three months. I'm not going to totally remove all alcohol - I'll still allow a drink or two here and there, but I can't have heavy nights out like that, or at least not alcohol-fuelled.

I'm also realising how calorific alcohol is. A night out on the booze is easily two or three thousand calories.

To make it clear how bad the coldsore is - I still have the damage of it a week later.

On this Thursday just gone, I went to the pub with colleagues at lunch and had lemonade instead of cider. I also went out on Thursday night, however only had two ciders then went back home. So I'm following it at least.

The Odyssey

On Saturday 12th we went to see The Odyssey. It was a generic film in how it was made, but I did enjoy watching it.

On the website

The website has moved! I've also been re-writing the scripts and HTML behind the website, so it's completely new and fresh. The new design makes it a lot easier to implement new features.

This weeknotes is the first weeknote to be written in the .yaz format, marking version 3.0 of the website.

In terms of entries, this week and last I wrote:

Screentime

So, I missed the chance to note down last week's screentime, but this week:

  • Sat 5th Sep: 4h 34m
  • Sun 6th Sep: 4h 17m
  • Mon 7th Sep: 8h 05m
  • Tue 8th Sep: 1h 52m
  • Wed 9th Sep: 3h 36m
  • Thu 10th Sep: 3h 45m
  • Fri 11th Sep: 8h 10m
  • Sat 12th Sep: 3h 09m
  • Sun 13th Sep: 3h 08m (already at 12:40)

... A lot again. And a few 8 hour days.

Last week, of my 1d 08h screentime, 19h were Brave, 5h 30m were BTD Battles, 1h 30m VLC, 1h Proton Mail... it's the same story every time.

Mandolin

For the mandolin this week, I've been given a M3 part of a piece called Saltarello, though I'm sort of struggling to play that piece. I can't seem to find where to put the notes, and there's a lot of dotted notes and quavers which make feeling the timing difficult. Generally I'm not as good at playing pieces where I can't find the distinctive melody to play - I can't naturally follow timings as well as I'd like.

I've also got the mandola part to look at, which I'm going to try play on my tenor mandola (though the part is written for octave mandola).

Next week

As always I want to digital-minimalism or low-screentime it a bit, and do so by turning the phone off and using the alarm and all that. I just don't tend to stick to it, and it's painful to do when I'm at home. I want to spend less time at home really. Well, really, if I just get rid of the phone ...

Achievement self this basically is. This kind of thing.

I don't really know what to do on that front. I feel like I'm mostly happy anywhere but at home. Anywhere I'm around people in real life. But my life isn't set up like that.

Also, I should probably try get a better sleep schedule this week!

I've got a short week this week at least. Friday off. And then, I have four day weekends every second week which will be good! I'd like to make the most of them.