{"version":"https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1","title":"Barry Frost","description":"Articles and weeknotes from Barry Frost","home_page_url":"https://new.barryfrost.com/","feed_url":"https://new.barryfrost.com/feed.json","language":"en","authors":[{"name":"Barry Frost","url":"https://new.barryfrost.com/","avatar":"https://new.barryfrost.com/barryfrost.jpg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://new.barryfrost.com/weeknotes/246-film","url":"https://new.barryfrost.com/weeknotes/246-film","title":"Week 246 - Film","content_html":"\n- Monday was a bank holiday: a welcome four-day work week.
\n- I took the boys to see the Super Mario Galaxy Movie at the local independent cinema. The film was better than I’d heard, although I’m a sucker for Mario nostalgia, so was always going to love it. My two enjoyed it almost as much as the McDonalds after.
\n- I baked my best banana bread yet. The leftover bananas I used were extra mushy, which I think helped.
\n- We finished watching the new series of Beef - fun, but not quite as good as the first - and have just started on the latest The Pitt, which continues the first series’ breathless, gripping pace.
\n- H has played a lot of after-school football this week, driven across the county by his mum for trials and taster sessions at potential clubs for next season. His current team lost their last league game away to local rivals, Welwyn Garden City, on Saturday, ending a very difficult season. Onwards.
\n- Meanwhile we rode an emotional rollercoaster watching Arsenal play West Ham. Their disallowed equaliser bounced us from despair to relief, made even sweeter by rival fans’ grizzling. Two league games to go to win the Premier League, plus a Champions League final to come!
\n
","date_published":"2026-05-11T00:00:00.000Z"},{"id":"https://new.barryfrost.com/weeknotes/245-lights","url":"https://new.barryfrost.com/weeknotes/245-lights","title":"Week 245 - Lights","content_html":"\n- For L’s birthday in February I bought her outdoor string lights for the garden. This weekend her festoon poles arrived so we could experiment with hanging them along one hedge. She now wants more for the other side. This could get expensive.
\n- I’m still battling Ikea’s cheap-but-unreliable Thread devices in my office. My bulbs and smart plugs keep dropping off my home network and refuse to reconnect. Rebooting border routers makes no difference. I’m close to binning them in favour of bog-standard wifi devices.
\n- Temperatures topped 24C on Friday so we enjoyed a couple of G&Ts sitting outside in the spring sunshine. Very pleasant.
\n- With the boys needing to burn off some energy at the weekend, I drove us all to Panshanger Park for a nice, long walk around the lake in the sunshine. There was only a little bit of grizzling, so I rewarded them with caramel shortbreads and cinnamon buns.
\n- A decent away draw in the Champions League and a thumping home win in the Premier League for the Arsenal. Ticking along nicely.
\n
","date_published":"2026-05-04T00:00:00.000Z"},{"id":"https://new.barryfrost.com/weeknotes/244-hippo","url":"https://new.barryfrost.com/weeknotes/244-hippo","title":"Week 244 - Hippo","content_html":"\n- I’ve been taking Cetirizine for several years to combat hay fever/allergies, but I was starting to doubt its effectiveness. I switched to Fexofenadine this week and, so far, I’m much less sneezy and snotty.
\n- H spent the night away with his school class at Tolmers Activity Centre. It was a big hit, even if I lost track of all the fun details, like Human Hungry Hippos, in his breathless recount. It was his first residential: another little milestone chalked off.
\n- The sunny weather returned at the weekend and so we all went outside to enjoy the sunshine in the garden. However, our neighbours decided to fire up their circular saw, while others left their dog outside to bark constantly. I retreated indoors.
\n- I did however step outside to tire out one son in the park playing football, before taking the other son to his cricket session. I spend a happy hour-and-a-quarter each week sitting on a bench at the boundary, listening to music on my AirPods while he bats, bowls and fields. I particularly enjoyed his late cut with the bat.
\n- Arsenal beat Newcastle to return top. We watched the nervy 1-0 through fingers/behind the sofa. It’s still on.
\n
","date_published":"2026-04-27T00:00:00.000Z"},{"id":"https://new.barryfrost.com/weeknotes/243-sofa","url":"https://new.barryfrost.com/weeknotes/243-sofa","title":"Week 243 - Sofa","content_html":"\n- I joined a CTO Craft mixer event at Tessl’s Kings Cross office for Guy Podjarny’s talk on agentic engineering at scale. It was worth the trip in for sharing energetic AI chat with peers all in the same boat. We were notably a bit startled with the pace of change that is only accelerating each week.
\n- L has been gardening, tidying and jet-washing the patio in preparation for new garden furniture which arrived this week. I assembled the corner sofa, table and benches just in time for the sun to disappear behind the clouds. Never mind. We are now at least ready for summer.
\n- Also, the relaid lawn has completed its six-month bedding-in period, meaning large boys can at last run around on it with balls… which they immediately lost over the fence.
\n- We’ve started watching Margo’s Got Money Troubles. Very good so far. I watched Weapons while L was out - I was correct in assuming it was very much not her kind of thing.
\n- Arsenal are into the Champions League semi-final stage, but lost to City in the Premier League. It’s definitely squeaky bum time. Can we have something nice this season, please?
\n- Booked: a family Center Parcs holiday in October and a September music festival in Valencia with Andy.
\n
","date_published":"2026-04-20T00:00:00.000Z"},{"id":"https://new.barryfrost.com/weeknotes/242-gardens","url":"https://new.barryfrost.com/weeknotes/242-gardens","title":"Week 242 - Gardens","content_html":"\n- The sun came out on Wednesday, the temperature reached over 23C and I had to find some shorts for the day. And then summer was gone. Come back!
\n- I renewed my Reflect subscription for a fourth year. Although I’ve switched to Obsidian as part of my new work operating system, I’m not quite sold on it as a replacement for my personal notes.
\n- One new addition to my toolkit is Talat (referral link). It reliably does the one thing I want from meeting transcription software: automatically begin transcribing when a meeting starts and then save raw text to a folder. I can then get Claude to import the latest file and interpret what was said via a skill. No monthly fee, just a one-off price for a solid tool.
\n- I took a half-day on Friday to cash in my trampolining pub quiz prize while the boys were still on Easter holidays. It was good exercise and good fun! I impressed everyone with my seat drops, full turns and tuck jumps, that I last tried 40 years ago at Saturday morning trampolining club at the Bramston Sports Centre. Still got it, although I hurt my back a little bit.
\n- On Saturday I drove us down to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew to meet up with L’s parents, brother and his family. We visited the Hive and the Pagoda, saw the spring flowers, and peeked behind barriers to see the Henry Moore exhibition which was still being set up. The cousins swapped notes on Pokémon and tired themselves out with high-octane games of hide-and-seek
\n- The day out meant we luckily avoided watching Arsenal’s capitulation at home to Bournemouth. It’s now or never, Mikel.
\n- Six hours of walking around West London meant my back felt worse on Sunday, but I soldiered on and took C to his first outdoor cricket session with WGCCC. The sun was back out briefly, and I could enjoy an hour-and-a-quarter with my AirPods watching from the perimeter.
\n
","date_published":"2026-04-13T00:00:00.000Z"},{"id":"https://new.barryfrost.com/weeknotes/241-hero","url":"https://new.barryfrost.com/weeknotes/241-hero","title":"Week 241 - Hero","content_html":"\n- I had a quiet Easter Holidays house for a few nights this week while L and the boys visited her parents.
\n- Why I use initials for my family members instead of their names: to quote Alice quoting Stew, “These people have not consented to be bit-players in my self indulgent psychodrama.”
\n- Terry from Cadent is my hero. He kindly diverted traffic to the other side of the road outside our house, avoiding a metal plate needed to cover a temporary gas pipe repair hole. Every few seconds there had been a maddening clang as cars sped over it. I nominated him for Employee of the Month via Cadent’s contact form.
\n- Watched: more gripping episodes of The Pitt and a couple of reasonable films.
\n- Over the weekend, with the boys back from Wiltshire, we twice went over the road to the park for Daddy v Boys football matches. Good exercise and I didn’t injure myself for once.
\n- L gave me the appropriately-named Big Daddy Loaded Half Egg for Easter. It’s incredibly dense, so I’ve been chipping off small chunks.
\n- Adding to the household sugar intake, I made another excellent banana bread.
\n- While visiting my parents on Sunday, I tackled a list of IT tasks they had saved up for me. They both have new laptops which needed setting up and data migrations. Although consumer technology is simpler than it used to be, there are still areas that are baffling to most, like shared photo libraries in iCloud.
\n- More hacking on a new project by poking at Claude. I wonder if there’s a danger my terse, direct style when prompting Claude infects how I converse with real people in chat conversations. Need to remember my Ps and Qs and how to employ empathy!
\n
","date_published":"2026-04-06T00:00:00.000Z"},{"id":"https://new.barryfrost.com/weeknotes/240-ancient","url":"https://new.barryfrost.com/weeknotes/240-ancient","title":"Week 240 - Ancient","content_html":"\n- I took C to his piano lesson for the first time at a local piano teacher’s home. He’s really progressing well. He only started in September, but is fast catching up with his father’s playing abilities, especially with his left hand. My chords-only organ-playing experience means I struggle to fluently read music in bass clef.
\n- (This reminds me of the day as a teenager when my mother asked my girlfriend if I had shown her my organ yet 😳)
\n- C dressed as a Pharaoh for Ancient Egypt day at school, with authentic-looking eye-liner. He’s been learning grizzly mummification facts.
\n- I used to play my older son at FIFA/FC on the Switch, but he hated losing to me (or me letting him win). He has been practising, and this week asked to play me again. I lost 1-3 and 1-2, to his ungracious delight.
\n- Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man was a decent full-stop on the story, but it felt a bit flat without the full cast from the TV series.
\n- We’re three hours into The Pitt, however, and it is phenomenal. So much happens that you (rightly) can’t dual-screen it.
\n- It’s now the Easter Holidays for the next two weeks. While I’m at home/office working, L is taking the boys to her parents’ in Wiltshire for a few days.
\n- I would normally buy curry and beer for the nights I’m eating alone, but I’m trying to be healthier, so instead I’ve stocked up on low-fat chicken tikka and non-alcoholic beers. I still plan to watch a few sci-fi films of course.
\n- Claude is my new executive assistant. I’ve given it read-only access to my calendar and I feed it meeting transcripts to help build a model of my job though its folder of Markdown files. It’s becoming genuinely useful the more it learns. Next on the list is experimenting with opening its folder in Obsidian so we can collaborate on daily notes.
\n- I’ve been watching the coverage of the ATmosphereConf with a degree of jealousy. There’s a real energy to the atproto community, with an explosion of projects and new ideas being shared. I’m hacking away at a few of my own which I hope to write about soon.
\n
","date_published":"2026-03-30T00:00:00.000Z"},{"id":"https://new.barryfrost.com/weeknotes/239-scoot","url":"https://new.barryfrost.com/weeknotes/239-scoot","title":"Week 239 - Scoot","content_html":"\n- I was almost run over this week on a lunchtime walk around the village. A car turned into the side road I was halfway across at the junction, but instead of giving way to the pedestrian, the driver kept driving at me and beeped. I jumped out of the way and the car drove on. Insane.
\n- H bought himself a grown-up scooter (two wheels to replace his three-wheeled toddler version) so he can join his friends scooting to school and back - only on footpaths thankfully, given what I’ve just written. It’s another small step of independence.
\n- I continue to discover that wearing my glasses makes all the difference close up. Text and UI on my 5K Studio Display is incredibly detailed and sharp. Who knew?
\n- After last week’s missed Wordle catastrophe, I achieved the impossible: my very first Wordle-in-one. CLASP. I will be signing autographs but no selfies please…
\n- I continue sliding further down the agentic-engineering rabbit hole. I’ve been experimenting with Claude Dispatch and Remote Control from my phone, and this week built a couch-to-5k skill. When I say I built it, I answered a few questions using the Superpowers plugin and then it spat out some Markdown files for progress and context. It’s addictive, but sadly Claude doesn’t do the actual physical running for you.
\n- Let’s not talk of Sunday’s League Cup Final ever again. I’m hoping our players blow out the cobwebs in the international break and come back ready to grind out the last seven matches in the League 🤞
\n
","date_published":"2026-03-23T00:00:00.000Z"},{"id":"https://new.barryfrost.com/weeknotes/238-streak","url":"https://new.barryfrost.com/weeknotes/238-streak","title":"Week 238 - Streak","content_html":"\n- I picked up my two new pairs of reading glasses from Boots. I now have glasses by my bed and on my desk. I can manage fine without them, but reading and laptopping is noticeably clearer. I just need to remember to put them on (writing this note has in fact reminded me to do so…)
\n- My old pod coffee machine spluttered and wheezed out its last, ejecting raw granules into my mug. New coffee machine time! I upgraded to a DeLonghi Magnifica S which was on sale. I’m still adjusting its settings, but it already makes much better coffee.
\n- I was in the office twice this week. My boss was in Cambridge for a flying visit so I had some time in the same continent as him for a change.
\n- I’m exhausted and exhilarated by Arsenal’s Premier League title challenge. From despair at seemingly dropping points at home to Everton in the 88th minute, to relief at two late goals blasting us into a (temporary) 10-point lead. It’s been 22 long years and I realised I just want it so badly!
\n- Bother. I forgot to do Wordle on Saturday, thus ending my 114-day streak. It’s almost enough to stop me playing it every day, faced now with a one-day streak. I told C and he was a bit tearful for me.
\n- Mother’s Day for L was some thoughtful presents that
the boysI bought, a long walk in Pansanger Park, taking C to cricket while she watched telly trash, and me cooking a roast dinner for us all over four hours. I slept well. \n
","date_published":"2026-03-16T00:00:00.000Z"},{"id":"https://new.barryfrost.com/weeknotes/237-fumes","url":"https://new.barryfrost.com/weeknotes/237-fumes","title":"Week 237 - Fumes","content_html":"\n- We had some warm evenings this week, so local homes had their windows open to let in some fresh air. Unfortunately, some idiot in the next village decided on Thursday that they would burn tyres, sending toxic fumes our way. Why do morons burn things when it’s hot? 😡
\n- While I’m grumbling, recent flooding has broken up local roads leaving behind many pot holes. I now have a loose mud flap on one side of my car as a result of one particularly deep hole. Damn you, weather.
\n- I love the spec and price of the MacBook Neo, announced this week. It’s the perfect laptop for almost everyone and, pending the reviews, will be my default recommendation.
\n- H’s latest football match was a disaster. There was a mix-up among the coaches over the kick-off time, meaning half his team only arrived at half-time. They lost 6-2.
\n- However, younger brother C had his best cricket session yet. His bowling action is really coming on. Very soon they’ll move out of the gym and onto grass.
\n- I have a wife sick with flu. She missed a couple of days of work, which is unlike her, and spent most of the weekend looking “beautiful but rough”. Germ-ridden schoolchildren are surely to blame.
\n- Our quiz night team at the local secondary school was therefore depleted on Saturday evening, but we didn’t shame ourselves. I think we were about fifth among 16 teams. Sport, languages and geography were strong rounds, although possibly too easy given the narrow spread of points.
\n- I won a family trampolining session (plus socks) in the quiz raffle, which means I will need to put my ego to one side and bounce around in public.
\n
","date_published":"2026-03-10T00:00:00.000Z"}]}