Weeknotes (2026 W27)

I'm going to try a Weeknotes practice. I expect it's less pressure than needing a specific long-form topic for a blog post, but sometimes the weeks run together and there's not much going on, so maybe I won't write one every week? It's also not clear to me how I want Weeknotes to be different from /now.

Dublin Inquirer Civics Classes

Dublin Inquirer held their Summer School 2026 over the weekend. (Technically this was Week 26 but I only started Weeknotes this week.) Navigating local government walked through the structure of the Dublin City Council, how things get done (or not done), local politics, budgets, and so on. Tracking your local councillors’ votes did a deep dive into the CouncilVoteTracker.ie tool shared in the local government session, and Sam walked us through the backend of the tool and offered to set folks up with access to get more coverage outside Dublin. Master FOI and AIE was a deep dive into Freedom of Information Act and Access to Information about the Environment Act requests, packed with Laoise's advice from her many years of submitting these requests.

I got a lot out of these sessions, and I highly recommend keeping an eye out for future sessions if you need to brush up on Dublin city politics.

Irish Presidency of the Council of the European Union

Wow, that's a mouthful.

The EU Presidency has taken up residence in Dublin Castle, next door to my office. It officially kicked off this week, but there's been a slow ramp up since May when the first bits of Dublin Castle were closed to the general public.

This is a neat bit of civics but it's somewhat overshadowed by the Guards blocking off all the streets that lead to my place of work, forcing me to take new routes and carry extra bits of identification. At least our office is still accessible, unlike some other businesses.

Active Travel Scheme Public Information Event

A "public information event" for a local active travel scheme^[1] was held in my neighbourhood. I had no idea how this event would be structured so I blocked off my calendar and showed up just as it was starting. It was very important to me that I show up as a supporting voice. I was worried it would be a forum, with lots of car owners angrily spouting off over the addition of bike lanes.

The event was in a small room in the community centre (which I had never visited before today). There was a sign up sheet at the door and half a dozen planners in attendance. Several tables had large printouts of the CAD files of the new bike and pedestrian paths, and artists' renderings of some of the sections of roads.

It was a really great experience. I spent about half an hour speaking with one of the representatives from the project. She walked me through every bit of this phase of the project, and we talked in depth about the benefits to the neighbourhood, the more complex bits of the design, the tradeoffs as they navigate the limited space available in some sections, and the overlap of this project with future active travel works.

I see this as a hugely beneficial project for the area and I'm very grateful for the care they've put into it. I hope myself, my family, and my neighbours can all benefit from it soon.

Cycling

A coworker of mine travelled into Dublin on Saturday for the Joe Duffy Group Clontarf Half Marathon, and it was a great excuse for me to cycle out to the coast. I hung out at the Bull Island causeway (close to the Tree of Life) to watch the runners and maybe catch him on his way by. My timing was pretty good: after about 20 minutes, I saw him trot by and I got to yell some words of encouragement.

The route took the runners down onto Bull Island before coming back to the coast road, so I crossed the street to catch him again and snap some photos as he passed. After that, I swung by 360 Cycles for a new helmet before heading home. Around 10km round trip I think.

Reading

My Xteink X4 arrived this week. I briefly checked out the stock firmware before installing CrossPoint Reader. I'm early into reading through the Discworld books, and I finished The Colour of Magic and read all of The Light Fantastic on that tiny little device. It's a great form factor, with the only downsides being the lack of a backlight (I bought the bundle with a magnetic book light) and my own failing eyes which really do need glasses to read comfortably.

Coding

I didn't do too much with masto-fe-standalone this week. I did help unblock another pull request that fixes some styling issues. I would like to continue with the code cleanup, I need to chase down if it's missing any GoToSocial features, and I think reviving the project rename is worthwhile to give it its own identity.

Gaming

A little Apex Legends, and a few hours into The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. (I wanted a new open world game and I never really got into Skyrim.)

Cooking

We signed up for a trial of one of those recipe boxes and cooked the first one last night, a bulgogi prawn stir fry. Good: super clear recipe, enough portions for our family of 5, tasted good! Bad: maybe too much food (we will have way too many leftovers if every meal is this big), had like 4x more carrots than was necessary.