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009: Just what the doctor ordered

009: Just what the doctor ordered

March 8, 2026
6 min read
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media-notes
2026
2026-03-08
weeknotes

Hello world,

Despite what the groundhog said, my corner of Pennsylvania has seen some downright balmy weather this week. The sunshine and (relatively) clear skies were just one of the things from my week that inspired the title for this week’s post.

🔖 My Favorite Stuff from the Internet This Week

🧰 Tools

🐾 Movement

With the warmer weather, I’ll be refining what goes in this session. I’m using Automations in Strautomator to update activity title names. Activities with ”🐾” were on foot and activities with ”🚲” were by bike.

✨ Refined Fitness Tooling

The webhook testing I did on Friday worked! A few months ago, when I was first setting up my Strava -> fitness.by.brie.dev set up, I elected to trigger updates manually. I wanted to make sure things worked properly. I got used to the manual approach. Although the script was working properly and didn’t require manual intervention, I continued running it manually as a matter of habit. No more thanks to:

I’m really happy with how this tool is developed. Setting up webhooks was pretty straightforward. I no longer need to run that script manually after each workout.

🌱 Gardening 2026

I suspect we’re experiencing false spring. Since March came in like a lamb this year, I will wait a while before starting my seedlings.

📖 Reading

I read a bit on my tiny ereader while enjoying my book in the sunshine. The main thing that made me put the X4 down in favor of the PocketBook was the need to highlight passages and take notes as I read. I’m fond of these activities when reading fiction or non-fiction.

Books Read: 2

  • A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (Read on 2026-03-07)
  • The Grownup by Gillian Flynn (Read on 2026-03-08)
    • This is a great novella that I first read a decade ago.

My excitement for A Gentleman in Moscow was totally warranted. I found it while looking for books folks recommended reading after Lonesome Dove. I was sold when I heard how moving and beautiful people found the writing. This was a gorgeous book that will stick with me. This is essentially a book that presents a philosophy on life and how well that philosophy serves a man as he faces change over the decades.

In Progress:

  • Shane by Jack Schaefer, Wendell Minor (Progress:125/178 pages (70%))
    • This is the second book pick inspired by Lonesome Dove. I started reading Shane earlier today and am very happy with the decision. My enjoyment of the book has not been diminished by my knowledge that the ending if ambiguous in nature. The “does he survive?” nature of the ending is a fairly popular spoiler.

🔗 Social Reading

I keep track of my reading in various places across the Internet:

🎮 Gaming

The gorgeous weather drove my Steam playtime to zero. All my gaming energy went into Ingress. I have made fantastic progress towards LVL16 while taking advantage of 6x AP and gorgeous weather on Saturday.

The “Good Cat” and “Bad Cat” events I mentioned last week are paid. I’ve spent money on Ingress a few times but never for events like these. I don’t know if these are enticing enough.

As much as I absolutely adore Agent Stats, I find myself wanting a bit more from my Ingress stats tracking.

🎧 Music

My top artists and top tracks for different periods of time are easy to find via last.fm or my Koito instance. Further, I think that stats like those provide a limited perspective into what my week was like musically. I want to do something more interesting with this section. To start, I wrote some Python that retrieves genre info about each song I listened to. Here’s a look at my music listening this week — my genre:

  1. 🍿 Pop (103 plays)
  2. 🎷 Jazz (54 plays)
  3. 🎤 Hip Hop (32 plays)
  4. 🍷 Neo Soul (26 plays)
  5. 🎺 Funk (18 plays)

I am really excited about the work I did this week to improve the visualizations I include in this section. The genre info I collected helped a lot:

Genre Stickiness

Daily Genre Breakdown

I still want some insight into artists so I’m taking a look at changes in top artists day-by-day over the course of a week:

Daily Artist Breakdown

I will be refining these further but I’m pretty happy with the results — especially since I don’t have to rely on external sources to generate these images.

🔗 Social Listening

I scrobble my music to my Koito instance at heard.by.brie.lol — as well as to bbbbbbbbrie on last.fm, bbrie on libre.fm, and briealeida on ListenBrainz.

Sporadically, I write song reviews on Crucial Tracks.

📻 Recently, I’ve started logging and reviewing albums on Record Club. The album that was in heavy rotation this week is Thelonious Monk’s 1968 record Underground. The album is a great example of Monk’s talent and is supremely listenable jazz.

Thelonious Monk - Underground (1968)

The album’s Grammy-winning cover is iconic. Read Thelonious Monk’s Underground: The Story Behind The Cover.

🌀 Weather Report

I notice the impact of the meteorological weather has on my mood.

  • Mon | 36°F (2°C) | Overcast 🌔
  • Tue | 47°F (8°C) | Rain 🌕
  • Wed | 54°F (12°C) | Fair 🌕
  • Thu | 65°F (18°C) | Fair 🌖
  • Fri | 70°F (21°C) | Fair 🌖
  • Sat | 76°F (24°C) | Fair 🌖
  • Sun | 60°F (15°C) | Fair 🌖

Admittedly, “fair” sells the week short: it was fantastic!

— Brie