Hello world!
The title of this week’s notes is inspired by the summer storm my sunflowers weathered this weekend. The winds were strong enough that a majority of my sunflowers are tied or staked in order to remain upright. Over time, I expect many of them to recover enough to where the stakes are no longer necessary. Further storms will lead me to repeat this cycle.
🔖 My Favorite Stuff from the Internet This Week
- AI Doesn’t Have ROI
- Completionist blogs (ooh.directory)
- These completionist blogs are such a neat idea. My personal favorite is the one revisiting Miles Davis’ live tapes.
- AddToAny: Share Buttons by the Universal Sharing Platform
- Against numbers
- Hallucinate - Massively Multiplayer Online Rave
- This is a cute little dance party!
- jupern/pocket-trmnl: BYOD-S TRMNL client for PocketBook devices
- Manubot - Manuscripts, open and automated
- The reference management functionality looks super neat, too. This suite is actively maintained and it looks like it’s worth taking for a spin the next time I have a project that calls for it. I like how well this could support writing a book in public. My current solution for this is
bookdown, a choice that provides me with an opportunity to learn a bit ofR.
- The reference management functionality looks super neat, too. This suite is actively maintained and it looks like it’s worth taking for a spin the next time I have a project that calls for it. I like how well this could support writing a book in public. My current solution for this is
- What I’ve learned about the trombone
🧰 Tools
- Madblog: A Markdown Folder That Federates Everywhere
- A super cool-looking feature list! I gave this a quick spin and it looks like a pretty cool way to turn a local collection of notes into something Web-accessible. This could be great for TIL sites or for exposing notes collected and managed with
nb, Obsidian or similar.
- A super cool-looking feature list! I gave this a quick spin and it looks like a pretty cool way to turn a local collection of notes into something Web-accessible. This could be great for TIL sites or for exposing notes collected and managed with
🌱 Gardening
It’s been a busy and pleasant week in the garden. I have had the opportunity to reap what I sow — in the best possible way. I planted seeds until the last day of May. The last seeds I planted were things other than sunflowers, mostly catgrass, dahlias and zinnias. I’m excited to continue planting the strongest seedlings into big containers to grow.
The catgrass seeds (shown in the image at the top of this post) have sprouted and Plop enjoys snacking on them very much.
🐾 Movement
| Metric | Total |
|---|---|
| Total distance | 17.1 mi (27.6 km) |
| Total on foot | 4.2 mi (6.8 km) |
| Total on bike | 12.9 mi (20.8 km) |
| Active time | 2h 26m |
| Elevation gain | 132 m (433 ft) |
| Avg outdoor bike power | 132 W |
- Time Split: Foot 50%
██████████░░░░░░░░░░Bike 50% - Distance Split: Foot 25%
█████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░Bike 75%
I decided to visit Allegheny County’s North Park to work out Thursday morning. Running up the bleachers at the football field was a highlight. Saturday’s rain made for a fantastic cooldown during the second half of my bike ride.
- Thursday: 🧭 North Park Bleacher Creature 🐾
- Saturday: ☁️ 🌞⛈️🌞 Rainy Montour Morning 🚲
📘 Reading
Books Finished: 1
I finished reading The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas on Sunday. I am really excited to read more about how the book was received in its time and to watch some of the many adaptations. I loved the 2002 film as a child and was surprised to see it featured a much younger Henry Cavill as Albert Mondego.
Social Reading
🙌 The list at brie.dev/books is up-to-date.
I keep track of my reading in various places across the Internet. I track every book I read as @bbrie on Hardcover and as brie on Rambling Readers. I also track each IRL Book Club pick.
🍿 Movies
Now that I have (finally) finished reading, I am excited to dig into all the adaptations of Dumas’ masterpiece. I started with the 1975 made-for-TV movie:
- The Count of Monte-Cristo, 1975 (Watched: 2026-06-07)
It might be silly to even try to boil this story into a 90 minute movie. A lot of the charm and nuance in the story had to be cut out. The revenge plot felt extremely rushed and many of my favorite side characters did not make an appearance. Valentine’s charm and adoration for Noirtier were welcome rays of sunshine that stood up well without the romance with Morrel. I appreciate how the ending of this adaptation reflected the cruelty of how Mercedes’ story ends. This is at the expense of the hopeful topne of the ending. The casting was better than the actual result. I love the story this movie attempted to tell but that won’t influence how I rate this movie.
🎵 Music
I listened to a few of the albums recommended by 1001albumsgenerator.com this week. On Friday, the selection was The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. This album keeps coming up as a recommendation and reference this year. I found a brief listening guide and then committed myself to actually making it all the way through the album. After this initial listen, I do think I get it and understand why this album is so meaningful to folks. I suspect that it would have impacted me more deeply if I found it closer in time to it’s release. My favorite track is definitely Everything is Everything. While the song is familiar to me, I didn’t expect to find it on this album.
📊 Stats
I listened to 262 tracks this week.
🦄 Unique tracks: 219 | Unique albums: 88 | Unique artists: 60
Top Genres
Top 10 Genres
- 🛹 Punk Rock (39 plays)
- 🎸 Alternative Rock (36 plays)
- 🤠 Country (29 plays)
- 🇩🇪 German (19 plays)
- 🎤 Hip Hop (14 plays)
I’ve been generating this treemap for a while and I think I like it enough to include in weeknotes now:
📯 Social
🤫 I was pretty quiet this week.
Most of my social media activity happens on Mastodon. I am brie.rocks on bsky but that’s mostly for the cool handle.
— Brie