The Good
- Activity – 10k steps… every day.. Going all the way back to Christmas Eve 2019. I have brought an old treadmill back into service during lockdown. I go outside for a decent walk a couple of times a week.
- Uncharted Games – the remastered 1-3 and 4 have all been given out for “free” with PS Plus over the last few months. I have waded my way through 1-3 and am onto 4. They tell really fun stories even if I find the shooting a bit repetitive at times. The puzzles are often worth it.
- Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes – if you have not seen LOM/A2A before then I envy you because you have a hell of a ride to go on. I encourage you to do so.
- Security Research #1 – Work gave my team an opportunity to take on security research against some open source projects. We had a lot of fun and found a tonne of vulns that we are in the process of disclosing.
- Security Research #2 – I had time to implement a process for data exfiltration using QR codes (RDPDownload). This is the opposite of my RDPUpload tool that I made a few years ago. While not a brand new technique I enjoy building exfiltration tools to see the trade offs involved and yes this worked on a genuine project. I am working on releasing that tool this month.
- Decoration – Given lockdown makes me stare at my walls I realised I am not in-love with my flat anymore. I have gone on a programme of doing a minor bit of decorating every night for two weeks. Filling holes here. Sanding and painting there. While I am no expert at this the results are sufficient to mean my eye isn’t drawn to various defects that were driving me mental. The benefits of this for mental health has been huge.
- Audiobooks – I was unable to get through any in May 😦
The Bad
In 2019 I was immobilised for months and was unable to get out of the house. I gained a lot of weight as a result and felt like crap. Indeed the whole point behind this “Captain’s Log” series was to show the positive steps I was taking to avoid a repeat of that period of my life and to get physically and mentally fitter.
Under lockdown my mental health has remained robust. By the end of May I decided to weigh in to discover indeed I had put on all the weight I had lost pre-lockdown. Not shocked but it is also a little annoying.
Kids out of their routine == Cranky days, late nights, and early waking.
When you are not sleeping right then weight gain is basically inevitable. Fortunately, the kids have started to sleep more regularly in the last week. So light at the end of the tunnel.
Highlight of the month
I think the decorating has really been the highlight. While there is still absolutely tonnes to do. It feels positive like I have stopped treading water and gone on to exert control over my domain. Plus I guess it provides a bunch of exercise to get it done which helps generally with everything.
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