L– was away for most of the week, so I was at home on my own. I took advantage of the space and the warm weather to finish painting the banisters. (The paint goes on much more easily and dries better when it’s warm.) When we moved in, the banisters were a hideous shade of matte brown paint. I painted the bottom part before we moved in, but didn’t get round to the top half before it was rendered inaccessible by boxes of stuff.

It didn’t take me much time: before starting work in the morning, I painted a bit, and each time I took a break I painted a bit more. After a couple of days, it was all done. The painting was a little difficult because you can’t go back over the same bit after it’s dried for more than a few seconds, and the shape of the banisters is complicated. The solution is to paint a serious of non-overlapping sections each time, so that where two painted regions overlap you’re only painting onto dried paint. It’s the ideal job to do in between another activity.

The banisters look a lot better now.

On Friday evening I went to Peckham for the Peckham Digital creative computing festival in the converted multi-storey car park that is Peckham Levels.

I spent a bit of time on Friday afternoon getting the latest version of Sonic Pi running on my laptop in preparation for a live coding workshop, and took enough notes to be able to replicate the process. I’ve documented the installation process for mine and anyone else’s convenience.

There’s only so much you can do in a two-hour workshop, but it was enough to get me started, and by the end I had some interesting polyrhythmic techno coming through my headphones.

There were a couple of peformances after the workshop from George Ash (who hosted the workshop) and Lizzie Wilson aka Digital Selves. It’s really inspiring, informative, and demystifying to be able to see behind the scenes and watch what the performers are typing as it happens.

We cycled over to Mudchute City Farm to see the alpacas today. I did not enjoy hauling my bike down and up the stairs both ways to get there. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that the lifts will be open any time this year.