Category: Miscellany 2021

Weeknotes #8

Week commencing Monday, 17 May 2021

  • I had to visit a hospital at the beginning of the week. It was nothing major but it was very controlled and unlike any other time I have had the need to be an outpatient: arrive, alone, no more than five minutes in advance, for example. As a result it seemed remarkably efficient. It would be nice if this kind of thing is retained as we move into a post-pandemic world.
  • I got caught in a torrential downpour on the walk back from the hospital. I was equal distance between two bus stops and, by the time I had sheltered from the enormous hailstones and arrived at the next stop, the sun was out. I decided to walk home in order to dry my clothes. This is very strange weather for May.
  • Helping PY’s company move offices on Saturday necessitated travel in central London. As I was on the edge of The City, it wasn’t overly busy but it is definitely noticeable that people are out and about again.
  • After the office move we had out first restaurant meal that was inside since December last year. It felt remarkably normal. The place was well ventilated and people were reasonably separated so we didn’t have any concerns.
  • Being out of the house meant I had a couple of deliveries diverted to a local pick-up point which was the first time I’d had need to do that since lockdown began. But one item was delivered to the doorstep, and subsequently stolen. It’s all on camera so can be reported. However, it did occur to me that the move away from everybody being home all the time is going to change the way deliveries work for the second time in eighteen months: few retailers have solved the problem of the last few metres of the delivery chain when they find nobody in.
  • Being out of the house also meant that we did not watch any of the Eurovision Song Contest performances from Rotterdam. We were back in time for the results. Disappointing for the UK. Congratulations to Italy (who last won in 1990). The main question on Sunday seemed to be did he, or didn’t he?

Archive

To save the links getting lost in the future I checked the Internet Archive to see what they had saved for the posts linked here.

Weeknotes #7

Week commencing Monday, 10 May 2021

Personal

  • The interesting, interconnected world in which we live has been highlighted for me on my quest to buy a new jar of Marmite. Don’t judge me for my love of the yeasty spread. Apparently, our inability to buy beer in pubs had an impact on yeast supplies to Unilever which, in turn, had an impact on the amount of Marmite that can be produced. I found a big pot on Amazon which saved the day but, please, as the local pub opens go and buy some beer!
  • I finished Dolly Parton’s America podcast. I fear some people may be put off by the title. Sure, Dolly is the thread that connects all the episodes but it deals with so many big issues for today. Give it a listen. My favourite Dolly line, “I don’t know that I believe in reincarnation. And I didn’t believe in it when I lived before”.
  • I went to the gym 3 times. Rather pleased that I managed that.
  • Walked around part of central London on Sunday which was most enjoyable. Took a picture of Tower Bridge with the clouds that I thought was quite good.

Archive

To save the links getting lost in the future I checked the Internet Archive to see what they had saved for the posts linked here.

Weeknotes #6

Week commencing Monday, 3 May 2021

London is in my blood – it’s the absolute honour of my life to serve the city I love for another three years.
My mission over the next three years is to put the dark days of the pandemic behind us and deliver a brighter future for all Londoners.
@SadiqKhan

Personal

  • I don’t know why house maintenance issues always worry me. At the start of the week there were issues with next door’s plumbing and it looks like they might want to lift some of our decking to try to find the problem. In the end, they didn’t. Still, need to keep an eye on this. At the end of week a plumber came to fix the bathroom leak but ended up leaving claiming it was a bigger job than the time allotted and promised a quote which still hasn’t materialised.
  • Bank holidays are always nice and we did a lovely long local history walk back to Earlsfield and up to Wandsworth Common in search of The Craig Telescope and it made for a lovely day. I also managed to grab a few snaps of the changing high street in Earlsfield. It’s a subject the fascinates me but I don’t have the time to document more. Yesterday evening I came across an office block where I once worked that’s being redeveloped. It’s the relentless march of progress.
  • Thursday was polling day in the Mayoral year-delayed elections. Sadiq Khan was selected. Disappointedly, the turnout was only 42%; but that maybe typical. The BBC reported that a Record number of mayoral votes rejected because of the supplementary vote system and says that the government is considering moving the vote to a First Past the Post system. I wonder if that favours them?
  • I made the gym three times this week. Quite happy with that although I realise it’s all about the continued momentum.
  • I wholly recommend My Octopus Teacher on Netflix – an Oscar winning documentary that was feel-good.

Archive

To save the links getting lost in the future I checked the Internet Archive to see what they had saved for the posts linked here.

Weeknotes #5

Week commencing Monday, 26 April 2021

It turns out, however, that setting and then chasing after goals can often backfire in horrible ways. There is a good case to be made that many of us, and many of the organizations for which we work, would do better to spend less time on goalsetting, and, more generally, to focus with less intensity on planning for how we would like the future to turn out.
Oliver Burkeman quoted in I’ve Never Had a Goal, by Jason Kottke

Personal

  • Turns out today is day 412 of lockdown. I had been on a long weekend before we were told not to go to work so it’s been a little longer since I worked in an office building. SO much has changed.
  • I had to write my annual objectives last week and I’ve been thinking a lot about them since. Everybody I have ever worked for has some variant on goal-setting. I understand the process but the output rarely ranks as my number one way to think about the work I do. This week I discovered Jason Kottke’s 2016 piece, I’ve Never Had a Goal which resonated and also linked to Jason Fried’s similar piece (“I want to make progress, I want to make things better …). If you find goal-setting as difficult as I do then these are reassuring words.
  • I am really enjoying reading blogs via NetNewsWire, it feels like a proper uncluttered RSS reader and reminds me of the original Bloglines or Google Reader. Tom Stuart writes weeknotes and he’s in my feed. A line in Weeknotes 68 struck a chord, “When I was a CTO I was the most senior technical decision-maker in the company; now I’m a nobody”. I was never a CTO nor do I have much desire for people management but the idea that I had a prioritised voice and now I just have a job made me stop and think about what I want in my career.
  • I’m starting to see people out and about again. On Friday we had a small team social at work for those of us who live in South West London (a pub garden in Teddington) and on Saturday a trip to see my parents who did a barbecue in the garden. It’s the first time I’ve seen them since last summer and it was lovely to be out and about.

Archive

To save the links getting lost in the future I checked the Internet Archive to see what they had saved for the posts linked here.

Weeknotes #4

Week commencing Monday, 19 April 2021

  • Beautiful weekend weather lead to much sitting in the sun. I may be a bit sunburnt. Taking a train to Southampton to see family on Sunday seemed very normal (even though I haven’t done it for over a year). The train disruption on the return journey also seemed remarkably normal and predictable.
  • The question I can’t get out of my head this week: at any given moment, how many people are saying the word “Alexa”?
  • We’re starting to plan what our ‘return to the office’ will look like. According to the BBC, HSBC plans to shrink its office space by 40% in a post-pandemic shake-up which, I suspect, is like a lot of other companies.
  • We had a team meeting to discuss our individual thoughts on the back-to-the-office. Generally, the return to the over-crowded commute was unwelcome. But, also, the idea of turning up to an office space to don headphones and video conference the people who are not in on that day. This is more than a change of ‘where’; it will be a change of ‘how’.
  • For a random reason I saw a statement on a Spotify job spec and I love this sentence, “You are welcome at Spotify for who you are, no matter where you come from, what you look like, or what’s playing in your headphones.”
  • Reminded this week about Troubled Diva’s ‘The 40 in 40 Days Project’ which you can still read via The Wayback Machine.
  • I feel asleep while watching The Spy Who Loved Me on Saturday night which must have been as a result of the wine I drink in the sunshine and the large Indian takeaway that we had.
  • Spent more time listening to Podcasts than I have done for while. The Chaos and collapse: European football’s not-so-super league episode of The Guardian’s Today in Focus was an interesting discussion about the launch and collapse of the Super League this week. Also recommend for the remote working conversations, Stephen Wolfram on 28 Years of Remote Work an episode of ‘Distributed, with Matt Mullenweg’ that’s from 2019 but interesting in light of this week’s conversations.

Archive

To save the links getting lost in the future I checked the Internet Archive to see what they had saved for the posts linked here.

Weeknotes #3

Week commencing Monday, 12 April 2021

  • Blood test this week; hopefully nothing important; a text from the Doctor and a follow-up consultation in a couple of weeks suggests nothing urgent was found.
  • First night out with friends in Streatham. £28.56 for bottle of wine is much more expensive that the ones in the fridge but it was nice – if cold – to be outside.
  • The heated Gillet that I bought kind of worked: it kept my back very warm but made me realise how cold my arms and legs were.
  • Initial planning for an evening out with with former colleagues. It would be the first time I have been into Central London this year – which isn’t surprising but still feels odd to write.
  • We’re trying The Falcon and the Winter Soldier on Disney+ but I am struggling with the new Captain America. To be fair, we are only on Episode 2.
  • The weather was lovely at the weekend so, on Saturday, we sat outside at the front of the house which gets the late afternoon soon. Met some street-neighbours who we’ve never said hello to before. Quite lovely.
  • Sunday we walked to Merton Abbey for some lunch and a walk around the shops. All the craft stalls were back and it was also great to be outside in the sunshine.

Archive

To save the links getting lost in the future I checked the Internet Archive to see what they had saved for the posts linked here.

Weeknote #2

Week commencing Monday, 5 April 2021

  • Prince Philip has died aged 99: “Prince Philip was an extraordinary man who lived an extraordinary life; a life intimately connected with the sweeping changes of our turbulent 20th Century, a life of fascinating contrast and contradiction, of service and some degree of solitude. A complex, clever, eternally restless man.” BBC News
  • As Diamond Geezer said, “Few events are as well planned for as the death of a major royal” but I thought the decision to take BBC Four off air seemed odd. I wonder how much streaming services were up this weekend?
  • COVID passports are in the news. There’s a feeling the people don’t want a 2-tier system that would exclude some people from whatever the new normal is. The BBC reported there was strong public support for their use in some situations. I’d happily have one if to means things can open up more quickly.
  • I had some fun with Google search console trying to figure out why I need a separate property for http v https. In the end I went down the domain verification path. It seems every few years I have to verify the ownership of domains I have had for years with them.
  • Working with my domains made me wonder when I first registered them, so I looked it up: curnow.org (14th-May-1999) and musak.org (17th-Feb-2003)
  • I am not sure I learnt much from Kara Swisher’s interview with Tim Cook but it was an interesting listen.
  • Too many radio station Wikipedia entries seem to focus on the station today and radio history is lost. I added some links to The BBC Radio Shropshire wiki entry. I wonder how long they will stay around?
  • I Tweeted about some links I cleaned up on a Listen to Musak entry and how many of the URLs have gone or changed. I’m a bit of a hypocrite because Listen to Musak’s URL schema broke when I moved it to WordPress and 12 years later I haven’t really fixed it but I am, gradually, repairing the site so the links work.
  • I also installed an RSS reader. Yes, I really am recreated the web of 2004. But Net News Wire is nice and the team behind it appear half way through enabling iCloud sync (it works on desktop but not to the mobile app yet).

Archive

To save the links getting lost in the future I checked the Internet Archive to see what they had saved for the posts linked here.

Weeknote #1

Week commencing Monday, 29 March 2021

… and who need a little bit of reminding, in chaotic times, of what it was like to telnet into a blank screen which contained the entire world.

Why Generation X will save the web, Heather Burns

There’s an excellent article by Heather Burns entitled “Why Generation X will save the web” which you should read. It was written in January but I was only pointed to it this week. Back in the glory days of blogging we’d all have been quoting that within a hour of it being published.

Heather’s comparison that “We – the GenXers – think of the internet as the open web” and “Today’s policy facilitators – the millennials – think of the internet as MySpace and Facebook. The closed web” is wonderful insight into the way the web has changed since I built my first sites and since my first blog entry.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about the evolution of the web and how it’s not as we foresaw. I think it’s something to do with celebrating a significant birthday last year and an urge to document what I’ve written here on the web over the years. It may also be do do with the fact that I’ve spent more time lately away from social media platforms and more time exploring the web as it used to be. I’ve been discovering how many of the blogs of old are still in existence and how many are being updated.

I still read Phil Gyford. His ‘Half Century Notes‘ is a lovely piece of writing about his version of that significant birthday.

Several of the bloggers I used to read, including Phil, have morphed into the Weeknotes format. So, as there’s a passing bandwagon, I thought’d I jump on it.

Weeknotes

  • the clocks went forward last weekend and we have lighter evenings now. I decided to try Couch-to-5k again and did the first session over 2.43 miles. That’s all I managed this week – but next week can bring another beginning, can’t it?
  • the highlight of the week is the gradual reduction in the lockdown rules. We can now meet outside – which includes the garden. This inspired a B&Q trip and some planting in the pots on Good Friday and visitors on Saturday. Also a visit to a garden on Easter Sunday for a lovely outdoor lunch. It’s cold out of the sun but pleasant while the skies are blue.
  • thinking of this weekly format reminded me of the 10-part newsletter I penned in 2010: Last Week in Digital Advertising. I looked at the first one and discovered about half the links no longer existed. I managed to find alternative sources for some but many will forever 404. That’s inspired me to check all links here for entries in the Internet Archive.
  • new guttering week and, just like every repair to this house, it ends up more because some shoddy previous work is uncovered but, after a brief worry about some missing roof tiles, all seems well.

Archive

To save the links getting lost in the future I checked the Internet Archive to see what they had saved for the posts linked here.

200

Two directions at once

High Cedar Drive Bus Stop

A New Year’s Day walk to Wimbledon Common. Taking a minor diversion along Copse Hill you come to this bus stop (and there will be a similar one on the other side of the road). This bus stop is an oddity – although I imagine there are other examples elsewhere. – because this stop is going in two directions at once. It’s not an indicator to get on a bus in the opposite direction across the road, no, you can board here but you must get on the correct 200 because, for this little leg, buses going in both directions pass this stop. The Copse Hill and Atkinson Close stops are part of a loop that buses in both direction take. I don’t know why but I imagine it is to do with serving the expensive new apartments on Wimbledon Park Hill. Still, if you get on here, make sure you get on the one going to Raynes Park or Mitcham because in about 5 minutes from this point you could be going in the wrong directions.

The ladies who bus did this route back in 2009 and when they passed The Collier’s Wood Tower (once deemed the ugliest building in London) which they said looked like it was “about to be demolished” but turned out to be mid-regeneration becoming Britannia Point by about 2017. Also, the Waitrose at Raynes Park had just opened when they rode the 200 – the place that became a lifeline to so many this past year and I am very glad was opened.