Day: 1 February 2026

Weeknotes #158: still out after dark

Thoughtful outings, cultural highlights, and small wins amid winter evenings.

Week commencing Monday, 26 January 2026

Colourful light installation reflected in water at Canary Wharf's Eden Dock at night. Vibrant rainbow beams of red, blue, yellow, and green light form geometric patterns across the water surface, with modern office buildings in the background and spectators viewing from behind barriers in the foreground.
Amplitudes transforms Eden Dock with rainbow light reflections.

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 6/7; Exercise 4/7 and Move 7/7. (81%). Morning walks: 0/3. Office days 2/5. Total steps: 51,782. 14.5 hours in meetings.

Life

  • Hello February! Where did you come from?
  • Here’s a story about social media’s made-up lies about immigrants in London. This should be a bigger story because thousands will have seen the original fibs (original reporting by London Centric and ht to The London Minute for linking to it).
  • Monday afternoon, I chat-botted with Bose support to see if there was anything that could be done about the terrible battery life in my very old noise-cancelling headphones. They gave me a sequence of things to try (plug, unplug, pair), and they came alive. So far, the results are very positive. They may be salvageable.
  • Monday evening, to Canary Wharf to see the Winter Lights. It’s an event that’s been running in January for a few years and is very suitable for dark winter evenings. It can get very busy, so we thought trying a Monday night might be better. Still plenty of people, but no overcrowded areas like in some years.
  • Ironically, a non-light art piece, “Whale on the Wharf”, was my favourite.
  • A leaving do had been planned for this week with no firm day. Today, we agreed to meet tonight. So I found myself drinking Black Heart stout at the BrewDog in The Sidings below Waterloo Station.
  • Related, Frickles tasted more of the batter than the pickle.
  • Relatedly related, bowling was fun. So was the slide.
  • Thursday, fun with AI that wouldn’t revert to the working version of the code, even after I explicitly gave it the last working version.
  • Later, nice to be in the pub with colleagues: it’s why I go to the office.
  • Friday, to Southwark Union Theatre to see Why Would We Care?, a new British musical premiering there, exploring themes of power, control, and the cost of a “perfect” society. Fun, but needs work.
  • Saturday, Number One, London (Apsley House) is worth visiting. Lots of impressive ‘history stuff’! And pictures of Napoleon. And an overly large statue of Napoleon. It’s also very unshowy, in spite of the world-leading art collection, and you could be forgiven for missing it.
  • I could have missed The Destination Travel Show as we really didn’t find South Korean inspiration.
  • Sunday, an evening of musical performances at Love Life: West End Unites Against Cancer, a star-studded benefit concert coinciding with World Cancer Day.
  • A lot of stars of recent big musicals were on the line-up: Nicole Scherzinger (Sunset Boulevard, Cats), Tom Francis (Sunset Boulevard, & Juliet), Diego Andrés Rodriguez, Bella Brown, and James Olivas (Evita), as well as West End favourites, including Carrie Hope Fletcher and Jordan Luke Gage. Very, very, good.

Media

  • We watched more episodes of Blue Lights, but I am not sure either of us was fully engaged.
  • Later in the week, the first episode of Heated Rivalry. I knew very little about it ahead of watching, except that it was recommended by Amanda, and the TV series has catapulted the story into the stratosphere.
  • The book apparently perfected a specific trope: the grumpy vs sunshine—or, in this case, the arrogant chaos-agent vs the repressed golden boy—dynamic. This TV adaptation debuted with a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which seems remarkable. I need to watch more; they say episode three is where you get hooked.
  • Also, two episodes of Alexander Armstrong In South Korea, where the presenter embarks on a three-part travelogue across South Korea, exploring the contrast between ancient traditions and futuristic K-pop culture. Some inspiration for our trip.
  • Related, watching Alexander Armstrong watching YouTube “mukbang” star Heebab perform “broadcast eating” did not make me search it out.
  • Hoorah. Game Changers Radio is back after the Christmas, and for them, summer, break.

Annual Report 2018

The curnow.org annual shareholder’s meeting is taking place now.

Last FM Stats 2018

My name is Jon, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the curnow.org full-year 2018 annual report to shareholders*. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there won’t be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during that time, please press star, then the number 1 on your telephone keypad, and I will ignore it. This call will be recorded. Thank you very much.

Are you sitting comfortably …

You might say this report is a lot like Jeff Bezos’ annual Amazon letter, only I can’t announce that we’re top of anybody’s customer satisfaction list like he can. It’s also not like Bill Gates’ annual letter where he speaks of the wonderful ways in which the world is getting better: “The world is healthier and safer than ever. The number of children who die every year has been cut in half since 1990 and keeps going down.” And I am most certainly not in Warren Buffett’s league, making you richer by the second: “Berkshire’s gain in net worth during 2017 was $65.3 billion”. Sorry.

No, this year, if we were to assemble the Board of Directors in a wood-panelled room around a large, polished oak table and serve them coffee from a silver jug in delicate china cups, we would have to begin with the company’s trading performance. And there would be some uncomfortable shuffling in those overpriced antique chairs we put in the conference room.

Although last year’s review gave the company a ‘Failed’ report, we spun the positives to deflect from the underlying health of the blog. I said that curnow.org would “go for a full house: an entry every month this year” and urged readers (sorry, shareholders) to “Stick with me”. Those that did ‘stick’ would have been very disappointed. 7 blog posts in 2018 was quite a way from that full house (here’s a tip: follow me on Instagram where a full house is guaranteed in 2019).

But, of course, like all the best investor briefings, I can distract from the grim reality by discussing lots of random numbers that have nothing to do with the underlying health of the curnow.org business.

There were 3,238 Swarm/Foursquare check-ins, which is an increase of 245 additional check-ins over last year’s performance. I think that’s what the management committee should be paying out any bonus on, don’t you? However, it all becomes less glamorous when you realise that there were 931 check-ins at railway stations. Clearly, Britain’s railway stations need to find better ways to occupy my time.

According to the statisticians at Last.FM, there were 5,804 music tracks played in 2018, which equates to 14 days and 3 hours of listening. It’s down from previous years. Kylie Minogue’s Golden appears to have been my top album of the year, which may or may not be related to watching Miss Minogue in concert back in September. Perhaps it’s time to buy a nice little sound system for the boardroom, huh? Something that would fit with the wood panels.

According to my Starwood Preferred Guest profile, I stayed with them on three occasions in 2018. I think my travelling is way down, although Jet Lovers has recorded 18 flights across the year (US, Spain, Hungary, Norway and Canada). I’m not sure what the shareholders think about our travel expenses at this point.

My Goodreads reading challenge was completed (15/15), which, I’d suggest to shareholders, is proof of the growing value of the underlying business and the fact that the curnow.org community and business continues to grow (where have I seen the words recently?). I’m guessing that there will be a later post about the books, but, as with 2018, don’t hold your breath.

I’m sorry, I am unable to take questions about Twitter at this time.

Thank you for joining us today. We appreciate your time, and we look forward to speaking with you again.

*Financial disclaimer if you’re reading this sat in a tax office somewhere in the UK: this is a blog; there’s no money, it’s not a business, and there are no shareholders. It’s a metaphor for something (although I am not entirely sure what).

It’s My Station: 18 Months Later

Can it really be almost 18 months since a discussion on Media UK about an Apple patent spawned a piece of writing here? Feel free to customise this post by inserting your own reference to one of TARDIS, flying time, or a reference to clocks. I did mention the Olympics – by which I meant London 2012 – which now just makes it seem old.

I genuinely believe the substance of that post & discussion – that if somebody gets the user interface right (and that will be the hardest task), then It’s My Station (that was the post) is the future of a lot of radio listening.

Radio has, of course, changed in so many ways thanks to the Internet. Just last week, there was a piece by James Cridland over on Jacobs Media Blog discussing the very use of the word radio: No, Pandora Is Not ‘Radio’(which is totally worth reading for the way James can crowbar a beer reference into a conversation). There’s a lot to be said for the idea of making the ‘radio’ brand stand for something, but I fear, much like music, the press and television, it’s too late to make broadcast radio stand for something different – or just reclaim the brand – now. Time to face what’s next.

I think when radio in the traditional, broadcast sense has lost people like me – who were once big fans of the medium – that last statement is important. My own listening is now mainly driven by iTunes and a dip into things around the world via TuneIn: this week it was Blake Hayes’ first week on Mornings at Coast 93.1 in Portland. Sorry to the good people of Portland, but I had to look it up on a map. How did I end up listening to that? Twiter. But that’s probably another post.

Which is why I was delighted to read that the Australian radio group, Southern Cross Austereo, has invested in a service which sounds similar to the one I was arguing for in It’s My Station. I’m glad somebody has done it and only a little disappointed that it’s exclusively available to Australian users right now. After all, I’ll happily listen to Hamish & Andy mixed in with my music collection – they make great radio while you can argue about my musical taste.

It’s fantastic news that a radio group is in a position to be able to invest like this. Now, if only I’d actually done something myself with that idea.

50 – 05

It’s that time of year again. I get to look back at last year through the photographs stored on my mobile phone. This year I had the Treo 600 and a Nokia 6230 to use, but I didn’t seem as prolific as last year, and I could only find 50 pictures to sum up the year.

I have been using Flickr more and more this year. I find it’s the best place to store and share photographs. You can see more of these pictures (and comment on them) in the Flick feed for mobcam 2005.

Again, they’re very raw, but they do show me what I did in 2005: Spain, winning the Olympic bid party, Formula 1 and more work travel, including Egypt. I enjoyed it all.

January Interest

A quick look at interest in this site in January 2004.

Traffic to this site in January 2004 seems to have taken a little bit of a leap. I see that Justin Timberlake was the most searched term. Unfortunately, dear Andrew Kinlochan hasn’t scored any comments. February is supposed to see the release of the new Phixx single, so I’ll wait to see if traffic to the Man of the Moment section follows other trends where the visits rise with some outside public event concerning the individual. It’s not science, but it is interesting to watch.

Shuttle Lost

I am grateful that people are prepared to take such great risks in the interest of human knowledge. I, for one, salute their bravery.

Space Shuttle ColumbiaLike everybody else, I was shocked to hear of the loss of the space shuttle Columbia. Like many, the first pictures I saw were the trails in the sky as the craft disintegrated. I’ve just found this radar picture online from the US National Weather Service which shows the heat generated as Columbia broke up. Despite the previous tragedy, it seemed space travel was gradually becoming routine. Seeing the radar image reminded me just what these craft and crew have to endure to push the boundaries of human knowledge. It brought space travel back into perspective for me and really shows the bravery of those who choose to go into space. As the events leading to the disaster unfold, it’s time to remind ourselves that we really are pushing boundaries. I am grateful that people are prepared to take such great risks in the interest of human knowledge. I, for one, salute their bravery.