March 9, 2025 – Hello Curns

Weeknotes #111: A boiler, the NHS and a smaller boat

Recovered, enjoyed exhibitions, and travelled

Week commencing Monday, 3 March 2025

The image shows a colourful poster with the phrase "PRIDE IN SELF" displayed across three horizontal stripes of different colours. The top stripe is red and contains the word "PRIDE", the middle stripe is orange and displays "IN", and the bottom stripe is yellow with the word "SELF". The poster appears to be mounted on a white wall. This poster is part of the "Out on an Island: Pride In Self, Pride In Place" exhibition at Quay Arts Centre on the Isle of Wight. The colour scheme uses warm tones (red, orange, and yellow) that are reminiscent of the pride flag colours, although the poster appears to show only the top three stripes of the traditional six-striped rainbow flag. The design is simple and bold with clear, white lettering against the coloured backgrounds. The exhibition explores themes of LGBTQ+ identity, community, and personal acceptance, particularly in the context of island life on the Isle of Wight. — Out on an Island: Pride In Self, Pride In Place

Quantified Self

This week: Stand 7/7; Exercise 4/7 and Move 4/7. (71%). Morning walks: 0/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Total steps: 48,172

Life

I continued to feel unwell for much of the week. Wednesday, I tried to go to my Tai Chi class but my coughing fit on the train to Waterloo persuaded me it would be better to return home.
I did do Monday’s pub quiz. We were 4th. That might be the best placing for a long time.
Last week I mentioned that I managed to get a GP appointment on Monday. Not only did I do that, I got a walk-up x-ray appointment on the same day and there was nobody else waiting when I arrived. The NHS worked for me.
Oh, the excitement: the boiler was serviced. The engineer turned up at just the right moment between two meetings. And tested the carbon monoxide alarm, which, I think, is the first time I’ve ever heard the noise it makes.
I did go to the office on Thursday. Lots of meetings about the next phase of work. Nothing concrete yet, but progress is being made.
Thursday evening to The Island. A smaller boat than usual on the crossing to Ryde, which meant the 8:20pm sailing felt very busy.
Related, we turned-up early for the return voyage on Sunday, and made it on to the boat but it was full.
On Friday, I succeeded and presenting my ID to the solicitors and failed to get the carpenter to remove the box surrounding the electricity meter.
Saturday, to Newport to see Out on an Island: Pride In Self, Pride In Place, an exhibition to celebrate 20 years of LGBT History Month in the UK. Fascinating. We ended up buying the book (and the lunch at Quay Arts was good too)
Sunday, to Hedge End and Sunday lunch with T. The pub he found was excellent and the portions superb.

Media

The concluding episode of the new Bergerac was good. I didn’t see it all coming together until the end, which I think is the mark of a good detective series.
We’re sticking with Prime Target on Apple TV, even though Edward belief in the maths in spite of all that is going on around him, is annoying.
Remember Monday was announced as the UK’s Eurovision entry: What The Hell Just Happened?

And She Said, “Life in plastic has been fantastic”

But really, the job I’d really want, is writing the answers to the daft questions people ask.

Earlier, on Facebook:

Voice recognition systems – Amazon’s Alexa or any other – must be one of the most fascinating areas of computing to work on. There are a lot of very smart brains working on artificial intelligence systems that enable Alexa to answer the millions of questions asked of her every day.

But really, the job I’d really want, is writing the answers to the daft questions people ask. “Alexa, what’s the first rule of Fight Club?” or “Alexa, do you really want to hurt me?” Anybody whose job means they get to write “… and happy birthday to Barbie whose life in plastic has been fantastic for 58 years” must be having a blast.

Mashable has a story today about a woman who asked Alexa about any connections to the CIA – at which point the system appears to crash. Obviously proof that all conspiracy theorists are correct.

The person with that fun job was swift off the mark. Now, somebody’s waved their neuralyzer & Alexa’s been updated and claims to work for Amazon. If it was me, I’d update Alexa’s sense of time and stop responding to my happy ‘good morning’ at 10pm with an equally up-beat ‘good morning’ and make her grumpy and tired.

Or maybe that would be a bit too human.

My Music and Radio Posts Connected

Two recent posts are connected, but I only noted it by reading them back.

It’s obvious that my previous posts about music and radio are connected. Music is more than just a personal space definer. It is, of course, a great mood-changer.

I noted the two radio breakfast programmes that I want to listen to. Chris Moyles and Terry Wogan are both great radio presenters, different in style, but no less entertaining. Having listened to Wogan for several years why did I switch? I think, ultimately, it came down to music choice. Wogan’s music has always been a little pedestrian and slow for my mornings. I don’t like it mad or frantic but I do like it upbeat. Now that there is an alternative breakfast presenter that I like, the choice has come down to the music. Chris Moyles plays upbeat music and I need that upbeat sound to get me going in the mornings. So my mornings are being re-defined for me.

Adaptation

It’s wowed audiences and received Oscar nominations(for Nicolas Cage, Chris Cooper, Meryl Streep and for Charlie Kaufman’s writing) but it didn’t do very much for me. Sadly, I was almost asleep, which I guess isn’t a good review.

In theory, it’s an interesting movie. Instead of being able to write a screenplay based on Susan Orlean’s bestselling novel “The Orchid Thief“, Charlie Kaufman (and his twin brother, Donald – more about him later) write a movie telling the tale that the film can not be written. We suffer with the author as he faces writer’s block and is tormented by false starts. Of course, during this process, we also get to see something of The Orchid Thief itself as characters within the novel have to face their own torments.

Charlie Kaufman is, of course, a real screenwriter (he wrote Being John Malkovich), and the tale appears somewhat autobiographical. Donald Kaufman, who shares the writing credit and is – I imagine – also nominated for The Oscar, is fictitious: a plot device to add to Charlie’s trauma and help finish the film.

I’ve heard great things about this film – and that made me want to see it. I read a great feature on it in a recent edition of Empire which also made it sound interesting and people have raved about it. I was looking forward to seeing it and, sadly, I left the cinema bitterly disappointed. You can’t fault the film on originality, story-telling or acting (Streep is fantastic, Cage superb as both twins) but something didn’t work for me. It’s terrible when that happens in a film, but this time it didn’t work. It would be an interesting take to see if I could watch it again and if I could get more out of it.

Unfortunately, I do think that while it’s clever it’s also confusing. Those who understand more about the screenwriting process or the struggles of the author may get more out of it.

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Originally posted at musak.org