Day: 10 March 2024

Weeknotes #59: first to the restaurant, not first in the dart game

Restaurant surprise. Work trip, health concerns, darts, project progress, website update, dinner.

Week commencing Monday, 4 March 2024

The dart and score boards at Flight Club
Flight Club

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 5/7; Exercise 2/7 and Move 4/7. (52%). Morning walks: 0/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Total steps: 40,344

Life

  • It’s not often I am first at the restaurant. I didn’t know which of our group had booked it, so I nearly crossed the road. I was in the right place.
  • Related: The old Carreras Cigarette Factory building is stunningly lit in the evenings. I think that’s one to come back to.
  • PY went on a work trip to France and seemed to enjoy immersing himself in the art. I had the alarm serviced.
  • My arm continues to cause me problems. A colleague joked he wouldn’t speak to me on our in-office day if I didn’t book a doctor’s appointment, so I did.
  • Thursday evening Flight Club darts with colleagues and friends. I hit the dart board, which counts as winning. It was nice to catch up with Alex.
  • We continue to make progress on the work project. It’s been two weeks of testing, and it is progressing well. A spanner may—or may not—have been thrown into the thing on Friday morning, but I decided not to worry about it (until next week, at least).
  • Part of the weekend was updating curnow.org to have a dedicated weeknotes page. While reading some older writing, I also decided to collect film (and other) reviews on a single page.
  • Delicious dinner at 40 Dean Street, followed by The West End sing The Oscars where Jack Reitman and Lewis Asquith did a funny version of “I’m Just Ken”. The players sang Happy Birthday to PY ahead of next week.

Media

  • Tears for Fears: Scenes from the Big Chair was a great insight into Songs From The Big Chair and I want to listen to the album again.
  • I wasn’t fully concentrating on A-ha: The Movie and missed a lot because it was subtitled. But I gather the band gets together, has hits, falls out, and then makes up and makes music again—a pretty standard band story. Or did I miss the subtleties?

Dreams of the Downsized

Today’s client visit evoked sadness witnessing online group’s downsizing struggles.

I went to see a client this morning: nothing too unusual in that fact. It was a client I have worked with over several years – the internet arm of a well-known organisation. Again, nothing too exceptional. Nice chat, coffee and a new product overview (from my part). As I had not seen them for a while, I thought it would be nice to go back. Now, don’t get me wrong, it was great to see people there. What was sad were the changes that have happened to the online group over the last year. Gone are the product managers, most developers and many of the other staff. They are now much, much smaller than they were.


Again, nothing too unusual in this, but today it struck me as sad. The ideas and the passion, the desire to make something happen and be part of it that all those people had – gone. How many people in so-called new media industries have been through it (some, several times)? I have been through the cut-back mill as people around me are “downsized” to allow companies to survive. Yet, today – I think – was the first day the scale of it struck me. I can’t explain it, and I am not sure that I want to try, but today I think I understood how the internet was built up and how it failed to deliver on those dreams for many people.


The “why” of it all is a different story for a different day. Today is about the good people who have moved on. Hopefully, they’re doing better.