Day: 30 March 2025

Weeknotes #114: theatre and a weekend in Paris

Family, food, and Paris adventures made for a lovely week.

Week commencing Monday, 24 March 2025

This image shows the Eiffel Tower in Paris at night, illuminated with bright golden-yellow lights that make it glow dramatically against the dark sky. The tower is captured from below, highlighting its iconic lattice structure and distinctive silhouette. A bright beam streaks across the night sky behind the tower, creating an interesting visual contrast with the warm-toned illumination of the monument. The top portion of the tower with its antenna spire is clearly visible, while the base extends beyond the frame of the image. This nighttime view showcases why the Eiffel Tower's evening light display is such a famous attraction in Paris.
Eiffel Tower in Paris at night

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 7/7; Exercise 2/7 and Move 6/7. (71%). Morning walks: 0/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Total steps: 56907

Life

  • Monday, attended One Night in Bohemia, a Jonathan Larson tribute concert at the Phoenix Arts Club. An energised performance featuring a standout cast, raising funds for the National AIDS Trust.
  • Tuesday, saw My Neighbour Totoro at the Gillian Lynne Theatre. A visually imaginative and whimsical stage adaptation, great puppetry and creative direction.
  • Wednesday is a change of office day for me. I had a hectic commute, productive meetings, and evening plans cancelled. Dinner included an inventive fridge-clear-out pasta dish.
  • Thursday: I worked from home. It was a quiet day. Mum and Dad arrived. It was strange to communicate with people in the office on the day I would usually be there.
  • Related, a large vegetable chilli dinner was created.
  • Friday to Sunday, family trip to Paris. Travelled by Eurostar and stayed near the Arc de Triomphe. Enjoyed smooth connections, scenic views, and good food throughout.
  • Saturday, took in the sights on a hop-on hop-off bus tour, failed to wander along the Seine, and admired the Eiffel Tower at night during a river cruise.
  • Celebrated Mother’s Day with lunch on the Bustronome, a double-decker dining experience offering panoramic views of the city as we ate.

Link Dump

A selection of things that deserve more comment, but won’t get it because time is a-ticking by.

Things I should speak about but there’s too much happening in the world:

  • The Tories are holding a ‘gay summit’, which is a shock to those of us who remember Margaret Thatcher’s rants. I am certain that, at one point, it was the Conservatives who wanted to round us all up and shoot us.
  • Andy points to a site for hot Brazilian men, which amuses me for some reason that I can not explain.
  • And over at Man of the Moment, I am receiving a lot of comment spam on Andrew Kinlochan, which means I need to find the time to upgrade this instance of Moveable Type to implement some of the spam-blocking features. In researching them, I notice there’s a whole raft of new functionality in the next release. I am, sadly, excited by this news.
  • Six Apart, the guys behind Movable Type, have grown phenomenally this year. Mena’s written something about it, which goes to show how difficult it can be to communicate when you’re a small company.
  • Lance Arthur has written 13 Reasons Why You Could Be My Boyfriend, and, as always, it’s a very well-written piece. But one of the items really struck a chord with me for some reason: ‘6: You Have Passion‘. It got me asking myself, ‘what subject am I passionate about?’ and, right now, I am not so sure (although I can go on about my newfound love of the gym and roller casters if I am pushed). I don’t think that’s healthy.
  • Dan Savage got legally married– but to a woman: ‘We emphasised to the clerk and her manager that Amy and I don’t live together, we don’t love each other, we don’t plan to have kids together, and we’re going to go on living and sleeping with our same-sex partners after we get married. So could we still get a marriage license?’ How fantastic.
  • And I learned a new acronym today: SPIM (spam over instant messaging). You heard it here first (maybe).

What a great day.

Straight Men Are Shopping Kings?

New research by one of the leading retail institutes shows men are beginning to get even with the queens of shopping.

I have never been one to consider myself well-dressed, fit or particularly over-groomed. Clean and tidy (I hope), but I have never been one to peruse the fashion rails at Selfridges for the latest gear. Therefore, I don’t consider that I fit any gay stereotype. However, it appears I now don’t conform to the male stereotype:

We surveyed a group of guys in Birmingham and they said rather than meeting down in the pub, they would now meet in Selfridges for a drink and then go shopping

The Scotsman

That’s it. Time to ditch the M&S shirts at once.