Weeknotes #62: hot tubs and paella hunt

Holidays, hot tubs, paella hunt, airport observations

Week commencing Monday, 25 March 2024

A beach in Lanzarote
Beach

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 7/7; Exercise 7/7 and Move 6/7. (95%). Total steps: 102,234

Life

  • Holidays are relaxing, but the presence of a hot tub vastly improves relaxation.
  • Finding, what seems like, authentic paella is harder in Lanzarote than I imagined. Maybe it’s not a thing here.
  • Related, it’s definitely not at a waterfront restaurant in Arrecife.
  • The Arrecife branch of Zara is not permanently closed as some apps said. It’s moved to the mall.
  • Related, I did not indulge in the McDonald’s food. But my resolve may have been weaker if they’d had milkshakes on the menu.
  • Walking with toes in the sea is remarkably calming. The foot rinsing showers are super handy.
  • A museum told me that the first aircraft to pass over Lanzarote were Zeppelin airships, and they used to drop mail by parachute as they passed overhead.
  • Related, the bus should stop at Museo Aeronáutico del Aeropuerto de Lanzarote. I felt like I would be stopped by the police on the walk from the terminal.
  • Relatedly, related: Buses run to a different schedule on Maundy Thursday. Even the bus drivers didn’t know when they should go.
  • A couple of walks to Playa Honda and beyond took us past the modern airport. I still enjoy watching the planes coming and going while trying to work out where they may be flying to or from (there’s an app for that).

Media

  • I was increasingly absorbed by Robert Elms’ London Made Us. “A cab diver stuck in a morass of road works and construction jams once said exasperatedly to me, ‘London is great, but it will be better when it’s finished.’ But of course the opposite is true, London will be finished when it’s finished.” (p291)
  • Bryant & May Investigate White Corridor is another wonderful book in the series. Even in Lanzarote, the descriptions of the snowstorm were chilling.
  • Beyoncé released Cowboy Carter while we were away. Wow, that’s a long album. Apparently, she recorded 100 songs for it. Thank god she could edit some out. I need to listen it more.
  • The only TV I watched while away was The Life And Death Of Lily Savage and I am glad I did. What a great story.

Portion Distortion

Perils of portion distortion, or why Americans don’t know when enough is enough.

Catching up with the excellent writings of Chris at prosaic (whose new design is simple and elegant), I was directed to an article at sfgate.com (The Obesity Crisis), which is fascinating and rings true. I am sure that, over the last ten years, the amount of food I have consumed has increased massively as a result of the size of the portions that I eat (rather than eating more meals). Anyway, methinks I should head off to the gym now and resist the urge to simplify the look of this site …

Add Listen To Musak’s Content to My Yahoo!

Now you can read me via Yahoo!

Add Listen To Musak’s Content to My Yahoo!

You will see, on the right-hand side of the page, a new link added so that you can add the content of Listen To Musak to My Yahoo!

Yahoo! has always been my favourite portal, and for many years,My Yahoo! was my homepage. These days, I tend to favour Bloglines so that I can read the content I am interested in. I think this is a great new feature for Yahoo! and it’s good to see them being inventive again.

As usual, when big portals roll out features, it seems they’re only available to users of the my.yahoo.com domain rather than those of us who have correctly set our country to the UK and are thus pointed to uk.my.yahoo.com. Still, removing the UK portion of the URL allows you to see this feature.

One of my usability gripes about Yahoo! has always been the way the switch you between localised domains. You can read some content at news.yahoo.com and then suddenly be shunted to uk.news.yahoo.com with no obvious way back. It’s one thing they have needed to address for a long time. On the other hand, I wait to see how good My Yahoo will become as a newsreader.

Anyway, add me. Thanks.

Gay Weddings

Link to Ultrasparky on gay marriage.

Of the many pieces of gay marriage – including some of my own –this is one of the most succinct, well-written and meaningful items I’ve found.

I don’t care if your religion approves or not: I’m not asking it to. But our government claims to function separately from religion, and it grants legal rights to married couples that have nothing whatsoever to do with the religious affiliations of married couples.

Ultrasparky

Go read it and spread the word.