Day: 21 August 2022

Weeknotes #16

Week commencing Monday, 15 August 2022

Norwich Cathedral

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 6/7; Exercise 5/7 and Move 5/7. (76%, better).

Life

  • I returned the rental car first thing on Monday morning. The Enterprise car hire place is very busy but the staff always seem very friendly. I’m still not sure why a bigger car was cheaper than the last time I rented but I have no complaints. Except petrol is very expensive.
  • We became a car-free household about 11 years ago. In the last year we have rented a car 3 times which is the highest number of rentals in any single year since we gave up our own car, with the exception of the year we moved house when we had a few daily rentals. While I quite enjoy driving and find having a car very handy, especially around Christmas, two days on the motorways last weekend reminded me how much better life without the car is. Except for rail strikes.
  • On Monday night we went to Soho to meet Phil. A lovely evening with an excellent dinner. Initially, we sat outside the restaurant but the rains came. It was a heavy downpour so we moved inside. By the time we left you could be forgiven for not realising it had rained. The whole of South East England was grateful of 30 minutes of rain.
  • Thursday for drinks with the product team. A kind-of leaving do because my boss, Sharon, in on holiday when I actually leave. I think it was both lovely and also, slightly, sad that we hadn’t had these conversations during lockdown. Nice to spend a night with them.
  • On Friday, we took a bus, because a lot of trains were recovering from yesterday’s strike, to Streatham where we met friends and drove to an Airbnb in Norwich. Some of the roads are remarkably straight.
  • Norwich is great. The cathedral is an amazing combination an old church and a new bit added on. But it’s been added on very sympathetically. I sat in the nave and contemplated life for longer than my friends were comfortable with.
  • I also lit a candle. I often do this in churches. I thought, primarily, of my grandparents. It was lovely. And sad. I am not sure what was in my eye.
  • We visited Great Yarmouth (underrated), Cromer (excellent crab lunch) and Cambridge (obviously foreign tourists). I loved them all. It was such a nice way to see East Anglia. And also the Anglia TV building. Can’t quite tell if it’s in use.

Archived at The Wayback Machine.

36 For 06

I have been rearranging and organising some of my photographs on the site today. In a bid to ease the effort it really would take to maintain this site, I am moving all my online photographs to Flickr. I have been using Flickr for a number of years, and my installation of Gallery on this site has not been used for a long time. So, shortly, the domain for photos.curnow.org will point to a new page about my photographs.

2006 Mobile Mosaic

As a result, I realised that I had not created the mobile set for 2006. In recent years I have been collating photographs taken with my mobile phone camera into a storyboard for the year. In 2004 I selected 100, but for 2005 I only managed 50. In 2006 I was again able to select 100 images that told a brief story of the year. You can see the 2006 set at Flickr. The last couple of sets were illustrated by the inclusion of thumbnails of each picture. I decided against that this year and instead created a mosaic to showcase a random selection from the 100 best mobile pictures.

So, the mosaic is a brief selection of the 100 mobile pictures that tell the story for 2006. Click here for the full set and feel free to comment on the set on Flickr.

Fast Food Fact Frenzy (1)

I don’t want to play food facts today …

  • The typical American now consumes approximately three hamburgers and four orders of french fries every week.
  • McDonald’s operates more playgrounds than any other private entity in the United States

Should we be worried? [Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser] And that’s only from the introduction!