Day: 10 September 2023

Weeknotes #33: little big things

Week commencing Monday, 4 September 2023

Outside the theatre where The Little Big Things is playing
The Little Big Things

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 2/7; Exercise 3/7 and Move 4/7. (42%, terrible). Morning walks: 0/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Total steps: 36,122

Life

  • The Little Big Things is a wonderful new musical based on the life of mouth artist Henry Fraser. It’s opened at the lovely Soho Place Theatre. We went on Friday night where there was a full standing ovation. I followed Lord Lloyd Webber down the stairs afterwards. If that’s not a seal of approval then I don’t know what is.
  • Business software 1: I do like a sequence diagram when explaining a product feature. I should do more of them. I did a couple to explain projects I am handing over.
  • Related: websequencediagrams.com makes it easy. I subscribed in my last job. I may do in my next.
  • Business software 2: Jira is a tool used by a host of software companies. People love it; people hate it and people love to hate it. But lots of people use it. It’s (almost) endlessly flexible. And in my job, it has all the info in it. So, why don’t people use it to get the info instead of scheduling meetings?
  • Related: labels are good in both Jira and Confluence: use them with abandon.
  • Related, related: tidied up a lot of tickets this week and wrote my final piece of documentation which was, in reality, an update to an existing doc but it felt like I was completing something. The list of closed tickets looks remarkably short.
  • Related, related: Team lunch on Tuesday was nice, although service was slow and a couple of people had to run off at the end for calls.
  • (Not business) software: when did WordPress get an AI assistant that reviews what’s been written? Interesting take on last week ’s Weeknote: “Overall, the content is informative and provides a good snapshot of the week. With some structural improvements and additional visual elements, it can become even more engaging for readers.”
  • I’ve previously mentioned the UK government’s position on messaging app encryption. Today a u-turn that the government says isn’t: “A new statement concedes that the tech to access messaging without breaking security protocols does not exist” BBC: Government denies U-turn on encrypted messaging row.
  • Thursday. How are you supposed to know if his advances are welcomed or not? Still, does anybody who is a ‘close protection bodyguard’ say that’s what they are?

Media

  • Started the second series of Apple TV’s The Morning Show. We enjoyed the first season but – and I have no idea why – we didn’t engage with the second. Suffice to say that we needed the recap and still have gaps in our recollection of the first. Episode one is confusing (are you fired or not?) but by the end we were hooked and went straight into episode two. And later in the week, episode 3.
  • Currently, politics is divided but this interview with David Lammy, shadow foreign secretary feels inclusive and suggests our future policies could be better than the ones we have.

Archive

To save the links getting lost in the future I checked the Internet Archive to see what they had saved for the posts linked here. If the source above no longer works, these should.

A Mastery Of Technology

Technology is good for us. But sometimes it gets the better of us. Like today when it wasn’t that helpful. My train was rebooted this morning. I was heading to the airport and sat in my train seat waiting to leave the station. I had a nice cup of morning coffee in my hands (I was still in England, it’s civilised like that).

I am writing this episode of .org on one side of the screen while watching an episode of Queer As Folk (US version) on the other side of the screen. I’m playing it from my computer’s built-in DVD. I am doing this as I am sat in a hotel room in Oslo. See, the relentless march of technology allows me to mutli-task in ways I would never have imagined a few years ago.

You could almost say I am stunned. But I am not. I am just bored in a hotel room.

Having said that, it would be great if all that technology stomping around the world managed to get a coffee machine or kettle in this hotel room. As it is I had to take the lift and fetch a cup of over strong coffee from the reception area. Really, Scandinavia is supposed to be so much more advanced. All this wood, heated bathroom flooring and sweet herring is all well and good but I want a good old fashioned cup of Costa Coffee and there isn’t one to be had.

Sorry, back to that relentless technology marching. I am seeing sleek back and silver gadgets marching in perfect unison through Red Square; USB cables tightly rolled and ready to attack at the first sight of an invasion. General Mac and Air Marshall Windows quietly surveying their battalions with stern pride and swelling chests full of medals. But this is modern tech. It would fail. It would let you down. The connector would be the wrong size or the driver would be missing. The intruders would conquer and a few bits of bare wire and broken hard drives would litter the streets.

See, I am well aware that technology is not fool-proof. How many times have you sent that email to somebody who should not have been on the cc list? How many times have you wasted half the paper in the printer because you forgot to check how that document would print? How many times did your Sat Nav take you the wrong way down a one-way street? How many times have you called somebody on your mobile that you didn’t mean to call? How many times have to had to reboot your train?

Yes, honestly, my train was rebooted this morning. I was heading to the airport and sat in my train seat waiting to leave the station. I had a nice cup of morning coffee in my hands (I was still in England, it’s civilised like that). I was thinking ‘which terminal?’ and wondering if those people on the platform were going to be charged excess baggage for the small van-load of cases they were taking. Then the train driver announced a small problem they were working on. A few minutes passed. We were late. The driver came on the tannoy again: now the power would be turned off and back on again. We weren’t to panic as we were plunged into darkness and the doors locked themselves. So we sat there in darkness with all the power gone. And then somebody switched us on again and – as with all turn it off and on agains – we were good to go. So we did. Go, that is.

Seriously, they turned my train off and then on again to fix it.

And it was at that moment I knew that technology had gotten the better of us. Machines now rule and we are relegated to the bit parts (every pun intended).

Where’s Matt’s Tongue?

There are too many obvious jokes here.

I have no real reason to post this about Matt Damon and porn apart from the fact that is amused me a great deal:

It’s difficult to tell if Damon’s tongue was firmly implanted in cheek when he spoke, but World Entertainment News Network is reporting that Matt wants to make a “character-driven” XXX flick – with dare we say it, a plot. [source]

and Steph and Alek have some great pictures. It’s probably not wise to think about it a great deal.

Around The World

Two contrasting stories from around the world.

Two contrasting stories:

South Africa’s highest court ruled Tuesday that gay and lesbian couples can adopt children, becoming one of only a handful of countries to sanction the step [CNN].

A recent report by Los Angeles County shows that hate crimes were up in 2001, with the bulk of new attacks based on Sept. 11 backlash and an increased number of assaults against the GLBT community [PlanetOut]