October 6, 2024 – Hello Curns

Weeknotes #89: A lot of out and about

Weeknotes covering events, thoughts, and social activities.

Week commencing Monday, 30 September 2024

A view of the concrete blocks of the National Theatre, with the statue of Laurence Olivier in the foreground — Coriolanus at The National, darling.

Quantified Self

This week: Stand 7/7; Exercise 7/7 and Move 7/7. (100%). Morning walks: 2/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Total steps: 70,420

Life

33 years.
Previously, 12, 13, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32.
I attended a “lunch and learn” about Kanban. Far too much discussion of WIP. I shouldn’t have joined. See last week’s note. My fault I wasted an hour, not the host’s problem.
For information-based jobs, the working-at-home genie isn’t going back in the bottle. There may well be a temporary rebound as desperate executives try, and some employees do prefer it. I see it in leaders around me who can’t articulate the benefits outside of wavey-hand “better together”. The story of the woman who went back and died, unnoticed, at her desk is an awful indictment of the “collaboration” excuse.
23 September was the fiftieth birthday of Ceefax (and UK Teletext). I’m surprised I didn’t read more about it, which is why I did not comment on it last week. But, if you have the time, join the campaign to find old teletext broadcasts and archive them.
From comments to that article, I don’t recall Radio Rentals selling mobile phones. £43. Bargain.
In 1882, the world’s first coal-fired power station was fired up in the UK. On 30th September 2024, 142 years later, our last coal plant shut down.
British Seniors is a life insurance company. They advertise on TV, a lot. I don’t feel senior. It drives me mad.
Thursday, Coriolanus at The National Theatre is superb, but as with all Shakespeare, it takes me a while to get into the flow of the language. The stage text helped.
Dinner with friends on Friday, and also on Saturday, was lovely. The service at the Holborn Dining Room was fantastic.
Sunday included a visit to the Isle of Wight festival exhibition at the O2 and another fabulous Cozy Cows presents: this week it was the Bee Gees

Media

I wouldn’t want to work in press for D&D restaurants; this double page feature in the new London Standard wasn’t glowing: Has this legend of the restaurant scene lost its cool?

AI-sourced views on HS2 Northern leg cancellation

Some of the text on this page was written by 'AI' using gpt-3.5-turbo. I have corrected some US spellings to UK spellings in the response as the prompt for British English seems to have partially ignored

Back at the start of the year, I shared a piece of generative AI that I had created to try to understand how a mainstream tool worked in a specific, more technical context. I think it’s great but, at this stage, it was a generalist.

One of the limitations of the models used is that they have been trained on data to a fixed point in time and many are not able to look-up new data or information against the wider knowledge of the internet. Poe is a collection of AI tools and I noticed a bot had been released that is capable of conducting a web search.

So, with this week’s news that HS2 is to be scrapped I thought I’d try out the this AI to see what it came up with. I am quite impressed with both the output and the referencing but it is limited to a couple of sources. In particular, the references to the Construction Plant-hire Association (CPA) are to a single 185 word statement. Nonetheless, I thought interesting new capabilities from AI.

The Prompt

Summarise responses to the cancellation of HS2 to Manchester. Use British English.

The AI generated response

The cancellation of the HS2 leg to Manchester has generated various responses. Here is a summary of the key reactions:

Disappointment and Concern

Many individuals and organisations have expressed disappointment and concern over the cancellation [1].
The Construction Plant-hire Association (CPA) described the decision as “extremely disappointing” and a significant blow to the UK construction sector [3].
Former Prime Minister David Cameron criticised the cancellation, stating that it was the wrong decision and would make it harder to build consensus for future long-term projects [2].

Impact on Plans and Confidence:

The cancellation has raised concerns about the impact on people who had made decisions based on the HS2 plans, such as moving or selling their homes [1].
The CPA warned that the decision could undermine confidence and impact future investment in the construction sector [3].

Alternative Funding and Projects:

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has promised to use the £36 billion of savings from scrapping the HS2 line to fund other transport schemes [2].
The government’s commitment to completing the HS2 line to Euston and diverting funding to other projects aimed at boosting transport infrastructure in the north has been highlighted [3].

Learn more:

Follow-up

Interestingly, WordPress (which is used to maintain this site) now includes an AI assistant that can review what has been written on this blog. I generated a review of this page. One of the pieces of feedback was, “Include diverse perspectives by including reactions from a wider range of individuals and organisations”. It amused me that an AI was, effectively, telling another AI to do better.

Autumn Again

It’s still my favourite season even if it was cold this morning.

Every year I talk about how nice autumn is (see, I did it here in 2003) and how much I like the season. If you have any doubts as to why I like the season then just go look at Flick’s autumn tag – it’s stunningly beautiful. Every autumn in the same with lots of work and me craving a holiday (see, I did that in 2002). This year is no different. But I have to admit – it was very cold this morning.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding

My Big Fat Greek Wedding was something of a hit and miss film. You learned much about the Greek (lead) character, Toula, and her inter-family relationships. But you learned very little about her love interest, Ian. If the point of the film was to show the development of Toula from the shy woman living life for her father by waiting tables (“seating hostess”) in his restaurant to the confident, beautiful self-styled woman that Ian Miller falls in love with, then, I guess, it succeeded. Sadly, because you know so little about him and his one-dimensional parents, this film feels empty and fails to pull you in.

Reviews will tell how My Big Fat Greek Wedding makes you laugh, cry and feel. I, however, was left wanting more. The large Greek family, played with love and humour, finally come to accept non-Greek Ian into the family. Ian, however, never challenges that their acceptance requires him to turn into them. Far from celebrating diversity, the film fails to show both sides of the tale and we are forced to believe that Ian will do anything, unquestioningly for Toula. I suspect that I am trying to read too much into, what should be, a light Saturday night romantic comedy but as the film played out its story I found myself less and less engaged.

Having said all this, there were some laugh-out-loud moments and some top-class performances. Andrea Martin (Aunt Voula), Michael Constantine (Gus) and Lainie Kazan (Maria) all stood out. The performance of Nia Vardalos (Toula), who also wrote the story, is also worth mentioning as she certainly conveyed Toula’s side of the story. Unfortunately, that’s all I felt I got (Toula’s side) and it could have been so much more.