Week commencing Monday, 12 October 2026
Quantified Self
- This week: Stand 6/7; Exercise 2/7 and Move 4/7. (%). Morning walks: 0/4. Office days: 0/5. Total steps: 35,769. 21.2 hours in meetings.
Life
- To Shrewsbury. Looking out of the train window in the West Midlands, as we approach New Street, I remain impressed by the scale of the concrete viaducts being built for HS2. Delta Junction alone has 13 interconnected viaducts. Network Rail describes central Birmingham as one of the most congested parts of the British railway network, which might explain why my journey from Birmingham International to New Street was 14 minutes late. Perhaps all that concrete will eventually help.
- Related, I bought a can of Bramble Hill rosé from M&S for the train, only to discover that canned wine dates back to 1936. Why has it taken 90 years for the world to decide this was a good idea? I’m not averse to drinking directly from one of those mini wine bottles, but at least a can makes me look slightly less like a lush.
- Relatedly related, last week the Shrewsbury taxi driver decided I live there and commute regularly to London. I decided not to correct him. It’s nice to have a second life. This week, Jez picked me up, so my double life is on hold.
- In real news, Andy Burnham has reopened the conversation about Britain’s relationship with the EU, just a couple of weeks after Macron described Brexit as the biggest lie of the last 30 years and said we’d be welcome back. It’s a bit like being invited back to a party after making a tearful exit, and we’ve all been there.
- Apple announced its new HomeView, a smart home display with a seven-inch screen, FaceTime, Siri AI and shared photo albums. After last week’s comment, it could replace my increasingly useless Meta Portal, so I’ve ordered one, though the screen size isn’t as good as I’d like. Whether I need all the clever AI features when I really just want something to show photographs remains to be seen. At least I should be able to look at the pictures again.
- OK. Somebody has definitely put something in the water: Shyam Sankar, CTO of Palantir, says AI researchers have started smoking because they’re convinced AI (Claude, probably) is going to cure cancer. H/t: Daring Fireball.
Media
- Watched Schitt’s Creek: Sunrise, Sunset, in which Moira is invited to return to the soap opera that made her famous. About halfway through, we realised we’d already seen it, but carried on watching anyway. It’s still very funny, and Catherine O’Hara’s Moira is such a wonderful character that watching it twice hardly seems a chore.
- Watched Ellen DeGeneres on The Graham Norton Show. After years of asking questions, she was on the receiving end. I wonder whether she was mentally marking Graham’s interviewing technique? She did ask some good questions.
- We watched the much-acclaimed Gosford Park as a family. I loved its dissection of the British class system (even more so because of the star-studded cast doing it), but eventually I was willing the murder to happen just to get the plot moving.