Day: 27 November 2022

Weeknotes #19

Week commencing Monday, 21 November 2022

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 7/7; Exercise 5/7 and Move 6/7. (86%, getting better).

Life

  • It’s taken me a little longer to get back to this than I had imagined. I decorated, I visited family and I went on holiday. I started a new job. And I have spent a couple of weekends on The Isle of Wight.
  • Has a lovely Thai duck curry at Nay Thai in Surbiton with Angela and Rich and an amusing evening swapping home buying horror stories. I think, like anybody who has ever nought a house in Britain, we all wondered why it’s so hard and takes so long.
  • Drinks for the Thirsty Thursday even were a much quieter evening that I think had been planned but lovely nonetheless. We didn’t get to see the 3D advertising in Piccadilly Circus that Cornelia had want to take a look at.
  • A Friday evening train to Havant allowed us to catch a bus to Hayling Island to meet Jo, Phil, Christine and David. Followed the England v USA World Cup match via family WhatsApp on the way down. It was still on TV when we arrived and it consensus of the pundits matched the view that it was not a good game for England.
  • We had a lovely weekend in a little house overlooking the beach and experiencing winter by the sea. Sadly the little Hayling Island strain wasn’t running because part of the track was flooded.
  • PY and I took a walk along the coast to the ferry point which was, sadly, not running this weekend. Stopped for a glass of wine at the Inn on the Beach with a view of the kite surfers.
  • We discovered that there are some very expensive homes along that part of the coast. Sunday was spent at Gunwharf Quays before taking the train back.

Media

  • The High Performance podcast is something I have been meaning to listen to. A number of recommendations for the Tyson Fury episode resulted in me listening to it. Recommended.

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 original source above no longer works, these should.

Elsewhere: Wish I was at home for Christmas

We are past the moment when we all start to discuss if mince pies should be in the shops and are slightly panicked when we meet somebody who says that they have already purchased and wrapped their Christmas presents for the year.  We’ve moved beyond the point when we ask if shops really should be playing Christmas songs to wondering when they’re going to play Slade on the radio.  But, year after year, we never get past the point when it’s OK to ask if Jona Lewie’s ‘Stop The Cavalry” is really a Christmas song or not even though it’s been played continually at this time of year for almost 23 years.

To help – or not – with this debate MyFizzyPop has a Top 10 list of non-Christmas Christmas songs featuring the likes of Living In A Box, East 17 and Steps. Not a sign of Jona Lewie on that list, but given it’s featured on almost every Christmas musical compilation there is I think we can allow the omission.

It is in this post that I have, at last, found somebody who likes an obscure song by a duet that I probably should not admit to liking. So I just had to have my say:

I’ve never found anybody else who appreciates the pure pop perfection of Jason & Kylie’s “All I Wanna Do” which, in my very humble opinion, was much better than the other side but rarely – if ever – played on the radio. “All I wanna do is make you so, so happy”. Indeed.

You’ve missed The Flying Pickets ‘Only You’ from your list and it would certainly be in my top non-Christmas Christmas songs list (although it was a Christmas hit it doesn’t even mention the season). Using that instantly recognisable Vince Clarke tune as a base, which might also feature on your list itself, the a cappella version makes it a cosy Christmas number suitable for parties attended by Great Aunts. For some reason it brings to mind a roaring fire and Val Doonican in a Christmas scarf: wrapped-up, warm and – somewhere – there’s mulled wine.

See other comments and suggestions on the original post.

 

I Found Some Of Your Life

Interesting site with somebody’s photographs.

Alright, it might be months old but I never mentioned it!

I Found Some Of Your Life: In my possession is one memory card from a digital camera. This memory card was found in a taxi in New York City. I have no idea who the owner of the camera is.

Fascinating and slightly scary, don’t you think but interesting nonetheless. One of the more interestings possibilities resulting from the rise of digital photographs [via Photo Matt].

Maybe Hewlett-Packard’s “privacy protection system” for cameras would have been useful [via Tom].

Snow is Oslo?

I am in Oslo and I am certain I saw snow.

It may be Thanksgiving Day for some of my colleagues but some of us are still working. I am, however, lucky enough to be in Oslo. I flew in last night. It was dark when I arrived but there was an unmistakable hint of snow on the ground at the airport. Considering all the trips I make to this part of the world, I have been a little disappointed that I have never seen a great deal of snow here. I was particularly saddened that there was no snow in Helsinki recently. Alas, by the time I made the centre of Oslo there was nothing to be seen.

Happy Thanksgiving

In some parts of the world, today is a holiday.

I’ve worked for American companies for a few years and never really grasped what the thanksgiving holiday was all about (apart from some very obvious things). This year I actually started to look it up:

The first Thanksgiving was celebrated between the Pilgrims and the Indians in 1621. That first feast was a three day affair. Life for the early settlers was difficult. The fall harvest was time for celebration. It was also a time of prayer, thanking God for a good crop. The Pilgrims and the Indians created a huge feast including a wide variety of animals and fowl, as well as fruits and vegetables from the fall harvest. This early celebration was the start of today’s holiday celebration. Like then, we celebrate with a huge feast. [Source: holidayinsights.com]

I would like to wish anybody passing by a very happy holiday.

Of course there is always an alternative view.