Day: 10 December 2023

Weeknotes #46: 30 plants and a wonderful Christmastime

Week commencing Monday, 4 December 2023

Singers at TheCrazy Coqs annual Christmas songs night, 2023
Festive tunes

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 6/7; Exercise 7/7 and Move 7/7. (95%, happy with that). Morning walks: 3/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Plant diversity: 30. Total steps: 73,718

Life

  • My app tells me how many plants I have eaten in a week. The theory is that more diversity is better for you. I need to aim for 30. I’ve added it to the quantified self check list.
  • Finished work early on Monday. Decided the tree decorations needed tweaking. Flying Santa doesn’t fly on this tree. Sad-face emoji needed.
  • Tuesday to King’s Cross to meet Florent for a quick drink. He was at a drinks reception and it took me a while to find him.
  • Interesting thoughts about using AI to write: Why should someone bother to read what you didn’t bother to write?
  • Thursday, the decorations outside the office was nice. There was a meeting where the basic discussion has been happening for years. I believe we will solve it eventually.
  • Train disruption on Thursday evening: I wonder if it’s possible to solve these issues on the railway network or will it be like this forever?
  • Merry and Bright was a wonderful community lantern parade which, thankfully, happened between the light rain showers.
  • Heavy rain showers on Sunday meant I was soaked walking down Ryde Pier. Dried out by the time the train got us home.
  • The West End singers who perform at The Crazy Coqs each month are great. The annual Christmas-themed evening was wonderful. The homemade kebab I made when we got home, delicious.

Media

  • Monday, E4 started Modern Family from the pilot episode. Amazing how many of the characters were well-formed from the beginning.
  • Why Benedict Evans is Leaving Twitter. Whatever you think of the ‘blue bird’ site today, this is worth a read.
  • Crunch and Roll: Jo Russell sold insurance by day, played music on the radio by night.
  • The giggle was an amazing episode of Dr Who. So much to process.

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. YouTube links don’t seem to archive well so I don’t list them. If the source above no longer works, these should.

A Pointless Rant About Trains

I am not shocked at the mediocre service. I am not shocked that the staff on board couldn’t care about the confused passengers. What amazes me is that I took two trains and for the majority of both journeys the trains were full.

Today’s illogical rant follows in a moment. Do not be alarmed. An emergency exit is located here and here.

Virgin Trains have made a big deal about the investment in new trains. And the trains were very nice – the airline style at-seat audio was a nice touch. But the service was still below par. On the way north last weekend  the train had been changed and so seat reservations were no longer valid (yet our seat numbers were still there). They seems to have removed the at-seat buffet (which is handy on a full-train so you don’t lose your seat) and the train terminated early.

I am not shocked at the mediocre service. I am not shocked that the staff on board couldn’t care about the confused passengers (are you in my seat or not?). What amazes me is that I took two trains and for the majority of both journeys the trains were full. And by full I mean people were sitting in the parts between the carriages, on the floor in the cold, draughty bits (as an aside, how come it can be so draughty and ventilated and the toilets still smell?). Every train I ever take is full. To work in the morning. Home in the evening. North to visit my parents. South to visit PY’s parents. So why do we always hear about the lack of money in the railway system?