Month: January 2024

Week commencing Monday, 22 January 2024

Quantified Self

• This week: Stand 3/7; Exercise 2/7 and Move 3/7. (38%, what’s going on?). Morning walks: 0/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Plant diversity: 42. Total steps: 39,165

Life

• The number of rental bikes being left in the middle of a pedestrian street is increasing and it’s hard to think of a solution that works. This one across the pavement on Sunday.
• A number of blockers have been rearing their head on the project I am working on. Tuesday, we decided on a minor change which we hoped took all the concerns away. Then some of them came back. Systems integration is not fun.
• Dinner with Mark B on Wednesday night – instead of my Tai Chi class – was a lovely, if slightly expensive, fish curry.
• I was going to go to a team dinner on Thursday but it switched to Nando’s which, at the time, I wasn’t too bothered about. Wish I’d gone now.
• Instead, I was in the pub coming up with ideas to better share our team communication which I didn’t follow-up on on Friday.
• Sunday, up to a rooftop in the city of London. It was a room with wooden floors and floor-to-ceiling windows. Nice views of Tower Bridge and St Paul’s cathedral but a very soulless experience.

Media

• Bread, diet-personalisation, milk, mushrooms and ultra-processed foods: Professor Tim Spector’s 5 foods I got wrong.
• Watched a number of things about the 40th anniversary of the Apple Macintosh computer. This by Stephen Fry was a different take.
• I tried to watch Last One Laughing Ireland after having seen a short interview with Graham Norton about it last week. The premise is good but I don’t think I watched enough to get into it. Comedians trying not to laugh meant their humour wasn’t that great at times. Maybe I’ll try again.
• I listened to a couple of episodes of Strike Force Five, a podcast that several of the hosts of American late night talk shows did during the writer’s strike last year. The aim was to raise some money for their staff who wouldn’t be working because of the walkout. I thought it might be interesting to hear them all chat in a way that competing TV hosts wouldn’t normally do. What came out most was that they all seem to get on really well.

Week commencing Monday, 15 January 2024

Quantified Self

• This week: Stand 7/7; Exercise 4/7 and Move 6/7. (81%). Morning walks: 1/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Plant diversity: 43. Total steps: 58,211

Life

• I didn’t know that: the book on British Rail that I have been reading says that Upper Crust, a sandwich retailer seen at most big mainline stations, was a concept developed by British Rail when it was still a nationalised operation.
• Related, p256, “Staff, however, when travelling around the network were entitled to reductions at station buffets for tea and sandwiches, but oddly not coffee, which at the time was perceived as a foreigners’ beverage.”
• Time Traveller’s Wide, Apollo Theatre. I hadn’t seen the book. The stage effects are good but I can’t remember a single tune.
• Thursday red wine at an overpriced bar. More at a cheaper place. Wrong train back meant a late-night trip across the bridge to the return platforms at Surbiton.
• My healthy eating habit goes well when I am at home and not well Friday night at Compton St. Brasserie (too warm inside); Saturday Lunch at The Rushmere (great soft shell crab but service was patchy) and dinner at The Ivy with a view of Tower Bridge (lovely classic menu).
• Sunday evening, Elvis was more enjoyable than I thought it would be. And the audience were up for it too!

Media

• Zoe: Why unhealthy carbs are making you sick. Eat better.
• ITV: The Pembrokeshire Murders. A great true crime drama where you know who the murderer is in the first half hour but they need the rest of the time to prove it.
• The New Yorker reporting on a British story I hand’t heard: The Disturbing Impact of the Cyberattack at the British Library
• Industry news in The Guardian: Jobs will be next’: TV ad slump prompts more fear among staff
• Freshman grew up in Telford: Crunch & Roll: Nigel Freshman

Week commencing Monday, 8 January 2024

Quantified Self

• This week: Stand 4/7; Exercise 5/7 and Move 5/7. (66%). Morning walks: 1/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Plant diversity: 19. Total steps: 64,746

Life

• Definitely back to full-throttle at work. Last week was a slow ramp-up. I needed it as I’m just feeling myself after my COVID infection a few weeks ago.
• Mr Bates vs The Post Office continues to dominate a lot of the news. Quite incredible for a TV show these days. I saw great commentary on rachel.blog: “That is what makes it so terrifying. It could have happened to any of us.” She says a lot more, some of which I would like to have said, although I would not have said it as well. Read it here.
• Buried on a PWL 90s playlist was a song called ‘Pink Champagne’ by Shakin’ Stevens. People of a certain age will remember his songs from the 80s but I had no recollection of this one. It’s not a bad song – reminiscent of his earlier hits- but didn’t mark a return to the Top 40 for ‘Shaky’. The next day, I dug out Green Door: that did reach the top of the charts (for 4 weeks, pop-pickers!).
• Related, I have one of those suitcase record players. It has a frustrating habit of skipping when I can see there’s no scratch (and, even, sometimes in a place it’s previously played OK). Wednesday, I went online and found the issue – it’s to do with the little block of plastic that raises the needle when you moving it. And the suggested fix seems to work.
• Thursday, was an office day which meant lots of chatting.
• The weekend was on the Isle of Wight. Saturday, a walk to Merstone along part of the former Sandown-Newport railway that closed in the mid-50s. Sad that there is no line into Newport today.
• Sunday, 6.5 miles up Bembridge Down. Views are stunning and the sun shone. Ploughman’s at the pub.

Media

• But first, this … is a lovely programme from counting down to the new year with the BBC Radio 4 announcers and hearing what happens behind the microphone. I can’t help wishing they’d left the new year ‘bongs’ in place on the BBC Sounds version.
• Netflix’s Good Grief is the directorial debut from Dan Levy of Schitt’s Creek fame. It follows Marc, who has lost his husband and how he copes with love after death. I enjoyed it.
• Trying to pick up The Morning Show again. Almost everybody is unpleasant in Series 2. I am struggling to find likeable characters.

Week commencing Monday, 1 January 2024

Quantified Self

• This week: Stand 6/7; Exercise 4/7 and Move 5/7. (71%). Morning walks: 0/4 (bank holiday). Office days 0/5. Plant diversity: not tracked. Total steps: 53,300

Life

• Happy New Year! I wonder what 2024 will bring? My New Year’s Eve party, mentioned last week, ended much later night than I predicted. It was a lot of fun but meant a sleepy Monday.
• For my post about link rot, I calculated that I was entering my 29th year of writing things on the internet. This site starts about 25 years ago but there are references to older material in Elsewhere: Wayback When which, itself, contains link rot.
• One of the first channels I subscribed to on YouTube was Tom Scott’s Things You Might Not Know. His 10 year streak of weekly videos came to an end this week. Simon Willison wrote about the power of streaks. Although this is weeknote 50, I am only 29 weeks into the current streak. Can I keep it up for another nine and a half years?
• Wednesday, an over-running meeting turned out to be useful even if I missed my class.
• Thursday, an afternoon on a train to the Isle of Wight to deal with a plumbing emergency. Turns out, afternoon trains are quieter which means it’s easier to get a table and the WiFi is speedy due to under utilisation. I was more productive on the journey than I thought I would be.
• There was a leak. It wasn’t mine but it was running through my bathroom. I arranged for the emergency plumber, thanks to a lovely lady who answered the insurance emergency assistance line. Not sure if it will be covered because the broken pipe was upstairs. A stressful afternoon was resolved by 10pm. And I met the neighbours.
• Friday’s after hours return was exactly 3 hours door-to-door. The fastest yet and shows how wonderfully efficient trains can be when they are able to run to the timetable.
• Not much sleep. Up at 5:30am Saturday for a day trip to Shrewsbury to help pack-up Christmas. So early that Vauxhall bus station was full of the Friday-Night-On-The-Towners heading home. Trip was productive.
• While in Shrewsbury, I found a pair of cardboard glasses that I had to wear in a school production of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. That was 40+ years ago. And the sellotape still holds.
• My return trip delayed which proves that the comment above, about efficient trains, jinxed everything.
• The first ‘Crazy Coqs Presents’ of the year was the music of Annie Lennox and the Eurythmics. Wonderful start.

Media

• A version of Mickey Mouse is now in the public domain in the US. How does it work with the different copyright laws in Europe?
• Mr Bates vs The Post Office is a wonderful bit of drama and really highlights the miscarriage of justice.
• Listened to the first couple of podcast episodes of Death of a Codebreaker, the story of a GCHQ employee found dead locked in a bag in the bath of his flat. Bizarre story. I am intrigued how they will pad out the remaining episodes.
• The Crunch & Roll episode featuring The late night Funster brought back memories of Piccadilly and Signal radio.

Archive

Going forward, I have decided to drop this archive section. My original intent was to make it easier to find the items referenced in my weeknotes when inevitable link rot happens. I intend to ensure all the links are in the archive but I felt this section makes reading notes harder than it needed to be (and it’s a lot of extra work to add it when the Wayback Machine can take care of creating a snapshot from this post alone). I’m sorry to future me for this decision. I wrote more here.