Weeknotes #53:Challenges and a savory moment

Weeknotes: Challenges with bike rentals, project blockers, social events, media exploration including podcasts and videos.

Week commencing Monday, 22 January 2024

A bike blocking the pavement

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.