Month: March 2024

Week commencing Monday, 25 March 2024

Quantified Self

• This week: Stand 7/7; Exercise 7/7 and Move 6/7. (95%). Total steps: 102,234

Life

• Holidays are relaxing, but the presence of a hot tub vastly improves relaxation.
• Finding, what seems like, authentic paella is harder in Lanzarote than I imagined. Maybe it’s not a thing here.
• Related, it’s definitely not at a waterfront restaurant in Arrecife.
• The Arrecife branch of Zara is not permanently closed as some apps said. It’s moved to the mall.
• Related, I did not indulge in the McDonald’s food. But my resolve may have been weaker if they’d had milkshakes on the menu.
• Walking with toes in the sea is remarkably calming. The foot rinsing showers are super handy.
• A museum told me that the first aircraft to pass over Lanzarote were Zeppelin airships, and they used to drop mail by parachute as they passed overhead.
• Related, the bus should stop at Museo Aeronáutico del Aeropuerto de Lanzarote. I felt like I would be stopped by the police on the walk from the terminal.
• Relatedly, related: Buses run to a different schedule on Maundy Thursday. Even the bus drivers didn’t know when they should go.
• A couple of walks to Playa Honda and beyond took us past the modern airport. I still enjoy watching the planes coming and going while trying to work out where they may be flying to or from (there’s an app for that).

Media

• I was increasingly absorbed by Robert Elms’ London Made Us. “A cab diver stuck in a morass of road works and construction jams once said exasperatedly to me, ‘London is great, but it will be better when it’s finished.’ But of course the opposite is true, London will be finished when it’s finished.” (p291)
• Bryant & May Investigate White Corridor is another wonderful book in the series. Even in Lanzarote, the descriptions of the snowstorm were chilling.
• Beyoncé released Cowboy Carter while we were away. Wow, that’s a long album. Apparently, she recorded 100 songs for it. Thank god she could edit some out. I need to listen it more.
• The only TV I watched while away was The Life And Death Of Lily Savage and I am glad I did. What a great story.

Week commencing Monday, 18 March 2024

Quantified Self

• This week: Stand 7/7; Exercise 3/7 and Move 5/7. (71%). Morning walks: 0/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Total steps: 50,437

Life

• Finally to see a doctor about my shoulder. Initial diagnosis is a rotator cuff injury. Scans and physio called for. No immediate relief but stronger pain killers prescribed.
• Lots of planning work this week in preparation for my week off: mainly about connecting systems together. Really good engagement across teams.
• “Will we, won’t we?” for the deployment of our new automations went on all week, when I left the office on Friday the team was planning on Tuesday but we had all our sign-offs by Friday evening so I feel less guilty about being away.
• Monday’s pub quiz in Wimbledon was fun and so the four of us have booked again for an April Monday. How Mark identified the celebrities from the poor photocopy of the pictures of their eyes is a great mystery of our times.
• Thursday catch-up with Linda, who is taking a short break from globetrotting on her boat, was lovely. It felt like St John’s Wood was going to be a bit ‘out of the way’ for a Thursday. But not.
• Friday was full of last minute things: holiday Euro cash, foot appointment, Easter egg ordering and then, at the very end, packing. Happy we’d ordered extra on Thursday’s Indian takeaway so that dinner was a fast re-heat.
• Saturday involved leisurely travel to Gatwick as the flight was early afternoon. The airport was pre-Easter packed, BA carrying double the number of Saturday passengers. The lounge was not the screaming-child free oasis I might have hoped for but the wine compensated.
• Airport security at Lanzarote was a breeze, with electronic gates that accepted British passports.
• First evening dinner: duck and chips. The honey rum came with the bill. I paid for it with indigestion.
• Sunday, first full day in Lanzarote, started hot, rained, hot again, slight rain, then too hot. But I was immediately relaxed, had slept well and – as I write – delighted I came.

Media

• Plane tunes were albums from Breland, Kane Brown and Macklemore. Also, last week’s musical discovery, Ada Morghe. An unexpected musical change from what I would have been listening to five years ago.

Week commencing Monday, 11 March 2024

Quantified Self

• This week: Stand 5/7; Exercise 2/7 and Move 4/7. (52%). Morning walks: 0/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/4. Total steps: 54,334

Life

• Monday evening, we headed to the Pizza Express Live (Holborn) to see Ada Morghe, perform a set. Now I am streaming her album, Box, all the time.
• A four-day work week for me. Planning for up-coming work took a big chunk of several afternoons and, as we get closer to the go live of our new integrations, the inevitable gatherings of people to agree on the deployment details took up more time than it should.
• An all-hands talked divisional strategy talk was interesting and I’ve broken down into team-specific talks for next week. The horizon is 12 months which seems far off.
• Friday, PY’s birthday. Lunch was the Hanoi menu at Six By Nico, with the matching number of courses, was superb from start to finish. Initially I thought we’d do the accompanying wine flights but glad we decided against it. It would have been too much.
• On a walk from Wooton Bridge to Newport, we passed a slowly rusting paddle steamer. It’s the PS Ryde, a paddle steamer run by Southern Railway to ferry passengers to the Isle of Wight from 1937 to 1969. They wanted to preserve it but, I guess, nobody had the money.

Week commencing Monday, 4 March 2024

Quantified Self

• This week: Stand 5/7; Exercise 2/7 and Move 4/7. (52%). Morning walks: 0/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Total steps: 40,344

Life

• It’s not often I am first at the restaurant. I didn’t know which of our group had booked it, so I nearly crossed the road. I was in the right place.
• Related: The old Carreras Cigarette Factory building is stunningly lit in the evenings. I think that’s one to come back to.
• PY went on a work trip to France and seemed to enjoy immersing himself in the art. I had the alarm serviced.
• My arm continues to cause me problems. A colleague joked he wouldn’t speak to me on our in-office day if I didn’t book a doctor’s appointment, so I did.
• Thursday evening Flight Club darts with colleagues and friends. I hit the dart board, which counts as winning. It was nice to catch up with Alex.
• We continue to make progress on the work project. It’s been two weeks of testing, and it is progressing well. A spanner may—or may not—have been thrown into the thing on Friday morning, but I decided not to worry about it (until next week, at least).
• Part of the weekend was updating curnow.org to have a dedicated weeknotes page. While reading some older writing, I also decided to collect film (and other) reviews on a single page.
• Delicious dinner at 40 Dean Street, followed by The West End sing The Oscars where Jack Reitman and Lewis Asquith did a funny version of “I’m Just Ken”. The players sang Happy Birthday to PY ahead of next week.

Media

• Tears for Fears: Scenes from the Big Chair was a great insight into Songs From The Big Chair and I want to listen to the album again.
• I wasn’t fully concentrating on A-ha: The Movie and missed a lot because it was subtitled. But I gather the band gets together, has hits, falls out, and then makes up and makes music again—a pretty standard band story. Or did I miss the subtleties?

Week commencing Monday, 26 February 2024

Quantified Self

• This week: Stand 5/7; Exercise 2/7 and Move 4/7. (52%, very poor). Morning walks: 0/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Total steps: 48,560

Life

• The Turbine Theatre announced a revival of the Pet Shop Boys musical Closer To Heaven. The theatre will be transformed into Vic’s Club for the show. I loved this musical when it played in 2001. It will be interesting to see what the theatre can do with it. Tickets are not cheap.
• I went to a Generative AI conference organised by Google UK, which focused on the business aspects of AI. What made it enjoyable was the panel from companies actively using AI in their business, including a case study from formaula-e. The message across the day was consistent: the pace of change is means you need to move fast to keep up.
• Related: The food during the breaks was delicious.
• Relatedly related: nice catch-up with my boss in the bar downstairs afterwards.
• The summary of this post was generated by ChatGPT.
• Thursday: I attended a collaborative workshop, and feedback on our v1 integration was positive in another meeting. It was nice to be in the room for both of those.
• Saturday: A lovey brunch at a new (to us) cafe and a train down to Shanklin and a lovely gin by the sea. Sunday: Lunch with PY’s Dad at a very posh garden centre.
• Reading about The Isle of Wight Distillery’s plans to move into Ryde Arena on the same day they withdrew the application. It’s utterly ridiculous that such a site goes unused.

Media

• Watched the last episode of the current season of Slow Horses. Disappointingly, I felt it rushed to the conclusion. There was jeopardy in the early part of the episode and a lot of shooting, of course, but it squeezed the ending into the last few minutes and it would’ve been better – or at least more satisfying – to play it longer.
• Went back to Ted Lasso. We’re way behind and only starting season 2. My favourite line: “Low Fat Custard that doesn’t make you sad” Ted Lasso, S2 E2.
• Archive on 4: Motorway City is a fascinating history of urbanism. The current political climate means there increasing protests from a large number of residents opposed to the pollution they are living with and those who feel any changes to existing road systems is an anti-motoring stance.