Weeknotes #144: the cloud ate my speaker

Tech frustrations, good theatre, tidy cupboards, and excellent Sunday pastries.

Week commencing Monday, 20 October 2025

A tall tree displaying brilliant red and orange autumn foliage against a dramatic, cloudy grey sky. In the bottom left, a section of a brick building with white windows is visible.
Autumn is putting on a dramatic show in Raynes Park.

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 6/7; Exercise 4/7 and Move /37. (62%). Morning walks: 0/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Total steps: 40,851

Life

  • Frustratingly, I learned that my perfectly functional SoundTouch speaker is about to become an electronic brick. They can no longer “support the cloud infrastructure that powers this older generation of products”. This is not how Tomorrow’s World said the future would unfold. Also, very annoying.
  • Relatedly, unrelated: the Amazon Web Services outage shows infrastructure is at the mercy of American Big Tech. It’s bad for us all.
  • I really want to know if, when launching their newest thing, OpenAI wanted “Vibe Lifing” to become a thing. I suspect yes.
  • Oh, it’s not just agencies, Steve: “Have you ever looked up during an internal review and wondered ‘who the ✱✱ are all of these people?’”. Yup.
  • I think we might have had “one for the road” more than once on Thursday night. But Friday was actually a really interesting day at work, and I didn’t notice I was tired.
  • But then The Producers at The Garrick managed to keep me wide awake: I’d give it all the stars. I thought it was wonderful that it still works as satire. Who’s doing that kind of comedy today?
  • The Raynes Park branch of Lockdown Bakehouse had a steady stream of customers on Sunday morning. Great to see a new business in the area.
  • Later that day, quite a bit of “cupboard sorting”. Maybe I’ll start a TikTok; it seems like something that could make me a cleanfluencer.

Media

  • We are coming to the end of this season of Only Murders in the Building and, while I am still enjoying it, the robotic concierge character has stretched this one a little too far.
  • We have jumped on the Celebrity Traitors bandwagon—binging four episodes this weekend. I think we both wish there had been a few more hours (even if we did get an extra one on Saturday night). Don’t tell me anything.
  • And still no Taylor listening.