Author: jon

Jon Curnow writes on curnow.org about things that interest him. The site has been around for many years in various forms and he always wants to write much more here than he does.

Weeknotes #124: from sea-lion noises to Korean feasts

Endured illness but engaged with new ideas and social moments

Week commencing Monday, 2 June 2025

A handmade 'BUGHOTEL' sign in bright orange letters on a turquoise background, marking a bee habitat constructed along The Beeline Way between New Malden and Raynes Park. The insect hotel, designed to provide nesting sites for carpenter and leafcutter bees, sits amongst lush garden vegetation with brick residential buildings visible in the background. A small decorative figure stands guard behind the colourful sign, whilst the surrounding area features typical urban garden elements, including stacked pallets and thriving plant life.
The Bughotel: Buzzing B&B on The Beeline Way

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 1/7; Exercise 1/7 and Move 1/7. (14%). Morning walks: 0/5, Office days 0/5. Total steps: 22,888

Life

  • I felt awful all week: a relentless cough combined with a lingering cold really knocked me about. There were moments when I wondered if I’d ever sound normal again. The combination of the cough and whatever cold-like illness I caught at the end of last week was very unpleasant. At times, the cough was continual, loud and distressing. I can’t imagine what the neighbours thought. My Quantified Self numbers (above) speak for themselves.
  • I avoided the office for fear of being sent home, but also because I didn’t want to be that person coughing through every meeting.
  • Related, it was disappointing to miss Tai Chi and a Breland concert I’d been looking forward to. I guess guilt and illness make for a heavy combination. I kept wondering if I was being overly cautious or simply sensible.
  • The online Volunteering Forum on Tuesday was well run and very engaging. I am glad there are some new ideas in the programme, even if everybody’s favourite part, the summer scheme, has been closed. I can listen while muted, and the cough disturbs nobody. And, unlike work calls, this was a camera-off event so nobody saw me go red every time I coughed.
  • Midweek, The New European rebranded as The New World: “We’re not rebranding because Brexit’s over – we’re rebranding because Brexit was just the beginning”.
  • Saturday was the first day I ventured out this week — lovely Korean meal with friends. I managed to get through the early evening dinner without excessive coughing.
  • Related, on the walk back along The Beeline Way between New Malden and Raynes Park, I noticed The Bug Hotel, designed to provide nesting sites for carpenter and leafcutter bees. Nice.
  • I walked to and from Wimbledon on Sunday, still sounding like a sea lion on occasion. The fresh air helped clear my head, even if my throat wasn’t quite ready to join the conversation.
  • Last week, I sent an application for something. No idea if it was the right move or just a hopeful stab in the dark. Sometimes you have to throw your hat in the ring and see what happens. Cryptic.

Media

Weeknotes #123: a dark comedy and a cough with company

Coughing through songs, feasting outside and sneaky sips

Week commencing Monday, 26 May 2025

Two freshly poured pints of lager sit side by side on a rustic wooden table at a traditional London pub near Carnaby Street. The beers feature perfectly formed creamy white foam heads that crown the amber-coloured liquid beneath. The wooden table shows natural grain patterns and appears well-worn from years of use, whilst a person's legs in dark trousers are partially visible in the background, creating an authentic pub atmosphere with warm, inviting lighting.
Pint-Sized Perfection

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 5/7; Exercise 5/7 and Move 5/7. (71%). Morning walks: 2/3 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Total steps: 44,581

Life

  • Monday was a bank holiday. I took Mum and Dad to the station before heading home. It’s always sad when they go. Their train was very full, so I was relieved to hear they’d found a seat. Less impressed by the station security people who tried to move me on from waving them off.
  • In the evening, to the Odeon Cinema in Wimbledon to see Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme. I love his deadpan style, meticulously styled cinematography, and symmetrical compositions. Another great film that looked stunning.
  • The plot? It’s a dark comedy that follows wealthy businessman Zsa-zsa Korda, who appoints his only daughter, a nun, as sole heir to his estate. Later, they must fight off scheming tycoons, foreign terrorists, and assassins. So, just your everyday tale.
  • Thirsty Thursday happened this week, but instead of standing outside the same pub all night, we went for some food and sat outside a different pub! The food was delicious. It was good to break the pattern – a small change that made the evening feel different.
  • While I was doing that, PY was on The Island, finally resolving the electricity meter problem. Wonderful news.
  • I woke up on Friday with what I thought was a cold, which has the additional impact of making my cough worse. I was not very well.
  • But I managed to get out of the house to see The Crazy Coqs sing Celine Dion. And, as I was feeling a bit better and we got 20% off at The American Bar, we had a drink there before heading home.
    I was glad I made the effort – the singers were terrific, and it felt like reclaiming the tail end of the week.

Media

Weeknotes #122: scans, scissors, and second place

Tests, travel, music and cheese

Week commencing Monday, 19 May 2025

This vibrant concert photograph captures the Scissor Sisters performing at The O2 in London on 23rd May, featuring a spectacular stage design dominated by an enormous illuminated scissor prop that towers above the performers. The stage is bathed in dramatic red lighting with atmospheric smoke effects, creating a theatrical backdrop of concert lighting rigs and towering equipment. Band members are positioned across the stage beneath the glowing scissor sculpture, which serves as the centrepiece of their elaborate production design, perfectly embodying the band's signature blend of glam rock theatricality and pop spectacle.
Cut Above the Rest: Scissor Sisters Slice Through London

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 7/7; Exercise 4/7 and Move 7/7. (86%). Morning walks: 1/5 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 0/5. Total steps: 56,823

Life

  • On Monday, I underwent a CT scan related to my cough. It was over quite quickly. I’m not sure how I felt about it. I think I was expecting it to feel like more of a moment, but instead it was just something that happened, and then it didn’t.
  • Relatedly, on Thursday, I had a lung function test. I had no idea I could breathe out for so long. It was their first appointment of the day, and the clinic was locked when I arrived. Eventually, I was let in, and it was all over quickly—if a fifteen-minute wait for a test dose of medication counts as fast. There’s something faintly ridiculous about being coached through deep breathing at 8:30 in the morning.
  • Monday evening was another of our monthly visits to the pub quiz. Ben joined us, so it was a team of five. Inexplicably, we came second, which means there’s a round of drinks next time we go!
  • Mum and Dad arrived on Thursday and visited the Chelsea Flower Show on Friday. I thought they’d be more impressed with the dig garden than they were. So, we took them to a garden centre on Sunday.
  • On Saturday, we took a bus to Wimbledon Village, tried empanadas at the shop on the high street, went for a walk to Wimbledon Common, stopped for a drink at Canizaro House, and bussed home.
  • The cheese came out again, and we had leftover Eurovision cheese fondue and raclette. It was delicious. We’re now in that post-Eurovision phase where leftover cheese becomes its own food group.
  • Friday night was Scissor Sisters at the O2 with PY and Mark. Before the show, the drinks in the O2 Blue Bar were nice, and we had excellent seats. Scissor Sisters were fantastic. I wish I had just a small portion of Jake Shears’s energy.
  • And, just before they are to be taken back into national ownership, SWR announced superfast onboard WiFi—but only as far as Basingstoke (which won’t help my south coast commutes)!
  • The New European: “Inexplicably, energy cooperation – which is essential to the UK’s future economic growth – has attracted barely a tenth of the column inches as has fishing, an industry which employs fewer full-time fishers than there are tattooists in the UK. But any long-term EU deal needed to explore these questions.”

Weeknotes #121: it’s eurovision time

Eurovision fun, successful chilli, sensor woes, and work thoughts.

Week commencing Monday, 12 May 2025

This image shows a festive Eurovision party buffet spread across a dining table covered with red and blue checkered tablecloths. The table is laden with various foods including cheese and charcuterie boards, salads, dips, bread, and Swiss-themed items (with small Swiss flags visible). There are also cupcakes on a tiered stand, wrapped presents, purple decorative elements, and party accessories scattered throughout. The abundant spread suggests a well-prepared celebration with both savoury and sweet options for guests.
Eurovision buffet

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 7/7; Exercise 6/7 and Move 7/7. (95%). Morning walks: 4/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Total steps: 64,365

Life

  • I pay for one of those insurance policies that sends somebody to fix plumbing or electrical issues. I’d booked someone to fix the sensor that turns on the bathroom light. It needed replacing. But now it turns off too quickly, and I don’t think I’m covered for another call-out.
  • Related: it’s not a setting on the sensor.
  • I went to see a consultant about my cough. More tests are booked. It’s getting (slightly) worse. It was a lovely walk up to the hospital.
  • Tuesday and Thursday evenings were Eurovision semi-finals. They were a lot more fun than I remembered and gave me a chance to see the songs before Saturday.
  • Saturday was the Eurovision party. The weather was nice, so people could sit outside if they weren’t that keen on watching. We rigged up multiple speakers.
  • Related: we retrieved the lockdown projector and projected the image onto the kitchen units for those at the end of the room.
  • My slow-cooker bean chilli with vegan cheese was a huge success and very easy to prep in advance.
  • We didn’t get the cocktails in a can out early enough, so most people didn’t know we had them.
  • The winner was Austria with the song Wasted Love, performed by JJ. The Austrian in the room was very happy.
  • Work-related: How can traditional British TV survive the US streaming giants?, and Microsoft is – again – killing an advertising product. I know what it’s like; if I can help anybody affected, contact me.

Media

  • The sixth episode of Doctor Who was watched on catch-up on Sunday. The Interstellar Song Contest featured the Doctor and Belinda attending a futuristic Eurovision-style song contest and a plot to kill trillions of people. Cameos by Rylan Clark and Graham Norton were quite good.

Weeknotes #120: Sunshine on The Island and a new Pope

Sunny long weekend with good food, travel, and relaxation.

Week commencing Monday, 5 May 2025

This image shows a coastal scene at Ryde on the Isle of Wight, featuring a sandy beach with calm blue waters under a partly cloudy sky. Two colourful kites - one teal and one with red, white and blue stripes - are flying above the water, suggesting kitesurfing activity. Several small sailing boats can be seen dotting the horizon, whilst the foreground shows the sandy shoreline. The scene captures a typical day of water sports and leisure activities along this popular stretch of the Solent.
Kites on the beach at Ryde

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: 38,784

Life

  • A quiet week. White smoke was rising.
  • A lazy bank holiday. We walked into Wimbledon, picked up steaks, and not much else.
  • My local Co-op still has empty shelves after the cyberattack. It’s odd.
  • I skipped our Cinco de Mayo social and spent the evening on a train to Portsmouth Harbour. Glad it ran to time.
  • The ferry to the Island was busy, but fine.
  • We spent most of Saturday in the sunshine with drinks, watching the kite surfers. A proper sunny day.
  • Sunday breakfast at RT Café Grill was delicious. We sat outside and soaked up the weather.

Media

  • Conclave is a Vatican thriller directed by Edward Berger. Ralph Fiennes plays Cardinal Thomas Lawrence, overseeing a secretive 72-hour papal election. Timely, and very enjoyable.
  • The best transport for cities: trams?
  • Doctor Who: The Story and the Engine mixed African folklore with classic Who mythology. I really liked this one.
  • Still loving Race Across the World, this time from Sanya to Shangri-La. As always, beautifully shot.

Weeknotes #119: Draw Me Like One of Your French Musicals

Volunteering celebration, good company, and fun-filled musical weekend.

Week commencing Monday, 28 April 2025

Promotional sign for the musical Titanique at the Criterion Theatre in London's West End. The show, which combines the story of Titanic with Céline Dion's music, is currently running at the Criterion Theatre. The blue sparkly background displays "Enough hits to sink a ship!" in elegant script above "MY HEART WILL GO ON" in bold white lettering, advertising the comedic jukebox musical parody.
Near, Far, Wherever You Are… You Can Hear Céline

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 3/7; Exercise 4/7 and Move 4/7. (52%). Morning walks: 0/4. Office days 1/5. Total steps: 45,714

Life

  • It’s been almost two years since the King’s Coronation. PY and I spent part of the day volunteering as wayfinders for visitors on the South Bank. In January, we were delighted to learn that volunteers had been awarded a Coronation Medal—a longstanding tradition dating back to King Edward VI in 1547. We collected ours on Tuesday.
  • We had a ‘happy path’ discussion at work, aiming to understand the ideal workflow without failures and to facilitate early testing. It’s a concept that always amuses me, and thirty minutes was too short a time to reach a solution.
  • Drinks on Thursday night, where I was (almost) persuaded to apply for an old job, but I think that was just the combination of drinks and good friends.
  • Saturday, to Woking, for a family barbecue, where there was too much fantastic food. Nice to see everybody. Way too stuffed to eat in the evening, but we could catch up on Doctor Who.
  • Sunday, to see Titanique, a jukebox musical blending the story of the Titanic with the music of Céline Dion. It’s a comedic take on the film; Céline Dion is portrayed as having survived the sinking of the Titanic. Enjoyable and much funnier than I expected.

Media

  • In End of the Street Linda Melvern tells how Rupert Murdoch moved his newspapers from Fleet Street to a new, technologically advanced plant in Wapping, bypassing traditional union agreements, triggering a major industrial dispute marked by mass picketing and violent clashes. Ultimately, the move broke the power of the print unions and transformed the British newspaper industry. It’s a story of making a big business change and its brutal consequences.
  • Lucky Day is the fourth episode of the current Dr Who series in which The Doctor and Ruby fight an anti-UNIT conspiracy theory and a campaign of disinformation against them. Set in the current year, bits of it felt too real. The Little Mermaid’s Prince Eric was the villain.

Weeknotes #118: Culture, musicals and cheese

Culture, musicals, cheese and travel made for a joyful week.

Week commencing Monday, 21 April 2025

Several Italian cheeses were displayed at what appeared to be a delicatessen counter with handwritten price labels on small chalkboards. Artisanal Italian cheese display at Lina Stores delicatessen, featuring traditional varieties like Ubriaco, Fontina D.O.P., and Prosecco-aged cheeses with handwritten chalkboard price tags. Located at 18 Brewer Street in the heart of Soho, London, this beloved Italian delicatessen has been trading for 80 years since 1944.
Artisanal Italian cheese display at Lina Stores delicatessen

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 5/7; Exercise 5/7 and Move 5/7. (71%). Office days 1/4. Total steps: 56,504

Life

  • Lovely Monday morning in Shrewsbury, and a train home the long way around because of engineering works. The train from Moor Street was busy, but we secured a seat, and that’s all that is really needed.
  • A not-so-secret leaving drinks happened on Friday night. A colleague is going for the second time, so I didn’t want a big event—delightful time with nice people.
  • Friday, to a small theatre in Lower Marsh to see The Rise and Fall of Vinnie and Paul, a musical based on Paul Gauguin’s turbulent cohabitation with Vincent van Gogh in 1888. Van Gogh’s infamous breakdown and the severing of his ear ended the piece. A truly intimate, small show—really well done.
  • Our Saturday cheese adventure started at Fortnum and Mason and ended in Neal’s Yard. There was much delicious cheese and some fizz.
  • Another new musical on Saturday, Stiletto: set in 18th-century Italy, follows Marco, a castrato singer, and Gioia, a talented black woman, whose love story is challenged by a murder. I learned the non-show meaning of Stiletto as part of this experience. Also, brilliant and deserves wider recognition.
  • To the Actors Church in Covent Garden for Songs I’ll Never Sing, a charity concert featuring West End performers singing songs outside their typical range, in aid of Chicken Shed and The Brain Tumour Charity. Always great singers, but it does feel quite wrong drinking alcohol in a church pew.

Media

  • I started it at the weekend, and by Tuesday I’d finished Careless People, a memoir by Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former New Zealand diplomat who joined Facebook and was there while I was. The book reveals a very different view of the company’s culture than I experienced, but the more I hear about things that happened around that time, I am beginning to think I was very sheltered.

Weeknotes #117: A family Easter

Enjoying walks, family moments, reading, and fun outdoor activities.

Week commencing Monday, 14 April 2025

A tranquil view of Colemere, a natural lake in Shropshire, surrounded by mixed woodland in early spring. Young trees with fresh green foliage frame the calm blue water, whilst reeds grow along the shoreline. Fallen branches and natural debris are visible in the foreground, with dense forest creating a peaceful backdrop.
Eater at Colemere

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 3/7; Exercise 2/7 and Move 3/7. (38%). Morning walks: 0/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Total steps: 37,770

Life

  • My quantified self metrics are some of the lowest I’ve had. This cough is affecting me more than I care to admit. I need to get out and about for some exercise.
  • The simplified version of the software, for speed, is far from simple, but we should continue to push for it.
  • I finally photographed my 2024 reading list. The books can now be rehomed, although some will remain by the bookshelf, waiting for a charity shop run.
  • I made the wrong call when the train was delayed. We should have taken the risk of the short interchange at Birmingham International, as we would have made it, and it would have arrived first. I’ll try the delay repay, but I bet they see this train still ran.
  • Attingham’s Easter egg trail was a lot of fun. I wore paper bunny ears all the way around. The lady who said to me that we have to do these things for our grandchildren did not make me feel young. The rest of the family laughed for the rest of the day.
  • My niece and nephew were braver on the climbing walls than I would have been. But I watched with a coffee and a flapjack and felt very safe.
  • The walk around Cole Mere was lovely. The Llangollen Canal looked very peaceful.

Weeknotes #116: quiz, beers and dumplings

Enjoyed sunshine, pub quiz, colleagues’ drinks, and homemade dumplings.

Week commencing Monday, 7 April 2025

This image shows the modern skyline of White City in London. The view captures several contemporary high-rise and mid-rise buildings under a bright blue sky with scattered white clouds. A construction crane is visible on the left side, indicating ongoing development in the area. The skyline features a mix of architectural styles, including a prominent glass skyscraper in the centre, cylindrical structures, and angular office buildings with glass facades.
The modern skyline of White City in London

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 4/7; Exercise 3/7 and Move 3/7. (48%). Morning walks: 0/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Total steps: 36,322

Life

  • When I asked my doctor if I should try to use my private medical, she didn’t hesitate to recommend it. I found out the process, but didn’t jump to use it.
  • Pub quiz week: Joint 7th sounds poor but is, in fact, excellent—like winning. Our musical round was a let-down, and I missed the obvious Boney M song in the mix.
  • The Technical Design Authority review meeting missed a crucial piece of data, resulting in many extra meetings and work this week (and probably next).
  • The weather has been decent this week. On Thursday, we were able to eat lunch while sitting on the balcony, looking at the high-rise buildings being constructed around White City.
  • Drinks with commercial colleagues at the Exmouth Arms near Euston on Thursday evening. It’s a little hidden away and turned out not to be as rammed as some pubs we had walked past. We secured some seats inside and, later, a booth. A very impressive list of beers is available, so I am not sure why I went for the Madri: I guess it is a known quantity.
  • On Saturday, we attempted to make Chinese dumplings: it was much harder than it seemed, although the handmade ones were better than those made with a plastic crimping tool.

Media

  • Friday, I was a bit tired and had an evening to myself. I’ve been rewatching episodes of The Blacklist. I am now at the point, towards the end of series 2, where I stopped watching when it was initially on Sky. All the episodes will be new to me from now on, but I am glad I rewatched them as I’d forgotten the backstory. I thought I’d settle in and watch a couple of episodes before I made dinner. Instead, I binged on eight episodes back-to-back, something I doubt I would ever have been able to do before streaming.

Weeknotes #115: food, friends and family (and a cough)

Enjoyed friends, food, nature and family despite feeling a bit ill.

Week commencing Monday, 31 March 2025

This image shows Canon Hill Common in Raynes Park, London, on a clear, sunny day with bright blue skies. The photo captures a wide open green space with short grass that serves as playing fields, indicated by several football goals visible in the distance. In the middle of the field, a few people are visible. The common is bordered by mature trees, particularly noticeable on the left side and middle of the image. In the background, you can see houses and buildings of the surrounding residential area of Raynes Park sitting on slightly elevated ground.
Canon Hill Common

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 2/7; Exercise 2/7 and Move 2/7. (29%). Morning walks: 0/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Total steps: 30,482

Life

  • Dad chased a missing birthday gift for PY that was dropped at a local shop. No luck. We’ll keep chasing.
  • I wrote something that reflected on Facebook/Meta’s high standards for product success, which was really reminiscing about the Meta Portal, an excellent photo frame and calling device.
  • Workwise, I attended a lengthy work session discussing apprenticeships, which was more interesting than I imagined.
  • Wednesday, I caught up with US tariff predictions and ended the day feeling low about the news.
  • Thursday was Thirsty Thursday again: an evening out at The White Horse where we tried to chat with ChatGPT about our personas.
  • Friday, I woke feeling ill with a persistent cough, so I cancelled next week’s Blood Donor session, but managed to get through the day.
  • Saturday: I enjoyed a lazy morning despite feeling under the weather. I called Mum and Dad about their anniversary flowers and booked train tickets for an Easter break trip to Shrewsbury.
  • Annoyingly, I discovered that AudioBoom no longer publicly hosts some radio clips I wanted to listen to. It’s time to see if I can recover them from AWS.
  • Saturday night, met up with friends in Balham for oysters, sharing plates and garlic prawns.
  • Took an afternoon walk on Cannon Hill Common, enjoying a moment watching local wildlife.

Media

High bar for tech

Heading for the big technology graveyard.

A picture of a Meta Portal device on a sideboard. The device screen is showing a photo of a Microsoft Zune music player.
Meta Portal

Facebook/Meta has always had a high bar for product success: when your potential audience is everybody in the world, products that seem successful to others are tiny to them. They’re not alone in that view; we used to joke that the Microsoft ad technology, shuttered while I worked on it, was a rounding error on a big Excel sheet somewhere, even though, by many standards, it made nice money. Big companies need a specific scale for their products to make working on them worthwhile. And, if the product is something you work on or value as a user, it’s always disappointing when you know it’s becoming obsolete and heading for the big technology graveyard.

And so, here’s a picture of a Meta (nee Facebook) Portal, IMO the best thing Facebook produced. It’s a device from which you can make Messenger/WhatsApp video calls. Three sizes were produced: this is the smallest. At the start of the pandemic, I bought the larger one for my parents and this model for my brother and myself. In 2020, we sat and ate Christmas dinner with my Mum and Dad using the device, as rules prevented us from partying in person. When you activate it, it makes calling somebody simple: just press their social media avatar. At some point, support was added for Zoom and other video calling services.

I don’t know what they did, but the speaker’s also superb. There’s a portal app for Spotify, and it’s also a Bluetooth speaker. There are still times when one of us inadvertently connects to the Portal speaker instead of the Sonos devices in our living room, and I think the Portal fills the space with sound much better.

It’s also a fantastic digital picture frame. As it’s from Meta, it has access to my Facebook and Instagram photos. A mobile app allowed device-only albums to be created. It offered fine-grained controls for which pictures should be displayed. While my use of Facebook and Instagram might have waned, the photos they hold are still memories, and this device convinced me that a digital photo frame is the best way to surface memories. I hope the product team behind Apple’s – rumoured – home device understands that. The Portal made my photo memories accessible, and lots of friends who visited often commented on the pictures shown.

Now, a device with a microphone and a camera from Facebook, launched in 2018, sometime around the Cambridge Analytica scandal, had its work cut out to convince people it’s not illicitly listening or recording. The pandemic may or may not have given it a chance. I thought it was an excellent device for relatives who found video calling on phones or computers too complex. ‘Just press my face’ was a line I used on more than one occasion.

Sadly, although perhaps not unsurprisingly, its days were numbered. In 2022, The Verge reported that Meta would stop making Portal for consumers, and more recently, it appears to have been phased out altogether.

This morning, I went to my Portal app to add photos from last weekend’s trip to Paris. The app told me it had been discontinued since January. While I love my Portal, it is telling that it’s more than three months since I last used the mobile app to manage the device (although I should say, it’s one of the most stable pieces of technology in my house; I am not sure I’ve ever seen it crash or need an unexpected reboot).

So, the device’s days are numbered. Many companies would have just shut down the service altogether. Kudos to Meta for not doing that. The support page says,

We’ll continue to provide customer support for Meta Portal owners as usual until February 2032 … You can still use your Meta Portal to call family and friends until late 2031.

While that is disappointing, it does mean I could get ten years of use from it. And that’s more than a lot of technology.

(I’m amused that I managed to snap the picture just as the screen showed an image of another piece of long-gone dead technology: Microsoft’s Zune music player. I never had one, but I once posted a picture to Facebook, which is why it appears on the device).

Weeknotes #114: theatre and a weekend in Paris

Family, food, and Paris adventures made for a lovely week.

Week commencing Monday, 24 March 2025

This image shows the Eiffel Tower in Paris at night, illuminated with bright golden-yellow lights that make it glow dramatically against the dark sky. The tower is captured from below, highlighting its iconic lattice structure and distinctive silhouette. A bright beam streaks across the night sky behind the tower, creating an interesting visual contrast with the warm-toned illumination of the monument. The top portion of the tower with its antenna spire is clearly visible, while the base extends beyond the frame of the image. This nighttime view showcases why the Eiffel Tower's evening light display is such a famous attraction in Paris.
Eiffel Tower in Paris at night

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 7/7; Exercise 2/7 and Move 6/7. (71%). Morning walks: 0/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Total steps: 56907

Life

  • Monday, attended One Night in Bohemia, a Jonathan Larson tribute concert at the Phoenix Arts Club. An energised performance featuring a standout cast, raising funds for the National AIDS Trust.
  • Tuesday, saw My Neighbour Totoro at the Gillian Lynne Theatre. A visually imaginative and whimsical stage adaptation, great puppetry and creative direction.
  • Wednesday is a change of office day for me. I had a hectic commute, productive meetings, and evening plans cancelled. Dinner included an inventive fridge-clear-out pasta dish.
  • Thursday: I worked from home. It was a quiet day. Mum and Dad arrived. It was strange to communicate with people in the office on the day I would usually be there.
  • Related, a large vegetable chilli dinner was created.
  • Friday to Sunday, family trip to Paris. Travelled by Eurostar and stayed near the Arc de Triomphe. Enjoyed smooth connections, scenic views, and good food throughout.
  • Saturday, took in the sights on a hop-on hop-off bus tour, failed to wander along the Seine, and admired the Eiffel Tower at night during a river cruise.
  • Celebrated Mother’s Day with lunch on the Bustronome, a double-decker dining experience offering panoramic views of the city as we ate.

Weeknotes #113: view to the past and the future

NHS visit, theatre, social outings, art, music, and musings.

Week commencing Monday, 17 March 2025

This image shows a public sculpture of a person lying down on a brown, angular plinth or base with vertical ridges. The statue depicts a person with dark, curly hair resting on their back with their head on a stone-like pillow, one hand placed on their chest, and knees bent upward. They're wearing a blue-grey shirt and dark trousers or jeans. The sculpture is "Lying Down" by sculptor Sean Henry, known for creating figurative sculptures of ordinary people in everyday poses, often slightly larger than life-size and placed in public spaces.
“Lying Down” by sculptor Sean Henry

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 6/7; Exercise 5/7 and Move 7/7. (86%). Morning walks: 0/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Total steps: 56,671

Life

  • Another nice experience with the NHS. The doctor is very pleasant, which makes the visit less worrisome.
  • Tuesday’s view on the past: a last-minute decision to see Alterations at The National Theatre, a new staging of a 1978 play. Set entirely in the upstairs alterations shop, the characters rush to complete an order, keeping them close – with all that brings – for the duration. The playwright, Michael Abbensetts, was the first Black British writer to have a series commissioned by the BBC. Ambitious Walker, who runs the shop, is complex, driven, and ultimately not likeable. I don’t know how close to the original it is, but it didn’t feel dated. Are the issues of identity and the complexities of Black British life the same today as they were almost 50 years ago?
  • Related, there were many chatty bodies in the audience and people taking photos throughout the single act. I’m not sure if the photographer’s pictures were deleted, but the front-of-house staff were trying.
  • Thursday was a night out to say goodbye to one of our Polish team. Excellent company.
  • Friday’s view to the future: to a performance space near Bethnal Green for Séayoncé: The Oral-cle’s Prophesissy. The Venezuelan food eaten in the early evening was delicious.
  • On Saturday, I saw Sean Henry’s Lying Down. I also watched, via the doorbell camera, the carpenter install a new bit of the door without the need for anybody to be home.
  • I Can’t Dance, Against All Odds, Invisible Touch, One More Night, Easy Lover, Sussudio and In The Air Tonight – a Sunday evening of Genesis and Phil Collins at The Crazy Coqs.

Weeknotes #112: Design Museum and surprises

London walks, birthday surprises, and AI made a memorable week

Week commencing Monday, 10 March 2025

This image shows a gallery installation from "The World of Tim Burton" exhibition at London's Design Museum, taken in March 2025. The scene is bathed in distinctive blue and purple lighting that creates a dramatic, atmospheric effect reminiscent of Burton's aesthetic. This scene is for materials fro the Batman movies.
The World of Tim Burton

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 5/7; Exercise 4/7 and Move 4/7. (62%). Morning walks: 0/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5 Total steps: 44,027

Life

  • I am often asked to produce my passport or my driving licence to use as identity, but I have not needed my birth certificate for a long time. Thankfully, I found it.
  • I asked Google Gemini to clean up a meeting transcript. It turned a forty-minute meeting into a ten-minute passage and then read it to me. That would have been a great time-saver if I hadn’t had to hear the entire meeting.
  • Related: nice though it was, I am glad I heard the original meeting because that allowed me to spot where Gemini had got it wrong. Unsurprisingly, people trust AI a little too much: Would a computer really go on the internet and lie? Well, yes.
  • Relatedly, related: Revealed: How the UK tech secretary uses ChatGPT for policy advice.
  • Thursday, to the office and met a former colleague in a lovely pub near St Paul’s Cathedral. I walked streets I’d never ventured down before. There are some interesting places in London.
  • On Saturday, for PY’s birthday, we saw The World of Tim Burton at London’s Design Museum. It was very busy, but it was really interesting to see the evolution of the Tim Burton look. Lots of films were covered in a small space, so the exhibition was very much focused on how the look evolved rather than on any particular show. Of course, I loved The Nightmare Before Christmas parts.
  • Related, the themed afternoon tea, rooftop cocktail bar with a view of St Paul’s Cathedral, and Argentinian steak dinner were all surprises. My timings all worked out, even with a delay on the Circle Line.
  • Friends of Sunday Lunch, PY has planned individual beef Wellingtons. After the Argentinian, that was a lot of steak in one weekend.
  • This resonated: How Much Do I Really Need to Know?

Media

All the news

I want to stay informed but don’t want to give my days over to the endless vibration of not-news.

The image shows a blue Metro newspaper container with a motivational phrase printed on it that reads "Make MORNINGS worth TALKING about" in a bold, stylized typography. The word "MORNINGS" is particularly prominent and appears to be in capital letters.

There’s always news. Arguably, everything is news all the time. Right now, it feels like the world is changing by the second because some people in the news are pretty loud, and everybody has an opinion. Should I check my phone for the ‘breaking news’ alert?

Back in 2013, in response to an online discussion, I opined that the generally accepted definition of news was changing from something an editor in a far-off city decided and placed in a newspaper, radio or television bulletin for us to consume to something each of us curates for ourselves using tools the internet has made readily available. I asked,

If I’ve opted to prioritise Formula 1 news or tech stories from Silicon Valley over today’s political posturing over the ECHR (which is front page on the newspaper next to me) then I’ve made a decision that’s no different from the editor that decided to pop that story in the paper. Isn’t Facebook’s timeline just news from my ‘community’ (which is what the news was for most people prior to rise of the mass national press in the late 1700s)? // source

I stand by what I wrote more than ten years ago. I still don’t know why the – relatively recent (in human terms) – phenomenon of an editor is more important than our community. But, in recent years, I have found myself avoiding news altogether: both the views from far-off editors and my curated view. This is where I may concede that social media, as a news service, might be to blame.

The other day, I read How Much Do I Really Need to Know? and it really resonated with me. The news is exhausting. Not just a bit soul-destroying but draining.

When I was younger, the news came on television after The Magic Roundabout at about 5:40 p.m. It lasted twenty minutes on BBC1. John Craven had told me about the world on Newsround an hour earlier, but that was for little kids. There was a lunchtime bulletin, and, of course, adults could watch the ​Nine O’Clock News​. Somewhere in the mix were Look North West and ​Nationwide​​.​ A little later, a revamped Six O’Clock News was launched with snazzy computer graphics, where Nicholas Witchell would end up sitting on some lesbians protesting Section 28, but the new time didn’t give us more news; it was so that we could have Neighbours and then Wogan or ​EastEnders​.

The news was contained; you knew when you’d get told what had happened today, and that’s how it was digested. You waited, and a well-spoken newsreader, who most of the time wasn’t sitting on a protestor, told you what had taken place during the day and provided a little analysis. There wasn’t a studio argument on every topic, and if you missed it, then you waited until the next scheduled bulletin or turned on the radio for the three-minute catch-up.

American radio has had all-news radio almost since the medium’s invention. According to Wikipedia, 1010 WINS is the oldest continuously operating all-news station in the United States, reporting to New York since 1965. In the UK, LBC, the country’s first legal, commercial radio station, was news-based from its opening words in 1973, but the news talk format included many phone-ins. Those early years didn’t quite count.

But then came CNN, and the concept of rolling news arrived worldwide. When I started work, I was often on shift through the night. I used CNN and Sky News as company while alone in the building. Overnight, Sky News had half an hour of locally produced content and, from half-past, thirty minutes of something from America, usually CBS News. It was on all night. So much of it was prerecorded that, come morning, I pretty much knew the overnight scripts off by heart. Not quite continually breaking stories.

Of course, we’d had all-night election coverage for a few years, but my first true appreciation of rolling news was during the first Gulf War. Radio 4 adopted an all-news format, and Radio 1 ran with the line, “When news breaks out, we break in”. It was exciting. On 31 August 1997, I was up very late trying to write copy for some web pages when the programme I had on in the background was interrupted to say that Diana, Princess of Wales, had been injured in a car crash in Paris. It was a late Saturday night, and gradually the channels moved to rolling news. That signalled it was an important story. I flicked between Sky News, CNN, BBC 1, ITV and whatever else was available on the analogue Sky satellite service. But I didn’t stay awake all night, and the news was more sombre in the morning.

Rolling news seemed groundbreaking, exciting, and futuristic. It did not yet seem vapid, vacuous, and bland. We hadn’t yet noticed that the airtime was filled with speculative nonsense. It more or less stayed this way for twenty years until the internet became a source of news, and every publication started to compete to be the first to tell you something. And, when mobile social media was added, everybody was a reporter—or at least had an opinion—and they shared it continually via a device that we all carry with us constantly.

Now, news is information and entertainment combined. Its immediacy is more important than accuracy. A hot take is pushed out simply for attention or to score political or culture-war points on any and every topic. News outlets need your attention and click-bait you into scrolling.

I want to stay informed but don’t want to give my days over to the endless vibration of not-news. What we all need is an informed summary presented calmly, preferably by somebody like Sue Lawley, while Nicholas Witchell subdues a studio invasion. Then we can get on with the rest of our day.