A busy, productive and enjoyable week. It has been super hot and humid in the UK. Our houses are built to keep the heat in, so sleeping can be a challenge, with the only solace being that it is generally a shared experience. You pass people in the street and in the office who, like you, are wandering around in a slight stupor, mildly hungover from the lack of sleep.
This was a week in which I:
Met with colleagues to agree the steps for setting up an external vendor’s staff so that they can support us when we set up a new office. There’s nothing like getting around a whiteboard and drawing it out.
Agreed the next steps for building out a technology stack for this new office.
Started to work through some issues in our work which have divided the team. Despite the different opinions, there’s a good, constructive dialogue, with everyone listening to each other. We probably need to spend more time in this space where we can, as I think it’s where we make good progress.
Worked with one of our local heads of Compliance to complete a survey by a regulator about our company’s use of artificial intelligence.
Prepped for and ran our programme steering committee meeting. We agreed it would be our final session as only minor snagging items remain.
Attended the steering committee for our sister company’s office refit project.
Agreed the scope of a project to enhance another of our offices, tackling a bunch of items that will keep the space relevant for the next few years.
Had my monthly catch-up with my executive partner at our information technology research and advisory firm. It’s always a useful conversation and this was no exception. The biggest problem is that I come away with too many things to think about, explore, and consider writing about.
Caught up with our audio/visual design vendor. Our main focus is on the project to set up the shared meeting space in our office, but have a few smaller initiatives in progress too.
Continued tweaking my new work laptop. I had to look up how to re-enable Query Builder in (the old) Microsoft Outlook so that my search folders worked correctly. Lack of support for search folders and advanced queries are the main barriers to me moving across to the new Outlook client. I should probably write up my Outlook setup in a blog post, but I’m not sure how useful this would be to the dwindling number of classic Outlook client users.
Joined our fortnightly Microsoft Copilot working group. The session covered a lot of old ground, but it was interesting to see how engaged the audience is. Everyone is at a different stage of learning about and using generative AI, so going over things again is perhaps more valuable than it first seems.
Enjoyed our weekly Learning Hour on the topic of homeopathy. The range of views was fascinating, and the host managed to navigate the different opinions with skill, keeping the discussion cordial and constructive.
Discovered that I haven’t been to the dentist in 18 months. I recently had what seemed like a random text from my dentist telling me that it is important to look after my teeth, which I didn’t consider to be news. I called them to ask when my next appointment was, only to discover that I didn’t have one and was in danger of falling off their register. Usually I book my next appointment when I pay for my current one, which I did last time. But apparently they then cancelled the appointment and never booked me in for another one.
Had a conversation with a friend outside of the UK who has a family member that was admitted to hospital. He had a feeling that the hospital was keeping his family member in for longer than necessary, diagnosing them with things they don’t have. For all its faults, I assume that our NHS is much less likely to do this as it is not-for-profit. Another reason we are lucky to have the service.
Thoroughly enjoyed the latest WB-40 Album Club, listening to a band that I had never heard of before. I love the eclectic variety that people bring to this group, and how honest everyone is in their feedback about what they hear.
Booked our main car in for its MOT and service. Owning two cars turns out to be significantly more expensive than just owning one.
Had a lovely relaxed Friday night dinner at a neighbours’ house.
Enjoyed meeting some lovely new neighbours at our annual street party. There were fewer people than in previous years, probably as the tons of young children in our road are now growing up and have things to do and places to be.
Sweated buckets on a very hot cycling club ride, which ended up with a pint of alcohol-free beer at the end instead of the usual coffee.
Media
Articles
I didn’t realise that raffling your house has (had?) become a thing that lots of people tried to do.
📚 Finished reading Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI by Madhumita Murgia. An excellent overview from the Financial Times’s AI Editor of the many emerging ways in which this technology is having an impact on people. Much of it is terrifying in an ‘is this the society we’re creating?’ sort of way, but the author tries to remain hopeful.
Wandered to the other side of town, using a footpath that I never knew existed despite having lived here for 20 years. This was painted on an outbuilding at the end of someone’s garden, facing the footpath.
A tiring week, with four days in the office and not much sleep.
This was a week in which I:
Started the process to get microwaves installed in our office, a temporary measure while our canteen is closed for the rest of the year.
Wrote up and circulated my notes from our quarterly facilities governance meeting with our sister company.
Took part in a valuation meeting for work that has been done in our office space. We have only one thing outstanding, which hopefully should be wrapped up shortly.
Attended a webinar on our mid-year performance review process.
Had a call with Microsoft and a member of our internal technical team to help me to get my laptop updated to Windows 11 24H2. The update was offered to me a few weeks ago but the installation failed as I ran out of disk space. After cleaning up a bunch of things, the update never appeared again. A few registry tweaks here and there resulted in a successful update. Unfortunately, Microsoft Office then stopped working and I couldn’t find any way to get it reinstalled, so I ended up switching to a brand new laptop.
Sat in on a Q&A with our divisional CEO, hosted by our regional CEO. It was good to hear directly from someone so senior in the organisation.
Enjoyed our divisional CIO being our guest speaker at our weekly Learning Hour session. It was good to spend some time with him in the same room.
Joined the company-wide Technology town hall meeting.
Took part in the final legal review of a proposed contract with one of our vendors.
Participated in our monthly operational risk review meeting.
Spoke to our technology research vendor about their request for me to appear on an interview panel at an upcoming event. I’m keen to get some more experience at public speaking, so this aligns quite well.
Met with our development team for their regular backlog refinement session.
Helped one of my colleagues get started with Microsoft Copilot, taking a document and getting it to compress the content down to a couple of pages.
Had a discussion with colleagues in our Technology and Learning & Development teams about our approach to digital literacy. It got me thinking about a multi-layered framework that we could use to give everyone a base understanding of key concepts, but could also help individuals who want or need to go deeper.
Said goodbye to one of our team members who had been with us for a long time.
Found myself caught up in a rail shambles at Euston on Monday evening. The trains weren’t going anywhere due to a trespasser somewhere up the line. We sat on the train, waiting for news. Eventually they asked everyone to get off so that the train could be switched off and on again — to reboot it (no, really). After everyone got back on board and sat down, they announced that it would only be stopping at Hemel Hempstead and then coming straight back to Euston, presumably to try and stop the timetable being out of kilter for the rest of the day. Cue most people getting off again. Then they said that the train would additionally stop at Tring. A few minutes later, they told us it would no longer be stopping at Hemel Hempstead. As we eventually pulled away, our destination not entirely clear, I noticed that there was a bag sitting on the floor, not close to anyone. I asked people around me whether it belonged to anyone but nobody claimed it. One person decided to move out of the carriage altogether and I followed him, walking the whole length of the train in an ultimately futile attempt to find the guard or conductor. Having failed in my mission, I texted the British Transport Police to report it. After a bit of back and forth, answering questions on whether it appeared “a deliberate attempt had been made to HIDE the item”, whether the bag possessed “any OBVIOUSLY suspicious characteristics”, and whether the item is “TYPICAL of what you would expect to find in the given environment” they concluded that it would “be for rail staff to treat as lost property.”
Was surprised to find the cost my tap-in/tap-out rail commute jumped from £19.35 to £29.80. I can’t work out whether the price has gone up, or it is just that we were previously benefitting from some kind of time-limited discounted rate. I think I’m going to switch back to buying books of eight flexi tickets via the London Northwestern app as they will work out cheaper.
Tried to pay a small bill of $29 for a medical provider in the US. They have spent a significant chunk of this sending me paper bills by air mail over the past few months. When I got the first one, I gave them a call, explained that we were insured, and handed my insurance details over again. This seemed to have zero impact on the letters. Not wanting to have a ‘bad debt’ on my record, I decided to bite the bullet and pay it. The website on the bill didn’t work, it just showed a blank page. So I tried calling the bill pay hotline, but instead of getting through to someone they read out the address of a different website that I needed to go to. It took a few minutes to register and log in; when I did, I found that I had a balance of $0. So…I’m not sure what to do next. I feel like I’m recording this here for posterity in case this $29 comes back to get me.
Wondered whether Lando Norris was visiting Berkhamsted over the weekend. My son spotted this car parked at a jaunty angle on the High Street, so we both wandered down to take a look. If you had enough money to buy the vehicle, would you buy this licence plate to go with it if your name wasn’t Lando?
Was this Lando Norris’s car?
Walked across the valley to deliver a cycling top that I won at Tour de Ricky but doesn’t fit me. I offered it out to people in the cycling club to see if anyone could make use of it. My walk took me along a footpath that I never knew existed, despite having lived in Berkhamsted for over 20 years.
Picked these up in the supermarket as I had never seen them before. I love an Eccles cake and apparently they are similar.
Great episode of the Microsoft Teams Insider podcast, where Ritika Gupta, Microsoft Group Product Manager, talks about everything related to Teams recording and transcription. I hadn’t thought about how transcription isn’t sufficient to convey sarcasm, nor how words can mean something completely different in a local context which is difficult for an AI system to process. For example, my South African colleagues call traffic lights ‘robots’, which led to a confused look on my face the first time they dropped the word into conversation.
We are in love with the new series of Faking It. Every episode is a joy, and we always find ourselves nervous for the consistently lovely people that are taking part.
Race Across The World was superb. All of the contestants ended up being very likeable, to the point where it didn’t matter who won. Yes, I cried.
Dept. Q was worth watching, despite the somewhat ridiculous plot.
A friend pointed us to You Can’t Ask That. It’s an Australian show where every episode has a bunch of talking heads associated by a theme — e.g. firefighters, nudists, disaster survivors — who answer a series of questions about their identities and experiences. Once you get used to the style of rapidly cutting between each of the people it is extremely watchable. The episode featuring people who’ve killed someone had me in tears.
I love how easily the modern world lets me explore films and shows from my past. Apropos of nothing, this week I sought out V, the TV series from the early 1980s where an alien race turns up on Earth claiming to come in peace but with other, hidden motives. Re-watching it this week made me realise that there are so many scenes that burrowed deep into my childhood brain and stayed there. It was a bit of a puzzle to find out how to watch it based on the episodes available online. There’s a two-part miniseries from 1983, followed by V: The Final Battle (a three-part miniseries from 1984) and then a 19-part TV series from 1984–1985 confusingly called V. I’ve made my way through the first of these and will watch the second, but reviews have set low expectations for the third. The scenes where scientists started to be persecuted because of their ‘conspiracy’ against the visitors are fascinating; it’s not hard to draw a parallel to recent narratives against experts, judges and scientists by the Conservatives in the UK and the Trump regime in the US.
Audio
SomaFM is 25 years old. I’ve been listening to Groove Salad on and off since about 2001; I don’t think there’s a better radio station to work to.
Had an insatiable earworm of the opening track of Stevie Wonder’s 1995 live album Natural Wonder, a somewhat patchy album that I probably haven’t listened to for 25 years. I don’t think there is a studio version of Dancing To The Rhythm but if there is, I’d love to hear it. This song is so good. All of the musicians seem so dialled in and the percussion is incredible. I’ve always thought that the recording doesn’t match the quality of the music.
Books
Tried using ChatGPT to recommend my next read to me based on my giant list of already-purchased books alongside even bigger wish list. The experiment failed dismally, with the LLM recommending books that were in neither of the lists — three times in succession — despite me telling it that I didn’t want this. Gemini seemed to fare better, and Claude did an ok job too. This seems like a basic thing that these tools should be able to do successfully, but I fear that I am myself falling into the trap of expecting too much from computer programs that just generate plausible text.
Next week: An online Album Club, and getting as much done as I can before another week off.
London’s Guildhall at lunchtime on a cloudy, cold June day.
A week of two halves. Back at my desk after a week off, I felt a bit rudderless and unsure of myself. I’m very good at switching off when I’m not at work, but this means that there is lots to catch up on when I return. On Wednesday morning, I met with one of my colleagues to discuss our overall approach to the work that our teams need to do and I felt completely rejuvenated by the conversation. Suddenly my sense of purpose was back and it felt as though a number of things had slotted into place.
This was a week in which I:
Was asked for guidance from multiple colleagues on how to deal with clients who are bringing their own AI recording tools into meetings. I gathered my thoughts on this and sent an email to some of our senior leaders to try and find out what we already have in place to help our staff. It would be useful if staff are able to point to a public-facing webpage about our approach to this.
Had an interesting conversation with an AI developer/consultant, who shared that he is also completely overwhelmed by the announcements and pace of change from the big technology vendors.
Took part in our development team’s sprint review and sprint planning sessions.
Collaborated with a colleague on some analysis in Excel. I see Excel as a Swiss Army Knife for people working in technology, useful for all sorts of data analysis and even text manipulation. Showing someone little tips and tricks to achieve an outcome makes me realise how much stuff I’ve learned over the years.
Met with colleagues working on the project to open a new office in a new location. Reviewed a document with options for the initial technical stack that we will use until we have found a more permanent home.
Had the weekly meeting with colleagues in our sister company on their office refurbishment project.
Reviewed the proposed submission of technical policy documents to one of our regulators.
Joined our bi-weekly Microsoft Copilot working group. I think we are doing better than I expected in terms of people collaborating and sharing with each other, but there is always so much more that we could do. I’d love to spend some time exploring Emily Webber’s work on successful communities of practice.
Met with colleagues in our Learning and Development team to discuss our approach to digital literacy, particularly in relation to AI and data.
Joined our quarterly governance meeting to review services provided to us by a sister company.
Had some interesting conversations about team dynamics, reflecting on how the world of hybrid work is the toughest place to exist. If everyone is in an office or everyone is working remotely, clear practices can be put in place to optimise how people work together. It’s the messy middle where things can go wrong.
Attended diversity, equity and inclusion training, following my election onto the committee for our technology division. It was a fascinating discussion. There are aspects that relate specifically to the goals that the organisation is trying to meet in South Africa, but the concepts are universal. It felt refreshing to be involved with like-minded people where the dominant narrative in the news has been to roll back on DE&I initiatives, following the lead of the Trump administration in the US.
Had fun at our office pub quiz. Our team got a respectable 75 points out of 114, but we still came fourth. The quiz host was excellent, bringing music questions to life by playing live piano, guitar and kazoo.
Had one of the days in the office disrupted by a fire alarm.
Enjoyed the free office snacks that we’ve put in place while our canteen is shut. I’m not sure how large I’m going to be by the time it reopens.
Joined the rest of my colleagues for pizza and beer in our office, one of the things we are doing while so much disruptive office refurbishment is going on in the rest of the building.
Subscribed to Allmusic for USD 16 for the year, getting rid of the insane amount of adverts and pop-ups on their site. I regularly use the site for looking at an artist’s entire discography, including ratings and reviews. This is particularly useful when looking for a way into listening to a well-established artist who has an extensive back catalogue.
Had my bike serviced at the local bike shop. It’s done just over 6,000km and needed a new front brake disc rotor. Other than that, a light greasing was all that was required.
Drove up to Birmingham on Saturday afternoon to get my son to his latest 1,500m race, this time in the British Milers Club Birmingham Uni Grand Prix.
I’ve occasionally listened to episodes of the EconTalk podcast for many years, discovering it as we went through the 2008–2009 financial crisis. For no reason that I can recall, I was recently thinking about the show and discovered that it has just hit 1,000 episodes. I enjoyed Russ Roberts’ reflections on hosting for the past 20 years or so.
It’s brilliant to learn that 20mph zones in urban areas really do reduce injuries and save lives. TfL’s study shows that looking at the three year periods surrounding each implementation of a 20mph zone introduced between 1989 and 2013 led to:
A 40 per cent reduction in the number of people killed (from 15 to 9), compared against the background trend of 7 per cent fewer fatalities across borough roads.
A 34 per cent reduction in the number of people killed or seriously injured (from 395 to 260), compared against the background trend of a 15 per cent fall in people killed or seriously injured across borough roads.
A 75 per cent reduction in the number of children killed (from 4 to 1), compared with no change across the control group. Additionally, a 50% reduction in children’s casualties (from 517 to 280), against the background trend within the control group of 20%.
A 35 per cent reduction in collisions and 36 per cent reduction in casualties on borough roads, against a background trend of 12 per cent fewer collisions and casualties across all borough roads.
Video
We’ve made most of our way through Dept. Q, which is fun enough to see past the silly bits.
We were surprised to find that we’d reached the final episode of season two of The Last of Us. There was a cliffhanger at the end, but it didn’t have a ‘final show of the season’ vibe.
Snowpoet’s Thought You Knew is a beautiful, delicate thing. I didn’t get as much into their last release, Wait For Me which (I can’t quite believe) came out four years ago. Their new album, Heartstrings, is lovely.
Books
I’ve been playing with using ChatGPT to pick my next read, uploading my giant text file lists of books I’ve bought and what I have on my wish list. After discouraging it from putting together a complex spreadsheet with lots of attributes for my books, it is now giving me a range of options based on how I might be feeling, what my energy levels are, etc. I’m enjoying how it is narrowing my focus down to a few books from which to choose.
Next week: Four days in the office, and the next instalment of Album Club.
I love that this was broadcast on Sky News for two reasons:
It reinforces that people should not trust the output of the ‘AI’ systems that we are using. Having such a stark example of this on a mainstream TV channel that will be picked up and shared by so many people is excellent.
It is a fantastic, citable example of a fundamental misread of what this technology is. ChatGPT generated false statements, but it didn’t lie. It cannot. It isn’t a being. It is a non-deterministic tool that generates what the probable text output is based on its training data, and the combination of the user’s prompt and the system prompt that was submitted to it.
My guess is that as Sam Coates has been uploading transcripts of his previous podcast episodes and asking questions about them over a period of time, the chat history and context led ChatGPT’s statistical generation process to produce what it calculated to be the most likely response to the prompt — one that included a made-up reference to today’s episode, despite it not having been uploaded yet. It was incorrect information, but it was a plausible response to his prompt of “what date transcripts do you have access to”. It wasn’t going back and searching a database of previously submitted transcripts. It just doesn’t work like that.
This isn’t to take away from the usefulness of ChatGPT and other tools like it. I use generative AI all the time in a variety of ways, such as to proofread my writing. But the way in which we anthropomorphise these computer programs and words we use to describe what they do — learn, know, think, reason, understand, lie — make us walk into the trap of assuming that there is somehow a being, a person, on the other side of the chat box. There isn’t. This trap is only going to get worse the better these systems get.
I love YouTube. There are so many great channels and accounts on there to follow, publishing incredible videos. My family and I use it so much that we justify the £19.99 per month Family Premium service that removes all of the adverts and gives us a bunch of other features.
A conversation with some friends today made me remember that I use YouTube in a slightly optimised way. I hate getting drawn into whatever the algorithm thinks is hot, trending or likely to pull me in for a long ‘engagement’ session, where I open the app and later look up to find that hours have passed. I’ve found a simple way of reducing the likelihood of this.
I have all of my YouTube history turned off.
This is what I see when I open the app on my iPad:
A beautiful, blank YouTube home screen.
When I go to YouTube it is usually to do one of these things, which I can now achieve without getting distracted:
Intentionally searching for something specific
Going to my subscriptions feed, a chronological list of videos from channels that I follow
Going to look at my ‘Watch Later’ playlist of long videos that I didn’t have time to watch when I first came across them
To set this up, press the settings cog in the YouTube app and go to ‘Manage all history’. Here you can go to the ‘Controls’ tab and turn off your YouTube history, to enjoy an almost1 algorithm-free existence:
YouTube history turned off.
One downside of turning off your YouTube history is that the service will never remember your place if you leave a video and come back to it later, as your progress is part of the history of what you watched. This is inconvenient, but I wouldn’t trade this feature for not having a zen-like home screen.
You will still get suggested videos next to the one that you are watching. ↩︎
Taken from a moving bike somewhere near Dorton, Buckinghamshire
A welcome week off, although I do feel a little bit like this guy. The days came and went but despite not getting much home admin done, the time didn’t feel wasted. I’m feeling relaxed and happy about getting back to work.
This was a week in which I:
Got on my indoor bike trainer almost every day, mainly focusing on recovery rides. I’m pretty sure that my knee pain was a result of putting too much power through it, standing up and trying to grind higher gears to propel myself up hills faster when I rode London Wales London. The joint is still complaining after a harder ride, but staying seated seems to keep it within tolerable levels.
Cancelled my remaining physio sessions as I feel that my knee is on the mend. Who knows, I may surprise myself and start doing the strengthening exercises any day now.
Got annoyed at our pet insurance renewal when M&S attempted to put the premium up by about 40% versus the previous year. After calling them we ended up cancelling our renewal and going back to their website to start a new policy, getting us back to a monthly fee that is just over what we’ve been paying for this past year. Things that renew annually and gratuitously increase in price are horrible, but I’m not sure what the alternative is; making the customer have to do something might result in the service lapsing, which would also be a bad outcome.
Joined my eldest son for a drive over to my parents’ house. It was the first time that he had driven on the motorway and it could hardly have been more challenging — a super-busy M25 with lots of rain and spray. He did great. We met my dad at the local driving range and then had a lovely lunch back at their house.
Had a lovely visit from my wife’s parents for the day. In order to make things a bit easier we picked them up and dropped them off at Burford Garden Centre, which is about halfway-ish between where we both live. It’s a beautiful place full of lovely things, especially the deli, but you pretty much need to remortgage your house if you want to buy anything.
Met friends for dinner at Tabure, which was as delicious as ever.
Took a trip to Deco Audio to rummage through their records and CDs. For £18 I picked up seven used CDs to add to my once again growing collection.
Had some lovely breakfasts and lunches out in town with my wife. It’s an extravagance, but it was lovely to do it and made it feel as though we were on holiday properly, just a little bit.
Savoury and sweet bases covered at Faire in Berkhamsted.
Cycled the Tour de Ricky, which when combined with getting to and from the start/finish resulted in a 250km ride from Rickmansworth to Silverstone and back. It was much shorter than London-Wales-London but felt hard in different ways; for some reason my toes and feet were in pain for a lot of the ride, and I have no idea why. It was also much warmer, which meant needing to remember to drink and to regularly refill our water bottles. We made it round as a group of four and had a lovely day out.
At the official start line of the Tour de Ricky. (Photo: Ian Biller)
Looking as pained as ever when riding a bike. (Photo: Ian Biller)
No idea why we stopped or what we were laughing at. But it was fun. (Photo: Ian Biller)
In fact, this is so effective that I wonder if enterprises everywhere are thinking about AI all wrong, at least in the short-term. There is a lot of focus on one person having a lot of agents under their control, and the allure of that — both financially and in terms of productivity — are clear. It’s possible, however, that a lot of the productivity gains are available now. A team leader can direct people (1) who use the same tools as them with a similar effectiveness (2) in an auditable way (3) and seamlessly extend or augment their work while retaining context. That’s pretty powerful!
The reason why I think this is novel and worth writing about is because none of the chatbots support multi-user. Daman and I hacked this together using the “Share Chat” feature, but this would be better if multi-user chats were possible by default. And, more broadly, the real unlocks from AI are not going to come from working the way we do but better; it will come from changing the way we work, and here at Stratechery we have started doing exactly that.
‘Link gaslighting’ is a horrible phenomenon. It would be much better that a link is broken than redirected to something other than the original page.
Video
Absolutely loved The Assembly, a show where famous people are asked questions by a group of autistic, neurodivergent and/or learning disabled interviewers. Danny Dyer is the first guest and comes across as very genuine, honest and funny. Each episode includes a musical performance, and I haven’t been able to get their rendition of Sunshine on Leith out of my head since I saw it.
Finished watching Sirens, which was strangely compelling and worth watching, but ultimately unsatisfying.
Saw the first two episodes of American Manhunt: Osama Bin Laden. One of our boys wanted to watch it as his friends had been talking about it. It was a weird feeling to be sitting there watching it and talking to the kids about events that happened before they were born that don’t seem that far in the past.
It’s brilliant to learn that The Beatles in Mono is getting a vinyl reissue. Signing up to the mailing list gets you a 10% discount, bringing the price to around £387, but it’s still a lot of money.
Web
This website reinforced to me what an embarrassing southerner I really am. (Hat tip to Lisa Riemers for sharing.)
I’m sure this isn’t completely correct, but it’s roughly right. One day I’ll visit Scotland and Northern Ireland. Probably.
Books
Still slowly working my way through Code Dependent by Madhumita Murgia.
Trees near Berkhamsted train station have yellow ribbons around them along with handwritten signs saying that tree preservation orders have been applied for. Lots of trees seem to be being aggressively pruned or chopped down altogether at the moment, and I don’t understand why.
The start of this week felt very tough mentally. Sometimes all of the things going on out in the big wide world feel like they’re getting the better of me and I walk around feeling fragile, having a mild existential crisis. This was one of those weeks.
Jensen Huang: The President has a vision of what he wants to achieve, I support the President, I believe in the President, and I think that he’ll create a great outcome for America, and he’ll do it with respect and with an attitude of wanting to compete, but also looking for opportunities to cooperate. I sense that, I see all that. Obviously, I’m not in the White House and I don’t know exactly how they feel, but that’s what I sense.
I got into computers as a kid because they were fascinating and fun. Technological advancements are still incredible, but everything now seems tinged with disappointment at the people who are in the driving seat for wherever we’re going. I really hope Rachel Coldicutt’s idea for a Society of Hopeful Technologists takes off, because I feel that I need it.
This was a week in which I:
Prepped for and ran our monthly programme steering committee meeting. Finances were the main focus of this month’s discussion as we were being asked to sign off on a significant spend projection for a shared project.
Wrote up the minutes from the meeting at the weekend.
Represented our team at one of our legal entity governance meetings in place of my boss. It was good to have a prep call the day before so that I could speak with confidence on the areas that I know less about.
Attended the steering committee for our sister company’s office refurbishment project.
Met with colleagues to review progress on the project to refit another of our offices.
Attended a meeting with colleagues to discuss a project that our new CEO has asked people across our office to look at.
Joined our quarterly Infrastructure Governance Authority meeting where we reviewed the architecture of our current printing solution.
Met with our pilot users of Microsoft Copilot for a guided tour of Copilot Agents. The platform offers a simple interface that conceals a myriad of possibilities, but this whole space seems like it is moving too fast for people who don’t work in the technology field to keep up.
Met with colleagues who are looking at producing newsletter-style content for internal staff and external clients.
Had my monthly call with my executive partner at our technology advisory vendor.
Joined a webinar from the same vendor on banking industry highlights for technologists, but left after a few minutes as the information was too generic to be useful.
Enjoyed an all-staff social lunch at our office, the last one for a while as our in-house catering is due to temporarily close.
Went out for lunch with one of my team members. We’ve worked together for years but haven’t eaten together much. We need to do it more often.
Had an experience listening to Mika’s Life In Cartoon Motion at this month’s WB-40 Album Club. I love how different music can affect people in different ways; I would never have picked it up on my own and I’m not sure I’d listen again, but other people were visibly and vocally moved by it.
Am still struggling with my knee, but it’s getting better. I’ve been predictably terrible at doing the short exercises prescribed by the physio, so I may as well cancel my remaining sessions. Low-intensity recovery rides on my indoor bike trainer are fine, but putting any kind of load through it seems to bring the pain back again. On Saturday I did a 75km ride which left it feeling sore, but the pain hasn’t lingered for days afterwards.
Opted for a lie-in on Saturday morning instead of getting out for the bike club ride, which also meant that I avoided the predicted rain. I rode the same route a couple of hours later, solo. There was no rain, but a massive amount of road rubbish that ended up all over me.
Paul Ford: And so where do I think this ends? I think this ends with the kids are going to use it no matter what. So you’d better, you better have a framework. They should understand how it works. And there should be context in places where, yeah, you’re right. They have to learn underlying principles. They have to go figure stuff out. And the people who are, in general, if you figure stuff out and you go and you learn how something works, you do tend to be more productive and smarter in life. Like, it’s a success strategy.
I love the concept of ‘Canadian Devil Syndrome’ that came up on the Sharp Tech podcast. It’s “the cognitive dissonance within a company between their professed mission and how the business actually makes money.”
Articles
One of my previous employers, UBS, is deploying AI analyst clones. Analysts are creating AI avatars of themselves which are then used to generate video of them reading their research. This makes a lot of sense given the propensity towards video as the main way that many people like to receive information.
Abandoned watching Poker Face after the first few episodes of the new season. It seems to have jumped the shark and now has completely predictable storylines.
Loved the first episode of the reboot of Faking It. My wife and I were jumping for joy by the end of it. What a wonderful contestant.
Sirens has been strangely watchable, occasionally veering toward being completely over the top but staying compelling somehow.
Elton John’s The Ballad of Danny Bailey (1909–34) popped up on a random shuffle. It may be my favourite song on the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album. The song is superb, enhanced by the incredible arrangement and musicianship, as shown in this excerpt from an episode of Classic Albums:
I’ve been listening to Marika Hackman’s I’m Not Your Man again. Good Intentions is a standout track for me at the moment.
Web
“ILGA-Europe’s Rainbow Map annually ranks 49 European countries on a scale between 0% (gross violations of human rights, discrimination) and 100% (respect of human rights, full equality) on the basis of laws and policies that have a direct impact on LGBTI people’s human rights.”
Making slow progress through Code Dependent by Madhumita Murgia. The book is very well-written, but the subject matter is tough at the end of a long day.
Next week: A week off, pottering around at home.
📷 Someone has left most of a cookie on a small window ledge outside my office. Not sure if it was a bird or a window cleaner who decided to save it for later.
This week felt difficult, in the sense that I never felt as though I was on top of things. Two late nights out in a row midweek also made things harder, and I’ve not been sleeping well. I need to find my mojo.
Last Friday’s indoor trainer ride and Saturday’s club ride left me with a very painful knee. On the way into work on Monday, I made an appointment at a physio and managed to be seen the same day. They diagnosed me with patellar tendinitis and recommended simple wall squats, which — of course — I’ve struggled to find time for or remember to do consistently. Someone also recommended Voltarol gel, which I’m slapping onto my knee twice a day. The pain came back again with this weekend’s club ride, although it doesn’t feel quite as bad as last week. I’m hoping it will fade as I really don’t want to spend time resting and not cycling.
This was a week in which I:
Was happy to see the work started last weekend was largely completed over the following weekend, leaving our office in a good state.
Joined a local office-wide meeting to hear about the upcoming construction works in our building, the expected impact on us, and what our plans are. I’d reviewed the script for the meeting beforehand.
Reviewed the latest iteration of costs for improvements to space that we share with a sister company within our office.
Took part in my development team’s sprint retrospective.
Reviewed the output of analysis work undertaken as a response to a request for help from one of our business heads. Agreed with everyone involved so far how we would take it forward from here.
Met with our Learning and Development team to review the material I put together for our Digital Literacy initiative a couple of years ago. We barely scratched the surface the first time around, largely because I was tackling it on my own and the need for AI education dominated everything else. It may turn into something yet.
Attended a workshop for using internal tools for career and personal development planning.
Remotely attended a divisional-wide event hosted by our senior leaders.
Had our weekly project meeting with our audio/visual consultant.
Went out with a couple of friends to The Cavendish Arms — a quite amazing pub venue, it turns out — to see a cheap gig. Hector Gannet kicked things off with his folksy songs on acoustic guitar and piano, followed by Scottish bands waverley. (sic) and headliner Day Sleeper. The venue was so small; waverley. seemed to have brought lots of their friends along who disappeared at the start of Day Sleeper’s set, giving it a strange atmosphere. The bands were running over, so when a couple of us ducked out in order to get the train home, the lead singer of Day Sleeper passive-aggressively followed us almost out of the door. Slightly unnerving.
Hector Gannet, waverley. and Day Sleeper
Media
Articles
Another week, another AI horrorshow. This time, Grok has been replying to people on X/Twitter and turning the conversation towards ‘white genocide’. It got me thinking about how many AI vendors say that they are ethical and yet nobody really knows what the system prompt is. I hope that awful stuff like this helps to move the conversation forward in that these things should be transparent…but it probably won’t.
Video
Loved watching The Four Seasons on Netflix. It was light, funny and heartfelt.
We’re once again enjoying Race Across The World. It’s so well done, with the contestant backstories and their motivations being revealed across a number of episodes. I do wonder whether behind the scenes they are each asked/forced to take a scenic route along their journey, though. If it was me, I wouldn’t be taking detours to see some of the wonders along the way, I’d just try and get to the end as fast as possible.
Audio
I’m so happy that The Sundays’ Static & Silence is being re-released on vinyl. I haven’t seen it appear on any stores in the UK other than Rough Trade, so I’m not sure how much it will cost here.
For no explainable reason, this week I varied my walk between the train station and the office. As I walked down Herbrand Street, parrots flew overhead. I found a bunch of them gathered on a bird feeder.
The end of my streak of four-day weeks at work. After last weekend’s giant bike ride, Sunday was spent in an overtired stupor and Monday was restful, ahead of going back to work on Tuesday. All week I’ve had mild pain in my left knee, which I think was caused by trying to keep up with the rest of my group on the cycling climbs. They are better riders than me, so I found myself standing up and grinding out a higher gear than usual to keep up. I got on my indoor bike trainer on Friday and found that it irritated my knee; by the end of Saturday morning’s club ride I was in a lot of pain. I’m going to try and get it looked at next week so that I can minimise the time away from exercising.
This was a week in which I:
Got a Teams message on my way into work on Tuesday from one of our senior execs about an issue in the office. We’d had some work done over the weekend but it hadn’t been left in an acceptable state. I spent my morning trying to get things to a place where the immediate issues were fixed as well as working with the team to ensure the next batch of work would be done to a higher standard.
Caught up with colleagues who had been out on holiday. A late Easter and public holidays meant that quite a few people had taken advantage of booking an extended break.
Had a sprint progress review meeting with our development team.
Reviewed the latest iteration of a master services agreement with our heads of Procurement, Legal, and Governance and Control.
Stepped in for my boss to represent our department at the Governance Committee meeting for one of our legal entities.
Had further conversations with senior client-facing staff about the process of producing newsletters and insights.
Reviewed the output and insights from one of my colleague’s recent business trips as we look to refurbish one of our offices.
Joined the weekly project meeting for the refurbishment of our sister company’s space, as well as our shared areas. Reviewed the latest financial forecast for the shared works. We have a busy few weeks ahead.
Met with colleagues who wanted advice on the next steps on a project, expanding the scope of a new tool or bolstering what has been put in place already.
Attended our fortnightly Microsoft Copilot working group.
Agreed our approach to purchasing more Microsoft Copilot licences as requests to use the tools come in.
Had an update meeting on our document management project.
Met with colleagues in our Learning and Development team to see how they can assist us with our Copilot journey as well as with some of our other projects that require substantial change management.
Attended an excellent Learning Hour, with Gartner’s Rob O’Donohue as a guest speaker. He gave a presentation on The Neurodiversity Advantage, the same one that I saw at the Gartner IT Symposium in 2023. It was just as fascinating the second time around, and sparked a lot of conversation within our team.
Met a colleague in our Operations team to talk through his approach to measuring and tracking ongoing process improvements. It’s been a while since I thought about Six Sigma, which was once very much the flavour of the month.
Was a little shocked when our car insurance renewal premium came through at £1,600. This is apparently only £100 more expensive than last year, but it doesn’t feel like it. In the past twelve months we gradually changed the scope of our insurance as my eldest son worked his way through his provisional licence and then passed his test. We’ve got used to paying a few hundred pounds just for my wife and I for one car, where we each have 30 years of driving history. Trying to find comparative quotes is difficult and time-consuming as you need to look at all cars and drivers on one policy versus different policies. It seems as though there isn’t much of a better deal around at the moment.
Dropped our Mini in for a service and MOT, expecting it to be expensive as it is 15 years old and we know it has a few issues. And so it proved.
Saw both of our boys finish school, our eldest for the final time. Our youngest one also had his first GCSE exam and is quickly in the thick of it. In a few weeks, the exams will be done and they can hopefully enjoy their summer.
Enjoyed a beautifully sunny club bike ride on Saturday morning, but by the end of 70km I was struggling with pain in my left knee, which persisted throughout the weekend. I’m going to look at getting some help with it next week as I don’t want to be off my bike for any length of time.
Signed up for The National 400 Audax ride on 28 June. It sets off at the civilised time of 10am, with a time limit of 1pm the next day. I’ve never ridden those roads before. I’m hoping I can get the logistics in place and my knee problem resolved so that I can ride it.
Went with Matt to the National Film Theatre to see The Extraordinary Miss Flower (2024). Matt had played Emiliana Torrini’s Miss Flower album at our latest Album Club night and I was captivated. The film is a beautiful, hard to describe thing. After the passing of Torrini’s friend’s mum, Geraldine Flower, they discovered a suitcase full of letters that were written to her by various men throughout her life. Torrini used these as inspiration for her album as well as this film. We don’t really get to know much about Miss Flower, as there are very few letters from her, so you end up with an impression of what she was like. The film includes all of the wonderful songs from the album. The event finished with a live Q&A with Torrini, Caroline Catz (who plays Miss Flower in the film), and the directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, followed by a couple of live songs from Torrini. Sophie Ellis-Bextor sat a couple of rows behind us in the theatre. A lovely way to start the weekend.
Media
Podcasts
Superb episode of WB-40 this week with Dr Nancy Doyle talking about neurodiversity and leadership. I thought that the things she raised are generally applicable and not just relevant to neurodiverse people. She says that popular models, such as being a ‘servant leader’, are targeted at the ‘historically bullying leader’ to make them “calm down and be a bit nicer”. I’m much more comfortable being in the ‘nice’ leader role, so having advice on how to hold boundaries and standing my ground would be much more useful than ‘servant leadership’ training. She also argues against the idea that neurodivergent characteristics are fixed “foibles” that others have “just got to accept” and that individuals shouldn’t be expected to change them.
…considering the urgency felt by the LGBTQ+ community, Apple releasing Pride bands and wallpapers is simply not enough to compensate for its decision not to speak out against President Trump’s attacks on trans people. There are certainly risks to Apple if it were to do more to stand up for the LGBTQ+ community, but those risks pale in comparison to the increasing threats trans and other people in the LGBTQ+ community face in the U.S. and around the world every day.
I’m sad to read that Ton Zijlstra’s weeknotes have come to an end, but understand the reasons why. The format he used was inspirational in that it meant that the whole weekend wasn’t taken up with writing something. I wonder how long mine will last for?
Rob Skinner’s reflections on London-Wales-London from both this and last year are excellent. I read his 2024 notes before I set off on my own adventure and they were very worthwhile.
Video
Subscribed to Paramount+ in order to watch Mobland but abandoned it after half an episode. It is so incredibly dreadful, almost like a parody of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Ridiculous London slang that the actors sometimes explain in the next sentence. Completely unwatchable.
Alicia Clara has announced her new album, Nothing Dazzled, which for me was an instant buy.
Bought a copy of Plum by Widowspeak. My friend Mat introduced me to them via a playlist he made for me last year. It’s not their latest and may not even be their greatest — I haven’t yet explored enough of their work — but it’s full of lush songs like this one:
T’Pau’s Heart and Soul popped up on a random playlist at the weekend. I think this is an underrated masterpiece of songwriting, which I’ve loved since it came out in 1987. It’s so clever how the backing vocals take the lead for the verses before colliding with the lead vocal. This lyric video that someone put together illustrates the point; it’s almost impossible to read all of the lyrics in real time.
Books
Continued reading Code Dependent by Madhumita Murgia. Superb writing so far.
Next week: The Interesting conference, and the WB-40 Album Club crew go to a gig.
Ever since I bought a bike back in 2013, I’ve been fascinated by long rides. It didn’t take long before I was venturing further than I could cope with. I remember that first summer, where I planned a route at home, printed out the cue sheet telling me what roads and turns to take, and held it awkwardly in my hand as I covered what felt like a gargantuan 70 miles. Neither the paper nor my fingers were in good shape after that ride, so I soon bought a cheap Garmin to make the route available to me through a handlebar-mounted sat-nav. It was revolutionary. The next year, in the early Spring, I managed my first century ride, covering 100 miles by riding to Silverstone and back. I had the bug. One year later — and ten years ago this month — I tackled Ride 999, a nine-day, 900 mile ride from London to Milan.
Last year I was on a business trip to New York when a friend from my cycling club announced that sign-ups for the 407km London-Wales-LondonAudax ride would open in the early hours the next day. This was the last thing at night for me, so I was in the perfect spot to secure a place. I’ve signed up to many events in the past that I’ve not shown up to, typically because of freezing temperatures or incessant rain. But I figured that for £29 it was worth it to at least have the option of riding. I signed up, paid the money, put it in the diary and went to bed.
Liam FitzPatrick, the enthusiastic organiser of the event, got in touch via email in late November and again at Christmas. These were handy reminders that I’d signed up to something significant. I think at this point I’d started to mentally commit to doing it, but knew — and kept telling anyone who would listen — that if there was torrential rain forecast for the whole weekend I wouldn’t feel bad about pulling out.
In late March, thoughts about the ride moved into the foreground. I read the super detailed and incredibly helpful pre-event notes in the emails that Liam sent out. We were well warned that rear flashing lights would not be tolerated under any circumstances. On Saturday mornings, I usually ride with the 16–17mph group at the bike club, but I knew that I would be much slower at this distance once refuelling stops and fatigue were factored in. At 12mph, setting off from the start at 6am would see me back to the final checkpoint by around 3am. I started to worry that my big front light wouldn’t last the ride. I bought it in 2021 to tackle a 300km Audax but had only used it for a couple of hours before consigning it to a drawer. Last week I tested it by charging it to full and running it flat, but I was still worried that it wouldn’t last for a whole night. Fortunately, the manufacturer created a rechargeable battery that straps to your bike to keep things going, so I picked one up from an online store. I also bought a second rear light so that I had a spare in case the first one wouldn’t last.
As the week of the ride arrived, I couldn’t stop myself from checking the weather forecast multiple times a day. Early in the week, Epic Ride Weather was predicting a bit of mid-ride rain, but as the days rolled by the probability of getting wet evaporated. Aside from the near-constant side wind, the biggest challenge was going to be the temperature changes. Cool when I set off from home, hot in the middle of the ride and then cold by the time we got back. I decided to buy arm warmers and leg warmers, bits of kit that I had never used before, as they could be easily taken off and stuffed into a jersey pocket or one of my small bike bags.
I was soon to find out the difference between ‘feels like 10°C’ and ‘feels like 4°C’.
On Wednesday I took my bike for a safety check at my local bike shop and asked them to swap out my old brake pads for new ones. I’d bought the brake pads a few months ago as I realised I’d been riding my bike for a couple of years and hadn’t changed them. But I’ve never swapped disc brake pads over before and hadn’t got round to fitting them. I figured that trying to do it myself for the first time a few days before a big ride was a recipe for disaster. When I picked the bike up they told me that it was in good shape but would need a proper service soon. I also learned from them that brake disc rotors are a consumable part and that they wear out — I had no idea.
I took Friday off work to relax, eat, charge all the things and prep my kit so that I could just wake up and go on Saturday morning. Fellow rider Mary and I had agreed to meet in the high street at 4:30am for the hour-long ride to Chalfont St Peter, ideally picking up Dave and Ian on our way through Chesham, and giving us half an hour at the start to grab our brevet cards and faff about. I tried to get to bed early, but my excitement for the ride and anxiety that I would somehow miss my alarm meant that sleep was fragmented and light. I ended up waking just before 4am and turned off my alarms before they even went off.
Despite not being hungry at 4am, I wolfed down half a bowl of muesli and granola as I knew from past experience that a lot of the day would be about managing food consumption. I started to get my kit on. It was 10°C and rising outside, so I decided that I didn’t need to don my leg warmers. But I also didn’t have enough room to stuff them in anywhere. Not thinking clearly about the forecast, I left them at home. This was a mistake.
Ready to go, complete with a note left by my wife after I’d gone to bed.
Mary was waiting for me in the High Street. After some quick hellos and knowing looks at each other that said ‘I can’t believe we’re up this early and doing this’, we hit our first hill of the day. I shared my live location to our group on WhatsApp so that Dave and Ian would be able to see when we were approaching their houses. We didn’t spot Dave, but Ian suddenly appeared behind us and quickly took the lead to guide us to the start.
There was a buzz in the air as the riders said hello to familiar faces and were greeted by the smiling volunteers who signed us in and handed each of us our Audax brevet card. This card has a box for each of the places that we are required to prove that we’ve been to, either by getting it validated by a volunteer at a mandatory control stop, writing down the answer to a question (such as ‘What is written on the house at X?’) or getting a time-stamped receipt from an ATM or a local shop. Each stop has both an earliest and latest time of arrival, with the gaps between them widening as the ride progresses. At the end of the ride, you hand over the completed card and receipts at the finish for final validation.
Checking in and anticipating what was to come.
Some light breakfast items were on offer, so I made myself a couple of slices of toast that I slathered with butter and honey. It had been over an hour since my half bowl of muesli and I knew I’d have to keep forcing food down me, even when I didn’t feel like eating.
Second breakfast.
At the start we caught up with Dave, as well as Ed whom I hadn’t met before. One of the team had a longer than expected visit to the loo, so we finally got pedalling a few minutes after ride organiser Liam gave his introduction and set everybody off on their journey.
Listening to Liam Fitzpatrick give his final instructions before we set off.
Ready to go at the start. (Photo: Ian Biller)
Our pace in the first stint was good, but probably a little too high. It can be difficult when riding in a group to slow down; you tend to be carried along by whoever is setting the pace at the front, tucking in behind them to take advantage of the drafting effect. If you lose the group, you may end up having to pedal even harder than when you were with them. We passed many groups and individual riders which gave me the impression that we were making good progress.
We soon reached the first mandatory control stop in Islip, 61km from the start. This is a typical distance for a Saturday morning club ride, but today we’d only covered 15% of the journey. The catering was superb, with sausage baps (even veggie ones), hash browns, croissants and all kinds of other breakfast things on offer. Two hours after my second breakfast, it was time for my third.
Third breakfast at the Islip control.
As we set off again, the sun was out and we had started to warm up. I wasn’t quite ready to put away my cosy gilet and arm warmers, but I think I took the gilet off somewhere along the way to Tewkesbury, our next stop at the 145km mark.
Setting off from Islip. (Photo: Ed Hems)
For the next stint, we started to drop Dave a little bit. He was never too far behind, but didn’t stay with the group. It was understandable given that he had run the London Marathon the weekend before; it was slightly crazy that he was doing this event at all. He had told me that the trick with a ride like this is that you need to ride it at your own pace, and he was absolutely right.
I always seem to look this pained when taking a bike-riding selfie.
I’ve ridden through the beautiful villages of the Cotswolds quite a few times. Guiting Power is my favourite, a little oasis in the middle of rolling countryside. I’ve stopped there occasionally to refuel at The Old Post Office cafe, but not this time. We breezed through, passing people enjoying themselves as they spilled out across the street outside.
Tewkesbury was familiar to me as I stopped there on my previous Audax ride. As we entered the town we stopped to regroup. As we waited, we were approached by the town crier dressed in fabulous full regalia. I resisted the urge to ask him “what have you come as?” He was good-humoured and told us that he was new in the job. Looking him up after the ride, I found out that his name is Richard Whincup and he has been on an incredible journey to overcoming a profound stammer and land this role.
The Tewkesbury Town Crier. I resisted the opening quip of “What have you come as?” (Photo: Ian Biller)
I remembered where I stopped for food last time and suggested we roll through the town to find it again. Coffee #1 was just what we needed. Locking our bikes together outside the shop we bought ourselves coffees, crisps, cakes and toasted sandwiches.
Before I knew it, we were rolling again, this time tackling the 41km to Walford, situated right next to Ross-on-Wye. This was the only information control of the ride — where we had to write down the answer to a question on the brevet card — before continuing to ride another 28km to Chepstow, just inside the Welsh border.
Climbing up Symonds Yat was hard. I’ve done longer and more difficult climbs, but this was the closest that I’ve ever come to getting off of the bike and walking. I was out of the saddle and grinding away in first gear, huffing and puffing my way to the top, where I found the others waiting.
Made it up the Symonds Yat climb! (Photo: Ian Biller)
As we set off again, things started to get weird. I didn’t feel like I could keep up with Ian, Mary and Ed and let them go. I needed to ride at my own pace. They soon disappeared out in front. Dave also disappeared from behind me, so for the first time I was on my own. I was feeling bizarre; a little light-headed, cold and shivery despite the sun beating down on us. I wasn’t bonking as I still had energy to pedal, but I didn’t feel like I was making good decisions such as where I was steering. The ride into Chepstow is via a series of descents, which I perhaps should have slowed more on than I did. Arriving at the border I found the others waiting for me, greeting me with shouts of “You’re in Wales!” I think my response was “I feel a bit f— up”, which quickly changed the mood. They sprang into action, quickly agreeing that we should head to control. I gingerly made my way through the town and got stuck at a traffic light that turned red after everyone else had all passed through. When the light went green I struggled to clip back into my pedal and instead rode my bike up the hill like I was on a skateboard, propelling myself along with my left foot. I missed the turn to the control and ended up at a difficult and busy junction. Instincts told me that I had gone too far, so I called Ian to check. Trundling back down the hill, I found the building and parked up. I was so grateful for the stop.
A week later, Ian told me that at this point he wanted to tell me to quit as I looked dreadful, but he decided not to say anything as he felt it was each rider’s decision as to whether they could do it and wanted to continue. All I remember was that the others cared about me and were keen to make sure I got some food and warmed up.
I sat shivering as we sat eating delicious bowls of chilli and drinking tea. After the second bowl, I turned my attention to the home-made cakes on the tables, munching away on the most delicious ginger cake. I was starting to feel a bit like myself again. I’m still not sure if I was dehydrated, low on sugar, or if something else was going on.
I’ve never needed a bowl of chilli more. (Photo: Ed Hems)
All of the volunteers at the stops were so incredibly lovely. At this stop they asked us to bring our water bottles inside and put them on a table. By the time we were ready to leave we found that they had been refilled for us.
I think this is where I started to find things a little tough mentally. It had been a good, solid ride to Wales but now it was early evening — albeit a beautiful one — and I knew we had to cycle all the way back again. We set off as a group of five and made our way down to the old Severn Bridge that crosses the River Wye before spanning the River Severn. Crossing the bridge is a sweet moment when you realise that you’ve made it there from home, under your own steam on two wheels.
Across the Severn Bridge (Photo: Ed Hems)
As we got to the end of the bridge I realised I couldn’t keep up with Ed, Mary and Ian. I hung back with Dave for a few minutes, but the next time I looked behind me he was quite far behind me, so I decided to keep ‘tapping it out’ at my own pace. This was the first ride I’ve done where I’ve been conscious of my heart rate, which I made visible on my Garmin’s default screen. I tried to keep it at or below a number where I know from an ‘active recovery’ ride on my indoor trainer that I’m working, but not too hard. At this point, I mentally resigned myself to riding the rest of the route on my own. I figured that if I could just keep turning the pedals and keeping my heart rate where I wanted it, eventually I’d make it to the next stop. The sun had started to go down, so I stopped to turn on my lights.
Riding alone is a very different experience to riding in a group. I find that my inner monologue doesn’t shut up, and I have to try and keep it on positive thoughts or listening to whatever music is on my ‘inner radio’. Just keep going Andrew, you’ll get there. My main focus at this point was on keeping the chilli and cakes down. A climb took me to what I now know is the Somerset Monument, a giant column at the top of a hill, but I could only think “oh, that’s interesting” as I didn’t know what it was at the time.
The Somerset Monument. When I cycled up to this I was on my own and had no idea what it was. (Photo: Ed Hems)
I kept pedalling. Passing some roadworks and reaching the top of the hill I came across a petrol station, which I thought would be a great place to refill my water bottles. As I pulled in I found Mary, Ian and Ed had also pulled up. I was baffled when they told me that they had only been there for a couple of minutes or so; I hadn’t been riding hard, and yet there they were. Ed suggested that we ride as a group from this point onwards as it was now dusk and the temperature had started to drop. I protested and told them to go on if they felt they could do it — I figured that nobody wanted to be out longer than necessary (not that any of this ride was strictly necessary) — but they insisted. Inside, I was so glad.
Cycling into dusk. (Photo: Ian Biller)
The next control, at Lambourn, was over 100km on from our previous stop. Our big night lights went on before we got to the checkpoint. I found myself getting dazzled by some of the rear lights from riders ahead. I should have cleaned my glasses as they were covered in sweat stains and salt, which gave me a lot of glare. It felt better when I was on the front of our group, but I wasn’t strong enough to take the lead role for very long.
Dark and difficult. (Photo: Ian Biller)
When I wasn’t thinking about how cold I was getting, riding in the dark was special. Owls darted in front of us as they flew from one tree to another. Rabbits decided it was a great time to run across the road as we approached, at one point causing us to brake heavily to avoid hitting one, as it suffered from indecision of which way to turn.
Lambourn was a beautiful sight as the outdoor team with reflective jackets and torches directed us towards the control. They told us that we could wheel our bikes into the hall, which meant there was less faffing around to secure them and find the things we wanted to bring in. Empathy oozed from the volunteers as they told us what a fantastic job we had done to get this far. They couldn’t have been more thoughtful and caring, offering us tea, coffee, biscuits, beans on toast, more bowls of hot chilli and words of encouragement. I wasn’t hungry, but I knew I had to keep eating, piling some fig rolls and Bourbon creams on top of the beans on toast. I was now really struggling to get warm — I really could have done with those leg warmers that I left at home — and asked the group whether they minded me getting another hot drink before we set off. At this point, I remember texting my wife and saying that I didn’t want to go out again. Dave turned up as we were finishing our food and getting ready to leave. It was so good to see him, but I didn’t have a lot of chat and banter left in me. This would be the last time we’d meet on the ride.
Lambourn. The last time we saw Dave. I’m texting my wife to say I didn’t want to go back out in the cold again. (Photos: Ian Biller)
I really didn’t want to go out again. But I knew I would. Having come this far, I couldn’t abandon the ride now.
On a ride like this you get to see the same people, sometimes passing them or having them pass you if one of you is faster but spends more time at the controls. In my head I’d started recognising ‘Great Britain Lady’ (who was wearing a white ‘Great Britain’ cycling top) and ‘Long White-Haired Guy and his Black-Coated Female Friend’. At this control it amused me that someone else started talking about ‘Great Britain Lady’ out loud.
The hot drinks caught up with me on our way to Henley-on-Thames. I wasn’t alone; two of our group stopped for a wee which I only noticed when they later overtook me, surprising me as I thought they were in front. Our next destination was a petrol station in Henley where we had to pick up a receipt, but I wasn’t sure whether there would be a toilet. Finding a convenient gate next to a field where I could park my bike, I made a sudden decision to stop. I did what I needed to do, got bitten a couple of times in the legs and then tried to set off again. It was here that I learned how much I rely on visual feedback when I clip into my pedals. I tried a few times and failed, so eventually had to point one of my front lights towards the floor so I could see what I was doing. I was now on my own, but not for long; in another act of kindness, I found Ian waiting for me at a junction a few hundred metres up the road. Little things like this mean so, so much when you’re cold and tired. I was feeling quite emotional.
The petrol station at Henley was a bizarrely happy memory. We queued to use the Starbucks self-serve coffee machine. I grabbed myself a hot chocolate and a Cadbury’s Boost, remembering to ask for a receipt and wondering how many Audax riders fail because they forget the receipt part. It was 1:15am and we were sitting around in a petrol station with a bunch of knackered strangers who were also on the same crazy quest. As I queued to use the toilet — they had one, after all — another rider said to me, “You’re not doing okay, are you?” I told him that I hadn’t packed enough warm clothes and was freezing cold. He said “come here”, put his arms around me and gave me a warm hug for about five minutes, with his wife — a fellow rider — standing beside us.
We were now only 32km from the ‘arrivee’, our final control back at the start. This was half the distance of a usual Saturday morning club ride. Despite being cold, I knew I could do it.
1:15am in a petrol station in Henley.
We got ready to set off, but just as we were about to go I saw that the LED indicators on my lights had turned red, which meant they were about to run out of charge. I changed the rear one and then faffed around with the front, plugging it into the battery pack. The others could have got annoyed at me, but they didn’t.
The last stretch of the journey was bizarre. We found ourselves going up a single track road at 2:30am to suddenly hear the surprising shout of “car back” followed by a reply of “really‽” Why were these cars going up such a remote road at this time of night? The climbs were feeling larger than they were, but it wasn’t surprising after more than 400km of riding.
We rolled into Chalfont St Peter at 3am, greeted by yet more amazingly chipper volunteers. Once again they let us roll our bikes into the control, which made everything just that little bit easier. I recognised Richard Bragg at the validation table, who made quick work of reviewing and stamping our cards to say that we’d completed the course. We’d done it!
My completed brevet card. Six hours to spare.
The volunteers offered us a bowl of pasta and some cherry Bakewell cakes because…why not? I started to think about whether pasta at 3am made any sense, but quickly put the thought out of my mind. Trying to make sense of everything again could start tomorrow.
My cuddly friend rolled in a few minutes later. As we ate and contemplated what we had done, he kindly offered me his waterproof jacket for my 25km ride back to my house, provided I posted it back to him. I said thanks but no; I thought I’d be able to tackle the route home without too much trouble. How much colder could I get in the space of an hour?
All done, ready to head back into the night for the hour ride home.
Ian guided us back to Chesham, and from there we knew the way back to Berkhamsted via the main roads. Climbing out of Chesham to Ashley Green I lost Mary but caught her again at the top. We parted ways as we finally entered Berkhamsted, with the sun coming up. I live on a hill and usually ride up my steep driveway, but I wasn’t going to attempt it today. I found that I couldn’t unclip from my pedal outside my house so had to crawl past it to the top of the hill, unclip and then walk back down. It was 5am, the sun was coming up, and I could see the mist from my breath across the beam of my front light.
A shower wasn’t enough to warm me up. I found some pyjamas and got into bed, shivering. Eventually I got to sleep.
A week on from the ride, my main feeling is one of gratitude. For Liam FitzPatrick, who had organised a brilliant event, for the volunteers that looked after us at all of the major controls, and for my riding companions who showed so much empathy and care, particularly when I had the ‘Chepstow dip’. Despite at some point asking my friends never to let me sign up to anything like this again, I’ve already been peeking at the Audax calendar to see what’s next.
Every year we get about two weeks to enjoy our lilac, which looks fabulous and smells even better.
My third four-day working week in a row, with one more to go. Work was busy, keeping my mind off of the big bike ride planned for the weekend. Many of my colleagues were on holiday, which meant things were both quieter and busier than usual. I took Friday off in order to relax and eat some carbs ahead of the early start on Saturday.
This was a week in which I:
Refined the slide deck for the design of a space we share with a sister company and published it to the core team.
Wrote up and published the minutes from last week’s programme Steering Committee meeting.
Had more conversations about using AI for research purposes.
Met with my development team to review and refine their work backlog.
Had the weekly project call for the construction works taking place in our office this year.
Had an interesting discussion about people recording calls and conversations for their personal AI transcription. No matter what the law says, I think that you now have to assume that you are being recorded anywhere, at any time. And that those recordings are going to be processed by third-party speech-to-text tools and large language models. And that the companies providing these services won’t have your best interests at heart.
Had the thought that it’s imperative that Microsoft Copilot keeps pace with the tools that people use outside of work, to avoid people defaulting to using their favourite ‘bring your own AI’ and disclosing confidential information to these services.
Found myself using ChatGPT Deep Research in a couple of different ways. It was interesting to see the types of responses it gave and where it was lacking.
Met with a couple of senior colleagues to talk through their ideas on creating a new product for our clients.
Was elected to the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee at work. Given recent events, it feels even more important to be involved than ever.
Helped to set up a town hall-style talk with our CEO and one of our business heads. The event was followed by leaving drinks for one of our senior colleagues who is moving to another of our offices.
Enjoyed the weekly Learning Hour session where a colleague presented on the FINRA Cybersecurity Conference that he attended last year.
Met with an ex-colleague who left my team towards the end of last year. He’s moved himself and his family to the Isle of Man. Although I knew the island has a special status from a tax regime perspective, I hadn’t realised it is outside of the UK.
Had a last-minute invite to a social event at work. We went to The Cube in Canary Wharf, which is apparently based on a TV show. We were put into teams of two and then used an app to turn up at different cubes to undertake physical challenges. Our team did great, somehow topping the daily points leaderboard. It felt like a long time since I’d been out with colleagues.
You find out who your truly competitive colleagues are when you’re top of the leaderboard.
Noticed that I had auto-renewal turned on for my NordVPN plan. They were going to charge me around £130 for another year from July. I cancelled the auto-renewal and then found that I could buy another two years of service for £77. It never feels right when companies make additional profit from auto-renewals.
Dropped my bike into my local bike shop for a safety check, and to get my brake pads replaced. I’d bought new pads a while ago as I figured that after 5,000km of riding they would probably need changing. But I wasn’t confident enough to change them myself for the first time ahead of the big ride. Lovelo did a great job of checking things over, greasing a couple of things that needed it, and advising me that I’ll need to replace my disc rotors at some point soon. (It was also at this point that I discovered that disc rotors are consumable parts. I had no idea.)
Looked at some lovely properties in Berkhamsted for some relatives who are thinking of moving house.
Next week: Four days of work and a trip to the cinema.
📚 Finished reading Thatcher Stole My Trousers by Alexei Sayle. This is his second autobiography, covering the period after he left school to the early 1980s, by which time he had become a popular live comedian. Sayle is one of those people whom I have vague fond memories of from my childhood, but I didn’t really know much about. His TV programme Alexei Sayle’s Stuff seemed edgy to me when I was 11 years old. I also remember when people used to burst into singing the title of ’Ullo John! Gotta New Motor? without warning. An enjoyable journey through his years of leaving home and starting a career.
The second of a series of four four-day working weeks. My mind has started to turn to London Wales London, which is only six days away. I have a mild anxiety that has me thinking through the kit that I need to take and checking the weather forecast which has now come into view. Currently it looks as though the temperature is going to go from 6–7°C overnight to 21–23°C during the day, with one spot of light rain thrown in for good measure. So, clothing-wise, I’m going to need a little bit of everything. I’ve got my bike booked in for a check-up on Wednesday and have some new brake pads ready to be installed. I’m looking forward to the event but a little daunted too.
When I sat at my desk on Tuesday morning I didn’t feel ready for the week. I had too many open loops and couldn’t see how I was going to get on top of everything to make it through to Friday evening with any semblance of success. Sometimes, the only way out is through; I started picking up the big things one by one and working my way through them, and by Tuesday afternoon the week felt achievable.
This was a week in which I:
Spent Easter Monday at my parents’ house, with my brothers and their families too, for a barbecue lunch. It was lovely to see everyone. The British weather oscillated from freezing cold to warm and sunny depending on whether a big cloud was passing by. I’d planned to cycle over to their place to get another long ride in, but the rain put me off; my front gear mechanism has been sticking a little bit after a wet ride and I didn’t want to exacerbate the problem ahead of the big adventure.
Met with senior colleagues to review a draft slide that I put together to explain our approach to licensing and rolling out Microsoft Copilot within our region. It’s always great to get different views, and involving people helps to get alignment ahead of wider circulation.
Completed the draft of our quarterly report to our Board of Directors and sent it for review.
Prepared for and ran our monthly programme Steering Committee meeting.
Had the fortnightly meeting with my development team, reviewing our roadmap and discussing how I can help without getting in the way.
Made further updates to our proposal for how we will kit out and support a shared meeting area in one of our locations, following feedback from one of my colleagues. We reviewed the slides with the project team at our sister company, making more changes as a result of their thoughtful suggestions.
Had our weekly meeting with our AV consultancy.
Joined the project meeting for the opening of a new office.
Met with colleagues to discuss our work so far on using AI tools for research and where we should go next.
Had a very productive afternoon with my Executive Partner from our technology consultancy vendor. We explored good, challenging questions about my team, my role and my future career. I need to spend some time thinking about this.
Joined the first part of our Lean Coffee meeting before I had to rush off.
Had a good coffee and a catch up with a project manager that I’ve been closely working with at our sister company.
Loved talking to a couple of colleagues who were both in the ‘stretch zone’ as they tackled work that was new to them.
Am still struggling with the Office Timeline PowerPoint plugin. The software is superb, but I have an issue where PowerPoint hangs for ages when I’ve had the application open for a very long time and I select a slide containing a timeline. Restarting PowerPoint gets things moving again. I’ve previously emailed the company, who effectively told me that ‘it works on my machine’, and as nobody else has reported the issue they can’t (or won’t) look into it further.
Finished adding all of the records and CDs that are on my Amazon Wish List to my Discogs wantlist. Inspired by Ton Zijlstra, I’m trying to move away from Amazon where I can. The big advantage of having everything in Discogs is that when I go shopping for something, the website will tell me that the seller ‘Has X more items I want’. This means that I can typically add more items into the order without dramatically increasing the postage charge.
Finally managed to join a Quiet Riot podcast ‘Ask Us Anything’ session on Zoom.
Booked our Mini in for its MOT and a service. We bought the car last year when it was already 15 years old, as something that our boys could drive. It’s been great, but there have been a series of little issues. Hopefully booking it into a Mini garage for the service will mean that they will be able to diagnose and fix whatever problems remain.
Had a fun, fast bike club ride on Saturday morning. Probably my last until the big one next weekend.
Enjoyed a weekend of pottering around at home with the odd potter into town. On Saturday my wife and I had a lovely lunch of avocado, cherry tomatoes and chilli flakes on sourdough toast at Jester. On Sunday the sun came out, so we strolled down the high street to find Altobells Gelato, picking up a scoop of banana, and another of chocolate orange that was made with real oranges.
Someone at work has scheduled an after-hours meetup to discuss the new book by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dream Count. I’ve avoided book clubs in the past as I only get time to read the book club book and nothing else. But I do want to support the idea of getting colleagues together. I’ll make up my mind once I’ve finished my current book.
This magnificent blossom-laden tree is right outside the rear entrance of Berkhamsted station. I took this picture early on Saturday morning as I cycled down to the start of the weekly club ride.
The first of a series of four-day working weeks. It’s lovely having time off, but it adds pressure to get things done during the remaining four days. This week felt quite productive, but I’m still picking up many more tasks than I’m completing, and feeling that I’m spread very thin.
This was a week in which I:
Had the weekly meeting with our AV design consultants.
Put together the first draft of some slides to present to our sister company on our proposed AV equipment, support and cost profile for our shared meeting rooms.
Met with colleagues to review our mandatory compliance call and meeting recording setup for one of our offices.
Had an excellent discussion about how to break down a problem and use generative AI tools as an accelerant, without compromising critical steps in the problem-solving process. It was refreshing to be in the room with someone who wasn’t taking an approach of just throwing AI at everything and seeing what happens.
Updated the slides to be submitted to our next Governance Committee meeting, including an update on our approach to using Microsoft Copilot.
Had my fortnightly staff meeting. It feels as though we are getting into our stride.
Helped a colleague with an approach to the analysis work on one of our key projects.
Met with the Head of Workplace Services at our sister company to discuss some of our shared amenities managed by our landlord and how they can be improved.
Discussed the configuration of a planned new office and proposed equipment list with our CTO.
Reviewed proposed changes to the master services agreement for a contract with one of our vendors. Met with colleagues and agreed next steps.
Had an impromptu discussion with our cybersecurity team on a range of hot topics, including their roadmap.
Met with colleagues to discuss the legal and operational risk aspects of a project that is about to reach a key milestone.
Asked the vendor of our password management solution for a simple primer on passkeys. Troy Hunt has mentioned that he has a draft blog post on the topic and I can’t wait to read it. They are being pushed by an increasing number of websites but I haven’t managed to get my head around the nuances of how they work. I want to fix that before our staff start asking questions so that we can support them.
Also asked them for some supporting material to help us with some changes that we plan to make to nudge even more people into using the tool.
Did some research into the UK Government’s Access To Work scheme.
Met with colleagues in our Learning and Development team to talk about our department’s training needs for this year. I’m trying to reframe our approach so that it is much more continuous and day-to-day, looking for opportunities for the learning experts to contribute more broadly with our Digital Literacy initiatives.
Had a handover from a colleague who will be on holiday for the next two weeks.
Enjoyed our weekly Learning Hour session where one of our team members gave a presentation on British food. One reason we set up the weekly session is so that people can practice giving presentations in a relatively safe space, and it’s so good to see it paying off.
Found my name on a list of nominees for our internal Diversity and Inclusion Committee after one of my team members put me forward for it.
Got notified that I have a number of days’ leave to take before the end of June, otherwise I will forfeit them. Booked a couple of weeks off over the next two months.
Tried to use my sit/stand desk in the office a little more, in the hope that standing up will gradually strengthen my lower back. I find that standing up for long periods, particularly at gigs, is horrible. I’m not sure it’s meant to be like this at 48.
Took the plunge and bought a new MacBook Air as my home computer. I’ve been using a 2017 MacBook Pro, which is now very long in the tooth. It’s on its second battery, and once again has started to struggle with bizarre power issues. It reports that the battery is dead, but when I plug it in it already has a 70% charge. I’d been thinking about upgrading for some time, but was planning to wait until Apple stopped creating security patches and ended support for my current laptop. The recent market turmoil caused by Trump’s tariffs made me wonder whether prices will go up in the near future, so I decided to upgrade while I could. Although I’ve gone from a Pro to an Air, the new laptop is a significant upgrade in every way that matters. I opted to move my files and install my apps manually on the new laptop as the Migration Assistant tool wanted to bring across a gigantic ‘Library’ folder that I couldn’t deselect; this took me longer, but it seems to have saved hundreds of gigabytes of space. The biggest improvement between devices is the battery life. On a full charge, with all of my apps installed (including some that run constantly in the background) it reports that the battery will last for just under 20 hours.
Enjoyed a random night out with my family, going for a couple of games of bowling and dinner. We’ve not been bowling for years. I was surprised to find that the pins now all have strings attached to their tops, allowing them to be re-racked much more quickly. It felt a bit cheap and nasty, as the only other time I’ve come across a setup like this was with a small single lane in an arcade on holiday. But a quick search of the web tells me that it looks like it’s the way that all lanes could be going, and I might have misjudged it. But it is controversial.
Gave my home office a much overdue spring clean.
Felt great on the weekly cycling club ride, despite having tackled a two hour indoor bike session the day before. It was a little confidence boost for the big ride coming up in a couple of weeks’ time. I’ve got my bike booked in for what I’m hoping is a minor safety check just before the ride and plan to ask them to install some new brake pads. (Now is not the moment to try and replace disc brake pads for the first time myself.) My bike isn’t indicating that it needs new pads, but I’ve done over 5,000km, so I assume they must be nearing the end of their life. I also tested my big front light by running it to see if it lasts; I’ve only ever used it in anger once about four years ago, so I was a bit worried about whether it would still hold a charge. I’ve bought a back-up battery for it just in case.
Quiet Riot published a sensitive and useful breakdown of the issues raised by the UK Supreme Court ruling about the definition of a woman as it pertains to the Equality Act. I learned so much from Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith’s discussion here.
Gary Marcus writing about “Sam Altman’s attitude problem” highlights why I am conflicted about giving money to OpenAI to use ChatGPT. The tool has so much utility, but like most of the useful AI tools out there, it has been built on the backs of other people without compensating them for their work. This isn’t news, but it is unresolved.
Video
Started watching season two of The Last Of Us. Once again, a YouTube recap video of the first season came in so handy. We’ve learned to do this before we start watching the next season of something that hasn’t been on for a while.
Watched the latest season of Black Mirror. The episodes were entertaining, but none of them left me with that weird hollow feeling that some of the earlier ones did.
Audio
Had two Album Clubs, one online and another in person. Emiliana Torrini’s Miss Flower is a superb find and I didn’t hesitate to buy a copy. I’m also booked in to see the film with an Album Club friend.
Next week: Lunch with the family, and cramming everything into just four days.
📚 Finished reading Intimacies by Katie Kitamura. A small slice of the life, relationships and feelings of an American working at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. It’s a novel that feels like a novella — we drop into and out of the story in a very short space of time. I enjoyed this.
📚 Finished reading Rainbow Diary: A journey in the new South Africa by John Malathronas. I’ve had this in my library for years, since meeting the author by chance at work. His recent passing and my return to Johannesburg prompted me to finally read it. It’s an interesting journal of the author’s trip around South Africa in 2005, with enough historical background to give context without disrupting the narrative. I’ve been to South Africa many times for work, but only once ventured beyond the centre of Johannesburg. This book brought to life just how much I’ve been missing out.
