Early on Sunday morning we had an incredible thunderstorm, with a lightning strike that fried the routers for a swathe of people in our street. It also killed at least two TVs, including ours. Thunderstorms typically don’t scare me, but when the sound hits your ears before you see the lightning, it is terrifying.
The strike before the one that did all of the damage.
Ended up awake with my eldest son paying us a visit as it woke him up. Incredibly, our youngest slept through it.
I’ve captured footage from the two closest strikes that hit us about a minute apart, each from two different angles. It’s the second one that does all the damage. Unfortunately, the camera that probably had the best view was temporarily taken offline by the second strike.
One thing the lightning did highlight is the need for us to sweep the cobwebs away from the front of our house.
The earliest I can get an appointment with an engineer from our Internet Service Provider is next Saturday. So I’m now assuming that I’m going to be in the office all week next week.
This was a week in which I:
Suffered from jet lag following the previous week’s trip to New York. My eyes were falling out of my head on Monday and it was difficult to catch up with sleep as the week went on.
Had the regular programme and project meetings.
Spent a lot of the week reviewing and discussing the detailed cost breakdown of one of our projects. It’s going to be top priority for next week too.
Met with vendors to discuss acoustic panelling, decorating and signage in one of our offices.
Agreed how we would move forward with the proposed cost model for one of our shared spaces.
Reviewed the draft technical architecture for the new smart environmental sensors that will be installed in one of our offices, ahead of next week’s architecture governance authority meeting.
Continued with interviews for the role in my team. I’m hopeful that we will conclude the process next week.
Joined the interim design meeting for the shared space in one of our offices. When we start getting into fabrics and textures and there are already half a dozen different views and opinions in the room, I tend to conserve my energy and let everyone else make the choices.
Agreed on a solution for getting TV feeds onto the screens in a new office.
Reviewed the pricing of Microsoft Copilot and Teams Premium. As much as I think there is way too much hype about — and inappropriate uses of — AI, there is definitely some value in the technology. We are going to look and see if we can find some of it.
Completed our final review of our annual operational risk self-assessment.
Caught up with our audio/visual design vendor for the first time in a few weeks.
Had lunch with a colleague and friend who has been out of the office for an extended period. It’s great to see him and start to work with him again.
Attended our weekly Learning Hour meeting, with our host presenting on the topic of being a drone pilot in the UK.
Got struck in the face by a MacBook Air. A colleague and I had a one-on-one meeting; as we got up from our seats, he fumbled his laptop and it ended up skidding into my head, just above my right eye. The rim of a MacBook’s screen is sharp. It was painful — there was blood and bruising — but my pain was at least equalled by how mortified he looked.
Am still regretting being missold two pairs of shoes six years ago. The fact that they are so uncomfortable, and were completely unused during the period of the pandemic where I worked from home, means that they are still going strong.
Deleted my Telegram account. The news coverage of Pavel Durov’s arrest has been an education in how the platform works versus those that are end-to-end encrypted. I don’t need it in my life, so it’s time to say goodbye.
Had another enjoyable Album Club evening, with brilliant hosting. I wasn’t keen on the album, but that’s okay.
Added Gabriel Birnbaum’s latest album to Discogs. I’d lazily waited a few weeks to see if anyone did the hard work of adding it before I stepped in and did it myself.
Enjoyed my first outdoor bike ride with the club for a few weeks. It was lovely to get out riding again. The weather has turned just enough so that I doubted my clothing choice for the first five minutes, but it soon warmed up once we got going. I’m going to try and keep my running going as well. I ran in the rain on Sunday and it was actually good not to be melting to death when I finished.
Had a look at potential new carpets for the stairs in our house. The current carpet was laid almost 20 years ago and is starting to look threadbare.
Media
Podcasts
WB-40’s episode on rebooting hiring came at a good time, as I’ve been interviewing for a role in my team. “Recruiting for the human skills” struck a chord with me.
Articles
I had never considered that ‘estimated reading time’ could be ableist. I don’t disagree with any of the points made, but I know that for me — an able bodied reader, typically reading via one or two different ebook or ‘read later’ apps — it has been very useful to see this before diving in to read something. Maybe I’d get used to a different measure such as number of words?
Finished watching Lady In The Lake. It took us three episodes to get into it; just as we started to enjoy it, the show went overboard with one crazy long dream sequence too many. I’d worked out the plot twist before the final episode and the end was quite unsatisfying.
📷 Had a lovely meal out for my mum’s 70th birthday last night, along with my dad and my brothers. I had to compare it to a photo taken on our family holiday almost exactly 30 years before. My two boys are now exactly the same ages that my brothers and I were in 1994.
This week I returned to New York in order to check in on one of my projects. I love spending time there. It feels like a home away from home.
The trip started brilliantly. Our corporate policy allows me to book a business class ticket both ways. But paying an additional £2k for a bigger seat and a better selection of food on the way out — a seven hour daytime trip — always feels way too indulgent. So I had booked myself into Premium Economy. When I handed my boarding pass over to the airline staff member at the gate, they exclaimed “Ooh, you’ve had a seat change.” My card was quickly ripped up and I was handed a new one, which clearly sat me at the front of the plane. I can’t remember ever having had a business class upgrade on a long-haul flight since I travelled as a kid with my dad, who worked for the airline.
Things went from good to great when I found that the in-flight Wi-Fi on the brand new plane allowed me to stream Sky Sports. I paid £18.99 for a full flight Wi-Fi package and settled in to watch the Formula One. The stream held up brilliantly, with only a few blurry moments and the odd cut-out. I was living the dream.
Ready to go, both the flight and the race
Topping even that, late on this Sunday afternoon, I found myself being the first person in the JFK airport immigration hall. Getting through immigration, a process that has previously taken me as much as four hours, was done in all of two minutes. As I waited for the cases to arrive in the baggage hall, I decided that if mine was the first to appear on the belt, I was going to go straight to buy a lottery ticket.
The hotel I stayed at was a little strange. New York hotel rooms are invariably dated and this was no exception. It was run with a skeleton crew, with entrance to the hotel and the room controlled by a six digit code instead of a key card. The receptionist informed me that I was “entitled to” one room clean and towel change during my stay, with additional visits charged at $40 each. Looking out of the window of the room at the construction site next door, I felt as though my luck had run out. But it turned out fine. The room had plenty of towels, the shower was great, the Wi-Fi was simple and I wasn’t disturbed by anyone or anything during my stay.
Demolition. Fortunately it only started long after I was already up and about.
My hotel was half a block away from Trump Tower. The base of the building is surrounded by concrete blocks, with 56th street completely blocked off to traffic. It must be horrible for people who have purchased apartments in the building, which presumably are now worth much less than they once were.
The base of Trump Tower, surrounded by concrete blocks and police.
This was my final visit to our current office before we move out. It was time to say goodbye to this wonderful view that greets everyone who makes a visit to our office kitchen.
Empire State view.
Wandering around a city where I used to live is sometimes tinged with melancholy. I took a trip down to Chelsea, swung past my old apartment block and wandered down 9th Avenue, remembering how my wife and I used to go for a walk at the weekend, popping into shops and trying whatever food took our fancy. These days, there’s so much pressure to get stuff done with whatever time we have. But 20 years ago, this felt like a great use of time. And I think it was.
This was a week in which I:
Worked on Monday, despite it being a public holiday in the UK. Taking a long-haul trip for less than a week doesn’t feel right, and I didn’t want to miss out on spending a day with the team in the office.
Found that I had forgotten to pack my belt. Inevitably, there’s always something that I forget when going on a trip. I just hope that what I forget isn’t essential. Fortunately, belts are pretty easy to come by in midtown Manhattan. It’s great to work so close to 5th Avenue.
Took the first delivery of the lovely new furniture for our office. It took the team the best part of four hours to unload two large trucks and to get the furniture up to our floor. This kind of work can only happen outside of office hours, so we didn’t leave until around 10pm.
Reviewed the comprehensive, detailed post-construction snagging report for the new office, and found a couple of items that hadn’t made it to the list.
Discussed and agreed the office entrance signage with the manufacturer, construction and landlord teams.
Made some decisions on the installation of audio/visual equipment, where they hadn’t been specified in our design documents.
Explored options for displaying TV channels on our Yodeck digital signage players in our new office.
Had a brief meeting to review the latest costs for another office upgrade. Set up a more detailed review for next week.
Met with the construction company assigned to one of our offices to agree an approach to improving our meeting rooms and adding some internal illuminated signage.
Agreed how we will proceed with the logistical plans to open an office in a new country now that things are moving again.
Completed the review of our annual operational risk self-assessment.
Had an introductory meeting with the executive partner at our technology industry analyst vendor.
Interviewed candidates for a vacancy in my team. One of the candidates appeared to be blatantly using a web search or generative AI tool to key in our difficult questions and read off an answer. He wasn’t even using any tools to make it look like we had his full attention. I wonder whether we’ll soon need to move back to in-person interviews as the default?
Had some catch-up calls with the vendors that are finding candidates for the role.
Had some lovely drinks and lunch out with my colleagues in the New York team. Had the splendid discovery that one of my colleagues is a bit of an audiophile and a typography geek.
Enjoyed some morning runs around Central Park. On a couple of mornings I decided to tackle the full road circuit, something I hadn’t done for a while. I was pretty pleased with my time, setting my fastest 5km and second fastest 10km, especially as the Harlem end of the route is a little hilly.
A Monday morning run around Central Park
Enjoyed eating out, revisiting Cafe Luce for a well-cooked bowl of pasta, Bill’s Bar & Burger for a traditional Friday afternoon lunch, Simo Midtown for personal pizzas (“hold the cheese”), Westville Chelsea for a wholesome homemade veggie burger, Springbone and Naya for healthy bowls and wakey fuel from Black Fox Coffee. It helped that my hotel didn’t have a kitchen, so I had to get out and find somewhere to eat every evening. Good Time IPA is a superb alcohol-free beer that I haven’t found anywhere outside of NYC, and the vegan Van Leeuwen ice cream flavours are too tempting to ignore.
Indulgent. But so good.
Spent the weekend with my body clock being all over the place. Despite ‘sleeping’ all the way home on the plane, I felt completely frazzled on Saturday and have carried it through into the start of the next week.
Media
Podcasts
A few friends have encouraged me to sign up to Bluesky. I had resisted as I thought that it was yet another siloed platform, but it turns out that it’s actually a federated network. It was interesting to hear this interview with Rose Wang, COO of Bluesky.
Articles
Had a conversation with a friend about social media and the recent far-right riots in the UK. I hadn’t seen that a 2020 speech by Humza Yousaf in the Scottish Parliament, in 2020 at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, had been clipped and was being shared with the narrative that he was racist. Reading the whole speech, it is actually exactly the opposite — it’s anti-racist. From Wikipedia’s entry on Ibram X Kendi’s book How to Be an Antiracist:
Kendi argues that the opposite of racist is anti-racist rather than simply non-racist, and that there is no middle ground in the struggle against racism; one is either actively confronting racial inequality or allowing it to exist through action or inaction. He defines racism as any policy that creates inequitable outcomes between people of different skin colors; for instance, affirmative action in college admissions is anti-racist in that is designed to remedy past racial discrimination, while inaction on climate change is racist because of the disproportionately severe impacts of climate change in the predominantly non-white Global South.
I’m not climbing on the Oasis reunion bus. I saw them headline at Reading Festival in 2000 and was so bored by their performance that I returned to my tent early to get ahead of the crowds. But I found this assessment of their latest anniversary reissue of Definitely Maybe to be an interesting read.
Video
Watched a couple of movies this week, trying to take advantage of my recent resubscription to MUBI.
This Closeness (2023) had an interesting storyline of a couple renting a room in an Airbnb for a long weekend. The whole movie is filmed within the apartment, with what’s going on in outside brought into the narrative by the dialogue between the protagonists and the odd additional character. It didn’t feel entirely believable.
Holidays go too fast. But so do weekends. And regular working weeks. All of it. Everything’s getting faster with every passing year.
I spent most of this week feeling worn out. Vocalising how worn out I was (not that I needed to — I’m sure I looked tired) made me feel a little guilty. I guessed that my colleagues would be thinking “But you’ve just had a week off! How can you be tired?”, although they didn’t say it. I know that a week isn’t really sufficient to detach and unwind from work, but there’s too much going on to take more time out right now. By mid-November, all of this year’s big, time-sensitive milestones will be behind me, so I’m aiming to take some more time away from the keyboard at that point.
Our street WhatsApp Group has been incensed by the news that one of our neighbour’s cats has been shot with an air rifle. It’s the same gorgeous fellow that comes over to visit, and even sometimes makes himself at home in my office. Here he is, checking us out through our patio door, early the same day that he got shot. How could anyone do this to him?
Louie at our back door. He’s as lovely as he looks.
Someone in the neighbourhood must have a clue as to who has an air rifle. Posters have gone up in nearby streets but I’m guessing that the perpetrator won’t be found.
Poor Louie. Who would do something like this?
This was a week in which I:
Resolved to try and cut down on snacking post-holiday so that the tiny middle-aged spread that I’ve been cultivating through eating all of the thingsdoesn’t get out of hand. I’m giving myself two out of five stars for the week. Will keep trying.
Not unrelated, decided to chance walking to my office from Euston on Monday morning. It turns out that 15°C is too warm by the end of the walk, even when it’s cloudy.
Paid the latest irregular instalment of the ‘idiot tax’ through leaving my umbrella on the train again. I must have lost ten umbrellas in this way over the years. I realised just as I was leaving Euston station and decided to run back to try and recover it. By the time I’d got back to where I had been sitting, it had already disappeared. Given the rain forecast for later on in the week, it’s times like these that I appreciate us having an Amazon Prime account with same-day delivery. But I could have done without the reminder of how many times I’d been in this situation.
Had the regular programme and project meetings.
Caught up with all of the new emails and Teams messages from the past week.
Wrote my section of our quarterly report to the board, and edited the rest of the document.
Chaired the latest programme Steering Committee. What I thought was going to be a relatively quiet period is proving to be much busier, in a good way.
Met with a working group to try and shape the remaining scope for one of our projects. The work sits at a cross-section of technology, facilities/real estate and aesthetics, which means that a wide variety of colleagues and vendors need to be brought together to scope, price and plan the work.
Visited one of our sites which is in the middle of the mechanical and engineering phase of the work we are doing. Took some photos and shared them in a Teams post to all of the staff in our part of the organisation. I’m not sure how exciting it is for people, but it’s not every day that they will get to see their office ‘naked’ with all of the infrastructure exposed.
Met with the vendor for the smart sensors that we are installing in one of our offices to discuss the next steps for the IT side of the setup.
Had the final weekly construction meeting for another of our offices, which has now hit the ‘substantial completion’ milestone.
Worked with our Infrastructure and Operations team to resolve an issue with the placement of a cabinet for the audio processing equipment in a new office.
Agreed the scope of our plans for opening a new office. The work has been brought forward a few months but the plans have been simplified, so it shouldn’t be a problem to fit it in.
Reviewed CVs for a role within my team and started to set up some interviews.
Met with our Operational Risk team to continue the review our annual self-assessment.
Booked some business travel for later this year.
Had a brief check-in with our sister company who are also involved in an upcoming office move.
Reported an AgilePlace defect to Planview which broke a couple of our Kanban boards. They’re making lots of aesthetic changes to the application at the moment. Despite their regular and detailed engagement with the user community, I’m not convinced that all of the changes are going in the right direction.
Attended a What’s New in AgilePlace webinar. Their 13-Minute Thursdays is a great format which always covers a lot of ground in a short space of time.
Moved into the main seat with our technology industry analyst vendor, giving me access to an executive partner.
Had a great conversation about organising information and using atomic notes, collecting and connecting ideas as they come up. I’m now using Obsidian as my main note-taking and information organising app, but I know that I’m not yet taking full advantage of what’s possible.
Enjoyed listening to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ Ghosteen for the first time at the WB-40 album club. I’ve now heard a couple of Nick Cave albums through these clubs and I understand why people like his work. I’m not fully on-board yet.
Had an opportunity to get out on my bike on Saturday morning for the first time in a few weeks, but decided to stay in due to the forecast of all-day rain. Perhaps I’d be more of an all-weather rider if I didn’t have the ability to jump on the indoor bike trainer.
Your Undivided Attention have an excellent check-in on the state of AI. It’s 18 months since they released their talk on The A.I. Dilemma, which had a profound impact on me. My views about AI — specifically Generative AI — has become less panicked since then. But I still feel myself looking on whilst everyone races to add the technology into literally everything, without anywhere near as much thought about what the downsides might be.
It was interesting to hear Paul Ford land on the same conclusion that I’ve read from Baldur Bjarnason in that generative AI is good for ‘translation’ tasks, moving between one ’language’ and another:
Paul: I can translate a plain-language statement into a big SQL query that then asks a database for something and gives me a result. I can take my language and I can say, “Can you please translate this into the language of a middle-school essay?” That is less about it being a thing that is reacting to you when you ask it questions, and more about moving from like one mental domain to another. And the reason I’m saying this is I’m starting to think about how to be more creative and thoughtful with these tools.
Was shocked to hear that Alex Andreou has left the Oh God, What Now? podcast line-up. It was announced by Dorian Lynskey in such a casual way, a footnote to the fact that there will be a change to the line-up of an upcoming live event. I’ve listened to the podcast since the early days of Remaniacs, with the weekly shows (and odd ‘emergency’ episodes) being a wonderful balm for the Brexit madness of the times. I listened to the spin-off podcast The Bunker for a couple of years, but found that it was just too much to consume it all every week. With Naomi Smith and Ian Dunt having left already, it was only Alex, Dorian, Ros Taylor and Andrew Harrison that remained from the original crew. I’ve been slowly falling out of love with the podcast for a while and think it might be time to switch over to Quiet Riot, hosted by Naomi and Alex. I’ll see how it goes.
I love this, from an article shared with me by a friend as we discussed the inside voice that we hear (or don’t hear) as we read:
‘Or as American philosopher William James put it in 1890: “The attempt at introspective analysis… is in fact like seizing a spinning top to catch its motion, or trying to turn up the gas quickly enough to see how the darkness looks.’
Video
We started — and then gave up on — Loot. There was just not enough of a purpose to keep watching.
Somehow found myself watching The Many Faces of Les Dawson, a documentary from 2011. He seemed like a thoroughly great guy. I don’t think I properly appreciated him when I was a kid.
Daley Thompson: Olympic Superstar is another excellent sporting documentary from the BBC. An incredible athlete from a difficult background with his own flaws. The t-shirt he wore after winning the decathlon at the 1984 Olympics is completely shocking when viewed through a 2024 lens.
Brian May: The Badgers, the Farmers and Me was excellent, but left me wondering how long the new government will let the current situation continue. The solution to the spread of bovine TB looks like it has next to nothing to do with badgers, and everything to do with unreliable testing and spreading contaminated faeces all over the place.
Finally got around to re-watching Threads (1984), a few months after I finished reading Attack Warning Red! How Britain Prepared for Nuclear War. I knew that the film is extremely bleak, but I’d forgotten just how brutally graphic it is. Watching the second part of the film on my iPad in a public place, I found myself having to switch it off as it wasn’t suitable for anyone who happened to be passing.
Audio
Loved intently listening to Free’s Fire And Water played very loud as I found myself with an hour to spare near the swimming pool last week.
A friend and I reminisced about how good Hits 6 was. I remember being on holiday in 1987 and the double cassette accompanying us everywhere.
Continued with The McCartney Legacy Volume 1: 1969-73. I’m up to the release of Wild Life, a lovely album that I discovered relatively recently. It’s been cool to listen along to the music as I’ve been reading the book.
Next week: Checking in on a major project.
📷 Zakynthos cafe vista.
🎶 Very excited to hear the new Magdalena Bay album, Imaginal Disk, which was released on Friday. Their debut album, Mercurial World, is one of my favourite things I’ve heard over the past few years.
This week was spent on holiday in Zakynthos, Greece, with four of our oldest friends and their families. We’ve been on manybrilliantholidays together over the past few years and we were excited to do it all again.
It started with an alarm at 2:45am on Saturday morning, waking us up in time for our taxi to the airport. Most of the group had managed a few hours of sleep, with one person not bothering to go to bed.
Our orange Cooper Black-adorned chariot awaits
Once we got on board the plane, we shuffled our 12 seats so that the children could sit together. I ended up in the middle of a block of three seats. A woman in a purple tracksuit was one of the last people to board, making her way to the vacant seat next to me and sitting down with a bump. She lowered her table, pulled out a bottle of Budweiser and started glugging it, before letting out a mild groan and scrabbling around in the seat pocket to find the vomit bag. It was barely 6:30am. As the cabin crew wandered down the aisle to check our seatbelts they saw the beer and asked the woman to put it away. She responded with a slurred, unfocused “ok”. Shortly after, a more senior member of the cabin crew popped by to tell her that she couldn’t travel as she had consumed too much alcohol and wasn’t safe to fly. The woman refused to get off the plane and started swearing at the staff, so the police were called to remove her. Despite being at an airport where I assume police are plentiful, it took a while for three officers to reach us and get on board. It was fascinating to watch them being firm but fair with her in trying to persuade her to leave; they were empathetic but didn’t tolerate abuse. Eventually she saw that there was only going to be one way out and decided to get up and leave. We were delayed, but I was so grateful that I wouldn’t be spending the next three or four hours wondering whether I was going to be puked on.
Zakynthos was hot, with blue sunny skies for the whole week. It’s difficult to tell exactly how hot, as our different weather apps gave very different readings and we didn’t see an old school thermometer anywhere. For most of the week, Apple Weather was telling us that the warmest part of the day was about 31°C whereas BBC Weather suggested it was at least 38°C. Based on how it felt — if we sat doing nothing it felt as though we were slowly melting — I’m inclined to believe the latter.
We stayed at the Villa Ionio Beach House, a restaurant that was recently converted into a seven-bedroom villa with a pool. Situated in Vasilikos on the east of the island, it was perfect for us. The rooms were kept cool with air conditioning and the communal space by the pool never felt crowded, even when all 12 of us were out there. A restaurant and bar were a few steps below us and the beach was a few steps beyond that. We had a small supermarket ten minutes away by foot as well as many different Greek restaurants scattered all around. It was lovely to have a holiday where we didn’t need to hire a car.
Villa Ionio Beach House, Vasilikos, Zakynthos
Someone brought along a Soundcore 3 speaker for the trip which performed superbly. We had a constant stream of music as we sat around the pool. As well as lots of greaIt was lovely to have the time to sit and listen
The view to the north-west from our villa…
…and the view to the south-east.
The pool was perfect for late night inflatable doughnut racing
View from the restaurant/cafe/bar beneath the villa
A beach free from pollution, unlike those back home
On the first morning I got up early to head out with my eldest son for a 10km run. I asked Strava to plot us a route, just as I had done many times before in many different places. My understanding is that Strava routes are based on the popularity of the roads taken by runners that have been there before us, so I had no hesitation in following the directions. The confidence we felt started to evaporate as soon as the route told us to leave the road and head through a field. Halfway across the field we were met by a ditch, wide enough to require us to take a run up in order to jump it. A few kilometres later, we found ourselves blocked by a locked gate with no easy way around it.
We stumbled across this neighbouring bay on our run
We backtracked and tried to take a different route to get us where we wanted to go. At home this faffing around would be no problem, but I had started to struggle in the heat. When we came across our second locked gate, we decided to call it a day. But then trouble hit. For some reason I couldn’t quite work out our return route. After stopping for the fifth or sixth time to look at the map, I realised my clothes were completely soaked with sweat and I had shivers and goosebumps, which didn’t seem right given how hot it was. So we ended up heading towards the sea to try and run along the beach, taking the shortest — and surest — path home.
A monstrosity of a route
Across the week I got out for a few more runs, but limited them to a much more manageable 5–8km, which was more than enough in the heat.
The pool area of the villa had an outdoor feature of some glass windows that look like they have been recovered from another building, which you can see in the distance in the main photo on their website. They seemed to be problematic for the local birds, who kept flying into them. The first time it happened I was sitting on my own on the porch, tapping out some weeknotes, when there was a massive thud on the glass. I wasn’t sure whether the bird was going to live or die; it just sat there, opening and closing its beak. I tried to help it with a little water in the lid from a plastic bottle, but it wasn’t interested. After half an hour or so, it suddenly gathered itself and flew off into the trees.
A stunned bird, completely disinterested in my attempt to offer it some light refreshment
We ate well, and a lot. On a couple of evenings we stayed in for some simple pasta, pitta bread, halloumi and salad but for the rest of the time we dined out for lunch, dinner and the occasional breakfast. The nearby restaurants — Ionio Beach Bar & Restaurant, Vasilikos Garden, Giovanni and Kostas Brother — were lovely and all had very similar food. Bowls of tahini, bread, baked or fried aubergine and courgettes, feta pies, feta covered in honey, baked feta, feta many other ways, Greek salads, spaghetti, more feta, plus all kinds of meat. One evening we ventured to Nikos Beach Bar, which was beautifully set in the neighbouring bay, but it wasn’t worth the extortionate ten minute €50 taxi ride to get there, and another €50 to get back. Sit and Share was excellent for a cooked breakfast, with the kids enjoying chocolate-drenched pancakes. On our last night we went to Skartsofoli which was probably the best food we ate, but also the most expensive. Typically a dinner for 12 of us cost around €230 and included generous starters and main courses, lots of bottled water, a little wine, and a few other drinks too.
Looking out over the Mediterranean from the Palm restaurant in Vasilikos
A more unusual take on a Greek salad at the Palm restaurant
Before we started the trip, one of our friends pointed us at the Splid app, which proved to be brilliant. We all downloaded the app, set up a ‘group’ for our trip and added three ‘persons’, each one representing one of the families on the trip. Every time we paid for something on behalf of the group — meals out, groceries from the supermarket, sunbeds — we added it to the app, logging how much it cost (and in what currency), who benefitted from it and who paid. It kept track throughout the trip and then at the end told us how to settle up so that we had all paid the same amount in an equitable way. I think I’ll be using it for any group travel in the future. It’s incredible that it’s free.
Roadside advert for Kostas’ Brother Tavern
Delicious salad with dried figs
Sit and Share, a welcoming spot for breakfast or brunch
The Amigo Beach Bar, a few metres along the beach from our villa
Looking out across the sea from the villa you would always spot at least two or three activities happening at once — parasailing, riding on a banana boat or ‘bouncy sea sofa’ thing, or riding a jet ski. They all set off from a spot ten minutes’ walk away along the beach.
Water sports launch spot, with a floating jetty that cooked my bare feet in about ten seconds
I’d never seen a Flyfish before. You either sit on the inflatable parts or lie down in between them and then cling on for dear life as a boat tows you along, with the inflatable leaping into the air. Our boys thought it was amazing.
Nervously anticipating the Flying Fish
On a couple of days we booked some private trips through Nefis Travel. The first one started in the late afternoon, taking us by minibus to a beach where we left our shoes and waded out in the shallow water to a glass-bottomed boat. Zakynthos is famous for its sea turtle population and it only took a few minutes before we spotted one, coming up for air before diving down again a couple of times, before considerately swimming directly under our boat. They are indescribably beautiful to see in real life.
Sea turtle swimming under our boat. (Photo: Katie Doran)
Coming up for air. (Photo: Mat Harden)
On the beach closest to our villa we found one or two simple wooden protection cages for the turtle nests. People seemed to be respectful of the nests and gave them a wide berth.
Our boat stopped at Marathonisi, an island full of turtles that is itself shaped like a turtle. Tourists can hop off their boats and swim in the busy water or grab a drink, ice cream or hot dog from the floating vendor boats. It felt very crowded and a little inappropriate to be so close to the nesting ground of an endangered species, particularly when the children found that the snorkelling area was filled with litter.
Getting off the boat to join the other tourists on Marathonisi Island
I’d never seen a floating concession stand before
Loggerhead turtle nesting ground on Marathonisi Island. This was two paces up the beach from where our boat landed.
After a little time on the island, we got back on the boat to speed around some nearby caves, swim in the water and watch the sunset, which was beautiful. The limestone rock that makes up the cliffs around Zakynthos is stunning, with clear layers of sediment visible in every cross-section.
Heading off to explore the caves
Limestone cliff faces
More limestone cliff faces
Sunset over the Mediterranean
Later in the week we took another minibus and boat trip, this time to take in the other ‘must see’ parts of the island. Our first stop was the small and busy Northern Xigia Beach, reached by some steep steps and a slope. It is famous for the water being fed from sulphurous springs in a nearby cave which apparently are also rich with natural collagen.
Northern Xigia Beach as seen from the cafe. You can see the discoloured water emanating from the caves.
Despite only having a handful of sunbeds and umbrellas, the beach was staffed by someone who radioed food and drink orders to the cafe at the top of the cliff. They then used an ingenious method to get the order down to the beach.
The brilliant mechanism to transport food and drinks from the clifftop cafe down to the beach
After an hour or so and a stop for lunch, we went on our way to find our boat.
Waiting for my ship to come in
Nearly all of the children thought that this part of the trip was their favourite. We hopped on board and then powered our way across the sea, landing with a series of massive thuds as we hopped one wave crest after another. Our captain was a skilled driver, taking the boat through ridiculous turns as we sped past rocky outcrops and coves. It was like being on a fairground ride without any rails.
We sped on to the cove containing the wreck of the Panagiotis, a ship that was beached and abandoned in a storm on 2 October 1980. People are no longer allowed onto the beach, giving the ship a little more life as a major tourist attraction. Compared to the images that I had seen online, the ship was in an advanced state of decay. Our tour guide told us that his father had worked for the coastguard at the time of the sinking and confirmed stories that the ship was carrying a vast amount of cigarettes, most of which were taken by the people that arrived first on the scene. Apparently, cigarette sales were down on the island for quite some time after the wreck took place.
The wreck of the Panagiotis
The colour of the water around the coves in this area was stunning. The eroded limestone cliffs produce a fine white sand which turns the sea a brilliant blue. It was incredible to look at, and to swim in. Fish darted all around.
The colour of the water made everything slightly surreal
Looking out to sea
Exploring a nearby cave; the water looked like an illuminated swimming pool
Powering our way through coves and arches
In the middle of the week, my fabulous wife and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary. Our August wedding date means that we’ve been making a habit of celebrating on various summer holidays over the years. It was lovely to be with our family and friends for the evening.
20 years later
Goodbye Zakynthos
And just like that, it was all over so quickly. Thankfully our trip home was uneventful and didn’t require any police intervention. England seems to have suddenly turned autumnal while we’ve been away. I’m not quite ready to put the flip-flops and shorts away yet.
Next week: Back to work.
📷 I think this Greek ice cream might be overplaying its hand.
This week felt very intense. I have a bit of a break from work coming up, which is either particularly well-timed or the very fact that it’s on the horizon means that I’ve started to feel a bit worn out.
It was a week of late nights, not helped by problems with the trains. I haven’t missed the drama that happens when the service fails. A broken rail near Berkhamsted meant that the only route home was via the Met Line to Chesham and then going via taxi, for a total commuting cost of £55 for the day.
Monday was the first day of us working from a temporary space while our office undergoes some essential maintenance. The team had prepared brilliantly, with network connections, desk moves, meeting room fit-outs, etc., but you never quite know how things are going to go until day one hits. Judging by the first week, it’s been a huge success.
Friday was a public holiday in South Africa — Women’s Day. South African holidays always seem to have such understated names for such important historical events. In this case, the holiday “commemorates the 1956 march of approximately 20,000 women to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to petition against the country’s pass laws that required South Africans defined as ‘black’ under The Population Registration Act to carry an internal passport, known as a passbook, that served to maintain population segregation, control urbanisation, and manage migrant labour during the apartheid era.” Lots of people were out so I decided to take the afternoon off to wind down and get the pre-holiday ironing done.
This was a week in which I:
Had the regular programme and project meetings.
Resolved a couple of small issues with the fit-out of a new office. Phone calls always work better than emails for keeping things from blowing out of proportion.
Met with colleagues from a partner firm to review the latest external cost estimates for one of our main projects. We also reviewed the standard JCT Minor Works contract and agreed next steps to get it into a working draft.
Started to hand over a project for some additional office improvement works to a member of my team.
Met with colleagues from a sister company to review our proposed financial operating model for a shared facility in one of our offices.
Attended a meeting to agree our approach to signage and artwork at the entrance to a new office. Everyone is in agreement on the direction we should go in.
Reviewed a draft of our annual operational risk self assessment submission.
Joined a drinks reception in one of our new temporary meeting rooms for a colleague who is getting married. It feels like ages since there was a personal celebratory event at work.
Linford is a brilliant documentary. Back when he was at his peak, I was a schoolboy delivering newspapers that were regularly filled with his achievements on the back pages. It was difficult to watch how much the mockery and ‘humour’ affected him, as well as the devastating — but weird — drug test failure after he had retired.
A central point of the book is that countries that are neither full democracies nor full autocracies as defined by the ‘polity score’ — known as ‘anocracies’ — are the most likely to experience instability and/or armed conflict. There is danger as a country moves through the anocracy zone, whether that is a country that has declined from being a full democracy, or a country that is moving at speed towards full democracy.
Once a country is in the anocracy zone, the biggest warning sign of a civil war is the appearance of a faction, a political group based on ethnic, religious or racial identity rather than ideology. Civil war is even more likely in countries divided into two dominant groups, where one group represents 40–60% of the population. The group that once held power and feels it slipping away is likely to be the one that starts the violence.
People may tolerate years of poverty, unemployment, and discrimination. They may accept shoddy schools, poor hospitals, and neglected infrastructure. But there is one thing they will not tolerate: losing status in a place they believe is theirs. In the twenty-first century, the most dangerous factions are once-dominant groups facing decline.
In recent years, social media has accelerated this process. The proportion of Americans getting some of their news from social media has increased from 23% in 2013 to over 70% today. The platforms promote “a sense of perpetual crisis”. The riots in the UK over this past week are fresh in my mind as I re-read this:
Disinformation spread by extremists discredits peaceful protesters, convinces citizens that counterattacks by opposition groups are likely, and creates a sense—often a false sense—that moderates within their own movement are not doing enough to protect the population, or are ineffective and weak compared to the opposition. It’s at this point that violence breaks out: when citizens become convinced that there is no hope of fixing their problems through conventional means.
I’m not sure that this is exactly what is happening right now in the UK — so far the riots don’t seem to have spread to moderate people — but I can see how it might happen.
Walter weaves the ten stages of genocide into her narrative. According to Wikipedia, stage 4 is ‘dehumanisation’, where “One group denies the humanity of the other group. Members of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects, or diseases.” The ongoing narrative about refugees and asylum seekers in the UK’s most popular newspapers promotes this way of thinking, and has been so painful to see.
“THE ‘SWARM’ ON OUR STREETS” is a disgusting headline. The Daily Mail has been pushing this agenda for as long as I can remember. It may be impossible to draw a direct line between these front pages and the riots that have been happening in the UK over the past week, but they can’t help.
The author also mentions Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), an organisation that publishes fascinating reports and datasets on how countries around the world are democratising or autocratizing. The recent reports are jarring.
V-Dem, the Swedish research institute, collects detailed data on the different types of democracies around the world and then rates them on a 100-point scale with 100 being the most democratic and 0 being the least. According to the institute, Spain has suffered one of the worst declines in Western Europe, followed by Greece, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Austria. Nordic countries, the most liberal in the world, have also dropped since 2010: Denmark, the number one ranked democracy for most of the past hundred years, has been downgraded 10 points on V-Dem’s scale; Sweden has been downgraded 35. The swift rate of democratic decay around the world has been so rapid that V-Dem issued its first “Autocratization Alert” in 2020.
The book explains that the most effective way for a country to avoid violence and civil war is to strengthen the quality of its governance, and make people feel that the systems and institutions are working. People need to value their democracy and believe that it is effective. Doing this is “significantly more important” to avoid conflict than improving the economy.
“…three features stood out: “the rule of law” (the equal and impartial application of legal procedure); “voice and accountability” (the extent to which citizens are able to participate in selecting their government, as well as freedom of expression, freedom of association, and a free media); and “government effectiveness” (the quality of public services and the quality and independence of the civil service). These three features reflect the degree to which a government serves its people and the degree to which its political institutions are strong, legitimate, and accountable. Improvements in governance tend to reduce the subsequent risk of war.”
The book is a quick read on a tough subject, giving an excellent overview of the resources and evidence available.
So much meme gold in such a short video. Sad to hear that Jack Karlson has passed away.
If you turn up to an online meeting with your ‘AI assistant’ and we haven’t had a chat about you bringing it along, I’m going to kick it out of the call. Doing this is not okay.
Bridgewater Monument under maintenance, 4 August 2024
It’s amazing how quickly something can become a ‘new normal’. For most of my career, I commuted into the office five days a week. The pandemic meant that I quickly shifted to working from home full time, which felt bizarre at first. Then, having been out of the office for 534 days, it felt bizarre to go back. For many months now, I’ve been working from the office at least three days a week, including most Mondays. But this week, as one of my projects hit a key milestone, our staff were asked to work from home. It felt very strange to be on my indoor bike trainer instead of on the commute. I’m now at a stage where I enjoy a balance of working in the office and working from home. Three days in the office feels about right. I’m looking forward to going in again this coming Monday.
Things feel under control at work. The main projects are reaching some critical periods, but they are on track and we have enough bandwidth to absorb the issues that will inevitably come up. This is the result of the amount of hard work and planning that the team have put in up until now. It’s paying off.
Zooming out, it’s been dreadful to see the fascist and racist far-right riots here in the UK. They aren’t demonstrations. Smashing up the community you live in doesn’t seem to be a great way to show how much you care about your country. I can’t imagine how terrifying it must be to be targeted by them, coming at you in your home. My view is that decades of racist ‘othering’ of people by the newspapers and dog-whistling politicians has prepared people to (want to) believe misinformation and disinformation online. Those online posts serve as a useful excuse to go out, smash things up and let your true feelings out. Many years ago I stopped clicking on any links to articles on the Daily Mail website. I’m now going to add Twitter/X to the ‘never click’ list. I deleted all of my Twitter content some time ago but it still feels icky to go to the site and contribute to the engagement statistics, so I’m not going to do that anymore.
This was a week in which I:
Had the regular programme and project meetings.
Prepared for and ran the Programme Steering Committee meeting. We’ve chosen a new office chair to (quite literally) roll out to our staff, a welcome upgrade as the current ones reach their end of life.
Coordinated with our project management consultants on all of the things that are outstanding that we need to quickly resolve.
Reviewed the latest design of a smart sensor system that we plan to install in one of our offices. The review revealed questions that we hadn’t thought about, relating to the ownership and management of IT kit that will be used to run the service locally. It took a couple of meetings to get to a conclusion on how we can take it forward. We’ve landed in a good spot.
Spent a day in the temporary office space that will be our home for the next few months. The team did an excellent job of tearing down our regular office and building out the temporary one in such a short space of time.
Picked up a couple of minor issues in the construction of one of our offices.
Reviewed a draft contract for work with a construction company, learning about JCT and their off-the-shelf legal documents.
Requested help from one of our vendors to design a solution for taking a TV feed and encoding it for use on our internal local office network so that it can be picked up by our digital signage players.
Took part in our technical architecture governance meeting to review a proposal for a new printing solution.
Discussed a strategy for moving towards a lower-cost, lower-risk PDF platform than our traditional one and agreed some follow-up actions.
Agreed an approach for coordinated experimentation with, and learning about, Generative AI within our part of the organisation.
Had a couple of broader conversations on AI and ethical frameworks. I continue to marvel at the cognitive dissonance of having ‘explainability’ as a principle, where this is fundamentally not how these systems work. ‘Transparency’ is another good one; the main AI models are not transparent about what data they have been trained on and what human labour has gone into the process, so how is this in any way achievable? Microsoft’s Responsible AI Transparency Report contains 12 instances of the word ‘training’; 9 of these refer to training people, one mentions how news content providers didn’t want to be excluded from search results despite having concerns about usage of their content, and two mention further training of new models. There is no mention whatsoever about concerns with how the models currently in use by their systems have been trained.
Had a couple of meetings with our technology industry analyst vendor about making some changes to our contract. I’m really looking forward to getting back into the technology side of things later this year, making much better use of their services.
Met with our Non-Financial Risk team to review and close out some historic records.
Had more conversations with staffing vendors about our company and the specific requirement I have in my team.
Took part in our monthly Lean Coffee session. We dived into a great selection of interesting topics, including the recent Crowdstrike outage and how IT is far from being a profession. Steve McConnell wrote about this in 1999 and not much has changed since. Just how big does an IT problem need to be before there is an overwhelming push for reform?
Found myself with some bandwidth to process a bunch of actions that I had noted down in meetings over the past few months. I have a great system for capturing them, but carving out the time to go through them always seems difficult.
Boarded a late train out of London and found myself looking down at a vandalised plug socket, where someone had left a piece of metal sticking out of one of the holes. I wasn’t sure whether this presented a danger to anyone who might accidentally touch it. I asked a fellow passenger to stop people from sitting in the seat and went off to find the guard. He wandered down with me to take a look, said he would put some protective tape over it and thanked me for alerting him. But we never saw the guard again. *Shrug.*
Dangerous?
Dabbled with watching the Olympics, catching whatever happened to be on at the time. South Sudan in the basketball was something I didn’t expect to stumble across.
Went for a long run with my eldest son, he at his recovery pace with me wondering whether my lungs were going to remain in my chest cavity.
Visited friends at their home for a beautiful and moving memorial service for someone that they recently lost. Despite the reason for the occasion being so sad, it was wonderful to see them and be with friends for a few hours. It got my wife and I thinking about how much time we spend with people we love and whether we need to reprioritise the structure of our weekends so that we see people more.
Media
Podcasts
Interesting discussion about Trump running mate JD Vance’s book Hillbilly Elegy. And by “interesting discussion about”, I mean “brutal takedown of”.
Articles
Two articles that made me log out of Twitter and vow not to log in again:
A key factor in this spread of online disinformation involved Elon Musk’s decision to allow rightwing activists such as Tommy Robinson back onto his social media platform X, said Joe Mulhall, director of research at Hope not Hate, the anti-fascism organisation. “The initial disinformation and anger was being perpetrated by individuals on Twitter, for example, that have been previously deplatformed,” he said. “And now they’ve been replatformed.”
From Super Deluxe Edition: “It’s so quiet at the moment, in terms of releases (and reissues), that Eminem’s new album The Death of Slim Shady (Coup De Grâce) remains at number one in the UK for a third week, with a paltry 10,757 sales! And according to Music Week, of those 10k+ sales only 105 units were actually physical sales (all cassettes!). Remarkable.”
Video
Finished watching Kin. A superb show which has left us wanting more.
Audio
Picked up a few CDs from our local Oxfam shop including a 1993 copy of Wings’ Venus and Mars, with a few extra tracks. I love this album. My uncle lent me a vinyl copy when I was a kid, which I recorded to tape and then played so much. There’s so much not to like about it, with its cheesy McCartney lyrics and bubblegum songs. But when it’s good, it’s really good. The dirty, opening guitar, drums and bass on Letting Go and the eerie beauty of Love In Song make it a worthwhile listen.
Finished reading Barbara F Walter’s How Civil Wars Start and need to write up my thoughts on it.
Listening to Venus and Mars has inspired me to pick up Volume 1 of The McCartney Legacy. If I read at an average speed, I’ll see you in just under 15 hours.
My happy mood continued into this week and I enjoyed the lightness that it brought with it. There were plenty of things to get done, but they seemed to be in front of me instead of weighing me down.
The rest of the family have been on holiday from school. My wife went away for a few days to visit her parents which meant that I was nominally ‘in charge’. It’s not quite the mission that it was when the boys were younger, but there were still more things to juggle. So much, in fact, that it has taken me until Tuesday to finish these weeknotes.
This was a week in which I:
Had the regular programme and project meetings.
Wrote up and published the minutes from last week’s programme Steering Committee meeting and immediately started the pack for the next one.
Attended governance committees and executive forums to give updates on the local project that makes up a big chunk of the programme.
Had a kick-off meeting ahead of a weekend of work to tear down the technology in one of our offices and rebuild it on a different floor of the building.
Confirmed our planned move-out date for one of our offices with the sister company that we currently share with.
Met with the Procurement team to review the latest responses to a request for quotation.
Reviewed the technology installation plan for a new office with our infrastructure team and the vendor we are using to supply and fit the equipment.
Reviewed a colleague’s draft presentation that they plan to deliver next week. It’s an important milestone where we take stock of what we’ve done and agree what our plan is from this point.
Completed the mid-year review process for all of my direct reports.
Confirmed a date to give my talk on Large Language Models and Generative AI to the board of directors of one of our African entities.
Enjoyed our weekly Learning Hour hosted by a colleague who gave us an overview of Windows Autopatch.
Attended the quarterly Technology town hall meeting. One of the guest speakers was Michael Stevens, a South African who had a childhood accident involving an overhead electrical wire which led to him having both legs amputated. He now competes in bobsleigh. He’s also the Operations Manager at Jumping Kids, a nonprofit that is working to give African children access to, and maintenance of, quality prosthetic equipment. They also focus on giving the children access to mainstream education and sporting opportunities. The stories of what some of the children have achieved are incredible.
Caught up with a colleague who is going through some major life changes. It was exactly the kind of impromptu conversation that wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t both in the office. Increasingly I think that being together in the same place is less about the work we do and more about the relationships and friendships that we foster.
Had introductory meetings with two staffing vendors. I’d previously worked with a contact at one of the vendors 15 years ago; it turned out that his colleague who was also in the meeting would have been less than 10 years old at that time.
Watched my son get a new 3000m PB at the Watford Open track meet.
Making progress
Had a couple of meetings about sporting scholarships in the US with the consultant that is helping my eldest boy to try and get over there.
Got my own PB for cycling 50 miles on Saturday morning’s club ride. We had a big group and a flat route which led to some impressive speed in the sunshine. It was so much fun.
Went for another Sunday morning run, this time a bit longer than last week. My legs already feel as though they are getting used to running again. I’m going to try and keep it up.
Bought some new t-shirts from DJ Tees and Design By Humans. It’s been a couple of years since I had a t-shirt refresh.
Enjoyed a pub garden lunch with my boys at the Green Dragon in Flaunden. I was a bit disappointed that the only food they did was pizza, but it was nice to sit outside in the garden and enjoy some time together.
Hosted the latest round of the WB-40 Album Club, introducing the rest of the team to the late 1990s prog-rock weird and wonderfulness of Mansun’s Six.
Consumed a lot of sport, watching some random Olympics events and the brilliant F1 Belgian GP.
Watched Keir Starmer’s first Prime Minister’s Questions with him on the executive side of the house. I’ve been fascinated by parliament since I was a kid, coming home from school and flicking the TV on to watch whatever was being debated at the time. I’d love to go and see it in person one day.
Media
Articles
Absolutely shocking articles from the Guardian highlighting the scale of violence against women in the UK. In this country, a woman is killed every three days by a man. They are putting names behind the statistics and highlighting the severity of the problem.
An incredible story of how a technology security training vendor was infiltrated by a North Korean hacker. They hired him after he successfully passed a number of their checks, including four video conference based interviews.
Continued watching Kin, rolling into season two. It’s excellent, gritty Irish drama.
I originally watched Three Kings (1999) at the cinema 25 years ago. I didn’t think that much of it at the time. I remember feeling a bit uncomfortable with it being an action/comedy movie based on the (then) first Gulf War. Recently, the film has been mentioned on a few podcasts I listen to, with people talking about how great the film is. The reviews looked good so I decided to revisit it. It’s definitely a better film than I remember, but the aspects of it that made me uncomfortable are still there — slang words for middle-eastern people played for laughs and no real character development for any of the Iraqi characters. The film was made in that short space after the war and before 9/11, so I kept thinking about how hard it is now to relate to how people felt back then.
Memories of Murder (2003) was a bizarre watch. About eight out of ten reviews online claim it to be a masterpiece with the other two saying that they have no idea why it’s so revered. I didn’t understand whether it was meant to be a comedy or not. Some of the scenes made me laugh out loud, particularly when one of the police officers randomly dropkicked someone, but I wasn’t sure whether I was meant to be laughing. Having read the Letterboxd reviews, I get the feeling that it was a serious film based on real life events.
Web
The update from Sonos’s CEO on the state of their main app is ridiculous. Features that are missing and are on the roadmap include: “Implementing Music Library configuration, browse, search, and play”, “Improving Volume responsiveness”, “Improving Alarm consistency and reliability” and “Restoring edit mode for Playlists and the Queue”. These aren’t features, they are basics. The app should never have been released. I suspect that they put all of the code for their new headphones into the new S2 app codebase and then were stuck between putting out a not even half-baked app or delaying their hardware release. I’ve been largely isolated from it by having an older system and using the unchanged S1 app, which just reinforces my view.
Next week: An unusual amount of working from home.
🎶 I love a random, unexpected gift that drops through the door. The Smoke Fairies have sent me a CD of their performances at Rough Trade East in London. What a lovely thing.
Yet another typically busy week. Somewhere along the way I seemed to turn a corner mentally, getting out of the funk that I’ve been in for the past few weeks. I have no idea why, but I’ll take it.
This was a week in which I:
Had the regular programme and project meetings.
Prepped for and ran our programme Steering Committee meeting.
Did a ‘roadshow’ visit to various department team meetings, giving people more context for one of our major projects. It impacts everyone in the office, so it’s important that they know why as well as have the opportunity to ask questions.
Heard that we have agreed on an early date to move out from one of our offices. This means that the local team will be working from home for a few weeks. It simplifies the technology work we need to do, but we have to ensure that the team can get together in the same physical space during that period.
Added an important item into the scope of works for an office refit project. Doing the work later over a series of weekends would have been a number of times more expensive.
Got agreement to proceed with putting technology into two rooms that we share with a sister company, enabling them to be used for hybrid and remote meetings.
Continued discussions on how we will onboard a construction company to undertake work on various items in one of our offices.
Met with our audio/visual design vendor to talk about the potential for demonstrations of equipment for large boardrooms and other complex spaces.
Caught up with a vendor that provides office environmental monitoring equipment to discuss our planned implementation. There are technology requirements that I hadn’t previously appreciated, so it may be more complex than I thought.
Had an introductory meeting with two new team members who joined us in the past couple of weeks.
Was introduced to a new recruit in our Procurement department, working from a remote location but being very much part of the team.
Enjoyed a Learning Hour meeting on the technical plans for an office move. If things get difficult during the work, it won’t be for lack of planning.
Had a Random Coffee with a colleague who works in our Credit Risk team.
Celebrated our youngest son’s birthday with a meal out for the four of us. We had such a lovely time. Both of the boys are great company these days. He followed it up with a trip to the cinema and dinner with his friends on Friday afternoon.
Loved getting out on my bike on Saturday morning for the club ride. It took it out of me; I fell asleep watching the F1 qualifying and woke up during the post-event interviews. TrainerRoad told me that Sunday was a rest day but I couldn’t face doing nothing, so I went out for a run instead.
Met with some friends for some nibbles and board games. We had a few rounds of Codenames, which I enjoyed so much that I’m determined to pick up my own copy to take on holiday later in the year.
Enjoyed a lovely impromptu Sunday lunch at my mum and dad’s. I picked up a bunch of CDs that were on their way to the charity shop and took them home for ripping to my Plex library.
Had our car serviced and MOTed. Yet again, the suspension needed some work. I’m wondering if the traffic calming speed bumps on a main road near to our house are causing the suspension to wear prematurely.
Media
Podcasts
Finally got around to listening to Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey’s Origin Story podcast. The episode on conspiracy theories is excellent, making a good distinction between a conspiracy theory and the theory of a conspiracy, as well as why certain topics become a focal point whereas other major events are ignored.
I’ve only watched two of the three episodes so far, but the BBC’s Disco: Soundtrack of a Revolution is superb. Combining pop music with social and cultural history is like catnip for me. What a time to be alive it would have been.
Audio
The latest Your Undivided Attention podcast episode from the Center for Humane Technology covers the fascinating and frightening realities of how DNA is synthesised and distributed. There are mechanisms in place to protect us from people recreating known viruses but they seem to me to be flimsy and trivial to someone who knows what they are doing and is determined to do it. Having heard how this works, I think I’m less of an optimist than Kevin Esvelt, the interviewee on the podcast who runs a biological laboratory.
Next week: Clearing things out and taking them home, plus an online album club.
Generative AI just doing its thing. Simple question, two ‘market leading’ models from the same vendor, opposite answers.
📚 Finished reading PWNED by Troy Hunt. I can’t quite remember how I stumbled across his work; it was probably via a link from a Twitter post to his brilliant ‘;–have i been pwned? service. It’s been fascinating to learn about data breaches and disclosure processes, Internet of Things adventures, 3D printing, public speaking, travelling the world and so much more through his weekly update podcast, which I’ve listened to for at least half a decade now. This wonderful book brings together a collection of his blog posts as well as introductions, epilogues and comments to each one. If you’re remotely interested in information security or carving your own path away from a corporate job, this is well worth your time.
