Helena Deland live at the Oslo, Hackney, 21 February 2024
I was home alone for most of this week. My youngest son was on a school skiing trip, and my wife and eldest son took a short break to Marrakesh. I have too much going on at work right now to contemplate any time off. Things are actually going in the opposite direction for me; I am finding that I have to take time at the weekend to knock a few things off of the to-do list. I think the volume of work this year will peak at both the start and the end, so I’m just going to have to plan other things around it.
Monday was filled with a man-cold aftershock. After being ill over the weekend, I went to bed feeling ok-ish on Sunday and woke up the next day feeling fine. By the time I made it to the office my eyes were watering and I was charging my way through packets of tissues. I don’t really have time to be ill.
This was a week in which I:
- Was completely blown away by the Helena Deland gig on Wednesday night. Oslo is an excellent little venue which was perfect for the show. I’ve been listening to her music for many years; her wonderful songs sounded even better live.
- Worked over the weekend to write-up and publish a few things, including the minutes from our recent steering committee. It’s been a few years since I’ve had to write formal minutes and I’d forgotten how much of a slog it is. “Record the meeting and use the AI!” I hear you say. Forgive me if AI-generated statements like this one don’t give me confidence to cede control to the computers just yet:
What does this even mean?
The meetings are every two weeks, a self-imposed schedule that comes from the need to drive a lot of decisions during this part of the year. That’s a lot of meeting minute slogging, but I can’t see another way.
- Got in the habit of recording my daily ‘standup’ meetings. I’ve been using them to share updates on our major programme but not everyone can make that slot every day. We spent a lot of time in our two-weekly management meeting going through the programme steering committee deck, which reminded me how difficult good communication is. I went into the conversation thinking that everyone knew all of the things, but there was much to talk about.
- Had a number of meetings with our audio/visual technical design vendor. We now have the first draft of a design for one of our offices for review as well as the project proposal for some adjacent work. We have two other projects to agree.
- Had the two-weekly real estate team meeting to review the status of opening a new office.
- Joined the weekly design meeting for one of our new offices.
- Met with the landlord of one of our new offices, along with our CEO and CIO.
- Took a look at a meeting space in our building with our COO, to see if it would be suitable as a temporary home while we complete some major work this year.
- Had the weekly project meeting with our sister company on the coordinated building works taking place this year.
- Met with our sister company to progress the discussion of us taking on the management of technology in a space that we share.
- Met with colleagues to review the proposed solution for managing documents between our region and a country-focused business function.
- Had a lovely Random Coffee with the business manager of one of our front office functions.
- Caught up with an old colleague who now runs our API practice. It’s always so lovely to speak with her.
- Hosted the weekly Learning Hour meeting. Our guest speaker was the head of our Global Markets Technology department who spoke about her recently completed Master of Financial Technology degree.
- Attended the two-weekly internal generative AI forums.
- Assembled my new Raspberry Pi 4 Model B with the intention of swapping it out for an old, problematic Pi that I use as one of my pi-holes. After burning the operating system image onto the microSD card and getting my keyboard ready for setting it up, I found that neither the existing power supply nor HDMI cable will fit into this new model. So I’m back to the shops again.
- Had a random email from a fellow BookCrosser
- Bought some new work shirts as quite a few of the current stock have reached their last outing. It’s still amazing to order something on Sunday night and have it there on your doorstep at lunchtime the next day.
- Pondered how I now seem to need to visit the barbers every three weeks and wondered if faster hair growth is part of the aging process.
Media
Podcasts
- Found this Risky.biz episode on Microsoft 365 tenant hacks quite terrifying.
- Enjoyed this WB-40 episode on the topic of the AI-powered Poem/1 clock until it was inferred that ChatGPT gets “lazier in December”. Lisa Riemers is an excellent host.
Articles
- Ian Dunt is superb on last week’s farcical scenes in the House of Commons.
Video
- Phoenix (2014) was both somewhat wooden and quite beautiful. I found I had to suspend disbelief at how quickly the story ran along, but I was glad to have watched it.
Web
Books
- Finished reading Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. It was lovely to have a physical book in my hands again, so I’ve picked up another. Now working my way through Everything I Know About Life I Learned From PowerPoint by Russell Davies.
Next week: Two online Album Clubs and the next steering committee meeting.
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