The start of the week was spent travelling back from Kingsville, Texas. Saying that it is 5,000 miles away from Berkhamsted isn’t doing justice to quite how long it takes to travel between them. I was up at 6am and on the road less than an hour later in order to get the car returned at San Antonio airport. It was then a two-and-a-half-hour flight to Atlanta, followed by a long bus ride to the international terminal and an eight-hour flight back to Heathrow. The International terminal at Atlanta is lovely, but completely different from the gigantic maze of the domestic terminal. Georgia itself looked beautiful on a bright spring day, even around the airport. It may be worth a visit sometime.
I arrived back on Tuesday morning, feeling quite ‘special’ from having tried to sleep sitting up in my chair on the plane. I’d taken the day off, leaving just three days at work to navigate. Lack of rest and jetlag meant that I yawned my way through them.
This was a week in which I:
- Spent most of my three days of work in meetings.
- Joined our monthly Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Forum meeting. We also met with our DEI officer to discuss our approach to a planned town hall-style meeting on disability in the workplace.
- Had the weekly project meeting for the fit-out of a new office. We also met with the vendor that is assisting us with the project locally, reviewing an initial ‘test fit’ of how we can configure the space.
- Met with the project manager from our sister company who is managing their office refit work.
- Presented at our weekly Learning Hour meeting on my dabbling with Claude Code.
- Discussed how we will approach picking up ownership for an AI software tool developed in-house last year by a different team.
- Met with colleagues to discuss how we can approach Microsoft Copilot upskilling in one of our offices.
- Continued to review CVs for the developer vacancy in my team.
- Met colleagues to discuss a problem that one of our front office teams is trying to solve, how they haven’t got much traction with their approach, and what we might do to help.
- Had our monthly operational risk review meeting.
- Gave year-end remuneration feedback to my permanent team members.
- Took my wife to the hospital for what we hope will be the final bit of follow-up surgery on her eye. After a quick final blast of a laser, everything is looking good.
- Helped my wife’s parents to get set up in their new home. My wife had done so much last week when I was away, so I was keen to get there to help out. We got their computer connected to the Internet, got their television service in place, set them up with a portable Bluetooth speaker, hung up pictures, built a wardrobe and took a bunch of boxes away to the recycling centre. Most of the work is now in the rear-view mirror, so I am hoping that they soon get down to enjoying their new place. We all went out for dinner on Saturday night, which felt like a little relaxing reward after a hectic couple of weeks.
- Bought more gear for my son’s upcoming bikepacking trip. The number of things one might need for such a trip is staggering, considering he’ll be carrying everything on the bike the whole time.
- Went to a quiz night at my son’s school and had a very amusing evening, with a lot of laughs. We came second, missing out on the top spot by just one point.
- Woke up in time for the Saturday morning cycling club ride but decided to go back to bed after seeing all of the cars covered in frost. I have a low risk appetite for icy roads, and an extra hour’s sleep felt like a good choice. It’s so handy to have the choice of riding indoors, which I did later that morning.
- Finally capitulated to buying a smartwatch after finding the chest strap of my heart rate monitor cutting into me on recent runs. I’ve had a Garmin Forerunner 55 for a few days and I’m very impressed. It’s one of the cheapest models they make, which fits my criteria of (a) broadcasts heart rate to other devices via Bluetooth and (b) doesn’t need charging very often. I’ve disabled a bunch of the features such as notifications from my phone. I’ve also found that I have a resting heart rate of 46 beats per minute, which I think is pretty good for my age.
- Experimented a little with Claude Cowork, getting it to scan a copy of my Obsidian notes library and give me feedback on how I’m using the tool. I also downloaded a copy of all of my blog posts and got it to use them to create a file that describes my writing style and tone of voice. It was interesting to read through the result. I don’t have any interest in using it to create new written content, but it’s fun to learn about its capabilities in a hands-on way.
- Discovered the latest problem in a string of issues with our house. We found water dripping from our en-suite bathroom through a light fitting into the bathroom on the floor below. We’ve stopped using the shower and sink in the en-suite for now until we can get someone to take a look. I don’t think diagnosing and fixing the root cause is going to be straightforward.
Media
Articles
- I guess we are now going to see a steady stream of people who get fired for their use of AI-generated content that includes hallucinations. This week, a notable example is — incredibly — the senior AI reporter at Ars Technica.
- Derek Sivers is offline for 23 hours a day, working like he’s travelling in 1996 and the only way to get online is at an expensive Internet cafe.
Video
- Stopped watching Industry late in episode two, as the entire show seems to be too bleak to tolerate. It’s clearly well-liked as there are already four seasons, and it’s set in a world of investment banking that I’ve worked in for nearly 30 years, but I don’t think I can do it.
- Enjoyed Evolver62 (2025), the film version of Mark Lewisohn’s detailed and fun stage show about a single year in The Beatles’ early career.
Audio
- Have had a week-long earworm of What We All Want by Gang of Four. How can something so punky be so funky?
Books
- Started reading Sweating Bullets: Notes about Inventing PowerPoint by Robert Gaskins. I find this kind of computing history memoir fascinating.
Next week: An online Album Club, a night out and some outdoor cycling.
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