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.
- Attended our monthly operational risk review meeting.
- Realised that I’m never going to change the culture at work to being cameras-on. It’s a Sisyphean task.
- Went to this year’s Interesting conference, “a DIY conference of short presentations about things our speakers find interesting”. A lovely way to spend an evening. In no particular order, we heard from:
- Rachel Coldicutt on The Society of Hopeful Technologists. I really hope this gets some traction.
- Lisa Rajan on being unable to talk. Incredible bravery in getting up to speak to a room full of strangers.
- Clare Reddington on toilets.
- Daria Cybulska on the Polish concept of kombinowanie.
- Rosa Loosemoore on the neurodiversity of cosplay.
- Terry Stiastny on fake news and wartime propaganda.
- Helen Gibbs on ‘postcards from a woman on the edge’.
- Rebekah Ford on being an 80’s teenage robotic dancer.
- Cate McLaurin on paving stones (which was actually about lovely little street gardens in the Netherlands.)
- Zoe Scaman on fairytales as emergency survival manuals for civilisational collapse.
- Anthony Dhanendran telling us that you should read the obituaries section of the papers.
- Daniel John Jones on dispatches of the infraordinary, including a radio station that reads out the everyday, ordinary things that are happening around the world.
- Lauren Beukes and Luyanda Unati Lewis-Nwalo on lessons in resistance from South African sci-fi.
- 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.
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.
Books
- Continued reading Code Dependent by Madhumita Murgia.
Next week: An online album club, watching my son in another race and getting ready for a week off.
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