Weeknotes #382 — Johannesburg

My regular morning view from the hotel gym, looking out across the Rosebank suburb of Johannesburg.

When last week’s Sun City-based conference was announced, I decided to extend my stay in South Africa so that I could spend some time with our team members who are based there. It wasn’t perfect timing; Tuesday was a public holiday for Youth Day, so many people chose to take Monday as leave in order to get a four-day weekend. But the time I did get to spend with the team and other colleagues from across the company made it worthwhile.

I was based at a hotel in Rosebank, close to the malls and shops and a five-minute walk to the office. When I wasn’t working, I spent most of my time watching World Cup games in my hotel room. South African coverage featured John Terry as a pundit. It also had in-match advertising that appeared with annoying regularity, where the match video would shrink, using the newly revealed space at the left and bottom of the screen to display an ad.

I recently got Tailscale up and running and worked out how to use my NAS drive at home as an exit node, which meant that I could stream UK TV on my iPad as well as download some programmes to watch on the way home.

Watching the BBC iPlayer coverage of the Czechia vs South Africa World Cup match on my iPad in an airport lounge in Johannesburg, with some help from Tailscale.

The reality for me, as a visitor to Johannesburg, is that it isn’t feasible to go for a run around the streets in the morning, so I confined myself to the hotel gym, clocking up four consecutive 10 km runs. It feels good to be running-fit so that I don’t have too much DOMS the next day.

It was strange to land back in the UK at the start of a heatwave, with temperatures much higher than the ones I’d left behind.

This was a week in which I:

Enjoyed catching up with my colleagues in a relatively quiet office on Monday, and going out for an organised team lunch on Wednesday. I also managed to grab a coffee with a colleague from our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion team who I had never met in person before.

Locked in the dates and plans for our management offsite meeting in London next month.

Gave an update to the whole team about the leadership conference that some of us attended last week.

Had a run-through of the draft slide deck that our CTO was going to use to present to our intake of interns, giving them a high-level overview of technology within our organisation.

Started to think about how we are going to deal with the demand for Copilot Cowork and similar AI tools that are paid for on a metered basis. Users have little idea before they press the Enter key how much their prompt will cost them in tokens, or the organisation in hard currency. Do you pool the budget for everyone and then, when you run out during a month, no-one can use any more tokens? Or do you instead give everyone a personal token allowance?

Remotely joined a town-hall-style meeting being held in our office in London with one of our business heads. I really enjoy relaxed interviews where you get to hear more about the person.

Was very impressed with the treadmill feature on my Garmin Forerunner 55 that I bought a few months ago. At the end of a run, I saw that the distance shown on the treadmill didn’t match the distance on my watch. But as I went to save the workout, it asked if I wanted to calibrate it. I entered the distance from the treadmill and it updated the statistics before it saved the run. Very cool.

Got our main car booked in for a service.

Volunteered to swap seats with a lady on the flight who was awkwardly leaning over to talk to her husband. As a lone traveller, I didn’t really mind where I sat. As I left the aircraft, the cabin crew informed me that they had added some points to my account as a thank-you. It was an unnecessary gesture, but I’m grateful; they will come in handy for buying cheap flights between home and university for our eldest son.

Had a day off on Friday, which turned out to be a good move considering how tired I was after the trip. I’ve also got Monday and Friday afternoon off next week, using up my remaining leave from 2025 before I lose it.

Got out on the bike on both Saturday and Sunday, my first time out riding since the Tour de Ricky at the end of May. To state the obvious, it was hot. My eldest came out for Saturday’s club ride, and was the instigator of a plan to cycle over to my parents’ house in Ascot on Sunday. Somehow I suffered yet another broken spoke in my rear wheel on the club ride, probably the fourth one that has gone since I got the bike in 2022. The team at Lovelo, our local bike shop, were brilliant as usual. They had the spoke repaired for me on the same day that it broke, so that I was ready for the ride on Sunday. However, they did point out that I have a small crack in the wheel rim. I’m not sure if that’s related, but I do know the wheel has never been quite right since I started using it. I’ve emailed Hunt, the manufacturer, to see what they think.

My cracked wheel rim.

Went to a joint 50th birthday party on Saturday night, hosted by a couple of friends of ours at their house. They had a gigantic marquee in their back garden, two bands, a free bar and a caterer making toasted sandwiches all night. I kept bumping into people I knew but hadn’t realised were mutual friends of the hosts.

Was given some wine, chocolate and two lovely cards for Father’s Day.

Ordered six bottles of wine from our namesake vineyard in South Africa for our dad. The owner, Tom, delivered them in person, and during their chat they discovered that one of our dad’s brothers used to service Tom’s dad’s car. The wine itself is lovely.

Media

Articles

Jane Dallaway has a lovely post with images from leaflets published by food marketing boards and councils in the UK many years ago. “Cheese makes parties easy.” They give the impression of a country discovering food for the first time. What happened to these organisations?

Having read scores of books on the Beatles over the years, I’m very familiar with the story that Frank Sinatra thought that Something was his favourite Beatles song, and that he mistakenly believed it was written by Lennon and McCartney. Terence Eden does a deep dive into whether that’s true.

I love the transparency that Tiago Forte gives as he breaks down the details of his book sales and what he has learned from selling half a million copies of them.

Lots of interesting data on “Where the world’s top AI researchers were educated, where they work now, and how talent flows between nations.”

Amazon’s post about how they are making their data centres more water-efficient is an interesting read, albeit with the knowledge that it is a self-promoting marketing piece.

The Financial Times reports on companies attempting to rein in their AI usage in order to control costs. I think that a switch to consumption-metered pricing is going to be a major headache for most large enterprises that have spent the past couple of years pushing for people to use more and more AI.

Manuel Moreale has found a new custodian for his lovely People and Blogs interview series.

I was in South Africa the weekend that Comrades, the world’s largest ultramarathon, was being run. I congratulated a colleague for completing such an incredible running feat, at which point she told me it was her 10th finish. The mind boggles.

Video

Brexit: A Very British Civil War was compelling viewing, but also a horrible reminder of what a dreadful thing our country did to itself. Given what happened afterwards, it is mad to think that one of the leading figures of that time is still many people’s preferred candidate to be Prime Minister.

Audio

My mental hi-fi seems to be stuck on tracks from Mariah Carey’s eponymous debut in 1990. I always think that X-Factor-style vocal gymnastics are not my thing, and some might say that Carey had a significant hand in inventing the style. But, for me, her debut doesn’t go too overboard with vocal showboating for its own sake. It’s a record filled with excellent pop songs.

Books

After a week when I didn’t manage to pick up a book, I continued with Having Spent Life Seeking by Kae Tempest. It’s getting good.

Next week: Bracing for the collective lack-of-sleep hangover of another heatwave.