Weeknotes #344 — Some jacket required

Stopping to fix a puncture on Saturday morning’s ride. Sadly our rider suffered a slow flat on the other wheel shortly after and decided to head home.

Back to the office after last week’s jolly in France. Autumn has suddenly arrived. Memories of wandering around Paris in shorts and a t-shirt on Friday faded as I pulled my big winter coat out of the cupboard for the commute to work on Monday.

This was a week in which I:

Caught up with the team after having been out of the office for a week. Talking to our new team member got me thinking about the process of by which someone ‘calibrates’ when they join an organisation. You’ve employed them to bring their expertise and want them to bring and apply their ideas, but it’s difficult for them to know how much to push when lots of people have always done things a different way and aren’t immediately bought into something different. Part of my role is to be a navigator to help with this process.

Had a good conversation with our CIO and CTO that got me thinking about how many attempts I have seen in my career to create one master set of data definitions, and standardised data, running on a single system that everyone in an organisation can use. It feels like it should be the right answer, but I’m not sure that it is. Having a big, centralised system means that the small defects and improvements that could have a significant impact for a small part of the company may never get addressed if they are constantly being compared for value against much larger changes. Maybe Conway’s law isn’t all bad?

Reviewed and updated the draft service request for two new members of staff to join us to support the technology in our shared meeting spaces.

Had our weekly meeting with our audio/visual design vendor. There’s plenty going on as we head towards the procurement and installation of equipment in our shared meeting spaces.

Met with our divisional Chief Information Security Officer to discuss planned changes to one of our technical policies that will have, hopefully, a small impact on just a few people in our part of the company.

Joined the kickoff for a cyber security-focused project, reviewing the scope with the team. The work that has been done so far has surfaced lots of assumptions and points of clarification, so it was very satisfying to see these documented and worked through systematically.

Attended our Microsoft Copilot working group meeting. The number of attendees is smaller than I would like, but the people who do come are very engaged and willing to share and collaborate, resulting in an excellent discussion.

Took part in our software delivery team’s retrospective and sprint planning meeting.

Met with colleagues who are working on our document management project to discuss where we are, what we need to do next and how we can try to accelerate the work. We’ve put a daily check-in meeting in the diary for now which may help.

Had a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion forum training session on how targets are set and tracked for ethnicity, gender and disabilities in our organisation in South Africa.

Met with my Executive Partner at our information technology research and advisory firm for our monthly catch-up. He’s going over and above for us right now, which I am very grateful for. Our meetings always result in me coming away with good questions to ask myself and think about.

Had a short meeting with colleagues to check in on the project to refurbish one of our offices.

Joined the weekly meeting with our sister company to discuss the refurbishments in our building as well as our joint work.

Ran our internal monthly check-in meeting to review both the work going on in our building and the couple of small changes that are still outstanding from our own refurbishment project.

Went to the pub with a bunch of colleagues from our office. We sometimes find ourselves in conversation at work where we feel as though we need to stop and ‘save it for the pub’. But the pub time never comes around. So I remedied this by putting a date in the diary. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves as they put the world to rights.

Hosted our latest Album Club, instalment #175 in an unbroken monthly series. A Monday was the only day that everyone could make, so a Monday it had to be. I decided to separate the art from the artist and chose The Bluetones’ first album from 1996, Expecting to Fly. I fell in love with this record when I heard it during my first term at university, and the songs have been with me since. I’ve not been inclined to listen to them after reading the allegations about lead singer Mark Morriss’s behaviour, but after reading Claire Dederer’s book Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma I feel as though I’ve given myself permission to enjoy the music that I already own again. I wouldn’t go and see them live, though.

Somehow finished the latest Learned League season in fourth place in my division, which means I’ll now be promoted to the division above. If past performance is anything to go by, my appearance may not last for very long before I’m relegated again.

Set my alarm to wake up early on Sunday to sign up for London Wales London 2026. I woke just after 6am but the Audax UK site didn’t start accepting signups until 7am. The 200 places all went in about an hour. As night fell during this year’s ride, I remember saying to my fellow cyclists “If I ever sign up to anything like this again, please shoot me.” I hope they don’t. We’ve got plenty of cyclists from the club signed up this time, so it should be an adventure. (I still have no shame in reserving the right to pull out if the weather looks atrocious, though.)

Had a great ride with the cycling club on Saturday morning, and was so pleased to see our club chairman at the end of the ride. He recently came off his bike on one of our weekly rides as he was going downhill, resulting in serious injuries. Being up and about is fantastic progress. I’m hoping he’ll be back out with us at some point when he’s ready.

Took advantage of a break in the weather by getting out for a 10km run on Sunday morning. As I got close to my house I noticed I’d only done 9.5km, so I did a lap around the block to round it up.

Enjoyed a lovely get-together for Sunday lunch at my parents’ house along with my brothers and their families. We missed our having our eldest son there, but he was enjoying a day at the beach in Texas.

Media

Podcasts

I think John Harris may be my favourite politics podcaster. The episodes where he goes out and about to talk to people in specific parts of the UK are always such compelling listening. This week’s episode where he visits Kent is no exception. His interview with Linden Kemkaran, leader of Kent County Council, was hard going, as were his conversations with people on the streets and Razia Shariff, the Chief Executive of the Kent Refugee Action Network, albeit for different reasons. The anonymous interviewee who talks about his lived experience of being a refugee is a must-listen.

Articles

Interesting to read Simon Willison’s ‘lethal trifecta for AI agents’: private data, untrusted content, and external communication.

404 Media have a write-up on how “AI ‘Workslop’ Is Killing Productivity and Making Workers Miserable”. I’m starting to see a big difference between AI output that someone takes and uses without checking or reading as ‘good enough’, versus output that has been crafted and reviewed with some help from AI along the way. It’s usually not that difficult to distinguish between the two, and I do find myself getting annoyed at having to wade through raw AI output that someone else thought was fine.

According to the Associated Press, the FBI has fired agents photographed kneeling during racial justice protests in 2020. The firings seem so vindictive, and I assume they are also illegal. But by the time the law catches up with whether the staff have been unlawfully sacked, a lot of the damage to their lives has already been done.

Video

This BBC Archive video on The Explosive World of “Blaster” Bates from 1974 is a good one. I’d never heard of him before. I’m not convinced about the efficiency of clearing an old trout pond through a series of explosions, but his work definitely made for good storytelling.

Continued watching a bit more of V The Final Battle. It’s pretty good for a science-fiction drama from 1984.

Started watching The Studio on Apple TV+. I don’t think it’s as good as the reviews, but it’s made me laugh out loud in places. Most of the time I find myself cringing in the same way as when I watch Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Audio

Interesting new book on songs that failed: FLOPS ON 45: The Ones That Got Away 1965–1979 by Richard Lysons. I’m adding this to my wish list.

Web

Stumbled across the history of a patriotic 1968 campaign called I’m Backing Britain that called for people to work an extra 30 minutes a day — for free — to boost productivity. Bruce Forsyth released a single for the campaign as it gathered steam, but it ultimately came “to be regarded as an iconic example of a failed attempt to transform British economic prospects”.

Books

Continued enjoying Jon Savage’s The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Resistance Shaped Popular Culture (1955–1979).

Next week: An online Album Club.