Weeknotes #251 — Lurking Lucas

Don’t strain your next looking for when the next bus is.

Don’t strain your neck looking for when the next bus is.

Although the meetings have started to thin out, it was another busy week. There’s still plenty going on in the run-up to Christmas. Some big gaps opened up in my calendar which felt like suddenly vacant spots in an otherwise rammed car park in which I’ve been driving around in circles. I still didn’t have enough time to finish all of the things I needed to, so had to spend some time working on Saturday to catch up.

On my way into work on Monday I started to get a sore throat and thought that I was about to get properly sick. Thankfully it never materialised. There are so many coughs and colds around at the moment and I’ve even seen a couple of colleagues take time off with bronchitis and pneumonia, so it felt like a lucky escape.

This was a week in which I:

  • Hosted the third and final workshop to review the status of all of the components that make up the core services in our offices. The next steps are to fill in the blanks and to use the data for scoping some of our projects for next year.
  • Joined a Generative AI workshop with a well-known vendor. I’m really struggling with the cognitive dissonance between a company having ’responsible AI principles’ but basing their technology on a model that is opaque about its training data and uses low-wage workers to train it. Generative AI can be incredible, but I am in ‘full skeptic’ mode as I think we’re still at the ‘peak of inflated expectations’.
  • Spent a lot of time discussing the architectural plans for a new office. We joined that office’s all-hands meeting to present the drawing and the thoughts behind it to the whole team.
  • Met with the project team from a sister company who are coordinating internal building works in our shared office over the next couple of years.
  • Met our COO and CIO to discuss our approach to the shared spaces within our office, as well as some relatively minor changes that we plan to make.
  • Reviewed a document that is intended for our division’s executive offsite meeting in January in order to kick off and frame the year ahead.
  • Put together my half of a slide deck about the ‘Digital Immersion’ that a colleague and I attended in October and presented to the department at our weekly Learning Hour session.
  • Had the monthly vendor call with the analyst service that we subscribe to.
  • Fed back to a potential vendor that we will not be signing a contract with them.
  • Joined the weekly project meeting for opening an office in a new country.
  • Prepared an outline for how I think we should move forward with the management of unstructured files across our division.
  • Attended an interesting Gartner webinar on The Basics of Product Management in IT. The poor presenter told us she wasn’t feeling well at the start of the session and seemed to be melting in front of our eyes as the webinar went on. We had to let her know through the Q&A that we were rooting for her. She managed to get to the end while keeping it engaging. Very impressive.
  • Was interviewed by two Year 11 students about diversity of people in Technology as part of a ‘Business Insights Programme’ being run by a sister company.
  • Enjoyed a ‘Christmas’ lunch with a big chunk of the team from our London office. I hadn’t been to Ping Pong in some time so I was excited to go. Our fabulous colleague who arranged it could only get us a table at 2pm, a little late for lunch, so treated us to a ‘social’ from Ole & Steen.1
  • Walked past Caroline Lucas and a small Channel 4 TV crew as I walked from my office to the train station. I thought I recognised her but I wasn’t sure; I stopped and stared for just a bit too long for things to be comfortable. They were set up in a weird alcove just off of Holborn Viaduct, which is why it took me some time to process. Looking at the video I can see that it’s a pretty good spot, with Amazon’s headquarters in the background providing a ‘random central London location’ vibe.
At the top of the stairs leading down to the road below.

At the top of the stairs leading down to the road below.

  • Enjoyed bumping into a friend from Album Club at the train station. It’s not often I see people I know on my commute, probably as a result of most of us not going in as much as we used to.
  • Had a great Saturday morning bike ride, my first outdoors for many weeks. The cycling club organised their annual Mince Pie Ride which had us all meeting up at a local cafe for a free coffee and a pie at the end when we were done. It was so lovely to get out again.
Mud-spattered and happy.

Mud-spattered and happy.

  • Met up with my family for our pre-Christmas Christmas at my mum and dad’s. They cooked a fabulous meal for everyone. I felt like the cliched uncle who kept remarking on how my nephews and niece have grown. (But they had!) After having been able to spend lots of time together on holidays over recent years, half a day with everyone felt way too short. Hopefully we’ll see more of everyone in 2024.
  • Tried getting a doctor’s appointment three different ways, all of which ended in failure.

Next week: The WB-40 podcast Christmas meetup, seeing some very old friends and going to see a friend drumming at a local gig.


  1. Such an unassuming name. This ‘social’ has to be one of the top five things that I’ve ever eaten. Ever. Absolutely incredible. People were standing around, nibbling them to make them last longer, all agog at how good they were. 

Weeknotes #244 — Bristol

The Granary, Bristol

The Granary, Bristol

Four days in Berlin knocked me out. Prior to the trip, I’d already decided to take off an extra couple of days after I got back, as the rest of the family would be off work and school for half term. I’m so glad I did. Tuesday was spent pottering around the house in a daze. On Wednesday the four of us jumped in a car for a day trip to Bristol, to see my wife’s brother and his family.

We had a lovely day out. Vegan pizzas at the Left-Handed Giant brewpub were followed by extraordinary hot chocolates at neighbouring Ruby Hue’s. It was so great to see everyone and particularly to spend time with the youngest member of our extended family who has recently started to talk.

Left-Handed Giant labels. All of their beers have fantastic artwork.

Left-Handed Giant labels. All of their beers have fantastic artwork.

Who knew that hot chocolate could be so complex?

Who knew that hot chocolate could be so complex?

I got back to work on Thursday for a two-day week, still feeling out of sorts. I wondered whether I’d picked up an illness but with the benefit of hindsight I think I was just worn out.

This was a week in which I:

  • Joined a presentation to our Technology Executive Committee to give feedback on our recent ‘immersion’.
  • Met with a member of our Investment Banking team to talk through the AI components of a client’s business model.
  • Attended a kickoff workshop to look at simplifying the complex process of onboarding staff to the organisation.
  • Met with the Finance team to review the approach to a major project that we are running over the next couple of years.
  • Reviewed the latest iteration of a proposed vendor contract with our Procurement department.
  • Continued the series of meetings with my product development and product management leads. It feels like we are making good progress in getting everything pointing in the same direction.
  • Met to discuss the status of one of our prototype products and how we will take it forward.
  • Gave yet another presentation on Large Language Models and Generative AI to a team of client-facing staff in Johannesburg.
  • Wondered who looks forward to eating jackfruit? It seems to be a staple vegetarian option in a cafe close to the office. I’ve never heard anyone drool at the sound of it, or say how much they are looking forward to it.
  • Went to my eldest son’s football match, my first of the season. He’s now playing in the Under 18’s, with players who span the ages of 16 to 18 years old. I couldn’t believe the amount of abuse that the referee got from the spectators and had to intervene at half time, siding with the ref and persuading him to stay for the second half.
  • Started to think about getting a new kitchen to replace our old and tired one.
  • Enjoyed a lovely meal out at Tabure in Berkhamsted with old friends. We felt a little unloved by the waiting staff as they seemed to leave us to our own devices for far too long. The manager told us that they are trying their best, but are struggling to find staff at the moment.
  • Had a visit from a neighbour’s cat who decided to make himself at home in my office.
Not my cat

Not my cat

Next week: Getting to know our neighbours.

Weeknotes #240 — PJ Phillips

PJ Harvey and band at the Roundhouse, London, 28 September 2023

PJ Harvey and band at the Roundhouse, London, 28 September 2023

My life is filled with so much music at the moment. In some ways it’s like being a teenager again. I seem to spend most of my spare cash on vinyl, CDs, downloads and tickets to gigs. I’m now in three different album clubs, which means that typically there will be three nights in a month where I will sit down and dedicate to intently listening to an album. I love it.

This week I heard a Velvet Underground album for the first time, as our album club host had picked Loaded for us to listen to. It was superb. Hearing Lou Reed sing “fine, fine music” in Rock And Roll made me think of Kill The King by Lena Deluxe and reminded me to check out her album from a few years ago.

Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights were spent with two of my best friends. We went to see PJ Harvey play her new album plus a selection of her old songs at the Roundhouse in London. It’s an incredible venue but could benefit from a sloped floor — we ended up behind some tall guys and people with massive barnets which meant that we were straining to see her as she moved around the stage. The music and performance of the whole band was incredible. Hearing The Words That Maketh Murder was electrifying.

Photo taken with my phone held very much aloft in order to avoid the giant-haired people directly in front of me.

Photo taken with my phone held very much aloft in order to avoid the giant-haired people directly in front of me.

The next day we found ourselves in the basement of Pizza Express in Holborn to see Grant-Lee Phillips. I’ve been listening to his music since Grant-Lee Buffalo’s Mighty Joe Moon album in the mid-1990s but had never seen him live. The venue is absolutely beautiful — it has a classic intimate jazz-club vibe — and was a perfect setting for him and his guitar. Hearing so many songs that I’ve loved for years sung by someone so close that you could almost reach out and grab them was something special. His voice and his music are criminally underrated.

Grant-Lee Phillips, Pizza Express Live, London, 29 September 2023

Grant-Lee Phillips, Pizza Express Live, London, 29 September 2023

I do wonder whether I should be prioritising even more time to music as I love it so much. I spend a significant part of my week with podcasts on politics and current affairs but I’m not sure it does me much good. It’s great to be informed, but life is short; I get the feeling that it would be better spent with music than hearing about the latest drama happening in the world.

This was a week in which I:

  • Got back to work after a week out of the office, catching up with the team on what was going on.
  • Created and a short summary of risks related to Generative AI and Large Language Models, much of it based on the recent book by Baldur Bjarnason, and published it to our internal working group.
  • Gave my Digital Literacy presentation on Generative AI and Large Language Models twice, to one of our Executive Committees and one of our regional offices. I’ve now covered everyone in our part of the business, having given the presentation around 25 times.
  • Reviewed a draft set of learning patterns and frameworks that we plan to offer to the rest of our department.
  • Looked at the Planview roadmap functionality and reviewed a proof-of-concept that the team had pulled together last week. Got SSO working with Roadmaps and AgilePlace again after we discovered that the settings of the former override the latter.
  • Attended a town hall meeting for our part of the business and heard some wonderful stories of the work we have been doing with, and for, our clients. We had some lovely office drinks and chats afterwards.
  • Met with the project team who are coordinating our Technology town hall meeting in November.
  • Extended our finance tracker out to 2024 given that the end of the year is fast approaching.
  • Reviewed and updated my open operational risks.
  • Had our monthly Lean Coffee session.
  • Attended the monthly Architecture Community of Practice meeting.
  • Scoped out a draft agenda for the Gartner IT Symposium in November.
  • Enjoyed a lovely ‘random coffee’ with a fellow member of the WB-40 podcast community.
  • Completed my tax return. Always takes more time and effort to think about it than it does to do it.
  • Had an eventful Saturday morning club bike ride. Halfway round I felt as though I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs and found myself coughing, spluttering and unable to keep up with the group. I’d had a Barry White voice on Friday and had just put it down to too many late nights, but this seemed like some kind of bug. Two COVID-19 tests were both negative and by Sunday I was feeling a lot better. A couple of other cyclists in our group got stung or bitten by insects and one of them has had a nasty reaction, his face blowing up like a balloon.
  • Had a wonderful dinner with friends on Saturday night that featured a banoffee pie of epic proportions.
  • Deleted my Clubhouse account. I think we knew at the time it took off during the pandemic that it was just a fad.
  • Tried to diagnose some home network problems where everything felt like it was being transmitted through treacle. Rebooted the router. Unplugged it and plugged it back in again. Restarted both of my Pi-holes one after the other. Changed our Internet DNS from OpenDNS to 1.1.1.1 for Families. Nothing seemed to make any difference. Finally tried rebooting the Virgin Media router — which is running in ‘modem mode’, so I assumed wouldn’t have a significant role to play in terms of network performance — and it all suddenly started working fine. I wish there was an easier way to investigate where network bottlenecks and issues are.

Next week: Seeing Gang of Four and making some big project decisions.