Weeknotes #55: catch-ups and anniversaries

Weeknotes: Vibrant catch-ups, cinematic delight, insightful media exploration.

Week commencing Monday, 5 February 2024

A pint of beer on a table in a pub with a view of the bar in the background
Catch-ups with beer

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 5/7; Exercise 4/7 and Move 4/7. (62%). Morning walks: 0/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Plant diversity: 39. Total steps: 46,626

Life

  • Lovely to catch up with Cornelia for our revised Thirsty Thursday (on a Tuesday) meet-up. Lots of talk about cooking. We seem to be converts to the slow cooker way. And a catch-up beer with Frank on Thursday back on Grey’s Inn Road.
  • I read more about companies tightening their belts in the current economic climate. I wonder how that will impact the push to ‘return to the office’ when, again, it’s proven to have no impact on productivity and a negative impact on people?
  • Did I miss it or has there not been a lot of discussion about this being the 30th anniversary of the opening of the Channel tunnel? Has it been a wasted opportunity? I love travelling Eurostar.
  • It was also the 20th anniversary of Flickr. I couldn’t explain how my first photo had been uploaded before the service was even launched until I remembered Yahoo used to own it and Yahoo Photos was merged in at some point. Meta data retained, I assume.
  • As a Product Manager in my day job, given I have feedback on your product, and I leave a feature request, is it good enough?

Media

  • To the cinema, to see Poor Things. Lovely screening room at BAFTA where I’d never been. Stunning building. But the film? Another beautifully shot movie (see, 2023: Asteroid City). In the colour parts I could only describe it as steampunk Victorian through a fish-eye lens. Wonderful. The story weird, horrific and compelling. A child in an adult body questions the world. Outstanding performances: Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef and an incredibly funny Mark Ruffalo. But, somehow, too disturbing to be great.
  • More episodes of The Morning Show and, after the last couple of episodes had missed the feel of the ‘newsroom’, this episode felt like the show was back to its old self.
  • I saw Kara Swisher at an event once. She was as you’d imagine. Thank god somebody’s watching the tech giants: Over Three Decades, Tech Obliterated Media.
  • Stephen Fry, reviewing Apple’s new Vision Pro: “Technology is a verb, not a noun; a process, not a fixture”.