Week commencing Monday, 10 March 2025
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 Total steps: 44,027
Life
- I am often asked to produce my passport or my driving licence to use as identity, but I have not needed my birth certificate for a long time. Thankfully, I found it.
- I asked Google Gemini to clean up a meeting transcript. It turned a forty-minute meeting into a ten-minute passage and then read it to me. That would have been a great time-saver if I hadn’t had to hear the entire meeting.
- Related: nice though it was, I am glad I heard the original meeting because that allowed me to spot where Gemini had got it wrong. Unsurprisingly, people trust AI a little too much: Would a computer really go on the internet and lie? Well, yes.
- Relatedly, related: Revealed: How the UK tech secretary uses ChatGPT for policy advice.
- Thursday, to the office and met a former colleague in a lovely pub near St Paul’s Cathedral. I walked streets I’d never ventured down before. There are some interesting places in London.
- On Saturday, for PY’s birthday, we saw The World of Tim Burton at London’s Design Museum. It was very busy, but it was really interesting to see the evolution of the Tim Burton look. Lots of films were covered in a small space, so the exhibition was very much focused on how the look evolved rather than on any particular show. Of course, I loved The Nightmare Before Christmas parts.
- Related, the themed afternoon tea, rooftop cocktail bar with a view of St Paul’s Cathedral, and Argentinian steak dinner were all surprises. My timings all worked out, even with a delay on the Circle Line.
- Friends of Sunday Lunch, PY has planned individual beef Wellingtons. After the Argentinian, that was a lot of steak in one weekend.
- This resonated: How Much Do I Really Need to Know?
Media
- No pub quiz for us this week, so we had Mastermind, Chess Masters, University Challenge, and then to catch up on Only Connect, The Final. We did get some of the questions right.
- We completed watching Prime Target. I’m glad we stuck with it. I don’t think many of the characters were nice enough to root for, but it was very enjoyable.