Tag: weeknotes

Weeknotes #4

Week commencing Monday, 19 April 2021

  • Beautiful weekend weather lead to much sitting in the sun. I may be a bit sunburnt. Taking a train to Southampton to see family on Sunday seemed very normal (even though I haven’t done it for over a year). The train disruption on the return journey also seemed remarkably normal and predictable.
  • The question I can’t get out of my head this week: at any given moment, how many people are saying the word “Alexa”?
  • We’re starting to plan what our ‘return to the office’ will look like. According to the BBC, HSBC plans to shrink its office space by 40% in a post-pandemic shake-up which, I suspect, is like a lot of other companies.
  • We had a team meeting to discuss our individual thoughts on the back-to-the-office. Generally, the return to the over-crowded commute was unwelcome. But, also, the idea of turning up to an office space to don headphones and video conference the people who are not in on that day. This is more than a change of ‘where’; it will be a change of ‘how’.
  • For a random reason I saw a statement on a Spotify job spec and I love this sentence, “You are welcome at Spotify for who you are, no matter where you come from, what you look like, or what’s playing in your headphones.”
  • Reminded this week about Troubled Diva’s ‘The 40 in 40 Days Project’ which you can still read via The Wayback Machine.
  • I feel asleep while watching The Spy Who Loved Me on Saturday night which must have been as a result of the wine I drink in the sunshine and the large Indian takeaway that we had.
  • Spent more time listening to Podcasts than I have done for while. The Chaos and collapse: European football’s not-so-super league episode of The Guardian’s Today in Focus was an interesting discussion about the launch and collapse of the Super League this week. Also recommend for the remote working conversations, Stephen Wolfram on 28 Years of Remote Work an episode of ‘Distributed, with Matt Mullenweg’ that’s from 2019 but interesting in light of this week’s conversations.

Archive

To save the links getting lost in the future I checked the Internet Archive to see what they had saved for the posts linked here.

Weeknotes #3

Week commencing Monday, 12 April 2021

  • Blood test this week; hopefully nothing important; a text from the Doctor and a follow-up consultation in a couple of weeks suggests nothing urgent was found.
  • First night out with friends in Streatham. £28.56 for bottle of wine is much more expensive that the ones in the fridge but it was nice – if cold – to be outside.
  • The heated Gillet that I bought kind of worked: it kept my back very warm but made me realise how cold my arms and legs were.
  • Initial planning for an evening out with with former colleagues. It would be the first time I have been into Central London this year – which isn’t surprising but still feels odd to write.
  • We’re trying The Falcon and the Winter Soldier on Disney+ but I am struggling with the new Captain America. To be fair, we are only on Episode 2.
  • The weather was lovely at the weekend so, on Saturday, we sat outside at the front of the house which gets the late afternoon soon. Met some street-neighbours who we’ve never said hello to before. Quite lovely.
  • Sunday we walked to Merton Abbey for some lunch and a walk around the shops. All the craft stalls were back and it was also great to be outside in the sunshine.

Archive

To save the links getting lost in the future I checked the Internet Archive to see what they had saved for the posts linked here.

Weeknote #2

Week commencing Monday, 5 April 2021

  • Prince Philip has died aged 99: “Prince Philip was an extraordinary man who lived an extraordinary life; a life intimately connected with the sweeping changes of our turbulent 20th Century, a life of fascinating contrast and contradiction, of service and some degree of solitude. A complex, clever, eternally restless man.” BBC News
  • As Diamond Geezer said, “Few events are as well planned for as the death of a major royal” but I thought the decision to take BBC Four off air seemed odd. I wonder how much streaming services were up this weekend?
  • COVID passports are in the news. There’s a feeling the people don’t want a 2-tier system that would exclude some people from whatever the new normal is. The BBC reported there was strong public support for their use in some situations. I’d happily have one if to means things can open up more quickly.
  • I had some fun with Google search console trying to figure out why I need a separate property for http v https. In the end I went down the domain verification path. It seems every few years I have to verify the ownership of domains I have had for years with them.
  • Working with my domains made me wonder when I first registered them, so I looked it up: curnow.org (14th-May-1999) and musak.org (17th-Feb-2003)
  • I am not sure I learnt much from Kara Swisher’s interview with Tim Cook but it was an interesting listen.
  • Too many radio station Wikipedia entries seem to focus on the station today and radio history is lost. I added some links to The BBC Radio Shropshire wiki entry. I wonder how long they will stay around?
  • I Tweeted about some links I cleaned up on a Listen to Musak entry and how many of the URLs have gone or changed. I’m a bit of a hypocrite because Listen to Musak’s URL schema broke when I moved it to WordPress and 12 years later I haven’t really fixed it but I am, gradually, repairing the site so the links work.
  • I also installed an RSS reader. Yes, I really am recreated the web of 2004. But Net News Wire is nice and the team behind it appear half way through enabling iCloud sync (it works on desktop but not to the mobile app yet).

Archive

To save the links getting lost in the future I checked the Internet Archive to see what they had saved for the posts linked here.

Weeknote #1

Week commencing Monday, 29 March 2021

… and who need a little bit of reminding, in chaotic times, of what it was like to telnet into a blank screen which contained the entire world.

Why Generation X will save the web, Heather Burns

There’s an excellent article by Heather Burns entitled “Why Generation X will save the web” which you should read. It was written in January but I was only pointed to it this week. Back in the glory days of blogging we’d all have been quoting that within a hour of it being published.

Heather’s comparison that “We – the GenXers – think of the internet as the open web” and “Today’s policy facilitators – the millennials – think of the internet as MySpace and Facebook. The closed web” is wonderful insight into the way the web has changed since I built my first sites and since my first blog entry.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about the evolution of the web and how it’s not as we foresaw. I think it’s something to do with celebrating a significant birthday last year and an urge to document what I’ve written here on the web over the years. It may also be do do with the fact that I’ve spent more time lately away from social media platforms and more time exploring the web as it used to be. I’ve been discovering how many of the blogs of old are still in existence and how many are being updated.

I still read Phil Gyford. His ‘Half Century Notes‘ is a lovely piece of writing about his version of that significant birthday.

Several of the bloggers I used to read, including Phil, have morphed into the Weeknotes format. So, as there’s a passing bandwagon, I thought’d I jump on it.

Weeknotes

  • the clocks went forward last weekend and we have lighter evenings now. I decided to try Couch-to-5k again and did the first session over 2.43 miles. That’s all I managed this week – but next week can bring another beginning, can’t it?
  • the highlight of the week is the gradual reduction in the lockdown rules. We can now meet outside – which includes the garden. This inspired a B&Q trip and some planting in the pots on Good Friday and visitors on Saturday. Also a visit to a garden on Easter Sunday for a lovely outdoor lunch. It’s cold out of the sun but pleasant while the skies are blue.
  • thinking of this weekly format reminded me of the 10-part newsletter I penned in 2010: Last Week in Digital Advertising. I looked at the first one and discovered about half the links no longer existed. I managed to find alternative sources for some but many will forever 404. That’s inspired me to check all links here for entries in the Internet Archive.
  • new guttering week and, just like every repair to this house, it ends up more because some shoddy previous work is uncovered but, after a brief worry about some missing roof tiles, all seems well.

Archive

To save the links getting lost in the future I checked the Internet Archive to see what they had saved for the posts linked here.