Weeknote 22/2021: By the sea

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 3 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Last week, I was on a family holiday – and the sun shone too. And, for the record, it’s still a holiday even if you don’t go abroad. It’s only a staycation if you stay in your own home.

Connectivity

Sadly, I’ve been strugging with mobile connectivity recently. I finally got around to putting a 5G SIM in my phone. Since then the 3/4G signal has been awful and I haven’t even seen 5G. giffgaff’s Twitter support were worse than useless, eventually demanding a list of personal information in a direct message including things they should know (like the identifier of the SIM they had sent me, which Android refused to show me). In the end, I gave up as I needed a SIM removal tool… I’ll try again this week, now I’m back home.

Meanwhile, in parts of Dorset, I even got a French mobile signal (when I couldn’t get an English one…)

Family History

One evening, whilst discussing family history, I found that my wife’s Great Great Grandfather was quite possibly murdered in the 1890s! The Coroner’s report suggests the body was found buried in a sitting position – so that sounds like foul play. It’s unclear whether there was a severed hand found nearby with some money but the newspaper says “hat” so that may be translation!

This week in pictures

Weeknote 21/2021: Running late

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 3 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Last week’s weeknote is a few days late…

That was the week when I confirmed that:

  • I’m still not a fan of panel discussions (I did take part in this event, but it still didn’t do it for me).
  • …or online events. Matt Ballantine’s post on “why I struggle with online events” sums up many of the things that I hadn’t quite managed to put my finger on. Basically, just because you can get 1000s of people to attend for virtually no cost, doesn’t mean it’s good value (not for the attendees anyway!).

On the subject of online events, I missed the Microsoft Build keynote completely (because of the poor communications), but I found this nice summary of what Google is up to:

Meanwhile, I’m reading The Human Organisation Report, to help me understand how to make work work.

A colleague shared this great advice for helping neurotypical people communicate in a way that works for those who are neurodiverse – so we can all understand one another:

It was also the week when I saw QR codes being used incredibly badly, and also well.

Last week in pictures

Not much on Insta’ this week…

Next week (now this week)

I’m on holiday now, which leads to my final point. I was reminded that being away from work should be absolute… if you do drop into email to do “just one thing” you may see things that then nag you and you have to fix them…

You have been warned!