Tag: weeknote

Weeknote 17/2024

Posted on April 29, 2024April 29, 2024 by Doug Belshaw

Adapt yourself to the environment in which your lot has been cast, and show true love to the fellow mortals with whom destiny has surrounded you.
Marcus Aurelius

I’m writing later than usual as it’s been a busy weekend. Between ferrying our teenagers to football matches, unpacking boxes, and painting walls, I haven’t sat down much.

My daughter’s team won the League Cup on Saturday in a close match due to the number of injuries they had. That means they’ve has done the double and have won every game this season, except one controversial match against their fiercest rivals which put them out of the County Cup.

My son bought a PlayStation 5 with his first pay packet, a far cry from me buying a couple of books with mine when I was about his age! It means I might actually get to play on mine occasionally now, and that it’s freed-up for my daughter to use, too.

I’m not sure there’s much of significance to share, really. I could complain more about Virgin Media, who took from Tuesday and Friday to allocate an IP address so that our fibre broadband worked. I could share intricate details of the exact shades of paint we’ve gone for to cover various walls of the house. I might even express some joy that I don’t have to go hunting for public EV chargers any more for our Polestar 2. I definitely want to thank my parents for all of their help and support while moving.

Last week, I had a meeting with someone who asked me how many hours of sleep I get per week. Their point being that I seem to do a lot. It doesn’t feel like that from the inside, other than that if I’m not doing things then I have the kind of brain that tends to ruminate. And I’m not a big fan of rumination.

We haven’t got loads of work on at the moment through the co-op. It’s easy to tie your value or worth to your job and the amount of ‘success’ you have in it. But much of this is outside of any one person’s control. To be honest, if I was on my deathbed now, aged 43, I’ve pretty much achieved all I wanted to in life. Yes, there’s more to do and I still have the energy to do it. Not to put too fine a point on it, fuck achievements.

I start my next MSc module this week, which is actually the introductory module (TB871). I’m hoping it’s easier than the last one. Client-wise, we’ve got a workshop to run for the Toro project out of CSUDH, continuing work around comms strategy for the Digital Credentials Consortium, and some planning to do with Participate around the future of the ORE community.

It’s International Workers Day on Wednesday, so although I’ll be studying, I won’t be doing any work. We set up WAO eight years ago, so it seems appropriate to sign off with this riff on the ‘A Team’ theme song.

Image CC BY-ND Visual Thinkery for WAO

In 2016, a crack team of learning, technology and community experts founded We Are Open Co-op to help organizations thrive.

These pioneers promptly set out to build a better world from their base in the digital underground.

Today, still driven by their mission, they survive as a co-operative of fortune.

If you have a challenge, if no one else can help, and if you can find them… maybe you can hire We Are Open Co-op

Until next time! I can predict that the early May Bank Holiday weekend will involve… some DIY.

Image: Susan Wilkinson

Weeknote 15/2024

Posted on April 14, 2024April 14, 2024 by Doug Belshaw

In my own way, this feel like livin’
Some alternate reality
And I was drownin’, but now I’m swimmin’
Through stressful waters to relief
Come Back to Earth (Mac Miller)

A monochrome photo of a living room with a clothes drying rack, packed moving boxes in the centre, a television on a wooden cabinet, and a cozy armchair, indicating a moving scenario.

We’ve now exchanged contracts on the house we’re buying, and will be moving next weekend. The sense of relief Chez Belshaw is palpable as things are never sure until this stage. We would have liked to have moved earlier, especially as the Easter holidays for the kids end tomorrow, but I’m continuing to channel my inner Epictetus.

This is the end of my second week off work. Last week, I felt better after having a cold, or Covid, or something during the last few days I was at work. This week, I’ve either caught something different, or what I had’s come back with a vengeance. It’s weird: I ran Monday and Wednesday and went to the gym on Tuesday; everything was fine. Then from Thursday to today I’ve been sick. I could do without it, to be honest.

I’m not a great patient, so I’ve been drinking full cafetieres of coffee and getting my MSc assignment done. It is indeed written, although weighing in at 6,500 words instead of the 4,000 word limit. While my tutor says she’s never known anyone be penalised for going over the limit, I should probably spend a couple of hours cutting out some waffle. It’s due on April 23rd, but ideally I’ll submit before we move house.

Without replying to anyone, I’ve glanced at work emails and Slack as a distraction from writing, and noticed that Laura published a post we collaborated on before I went on holiday entitled Examining the Roots: Unpacking the foundations of Verifiable Credentials. It looks like she’s also published the next couple of episodes of Season 9 of our podcast, The Tao of WAO.

Erm, other things to report? I saw Dune 2 with my son at the cinema last night. Visually absolutely incredible, but it didn’t really do anything for me on a visceral level. Perhaps, as I mentioned on the journey home, it’s because I’m now at an age where I don’t identify with the main protagonist. Or maybe I just find it difficult to sit still for almost three hours.

I wrote a pretty niche post about exporting blog data to a format to make it easier to use with LLMs like ChatGPT. I published some things on Thought Shrapnel. I bought a Pixel Fold for less than half of the list price and installed GrapheneOS. I packed and moved some boxes. I took my kids to football and basketball training/games. (My son’s basketball game was particularly exciting, coming back from 20 points down against the team he used to play for, to draw in the last few seconds.)

I’ve nearly finished Ethan Mollick’s Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI. It’s pretty good, although it doesn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already know. Definitely useful to pass on to others, though, which is one of the advantages of buying dead tree books. I’m also reading one of the most recent Jack Reacher novels, and although the early ones are clearly much better, they’re an easy read and way to switch off.

Image: two boxes stacked in the living room of our current rented house, with clothes drying wherever we can find space.

Weeknote 14/2024

Posted on April 7, 2024April 7, 2024 by Doug Belshaw

It’s 7am on a Sunday morning while I’m on holiday. So, of course, I’ve been up for about an hour and a half.

This week, I’ve started the end of module assessment for my first MSc in Systems Thinking module. It should be a lot easier than my last one and, given that I’m a lot less stressed about the whole thing, have registered for the next module, starting May 1st.

We’ve got a moving date! After checking everything that needed to be checked, and signing everything that needed to be signed, we should exchange contracts on Friday 12th April, and complete a week later. This time around, we’re getting a removal company to move us, rather than doing it ourselves.

After I was under the weather last week, this week it’s been the turn of other family members. My son had what I thought was a chest infection but seems to have cleared up. My daughter has a pretty bad cold which, along with the ankle she injured in a futsal tournament last week, is making her feel quite sorry for herself.

There’s not much else to report, other than I’m doing plenty of reading and have published a few posts over at Thought Shrapnel. Next week, I’m aiming to get my assignment finished and, once we’ve exchanged, order an EV charger for our new property, etc.

Image: boxes and other things ready to move in the ‘cellar’ of the 17th century coach house we’re currently renting.