weeknotes for w/c 14/04/25

started writing this update at the London Night Café, but crashed out before I managed to finish it so it's going out on Monday afternoon. absolutely shattered from this week. the weather has (thankfully) been getting warmer, which I’m grateful for. it's felt uncomfortably sticky at times, though.

• started off the week well. had some of the leftover Maasdam cheese with some leftover picnic crackers and lightly salted plum tomatoes for breakfast on Monday. it was lovely to have something light, and I quite liked how nutty the cheese was is
• had a steak and Stilton pie with chips for dinner on Monday evening. used some of the leftover spinach on the fridge and added lettuce, tomatoes and onions to make a salad
• played Split Fiction on Monday evening, and got pretty close to completing it!
• called in sick on Tuesday, as I wasn’t feeling too great. however, I managed to catch up with Josie on Tuesday afternoon, despite the lurgy
• Hugh wrote a blog post about Not Another Pizza. give it a read, and go join!
  • saw it on LinkedIn, and realised I hadn’t subscribe to Hugh via RSS. that’s rectified now
• went to the funfair on Wednesday evening, after work
  • got a Solero ice cream on the way, was the perfect remedy for the spring warmth
• treated myself to a waffle cone with strawberry sauce from the ice cream van on my road on Thursday
• didn’t have too many meetings this week, so I could focus on building stuff. got a big PR reviewed and through on Friday, so next week will be dedicated to some integration work
• went to board games at Rachel-Lee’s house on Saturday. arrived a little late, so spectated two games of Splendor, followed by Oh My Pigeons and then Unfathomable
• had Mac come over for the bank holiday weekend! was lovely to spend time with him
  • we listened to a lot of good music, including BITTERSUITE from Billie Eilish’s HIT ME HARD AND SOFT. it’s a good album I’ve been meaning to listen to for quite some time
  • watched Airplane! on Friday night, it’s a good comedy film
  • I’ve kept hold of a piece of parchment paper for ages, and it turns out it was the perfect size for the mascarpone, mushroom and ham sourdough pizza I got from Lidl. my hoarding urges have been validated!
  • did a lot of cooking, including a stir-fry with egg protein noodles, a vegetable mix with onion, leafy greens, carrots and corn, and cubed chicken thigh marinated in some sauce.
    • made the sauce by mixing hoisin sauce from a packet with some sesame oil, lemon juice, chilli flakes, chilli powder, paprika, parsley and wholegrain mustard. it turned out delicious, and all the flavours worked together well
    • chicken turned out slightly rubbery, but I’m not sure why. probably I cooked it for too long?
• went on a 3h30m walk around Richmond Park on Sunday, with David and Mac. happy I got to experience nature, and we even saw three deer!
  • we stopped at 1230 for lunch, a delectable spread of meats, cheeses and hummus under a tree in the park. I found the Shropshire Blue soft cheese David brought to be a beautifully creamy cheese
  • tried some dog ice cream (ice cream for dogs, not made from dogs), which actually wasn’t too bad
• after my walk, went to the London Night Café. was invited by a friend, they brought along Kourosh and their partner
  • found a Metro newspaper on the bus and brought it with me, and completed Krisskross and Numberfit in the metro, along with the crossword. we absolutely flubbed the sudoku, though
  • I love what Eric’s done with the Night Café in terms of design. I know couldn’t be nearly as creative.
• looking forward to next Monday as I have a day off, before I do a product demo on Wednesday. a lot of hard work will finally pay off.
• some WiFi access points can detect randomised MACs. it looks like detecting one on iOS is as simple as looking at the second character of the MAC address.
• finally got around to dropping off my slippers at the dry cleaner’s. spring cleaning has officially begun!
• got rejected from the scientific study I applied for. I’ll give my body to science another time!
• Greggs have new lids for their hot drinks cups, which are the first heat-resistant, recycled PET hot drink lids in the industry and apparently don’t crack!
• completed my outline for my talk at newline. converted an outline for a blog post into a talk, and added some more content to make it 30 minutes
  • excited for Hugh to give me some help converting this outline into a workable talk next Wednesday
  • one of my co-workers said Ghent his favourite city, so I'm even more excited to go back to Belgium!
• I need a sixteenth century patron to give me money, so I can do all their technology stuff. that would be the dream
• makes me sad we don’t produce instrumentals for music anymore, especially given that lyrics can be very distracting sometimes