Category: Misc
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Reading 2021
Shiang: Empire of Salt book II by Conn Iggulden, second part of the trilogy I started reading at the end of last year. The Sword Saint: Empire of Salt book III by Conn Iggulden Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. This felt big. Henry VIII is kind of a big deal in British history, his marriages […]
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Being hired at Automattic
I started working for Automattic as a senior back-end software engineer in June. It’s an amazing place to work, the culture and processes are really distinctive – which I’ll explain more about another time. For the uninitiated, Automattic are the people who make WordPress.com, tumblr, Pocket Casts and much more besides. When I was considering […]
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Reading 2020
Used to spend my commute reading, which obviously didn’t happen after March. I read a bit less fiction this year and hardly any re-reads. First Law: The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie. really well written, classic fantasy. Loved this and the direct sequel. The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin. Interesting sci-fi, loved the human computer. follow […]
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Weeknotes: 11th May to 17th May
What would you have liked to do more of? More focus time. It felt like too much of my week was playing work Tetris. To do this I’m going to try the trick of blocking out some time in my calendar and using skypes red light. More time on the enes project, the time I […]
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Weeknotes: 4th May to 10th May
What would you have liked to do more of? Move on to implementing a couple of bug fixes I planned. What did you learn? I knew of Wardley maps but my knowledge came from looking at some in some blog posts. Reading the book has shown me not only the maps but the other ideas around them, […]
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Weeknotes: 27th April to 3rd May
Decided to try writing weeknotes again, this time following a bit more of a structured approach inspired by Andy Callow. What would you have liked to do more of? Contributing to the opportunity overview for one of the potential projects I’m involved in starting up. I think I can make some really valuable contributions to writing […]
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Weeknotes: 23rd-30th March
This week was annual leave (or rather taking back some of the lieu time I’ve built up recently). It’s not the tandem riding with Sara, afternoon teas and long lazy luxury lunches I’d planned though. It’s been teaching instead. I’ve really enjoyed it. Hugo has too, he’s been able to finish his work hours ahead […]
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Weeknotes: 9th-15th March
I’ve been concentrating a lot on catching up on various things, lots of odds and ends to tidy up. I’ve also been concentrating on my leadership course. At the prompt of the leadership course, I read Dan Pink’s Driven in preparation for a talk on motivation I’m doing. His theories about motivation really chime with my experience: […]
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Reading 2019
Edgedancer by Brandon Sanderson – short story from the Stormlight Archive Stonehenge by Bernard Cornwall – really good historical fiction, some of Cornwalls output seems a little formulaic but this standalone novel felt really imaginative. Codebreakers Secret History – massively comprehensive book covering cryptography until about 1960 (post-enigma computer cryptography is covered only in the […]
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2018 in sport
Running Running went downhill for me, I never took it up properly after getting shin splints, I started running more as the year went on but only ever managing 5km or so each week. Over the year I averaged 5km a fortnight, which was rather disappointing. I did run the Bolsover 10k which was supposed […]