Week three at work. One of the interesting aspects of the job is that I’m the first in-office hire on a small team that is otherwise remote and has been stable for a while. This week I pushed to get a tour round the office and be introduced to everyone - well, careful what you wish for. The director who took me around was so generous with their time and I’m very grateful. It was a good thing to do.

But after a couple of hours of going around desks and meeting people, I’d used up all my batteries for that day and the next. I’ve watched enough TV to know that everyone breaks in the end. If you want me to tell you my deepest secrets, forced meeting of lots of strangers beats water-boarding every time.

I’ve been finding my feet with an AI-heavy workflow. I have a lot of habits to change and new ones to form. I’m working on it. I’m not for or against, but the adjustment hasn’t been easy this week. More details anon, I’m sure.

How’s my commute, you ask? Great. I’ve been Voi ‘ing all week, made affordable by buying a pass. On Thursday I picked up a bike from the office. As I wheeled it around on the grass, it shot off as if I was pedalling and pulled me to the ground - big bruises on my legs and side. What I should have done is put that possessed bike back and taken another. Instead I gave it another chance and headed home on it.

I think the torque sensor or something was broken: the pedals ran completely loose - no effort required at all - and the bike seemed to have only two speeds, frighteningly fast and stopped. I made the 32-minute trip home in 27 minutes, and at one point the speedometer read 24mph. Normally they’re limited to 15mph. In retrospect, this was a very silly thing to do. I reported the fault once I got to my final parking place. But I finished a tricky day smiling.

I spent an hour velcro’ing my couple of guitar pedals to a cheap bamboo shower mat to try and reduce the infernal tangling of cables. So far, it’s working well. Real pedalboards are pricey and I’m too mean to buy one.

Grab-bag

  • This is one of my favourite GDC talks. I return to it again and again, and I’m thinking about doing something similar at work - especially since I now know we have a big printer…
  • How are we actually going to wean ourselves off the fascist tech-bro systems and tech? Here’s a story in the small of a Linux migration that I really liked.
  • Watched the last of the Planet of the Apes Caesar trilogy with the youngest (started a couple of weeks ago). On the cycle back to his mum’s house we talked about the (not exactly hidden) parallels with the biblical story of Moses. I’m always amazed that he knows things he’s learnt independently or at school that aren’t TikTok memes. This is my problem, not his!
  • I wonder if the next phase of AI will belong to the people who actually own some content: Thomson Reuters is launching its own frontier model .