Archive: 2025-03
Week 220: Boring grown-up stuff
I’ve been doing a lot of financial admin as it’s the end of the tax year. In one sense, it’s boring grown-up stuff, but I also find it reassuring to feel that I’m in some kind of control.
Week 219: Exploding head
We finally visited Phantom Peak on Friday evening. It’s all of ten minutes’ walk from our house, and we’ve both been past it enough times to be aware of it, but I had always been quite cynical. It was the recommendations from our next-door-but-one neighbours, who have been a few times (via discounted NHS staff tickets), and from Terence, who attended a play test, that prompted us to look into it. We managed to pick up tickets for less than full price, although they probably made it up on the 2 vegan hotdogs and 4 pints of beer we had between us.
Week 218: Quinquennium
Do you ever wonder how it is that there was a massive influenza pandemic in 1918–1920 that killed tens of millions of people and yet there are hardly any explicit mentions in the literature of the period? I don’t really wonder any more. Few people want to relive the period from 2020 to 2022 in any form.
Week 217: A hostile foreign power
On Monday, a few of my colleagues were listing their gripes with the Microsoft suite we have to use, and especially SharePoint and Teams. I jokingly told them not to worry, we’ll have to migrate away from it soon, because you can’t use software from a hostile foreign power. For context, Miro is banned in UK government departments because of its (now mostly historical) links to Russia.