Weeknotes 2024 W04 W06 W07

Oops! It seems I’m a bit behind with these weeknotes. Here’s a hazy recollection of the last 21 days.

Recently adding the watching, reading and listening pages on my website has motivated me do more of each of these activities. There’s something about actively typing out each entry that feels much more rewarding than a LastFM or MAL background synchronisation.

• We had a family trip to the Barbican to see the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of My Neighbour Totoro. As longterm fans of the anime our expectations were sky-high and we sat in anticipation waiting to see how they’d pull off Totoro and the other magical characters and creatures.
• I finished off watching the anime adaption of Chainsaw Man.
• Shigeru Izumiya’s album Nine Ballads Of The ’80 spun on repeat.
• I finally finished Sakyo Komatsu’s Japan Sinks and immediately picked up Genki Kawamura’s If Cats Disappeared from the World.

I put my money where my mouth is and subscribed to Readwise.io. I’ve been on an extended trial since December and have loved the experience. The deal was sealed after I added the Obsidian integration for syncing highlights. I’ve also just discovered the beta of ‘Paged scroll’ which makes reading on an eBook all the more better.

• Hands off my books, tech bros! – Against Disruption: On the Bulletpointization of Books
• Turn left to a future of single-person short-distance electric transport… – Mini Cars Inspired by Polaroid Cameras to Be Made in Japan
• …or turn right and ride like the Bōsōzoku into Neo Tokyo – The Iconic Akira Bike is Real and It Can Now Be Yours
• The past, present and future of the web – We’ve been waiting 20 years for this, Where Have All the Flowers Gone?, Let a hundred flowers blossom

The Obsidian Telegram Sync plugin has also rocked my world these last few days. I had been toying with syncing my vault to my mobile but it was overkill for what I needed. The plugin allows me to capture brain-farts and send them to my vault and then embed them to my daily note.

I’ve been working with various US-based product teams over the last few months. We’re about to launch research study 5 next week, our penultimate study before we wrap up. It’s been interesting to see how differently teams work, what their priorities and expectations are. We ran an internal pilot study on Thursday which surfaced some timing issues with the volume of research questions and some confusion around labeling. It was really great to work closely with the team to work out a solution. Yay teamwork!

In other work news, Luke Hay and I are planning day trip up in London to scout out some testing labs. It’ll be great to got out of the house/office for once!

I wrapped up this week, or should I say folded up, by joining other origami aficionados at the monthly fold in Hove. Then on Sunday, I had my very first taste of virtual reality at the The Depot cinema in Lewes, followed by a homemade sushi feast.