Last week in Followsound 2022.33


This week began with D and myself taking a trip to one of Bourne Leisure’s new hotels: Haythrop Park. I will do a separate post about our trip, as there is lots of information to share. As I always say, it is a worthwhile experience to sample the product your employer sells.

At work, I have been working through some complex designs of new infrastructure. They’re getting more complex as; 1, these are upgrades (which are always a challenge compared to green-field work), and 2, a wide range of colleagues need to adapt some of their ways of working. My usual stance is that if everyone is unhappy, the change is fair. I’m not sure that will be the case here, but we shall see.

I was scheduled to have an X-ray on my neck this week but the clinic called to cancel my appointment at the last minute. This was due to their basement (where all the X-ray equipment is housed) flooding; the issue is we have had one of the hottest and dryest years on record in the UK. This results in poor absorption, even if we only have a light shower.

This brings me to my ongoing climate change research project. I’m working on about 5 different Evergreen notes on the topic and hope to double that before Christmas. I’m discovering a lot from Vaclav Smil, as usual, and I’ve added Research Rabbit to assist in finding better, more relevant papers. The premise of Research Rabbit is that the AI they have created uses categorisation techniques to do an “advanced search” given a list of existing scientific papers. They even have an import from Zotero feature, which I have used to import my research library from my Undergraduate study.

During my Zotero import, I discovered links to reports I wrote while studying (over 7 years ago); some are good, and some are not what I would write now. I believe it is healthy to review past works, and I mean adequately review, to better future output. However, I find it hard not to get hung up on things, so I’m working on that.

To round the week off, we celebrated my cousin’s and father’s birthdays (they share the day) in true family style: by eating loads of food!


In summary:

  • Trip to Haythrop park;
  • Lots of complex designs at work;
  • Missed my neck X-ray (due to climate change; only a partial joke);
  • Did more personal research on climate change;
  • Played some “Horizon: Zero Dawn”;
  • Played on the Steamdeck (review to come);
  • Celebrated birthdays in the usual way (eating tonnes of food).