Our new hob got delivered this week but the fitters couldn’t fit it because they’d need to switch the oven over to a standard plug to make it work and didn’t seem to fancy it. It’s becoming very boring not being able to cook a lot of things. Our new cat sitter came to visit the s … | Continue reading
Charlotte continues to be sick (but improving) and I have managed not to catch it but I am just very tired all the time. Trying to get this weeknote written before work because I didn’t want to interrupt our bed day yesterday. At least Spring has arrived! On Thursday it was Arjun … | Continue reading
I’m going to keep this brief because I was up until 2:30 on Sunday and I very much want to crawl into bed instead of writing weeknotes. It was a quiet week. Charlotte has become ill with what seems like a flu and has been out of action for a few days. We had a nice little pub tri … | Continue reading
We finally got our leaky kitchen tap sorted by replacing it. I was gonna do it myself but then realised that we don’t have a hot water isolation valve for the sink and it’d mean fiddling with the boiler. I had a look at the mess of pipes and decided to hire a plumber. On Saturday … | Continue reading
We had a deliberately relaxed week without too many plans, we’re both quite tired. I’ve been reading a lot for the last couple of weeks and I’m on track with my very unimpressive 12-books-in-a-year target. I read Frankenstein, which I enjoyed a lot, and have moved on to Dracula w … | Continue reading
The kittens are settling in well, they now have free reign of the office, bedroom, and living room during the day but are kept in the living room at night or when we’re out for a short while. They’re adorable. They still mostly want to be in the same room as each other or one of … | Continue reading
The kittens have arrived! I hope you’re excited for a lot of updates. They were described by the vet as “very calm and gentle for their age” 🥹. They’re just a couple of gentle little lads 🥹 We picked them up from Charlotte’s mum’s friend on Saturday, we hired a ca … | Continue reading
We said goodbye to Rocky this week, he went home on Wednesday. He was a delight, v chilled cat. I spent a few days being careful not to kick a nonexistent animal, weird how quickly you get used to having them around. On Saturday we went on Rhys’ leaving hike which is a really lov … | Continue reading
This week was the first FT Boardroom (boardgame night) in a few years, it was so much fun. We mostly played large party games but that was what we were all in the mood for. Several rounds of very competitive Codenames were my highlight. On Wednesday a visitor came to stay … | Continue reading
We’re getting two kittens! We’ve been thinking about getting another cat for a while and an opportunity kind of just landed in our laps – a friend of Charlotte’s mum had an unexpected litter and there are two left. We pick them up in March and I’m quite excited about it. We’re st … | Continue reading
So. While we were away the flat above the flat above ours had a burst pipe and we’ve had our fourth instance of water leaking through our ceilings. Hooray! This time the hallway was the most impacted room which sounds OK right? Well yes except that’s where our mains switches are, … | Continue reading
It was a pretty ordinary work week aside from having a minor debate with our CTO about the use of generative AI in programming. I met up with Andrew and Ed for a few Guinness 0.0s, which was lovely. Drinking alcohol-free beer really doesn’t save you any money though. I’m trying t … | Continue reading
I’ve set up a regular call with Mum so that we talk a bit more out of habit. We both just assume the other is busy (we’re not) and so now I call her on a Tuesday on my walk home. It makes the journey fly by. Water started leaking through our bathroom light fitting, this time beca … | Continue reading
This week was Engine Room, the FT’s internal tech conference. As always, it was a fun day and really well-organised. I shouldn’t pick favourites but I think Andy’s talk on his decade-long (!!) Theatrebase project was really excellent. I’m a big fan of a talk where somebody introd … | Continue reading
We watched Saltburn, loved it. Everyone in it was excellent. I’ll never look at a bath in the same way. It’s been a little while since I’ve been to the cinema and I’m not sure why, Genesis is amazing and a very short walk away. We got the PSVR out for an evening with some friends … | Continue reading
Happy New Year! We rang in the new year in a Simmons, it was the right level of disappointing – long bar queues and too-loud music. We managed to not be hung over 🎉 Back to work! I’m actually quite sickeningly pleased to be back. I feel refreshed and some of the stuff we … | Continue reading
Here we are after another year (and a few months, I couldn’t be bothered to write this in November). After buying my flat in year 1 and demoting myself in year 2, this year has been more chill. This is good because last year I wrote: Generally, I don’t feel like I need to make an … | Continue reading
Christmas day was nice and relaxed. Charlotte and I broke out the Christmas Dinner timing spreadsheet and it didn’t let us down – dinner was great. We played a few games, exchanged gifts, and ate a lot of chocolate. We managed to complete the selection box rating, the raw data is … | Continue reading
Work’s over for the year! I’m one of those annoying people who really enjoys their job so this isn’t all that great for me. I keep having ideas about new things I want to work on and then squashing them down. I’ve had what I think is a great idea for a blog post that I might work … | Continue reading
This week included Christmas Party #2. Drinks were free all night and there were no queues for them – just pre-made cocktails ready on the bar. Perfect 👍 I’m told that some people were kicked out but I witnessed no real drama, unfortunately. Charlotte and I made a plan to … | Continue reading
I’m very tired. None of these bullet points will exceed 13.7 words. Advent of Code was fun until day ten part two. No thanks. We had an all-day planning session. It surprised me by being excellent. Our first Christmas Party was great. Long queues, good Old Fashioneds, dancing. Fr … | Continue reading
The highlight of the week was Friday – we’d taken the day off work to head out of London but the trains were fucked so we cancelled the trip. Instead, we walked over to the Olympic Park and then followed The Line. It’s a really nice walk through the docklands but possibly has an … | Continue reading
For anyone waiting with bated breath for my third yearnote, I’m moving it to the end of the calendar year because I can’t be bothered with it yet. Three years of writing every week though! Still going strong(ish). I haven’t missed a week yet – I know myself and skipping just one … | Continue reading
Back to work this week! It wasn’t easy to get back into it but think I got some useful things done. Alex and I worked out a cool way that we can tie our error pages to our logs and make it easier for us to debug production issues; I’m looking forward to getting it implemented. On … | Continue reading
Phuket is beautiful, we spent a week mostly inside the resort with a few trips out to bars and the beach. The food was excellent, the drinks were excellent, the pool was excellent. We did a lot of swimming in the bath-temperature sea, a highlight was sitting in the sea drinking w … | Continue reading
Bangkok is a really busy city, it’s fun but I would probably struggle with a full week. We met up with Euan (who’s been in the Philippines for a year), Adam (who lives in Perth and we haven’t seen for a year), Luke (who’s been in Japan for three months), and Paula. Bangkok nightl … | Continue reading
Driving is pretty easy in Australia (at least in Victoria and New South Wales). It’s on the left, roads are wider and better-maintained, and everything’s signposted well. Our trip along the coast was very stress-free. We did a lot: We went for a walk through a rainforest which ma … | Continue reading
Melbourne is a fun city. We’ve been fighting a little bit of jet lag but our sleep seems to be back to normal after week 1. We’ve enjoyed ourselves a lot despite it! On Sunday we travelled into Melbourne proper and checked into our 45th floor Airbnb. It was fun staying so high up … | Continue reading
Hi from a Melbourne airport hotel 👋 this weeknote’s mostly gonna be about other stuff because we only got here last night. I stayed awake for most of 30 hours and I woke up feeling pretty normal which is promising. Today we check into our Airbnb and don’t commit to doing … | Continue reading
Back to work/normality for two weeks. It was difficult getting my brain back into gear but by Wednesday I think I was back to my normal slightly-too-keen-on-my-job self. We’re at the slightly awkward point between quarters where it’s not the most clear what to work on so I’ve app … | Continue reading
These weeknotes are brought to you by a 9.5-hour layover in Shanghai airport. Japan has been amazing! To all the people who told me I’d have a great time: you were right. It has not been restful in the slightest, though, we packed a lot in. On Monday we went to Tsukiji Fish Marke … | Continue reading
What even is work? I was quite switched off in the lead-up to this trip. On Friday we started our ~18 hour journey from London to Shanghai to Tokyo. It was fine, I didn’t really sleep a lot so pretty much stayed up for 24 hours solid. I burned through a lot of TV. China Eastern f … | Continue reading
Oof a lot of incidents this week! Tiring but I think I’m good at making calls with this stuff and I don’t really get stressed about them. “Nobody dies if the FT goes down” is my mantra. One of the issues was a pretty nasty XSS attack which was quite a fun one to fix. We were also … | Continue reading
We finally got rid of the large corner sofa which was dominating the living room of our flat. We never used it and it wasn’t comfortable. We’ve replaced it with a lovely table and chairs so that we don’t have to eat off of our laps. I love it. I drove a van for the first time to … | Continue reading
I started the week off strong by fixing the wastewater pipe under our kitchen sink. It turns out one of the elbow fittings had cracked so it was mostly just replacing that. I used expanding foam (fun) to secure the pipe in the wall in the hope that it can’t be twisted from the ou … | Continue reading