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Weeknote 41
The most significant thing is my good friend’s brother died suddenly in the last few weeks.
The news didn’t hit me that hard at first. Then, old memories surfaced and I struggled to work or even think clearly. My grief feels shallow: sympathy for my friend. I was stunned knowing this was nothing compared to what was the heaviest of heavy for him.
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It also felt like finality, the absolute end of being obsessed with music and dancing in Glasgow clubs. It’s all I did, studying or working was always secondary. It was fun and wild but also hedonism too far, effecting my mental health. This was unrealised, I lacked capacity to understand at the time. I have no regrets but it feels like a foreign country.
As usual social media made me feel connected first then quickly alone.
Music helped with very happy moments reliving some mixes from those days. Thanks for the tunes! What a time we had.
Watching loads of films at LFF also helped and I felt blessed. What a cool job I have.
What went well
- An inspirational chat with Iain made me realise we’re thinking the same things but need to do more to explain outwards and consistently. Nice to realise I do have something to contribute to technical conversations.
- Automated testing started to come good, big up the ever modest and steadfast Prashanth.
- I met with the BFI Player team, Annie and Laz were helpful and supportive. I fudged a couple of points but thanks to Annie’s thorough note taking I’ll be able to pick it back up
- I shared a content brief style doc and I’m looking forward to working with Jem on it. He’s fun and smart.
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- I’m writing this about to return from Scotland. The coastline of Fife never fails in beauty but as always the trip was tinged with sadness. The sky was big and the food made me happy but I was missing family before I even left.
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- I helped my Dad fix his overpriced speaker system. This ridiculous thing streams music over WiFi. The app he used updated and broke the whole thing. He’s 80, lives for music and blamed himself. A real life example of bad tech. One good thing the company did was publish an open backlog. I wonder if we could do this.
What could have been better
- Death, grief, loss. Y’know, the usual.
Listen, watch, eat
30 years later one of my fave De La Soul songs got a video
Deep fried carbonara – a disgusting yet delicious Scottish fusion
LFF – respect to those who made this happen
I loved La Cocina ⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Surfer, silly fun ⭐️⭐️
The Outrun was moving and intense. Not part of LFF but so what. ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Bury Your Dead was a bit gruelling ⭐️⭐️
I found Happyend impactful but also kind of gentle. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️