Week note 1 #
In which I don't have a lot of week to note but while I'm trying to build a habit I log things anyway.
I think I want the thrust of the week note to be work related, with asides about the rest of the week, and non-weeknote entries to speak more to the general life side of things. But for that I'd need to be better at writing things, so here we are.
Work #
I was only around for a couple of days this week, having taken leave to do my London fix. This meant I spent a fair chunk of the time catching up on what I'd missed and going through emails. Going through emails is quite annoying at the moment as we're switching away from the Google suite and into the world of Microsoft. I'd really rather not, but that's the decision we're living with. Unfortunately it's a slow transition with some people eagerly adopting the new world and their new email address and abandonning the one that could never reach inbox zero, while others are needing to preserve access to a bunch of things in the old world so only glance at the new things from time to time. This leads to a lot of messages not being seen very quickly, and even more messages being duplicates of something sent to the other address as well. And don't get me started on what it's done to the calendars... I also forgot to switch on my out of office, leaving a couple of people seemingly ignored which I berate myself for every time I think about it. Sorry people!
Aside from catching up I've been trying to make sure one of the teams feels well supported in August as people take leave which of course has an impact on the people who'd usually be collaborating with them. We have a good culture of keeping work/life balance in check and supporting people to take time out, but it does mean juggling people's responsibilities a bit sometimes. One of the things I took on as someone was heading out early to spend some time with kids, was launching a page I had no right to take the glory for as others had done all the hard work. But after a long time waiting for the go ahead, we linked out to an interactive map we built with help from other departments, which is to help demonstrate the value Labour is bringing in supporting the NHS: https://www.gov.uk/missions/nhs/progress
I also spent a bit of time at the end of the week noodling around with animation in CSS. There are all kinds of things in the web world that I never need to use at work because of the nature of the site we work on. We have to be backwards compatible to support old browsers because we're not a business and users have no alternative to choose if our site doesn't work for them, whether they're on superfast broadband and the preview version of the latest greatest browser, or trying to navigate on 3g on a crappy mobile they inherited as a cast off. Animation ticks some of those boxes but it's also largely unnecessary sugar to jazz up a page. And as such I know practically nothing. I poked around trying to make bubbles fizz in a poorly drawn glass, and while I borrowed code and tweaked it I can't say I fully understand why it's behaving the way it is - I plan to find out though. This was part of a challenge one of the frontenders is running for the whole discipline where we're invited to contribute to a group picture that builds up over a month or several - the whole point being it's an opportunity to flex atrophied knowledge of the more decorative bits of code. Felt like I should set an example by contributing now and then.
Non work #
Went to London. Forgot how I don't walk around much any more and overdid it a bit when avoiding tubes because "it's not that far".
I went to:
- the London Postal museum, where I got to ride a train under the city as though I were a letter over a decade ago
- the Secret Comedy Club where I enjoyed the host and 5 of the 6 acts. And a cocktail.
- London Zoo where I met the noisiest otter and got a great photo of a tiger, but didn't see a lot because of resting overworked feet
- The National Theatre where I watched Nye
- a closed door I expected to enter to see the War of the Worlds immersive experience. I'd booked for the wrong day. I failed to pass on the ticket, too, which was a real shame.
- the Monument to the Great Fire of London. Lovely views, but it cost me six quid to walk up a LOT of stairs and I was already exhausted!
Then I went home because although I could have spend a few more hours there I was tired and didn't spot anything relaxing to do, only active things. I miss having all this stuff on my doorstep and no dog holding me back from embracing it all. I should have taken better advantage of that time!
Pictures! #
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