Week 22 of 2020 brings Green Party memberships, Alex Brooke, Facebook parties, waving on video calls, on-demand video tracking, running PB's and plenty DIY.
- Following the COVID-19 pandemic halting procedures along with some questionable leadership from the UK government, I was motivated to renew my Green Party membership and revive my local candidacy campaign. Early stages but I’m determined to channel my energy in a more pragmatic way. #life #politics
- Tuesday, I caught up with product designer Alex Brooke for the Make Life Work podcast. It was great to get someone else’s take on working in-house at scale and hear how Alex is coping through the lockdown. #sides #makelifework
- Thursday, I started to consider the logistics of hosting a virtual birthday party with my 40th fast approaching and little desire to mingle in person with friends and family. Whilst Facebook seems like the obvious choice for the masses to access, Zoom could also work and I like the idea of Houseparty for games. #tech #life
- My conversation with Alex also raised an interesting topic about waving goodbye as video call etiquette. It seems as if many others do, some even go as far to say “love you”. #tech #zoom
- I started to consider what tools are available for tracking TV viewing habits. All the on-demand services have so much data on us but it doesn’t seem to be readily available. I signed up to Trakt to test that with Netflix but it requires a Chrome extension which is not ideal. #tech #entertainment
- I’m not particularly pleased with the audio quality on my end of Make Life Work so I ordered a new desktop boom-style mic stand for one of the dynamic mics I recently ordered for karaoke. Plan is to test it on next week’s episode with Mike Street but I might not have time to get it prepared. #tech #sides
- Friday, I managed to run my personal best of 8.5km (aiming for 8km) as I tried to get closer to the Strava 10km May challenge. Tuesday, I managed 7.5km (aiming for 7km) so I’m quite proud of my iterative mini-goals to reach the magic 10km. It just means I roll over the challenge to next month. #health #running
- Saturday, the bathroom tiles were tackled as we realised they needed replacing. On further inspections, we also discovered an extra foot of space against a fake wall leading to the ventilation. Whoever designed our bathroom before us must’ve had method to the madness but it’s beyond us. #life #diy
- Saturday evening, we did our first online Zoom quiz as a family as we noticed a Gavin & Stacey event on Facebook in the morning. It was good fun to participate in but our G&S knowledge was extremely poor compared to the 500 other participants. Give us a Friends, Simpsons or Bottom quiz any day! #entertainment #tech
- Sunday, it was outdoor DIY time. The kids “jungle gym” got some optimisations as I removed the excess bridge and tower and repositioned one of the climbing walls. One of the kids old bikes got repaired for giving away then the BBQ got some much needed attention. #life #diy