Weeknote 2025-43

We leave daylight savings time in the UK for another year. And so begins another week of being paranoid that I’m late to all my meetings with anyone in North America.

I need a new phone. A little while ago I dropped my iPhone 12 on the concrete and smashed the screen. I got it repaired under my gadget insurance for a £70 excess, but it seems that it’s permanently weakened now. It’s broken again, and I genuinely have no idea how.

It’s a little early for me - I try to hold on to my phones until they stop getting security updates, which judging by Apple’s previous track record is going to be 2028 sometime - but I have absolutely no desire to throw more money at this phone.

I’ve mostly owned iPhone’s since work bought me my first 3G back in 2008. I had some dalliances with the Sony Xperia and the Nokia Lumia, but I’ve been on the Apple train full-time since probably 2013 at this point.

The drop in quality of the software year on year since about 2015 is staggering in my opinion, and iOS 26 is almost unusable, from both a practical point of view as someone with an older phone, and a UX point of view as a myopic human trying to navigate this mess of an Operating System.

Apple just don’t seem to be interested in fixing bugs or improving performance, or polishing the releases in ways they used to, and it’s a real shame. I don’t even think they have the edge in the hardware that they used to. They’re riding that brand loyalty all the way to the bank.

Anyway, I’m not 100% about switching yet, because it’s hassle. But, I am definitely keeping my eye on the upcoming OnePlus 15.

I’m back to work today after a lovely half term break with the family. We went to Cambridgeshire, stayed in a log cabin, and made our way over to Nottingham, where we took the kids to see the absolute marvel that is Steve Backshall.

Honestly, Steve’s shows are like old Top Gear, but for kids, and vaguely educational, and with fewer twats. Which I guess, makes it not very much like Top Gear in retrospect.

But Steve still does ridiculous stuff because he can, which is fun.

I made a slightly inebriated toot while I was away, which I stand by.

After our long public transport adventure of getting from rural Cambridgeshire to Nottingham and back I took the opportunity to go to the pub in the village where we were staying. The Grafham Trout is a community run pub inside what is essentially a very large shed. It was delightful, I had a nice chat and a pint with the volunteer bartender (a young man studying architecture at Leicester Uni).

But walking back to the cabin at 11pm down an unlit forest track was a very sobering experience. Seeing the constellations in all their glory reminded me that, even though I live in a rural area, I hadn’t properly seen the stars in a while.

The humdrum of life - kids, laundry, work, finances always expand to fill all available time, and it made me realise that I need to take some time every so often to just exist and breath, and that often the things that seem like they’re going to drown you, really aren’t as important as they initially present as

(obviously I don’t mean my kids, keeping the small people alive and happy is pretty important in the scheme of things).

And after that little bit of self-indulgent noodling, I’ve still no fucking idea, when I’m going to find the time to touch grass, or gaze at the stars, or whatever, but that’s a problem for tomorrow me, brb, I’ve got capitalism to capitalize.