I only have 14 working days of 2024 remaining and I have to say – phew! For all sorts of reasons I am emotionally, mentally and physically out on my feet at the moment and need a dose of Christmas cheer and an extended break to reboot my brain and body ahead of 2025.

The big project with [redacted] was infuriating this week so I’m going to focus these notes elsewhere lest my blood pressure rises again.

A highlight of the week was an all staff talk from Colin Burns (formerly Chief Design Officer for the BBC and Senior Director of Design at Apple) with the fun title “From Orange to Apple – unpacking the fruits of labour in design and innovation.” He really has had a fascinating and impactful career which he shared in a really engaging style. His work on both hardware and software across telecoms, retail, media and more was really a greatest hits montage and I especially loved his thoughts on making prototypes crap again (not what he said – but what I took away) as they’ve become too hi-fidelity, too early these days.

He gave a version of the talk at Turing Fest and someone has written it up far better than I could – well worth a read.

We also had a DSIT all staff ‘meeting’ which covered a lot about the outcomes from the Budget/Spend Review and acted for most of us in my corner of the Department as a trailer for an upcoming meeting where some of the findings from the Digital Centre of Government will be shared. As a short-timer I’m mainly just a curious observer but a lot of people are very interested and a little anxious about how this lands I have realised.

What else?

Well a couple of things happened that provided a chink of light in the general darkness at the moment.

The Guardian ceasing to post to X/Twitter seemed like a big move and I wonder who else will follow them. I don’t actually care whether big media or brands or Gov departments join Bluesky (in fact I’d rather they didn’t – I follow individuals not institutions but I know I’m in the minority here) but I wish they’d stop feeding the Musk machine.

I also LOVED that the team behind The Onion purchased InfoWars and sent Alex Jones into meltdown. This is trolling at an epic scale.

Post US election Bluesky has exploded with new users which I am very happy about but I do wonder what the heck my 100s of new, mainly US based followers will think of my feed as I’ve been chronically miscategorised on Starter Packs. Also if new people (mainly journalists) can stop wanging on about their old follower numbers and their new engagement that would be lovely. Same with those arguing about the need to stay on X to fight the good fight. Nobody cares. Really.

Sequel silliness 

I went to the cinema to watch Gladiator 2. It was definitely a sequel to Gladiator I’ll say that for it. They made that very clear. It was weird – in many ways it felt like one of those old ‘straight to video’ sequels of years gone by. Low budget cash-ins without the script or cast of the hits that spawned them. Except this clearly had BUDGET and a great cast. The money was up on the screen and some of the set-piece fights and special effects were top notch (the baboons and rhino were especially fun.) The fact that it made not a lick of sense, was the embodiment of the Harrson Ford “you can type this shit, but you can’t say it!” quote and lacked any emotional engagement at all somewhat undercut the fight scene fun.

Oh well – it was a nice trip out.