Weeknotes 266

At long last I made it to the gym before work on Monday, then twice again later in the week. I already feel slightly better for it and have lost a tiny amount of weight. It’s not much but it’s a start.

As always, the main benefit of exercise is not the calories burned but the stubborn determination to eat carefully all day for fear of “wasting” the suffering of the morning’s workout. I otherwise lack the willpower to be disciplined about food so I find it genuinely helpful to turn the sunk cost fallacy to my advantage.

The gym innovation for 2025 is to leave my phone at home and rely entirely on my cellular watch. I’d imagined that the freedom to carry fewer objects while exercising would be a big upgrade, and it is, but in my excitement to try it out I forgot the gym’s in a basement with no cellular reception anyway.

I ended up connecting my watch to wifi which I could’ve been doing for the last year with the non-cellular model if I’d thought of it. Still, at least I’m covered for the three-minute walk there.

A legitimately futuristic consequence is that I’ve decided to pair some Bluetooth headphones with my watch and download audiobooks onto it so I can always press play and listen to a book instead of scrabbling about for a tolerable podcast.

I still have some leftover credits from the last time I tried Audible, and they have a watch app, so I went with them for the time being. It was a bit fiddly to get books synced onto the watch but it works great now they’re on there.

Books on a watch! Imagine!

In the end I couldn’t face restarting Consider Phlebas for the second or third time — I may have to accept this isn’t the book for me — so I bought Children of Time and gave that a try instead.

I’m enjoying it a lot so far, and crucially it’s holding my attention enough to prevent me from thinking about work while I exercise (always a danger) and generally make the time pass quickly. Absurdly I even find myself looking forward to my next gym visit so I can find out what happens next in the story.

On Friday I met Alice, Dan, Phil and briefly Matt for breakfast south of the river. Apart from everything being different, it was just like the old days. In various ways our lives have all changed significantly since we first started doing this, which, I’m gradually learning, is what happens with friends when enough time passes. Still: lots of laughs.

Speaking of change: I think Club Mexicana Shoreditch might have suddenly closed without warning this week. What the fuck?

They’ve continued their tradition of frustratingly bad customer communication by not saying anything about it, just silently removing the Shoreditch location from their website and ignoring questions on Instagram. I love the food but… well, whatever, an explanation wouldn’t change anything, I’m just sad that it’s gone and would’ve enjoyed a final visit if I’d known.

I was relieved to finish season two of Silo. It’s not very good.

I also felt a bit deflated by episode four of Severance which failed to maintain the pace and suspense that the second season has established until now, especially given the cliffhanger ending of episode three.

The performances and visuals are always excellent but this week’s plot consisted of disposable lore guff and inconsequential filler drama, plus a last-minute reveal of some information which a) surely the entire audience had already twigged weeks ago and b) I don’t find plausible in the first place. Hopefully it’ll get back on track next week.

When I rewatched The Social Network last year I noticed there was also a 4K transfer of Seven coming out soon to celebrate its thirtieth (!) anniversary and made a note to watch it when it became available.

I saw it last night. It’s great! Seven is simply a very well-executed film, and the new transfer looks & sounds amazing, with the grimy setting and perpetual rain really enhanced by the HDR and surround mix. I spotted a couple of subtle fixes but it’s overwhelmingly the same film in higher quality. I’m relieved they didn’t make it palatable to modern audiences by digitally replacing Kevin Spacey with a Minion.

I disassembled my PlayStation 5 controller because the left joystick was squeaking slightly. I removed the joystick cover and gave it a quick squirt of WD-40, put everything back together, and now the stick’s as good as new.

Unfortunately the right triggers have stopped working entirely; I must’ve damaged their flimsy ribbon cable when I unplugged it to free the motherboard. This seems to be a common failure so it was easy to order a replacement cable. When it arrives I hope I’ll be able to fix this new self-inflicted problem without creating yet another one.

EARWORM CORNER: Paul told me about some hyperlocal bin drama which reminded me of Brett Domino’s Bin Guy and it’s been stuck in my head ever since.

Still no booze.