thing about everyone caring about GOV.UK on the internet again this week: there’s no way to make everyone happy. it’s a public service, so everyone feels a bit of ownership. fair enough. I’m looking forward to seeing how accounts play out based on what we learn, and having some proper chats about it as we go along.
moving somewhere bigger (…almost four times bigger) is making me mildly concerned about our electricity bills - it’s looking like we’ll move next month. so of course I’m now in a rabbit hole of privacy centric smart homes. I’m interested in thermostats and radiator valves, but not really in smart speakers. at the moment we’ve got a Hive hub but it’s a bit flaky, and it properly locks you into the Hive system, too. open source privacy centric smart homes? do I have to buy a Raspberry Pi and start building thermostats on local networks or something? (would probably quite enjoy that tbf.) I’m reminded that Nat wrote about Ikea smart lighting a few years ago, and might now go and look that up again. should probably write a proper post about it when I figure it out as a way to capture the research, because that’s what the internet is for.
even though we’re moving, I’m super happy that we got a grant of a few grand from the local authority to make the garden outside our current block nicer. I put in a bid suggesting picnic benches and some raised beds, and it might actually happen. chalk that one up to “the world only gets better if you do something about it”. this year’s Cleaner Greener Safer grant fund ends on October 4, if you live in Southwark you can apply here for ‘permanent, physical changes to your local area’ - things like bike parking, playgrounds and benches. as far as I remember I did mine a few hours before the deadline when I was a bit drunk.
I’m interested in the 'will there be a remote future’ / 'what will hybrid working be like’ debates, because I am a white collared tech worker (ha ha imagine wearing a collar in 2020), but I’m also wondering about business models for these things. what about redistributing estates budgets to individuals or teams? what does it look like to give financial autonomy about ways of working to individuals or units? I could see a world where individuals get, I dunno, £200 / month to sort out their office space - and maybe if you chose to take team funding, a team of 5 gets £1200, a premium to encourage face to face collaborative work. essentially how could we redistribute and decentralise the 'future of work’? because 'office open / office closed’ is hardly a new way of doing things, is it.
been feeling a kind of slow burn into stir craziness / cabin fever now I’ve been working from home for six months, which this week I told the internet about. astonishing response to be honest and I’ve no idea if I’ll have enough time left as a south Londoner to meet all these humans. I think it’s variety that’s been missing; the only days I feel like I remember from the past six months are the ones where either we’ve gone looking for houses or I’ve been out all day on my bike (big ups to my riding buddies Will, Kuba and Papa). hopefully an injection of different people and perspectives will help make life feel like a thing that’s being lived rather than survived. Though I suppose survival isn’t such a bad goal either.
thank goodness for Folklore. imagine this year if it hadn’t had a new Taylor Swift album in it? (the best bit, officially, is the bit in August at 1:43 - “back when we were still changing for the better, wanting was enough” - until “cause you weren’t mine to lose” at 2:08, because somehow she musically codifies the feeling of longing, how’d you do it Tay?)