It's an Exciting World

This Monday, Steph and I went to Yonder to work together and do some climbing. I had a great time climbing with her, and it is nice having the walls mostly open during the day. We came home early so I could try my hand baking some cheddar and marmite rolls, which turned out really well. I took them to the triple choir workshop, and they were a great hit. The workshop was interesting, as we worked on hearing the harmonies of the other people around us. It was a lot of fun, but didn’t seem particularly well structured, or at least the structure and goals could have been explained more. We went for drinks afterwards in the basement of a pub nearby.

Tuesday was a boring slow day, but I tried my hand at cooking pancakes for pancake day. Steph had a recipe from Fallow she wanted to try, so I gave it a go. It was ok, but more of an egg dish than pancakes.

Wednesday we went back for the last time to the Slomo sauna in Kings Cross. It has been a great experience in the sauna, and I look forward to doing it more next year.

Thursday, Steph headed to Mexico for a cave diving course. I helped her get her bags to the Thameslink train.

Saturday I hosted some people from choir at my place for board games. It was a great time and we played codenames, mysterium, a quiz game, and a mantis shrimp themed matching game. I served some drinks and pizza, and it was a lovely time.

Sunday was a Mercato Mayfair day for RS1, and I had a great time performing. I love doing those Mercato performances because we get to sing so much together. Afterwards we had a book club discussion of the first book in the Murderbot series, All Systems Red. It was a great discussion and I think I’ll join for book club going forwards.

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I had a great week, with a normal Monday choir and then we stayed in the larger room at the pub afterwards which had much better acoustics.

Tuesday evening I organised some games at a place called Boom Battle Bar, which was a ton of fun. We started off with Shuffleboard, then grabbed some drinks. Then we tried our hand at axe throwing. I did really well at the axe throwing, but the scores were all still quite close. Zaheer even hit the tiny extra points target.

Then we played one of the most unique mini golf courses I’ve ever done. They had a series of unique holes that each had special rules. They included a tilt maze race, a hole where you could block the person’s ball with some foosball players, a slingshot at targets hole, and a hole that had conveyor belts. All in all it was a really fun night.

Thursday we did the sauna again, and then that evening I had a StartX CTO neighbourhood meeting.

Friday was the RS1 Ceilidh, which is Scottish line dancing. It was amazingly fun and I can’t wait for another one. I met a lot of the other RS1 groups and got to dance with some amazing people like Petra, Morgan, Raiad, Maggie, and Madeline. The dancing was hard to learn, but once I was in the groove of it a ton of fun. My feet and legs were sore for days afterwards.

Saturday, Steph and I went to the Cirque show Ovo. It was really well done and a great visual display. The costumes were so interesting and the performances were impressive. It felt more coherent than many of the other Cirque shows I’ve seen. Afterwards we went to Akira at Japan House for afternoon tea. We happened to see Petra and Morgan there, who I had really just met the night before at the dance.

Sunday I met Stacie at Light Room for the Dinosaurs exhibit. As expected there were a ton of kinds running around, but it was still really interesting to see. My favourite part was when they did the real scale display, and some of the dinosaurs were taller than the room, which was already 12m tall. We walked around Coal Drop Yards afterwards and got some amazing cookies at one of the shops there.

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Monday’s Choir rehearsal was hard, and I went straight home after as I wasn’t feeling up to sitting in the loud bar afterwards.

Tuesday afternoon Steph and I did another sauna session, and then in the evening Steph and I did ClueQuest on the fourth mission of theirs that we’ve done. It was a really fun mission and we did well, escaping with just the two of us and not getting any hints. I thought they did some of the puzzles really well.

I mainly worked the rest of the week.

On Saturday I went to the V&A and walked around the keys area and then tried to find the corners I hadn’t been to before. Then I met Zaheer at the Power Up exhibit at the Science Museum. It was an interesting hall of all sorts of video games. We played some Wii Super Smash, N64 Mario Kart, Golden Eye, and then some Halo. I still have the magic with Mario Kart and Golden Eye, as I played way to much of those growing up. We were some of the few lone adults there, as most of it was families with kids. It was also pretty much packed, and after we couldn’t find a good open game we headed out.

Sunday I went to Anthony’s place to play a social deduction game called Blood on the Clocktower. It is like Werewolf or Mafia, but with a lot more control and roles and scenarios. We played some really fun sessions, but with so many rules and roles it was hard for me to bluff anything. I ended up doing decently well, and I had a great time. I look forward to playing again and I’ll read up more before the next session now that I know the format.

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This week I went to choir, but otherwise worked. Steph was away for the week in Zurich, so it was just me with the kitties.

Friday evening I went to board games at Giulio’s place near Stratford. It was a great time and I showed off some of my real time video streaming as well. We played an async information coop game about diffusing bombs. We started off really badly, but quickly picked up how it should be played.

Over the weekend Steph and I visited some of the new bib gourmand restaurants of 2026. We went to Kricket on Saturday, which was a tasty Indian place. Then we got pasta at Bancone on Sunday. Sunday evening was book club for Someone You Can Build a Nest In, which is an amazing and interesting book.

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I had a good choir rehearsal on Monday and got to chat with Zaheer at the pub. The songs this session are more challenging that the previous sessions, and that is saying something.

Tuesday Steph and I went to the Hitchhiker’s Guide. It was an interesting experience, and just as strange as the books. They try to keep some through lines, but even having read all the books I missed many of the references and had forgotten many of the characters. The level of interaction was low, but not terrible, and it was a little slow paced. I still enjoyed it.

Wednesday we went to the Slomo sauna in one of the squares in Kings Cross. We plan to go once a week while it is open. They have two really nice sauna rooms with optional steam. Then four cold plunges with different temperatures and a hot tub. It is a really nice setup and amazingly relaxing.

Saturday I took a long walk along the canal and through Regents Park. I walked along the canal through Camden Market, and up into the park. I walked all around the park including the rose garden and tried to find all the interesting nooks that I hadn’t been in before. It was a gorgeous day and I got to listen to the audiobook the whole time.

Sunday Steph and I went to the Magicians Table, where they had ten different magicians doing short acts and then rotating. I had a great time and it was a fun format to get so many different styles of acts. There was also an overarching theme and some tasty drinks.

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I really enjoyed the song for choir this week, as the bass line had the melody, which is rare. It was also just really fun to sing, with some humming and whistling thrown in.

Steph was in Zurich for the start of the week, and I got access to a great coworking space nearby, which is where I spent most of the week during the day. The weather was cold and wet, so I didn’t get around much otherwise.

For the weekend I hosted karaoke on Saturday, which was great fun. I had some people from choir as well as Stacie, Aaron, and Giulio. It was a smaller group, but it worked out really well. We also played some Drawful 2 and then some Code Names which was great.

Sunday I went to Mercato Mayfair in the morning and sang with people, which was great fun. I really enjoyed it, and getting to chat with everyone was also great.

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After our trip to Devon and Cornwall it was nice to be back home with the kitties.

Monday was a busy day back to work, and in the evening I got to join the first Ready Singer One choir performance of the year. I had a great time of it, and we are learning some hard songs, the first one from Dragonborn.

Tuesday evening was great fun as Steph and I went to Prison Island. It was similar to the Escape the Bomb experience I did in Atlanta, but with many rooms. Steph and I did really well together, with a great mix of mind puzzles and physical challenges. Only a few weren’t really possible with only two people, but the others were a good challenge.

The rest of the week was very cold, with a touch of snow and the canal freezing over.

On the weekend we went to the Turner and Constable exhibit at the Tate Britain. It was a lot of great paintings, and the story of the two was good, but felt incomplete in the telling. I like Turner more for his variety as Constable has a specific valley he did most his work on.

Sunday, Steph and I walked to the Camden Garden Center and got some succulents for the glass container she got me for Christmas. It is a neat geodesic pattern that works really well for the succulents, but not quite for a terrarium.

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This week I finished the final edit for a movie I made with AI.  It has lots of movie making problems, but most of those aren’t problems with the tech, more of problems with my ability to make a movie.

Monday I had tea at BAFTA and was able to talk with a movie industry veteran about the AI in Movie space.  They confirmed most of my assumptions about why my AI video platform wasn’t working, and it helped me confirm that I wanted to make a big change. 

I didn’t do much else this week.  On the weekend Steph and I went through Islington and had a great time in the shops.  I found some interesting trinkets to put in the small gift boxes for the Christmas Eve celebration we were planning.

Sunday was amazing, and I got to see Romana perform lots of Christmas songs with the orchestra.  They were joined by four amazing singers.  I got to hear a lot of the classics and some of the less common Christmas songs, and some other songs on request.  We got to drink before the performance with the top violins from the Orchestra, and I ran off afterwards to get home to see Steph after her latest trip.  I also noticed that one of the percussionists in the orchestra had performed with RS1 several times as well.

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I made it back to the UK, and made it to the RS1 performance. It was great to see the performance, and hear all the parts blending together. Normally I would only hear the section I was in, but being in the audience I got to hear it all. There were certain parts that I always felt were awkward, but when blended were amazing. I also got to join at the pub afterwards.

Unfortunately I got sick and didn’t really do much the following week.

Eventually on the weekend I made it to lunch with some Meta people, then Karaoke on the weekend.

The next week on Tuesday we had a triple choir rehearsal, and that was so much fun. It is amazing getting to sing in the large groups, especially when mixed. Then afterwards we went to the pub for an amazing quiz game. Somehow our team was winning at the start, and we did well throughout, but the mechanics of the quiz weren’t great for us at the end, and we dropped down in the rankings.

I met up with Marissa to cowork in Kensington one day. We only did the morning, then I went to the V&A afterwards to wander the exhibits. I did only a small portion before heading back to the flat.

On Friday I did the last step of the ILR application and then went to the variety show Sabrage. It was pretty good, with a lot more nudity than I was expecting. Steph and I had a great time going to a show together, and it is convenient being a 10 minute walk from our place.

Saturday I went to the Gemini hackathon, but missed half of it due to going to the Lander 23 experience from Punch Drunk. It was my least favourite of their shows, but still pretty good. I don’t know if it is worth going again. It was effectively the game flashlight tag with some extra bits on top and a very loose theming and pretty much no story.

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