Andrew Doran
Andrew Doran
I write here in order to work things out and understand myself better. I write here in order to put things down that I have been carrying around in my head, so I don’t need to carry them around anymore. I write here in order to capture a moment and have something that I can look back on, remembering what I thought and felt at the time.
August 2026
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Top Words
- weeknotes
- year
- born
- work
- life
- song
- london
All posts (101)
Gave my About page a long-overdue update. I’ve also added a /now page to the site too.
A regular week, back in the office after last week’s trip to Barcelona. Things have suddenly turned very cold here in the UK. It’s feeling dark and wintry. This was a week in which I: Had the weekly call with our audio-visual design company and agreed the design change to swap the digital signal processor for a...
I’m a big believer in the philosophy of ‘Post (on) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere’, or POSSE, as it has come to be known. My website is the canonical place where I post anything I want to get out into the world. The syndication takes place via micro.blog — it reads the main RSS feed and then does an excellent job of...
Sunrise over the Mediterranean as seen on my morning run. Most of this week was spent in Barcelona at the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo. It’s the third time I’ve been1 (see my previous write-ups of 2023 and 2024), and I now feel I know exactly how to get the most out of my time there. The view from the 22nd floor of the...
A small software change that delights: holding down a key on my iPad keyboard now brings up a menu of accented variations of that letter. This is a massive improvement over having to bring up the on-screen keyboard and doing a similar thing on the screen.
About a year ago, I asked ChatGPT “Based on what you know about me, draw a picture what my current life is.” It came up with this: Aside from the fact that it has that typical AI feel about it, I was intrigued by the elements it contained. Last week, after another year of interactions, I wondered what that picture...
Finished reading Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. A friend suggested I pick this up; I’m glad I did, as it contains snippets of wisdom that I needed to hear. I love the idea of treating my reading pile “like a river, not a bucket” and my to-do list as a menu. The saying that ‘there’s no time like the...
Strava seem to have removed their activity map styles of ‘Black Lives Matter’, ‘Pride’ and ‘Support Ukraine’. Presumably this is part of getting ready for their IPO and not wanting to have a potentially damaging narrative about whether they are ‘too woke’. I always wondered when this would happen, given the broad...
After starving myself for over twenty-four hours last week ahead of a colonoscopy, this week I once again found myself going without food for a whole day. Unfortunately, this time it wasn’t planned. We’re not sure whether it was food poisoning from the prawn-based dish we cooked on Sunday night or some kind of...
Without beating around the bush, the major event of this week was a colonoscopy. This year I decided to follow up with a couple of minor medical issues that I’ve experienced in the recent past, figuring that there would be no harm in getting them checked out by the experts. This specific procedure was recommended by...
Finished reading The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Resistance Shaped Popular Culture (1955–1979). An epic book in five parts, covering the mid-1950s, the early and late 1960s, and the early and late 1970s. This period is transformational for gay rights, moving from a hidden and illegal world to one of openly homosexual,...
There was something about Monday. You could just feel it. I got to the office, checked my diary, and for the first time in months I saw a meeting-free afternoon stretched out before me, full of possibility of all the productive things I might do. It wasn’t to be. John Steinbeck described such a day in his novel...
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