2020s
Agenda: Tuesday 21st April
Difficult evening last night. I found it hard not to think about all the things that this situation has taken away from my life - but I really should count my blessings that it has yet to take away anyone I love.
Morning
Home schooling: Maths and English, plus ballet on Facebook Live, and a Zoom chat for my youngest’s class.
😱
Afternoon
Working:
- “Cheat Sheet” for a client’s journalists
- Assessment of SEO potential for client’s stories
- More work on a strategy document
- Marking
Hoo boy. Gonna need some coffee today…
My weekend project was taking a moribund blog, exporting it, migrating it to a new platform and getting it up to speed.
It worked.
Now, let’s see if I can make that time worthwhile with some content…
Agenda: Monday 20th April
Morning all,
With at least three weeks to go before there’s any chance of easing this lockdown, I need to get my brain in gear.
Home school restarts this morning, and I still have enough work that I need to focus on keeping working - while figuring out how to sustain an income over the coming months.
I’m going to try to do daily “agenda” posts - just to focus myself and hold myself a little accountable for what I need to do.
Today
- Morning: working. Editing, writing and marking are the top priorities
- Afternoon: home-schooling, with a focus on natural history and computing
Let’s go…
This is fascinating. Ash trees most likely to overcome killer disease if they stand alone:
The researchers found that dense stands of ash trees with closed canopies were highly susceptible to the fungus. Isolated trees still got the disease but tended to pick up less fungus.
The Goodies helped define my humour and view of the world as a child. This makes me unspeakably sad:
Tim Brooke-Taylor dies at 79 after contracting coronavirus, agent says
Tonight I am transcoding an Easter Service video, produced remotely by multiple local households, for best playback on Facebook. It’s already on YouTube.
And given the comfort it will bring to people in 12 weeks of self-isolation, this is time well-spent.
Here’s the big question on my mind: how does journalism survive the Covid-19 crisis?
And I mean “journalism" not “news” - because there’s a whole lot of value we’ve under-estimated in under-threat B2B and consumer titles, too…
Dr Tinworth and I started watching The Mandalorian last night.
OK, I now understand the fuss. It gets the Star Wars aesthetic perfectly, and tells an intriguing story. Looking forward to working our way through it. 📺
Lovely 13th Doctor short story from ex-Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat: The Terror of the Umpty Ums.
He nails her voice perfectly.
Testing video setups is much harder when you actually have to share your home with the rest of the family while you’re doing so…
Funny how my plans for the year have now largely boiled down to:
- Don’t die.
- Don’t go bankrupt.
Everything beyond that is a bonus right now…
The co-founder of Instagram Kevin Systrom has re-emerged with a blog and It is all about coronavirus and maths.
Uh-oh.
We can’t fight the big hiatus. So, we have to embrace it.
Embrace the Pause: time to plan and prepare for what comes next.
I have just remembered that once, a very long time ago, I drank whisky, smoked a cigar and chatted with Omar Sharif.
Life has been good to me, in ways it is easy to forget.
The speed with which some local folk have started demanding that martial law be imposed is quite, quite terrifying.