52 good things from 2023

I recently came across this blog post by Tony Stubblebine which seemed like something I should shamelessly copy. Paraphrasing from that blog post:

If I can’t find at least 52 highlights from the year then something is wrong with my life.

So over the last few days I’ve been thinking about what has gone well for me in 2023 (both at work and at home). It was a bit of a struggle to get to 52 items but I think this is mostly because I’ve left it until the last minute to make this list.

I will aim to repeat this list in 2024 and so I’ve set up a weekly reminder to help me capture thoughts throughout the year. So without further delay, here are my ‘52 good things from 2023’ which are loosely arranged into a few major categories:

Arts

I did make a conscious effort this year to listen to more music (to compete with the ever-increasing number of podcasts that I listen to). I’ve failed to listen to as much music as I wanted to, but I did improve on things compared to last year.

So this section includes five music choices:

  1. I/O album by Peter Gabriel. I’ve always been a fan of Peter Gabriel and I loved his offbeat approach to releasing this album (one new track has been released on every full moon of 2023). The full album was released in December and it has become one of my most listened-to albums this year. Listen to the ‘In-Side’ Dolby Atmos mix with headphones on. How can someone’s voice sound this good at age 73?

  2. Guts by Olivia Rodrigo. I marvel at how much she’s developed her songwriting talent at such a young age. I love how she adapts some of these songs for public performance. Her Tiny Desk performance of some of the album tracks should definitely be watched.

  3. Hackney Diamonds by The Rolling Stones. A stunning return to form by a band who have found a new burst of energy in the twilight of their career.

  4. Now and Then by The Beatles. To be honest I wasn’t expecting the Beatles to release ‘new’ music in 2023. While I think this is a poorer ‘song’ that the previous two posthumous efforts (‘Free as a Bird’ and ‘Real Love’) I love how the fragile, incomplete John Lennon demo has been transformed into the finished arrangement. I wonder how much AI will be used in future to clean up other old recordings with hums and background noises that would otherwise make them unlistenable.

  5. Wendlo. Wendlo are an Atlanta-based duo who I discovered at some point on Instagram. They specialise in short-form video versions of cover songs with the ‘twist’ that they are seemingly all recorded live at various rooms in their home. Their cover of You Make My Dreams (Come True) is one of the best things I’ve listened to this year. Their voices blend so well. Their hallway-recording cover of Maybe I’m Amazed is also worth a watch/listen.

  6. Moving on from music, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was my film highlight of the year. It expands on Into the Spider-Verse with a new palette of colours and characters. Just stunning animation and story-telling

  7. One of my challenges this year was to read a book a month (I appreciate that others might consider this a very low bar but I was coming from a place of just not reading much at all). I have accomplished this (though I did re-read two books that I had not read in a long time) and I was helped by the next item on my list. I’ve heavily gravitated to science fiction and time-travel in particular:

    1. Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel ★ ★ ★ ★
    2. Lost in Time by A.G. Riddle ★ ★ ★ ★
    3. They by Kay Dick ★ ★ ★
    4. Here and Now and Then by Mike Chen ★ ★ ★ ★
    5. Light Years From Home by Mike Chen ★ ★ ★
    6. Babel by R.F. Kuang ★ ★ ★ ★
    7. Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki ★ ★ ★
    8. Quantum Radio by A.G. Riddle ★ ★ ★
    9. Amomaly by Peter Cawdron ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
    10. Never Let Me Go by Kazuro Ishiguro ★ ★ ★
    11. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch ★ ★ ★ ★
    12. The Hobbit or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien ★ ★ ★ ★

Technology

A quick look at some of the apps and technology that made my year a better year.

  1. Kobo eReader. One of the reasons why I was able to read more than usual was because I purchased a Kobo Libra 2 eReader. Unlike Amazon’s Kindle devices, the Kobo can integrate with the Libby app which means I can rent eBooks from my local library (for free) and read them on my Kobo. It also integrates with Pocket meaning you can use it to read your ‘read later’ articles you find on the internet if you want.

  2. Pedometer++ app. I recently unlocked a 15,000 lifetime miles badge in this app which reflects that I’ve been using this app a long time (since my iPhone 5S). In a year where my body has atrophied from a lack of proper exercise, this app alone is the reason why I’m not in a worse state than I am. This year I broken my record for longest streak of 10,000 steps per day and if I can make it one more week, then that will become a 365 day streak.

  3. Finity app. For many years, ‘Threes’ has been the go-to puzzle app that I resort to when I have a bit of time to kill and want to play a simple game. This year that has been replaced with Finity which recently became available through Apple Arcade.

  4. Ivory app for Mastodon. Because of Elon Musk I no longer post to Twitter/X. I have effectively left that app behind and spend most of my social media hours on Mastdon (I’m @kbradnam@hachyderm.io). Ivory is a brilliant app which I use in preference to the default Mastodon app on iOS.

  5. Use of Focus modes on iPad, iPhone and Apple watch. I’ve really doubled down on how I use focus modes this year. When I enter a particular focus mode, my home screens dramatically change to only show me relevant apps for that mode. In addition to the default ‘Do Not Disturb’ mode, I use:

    1. Sleep
    2. Reading - only shows me a few relevant apps to minimise distractions (I sometimes read on my phone using Libby or Kobo apps)
    3. EU - for travelling in the EU, shows me travel and translation apps
    4. Commuting - focuses on travel and weather information
    5. Personal - my weekend mode which removes work information from any home screen
    6. Work - only shows me work-related apps and automaticaly turns on when I am physically close to where I work

  6. Discovery that you can run Linux on a Chromebook. I started getting back into programming this year (after a long absence). I had a data-driven problem I was trying to solve at work and this led me to write a Python script that gave me the answer. When I realised that you can run Linux on a Chromebook I bought one as a little ‘programmers playground’ to (hopefully) help me develop my fledgling Python skills. This has been helped by…

  7. …Using ChatGPT more. I hadn’t realised just how good ChatGPT could be for certain tasks. Needing to learn Python, I have found it invaluable for giving me the framework to write pieces of code. A useful skill for all of us in 2024 is ‘learn how to ask AI agents the right questions’.

  8. Completing my mirrored keyboard and mouse setup at home and work. I have a work laptop + keyboard + mouse provided by my employer. They are, predictably, all pieces of hardware made by Dell. Yuk. I can’t live like that. At home I use a Logitech K380 keyboard (in black) and a M720 mouse. Both of which can be paired with three devices (work PC, iPad and Chromebook). For a long while I was taking them into work on the two-days a week I work in London. I then bought a second-hand M720 mouse to keep at work and this year I found a cheap used K380 keyboard on eBay. This also is kept in my locker at work meaning that I have the same setup at home and work and no longer have to carry anything back and forth. Sidenote: I use the extra buttons on the mouse to act as next/previous tab shortcuts in web browsers and Excel…this saves me a lot of time!

Work

  1. Successful completion of two big change management IT projects. I led the upgrade of our website from an older version of the Sitefinity CMS to a modern version. This required jumping over half a dozen major releases. So lots of things could break. I also led a project to migrate the off-brand email addresses used by our bulk email platform to an on-brand set of addresses (i.e. email addresses that end in @rcpsych.ac.uk). Like many good IT projects, if you are successful then hardly anyone notices and people wonder what all the fuss was about. Apart from some minor bumps, I was successful with both projects.

  2. I became a productivity ninja. At the end of 2022 I had a ‘learning day’ at my place of employment (all employees spend the days taking various training courses). One of the training courses I took was run by an outside agency and was all about becoming a ‘productivity ninja’. We were given a free eBook version of How to be a Productivity Ninja: Worry Less, Achieve More, Love What You Do. I put off reading this book until the middle of this year. It might sound hyperbolic, but this book has changed my life…well, my work life at least. Most of the information in the book are things I’ve come across in the past, but reading them all in one go resonated so much with me. My stress levels at work (which had been high) have now gone. My ‘second brain’ now captures everything I need to be doing and that has taken a weight off my mind.

  3. Learning day presentation. One year later after that revolutionary learning day, I was asked to present something to others where I work. So I ended up running two 1.5 hour sessions on ways to improve web content. My talk title was ‘Sorry I didn’t read it: 10 reasons why people are completely ignoring your presentation…and tips to help address this’. I love giving presentations - which I sadly don’t have much opportunity to do in my current job, and so I thoroughly enjoyed working on this (and hopefully it was well received).

  4. Identifying the people who generate a lot of work for us. My team approves website updates submitted by others. There are over a hundred staff members who are trained to use our website and the number of submissions has steadily been rising over the last few years. I realised that because the website generates an email (with the submitters name in) for each update, I could export all of those emails to a text file and then write a Python script to process the information. This has let us - for the first time - clearly see which individuals are contributing to more of our workload and this in turn has enabled us to make some changes to reduce our overall workload.

  5. Created FAQs. In addition to approving website updates one of the other things my team does is to answer general enquiries to our ‘Web team inbox’. Like our website submissions, these have also been steadily rising over time. So this year, I decided to create an extensive set of FAQ items (almost 100 at the time of writing) which we can point people to. This will hopefully save us a lot of time in dealing with repetitive enquiries in future.

Family

  1. My wife. My wife is exceedingly generous with her time and attention for other people. I have been a beneficiary of this in 2023 (as in other years) but I feel that this year she has gone above and beyond when helping her friends, family and colleagues. She always put other people first and volunteers her time unselfishly.

  2. 10 year old’s artwork. My eldest son has been into drawing for the last few years but this is the year where his passion, and his talent, have really exploded. Almost every day he runs into a room to show us his latest drawing. I was touched by the David Tennant-era Doctor Who Christmas card that he drew (and painted) for me.

  3. 5 year old’s 500 word story. My youngest son submitted an entry for the BBC’s 500 words competition. This was mostly dictated into his iPad with me and his mum acting as editors (mostly to correct typos and occasionally make some suggestions for him). We submitted the story and recently heard that he has made it past the first round!

  4. 80th surprise party. My side of the family are not especially close but it was lovely that we could all get together this year to surprise my mum for her 80th birthday. She walked into a restaurant with one of my brothers only to discover all of her children, grandchildren and partners/spouses. This might be one of the few times that all of her children and grandchildren have been together.

  5. Heringsalat. My father-in-law is German and so we celebrate Heligabend on Christmas Eve and he always makes a wondrous herring salad. It’s one of those things that tastes amazing partly because you know you will only be eating it at this one time of the year.

  6. Sticky toffee pudding. My wife makes an amazing sticky toffee pudding which I ate far too much of this Christmas.

  7. Ambleford. Both boys had birthdays at Ambleford this year. This is just an amazing outdoor venue which has a mission of being a ‘school of rural skills’. They also host kids parties in a brilliant environment where kids can do things like archery and then learn to make their own bow. Both boys loved their parties so much we are planning to return in 2024.

  8. Trip to Hastings with boys. During school holidays my wife and I juggle child care responsibilities (if they are not in any organised activity). Occasionally one of us will take the boys on a day out somewhere which can be a mixed bag (largely depending on the mood of the boys and how much they bicker). Occasionally, we experience one of those magical days where the kids enjoy everything, the parent on duty enjoys everything, and where they sleep in the car on the way home as they are worn out. I had one such day in April where we spent the whole day in Hastings. This included playing mini-golf, going for walks on the beach, and then finding a cool park to hang-out in.

  9. Star Wars surprise trip. In April I also took my eldest boy on a surprise trip to see a Star Wars exhibition in London. The exhibition consisted of fan-made Star Wars props and costumes. He loved it and it was just a lovely day with him in which we also did some sightseeing around London.

  10. Volk’s electric railway. In May we took a family trip to Brighton. This was ostensibly to visit the world’s oldest electric railway because my 5-year old loves anything to do with trains (and buses, trucks, tractors etc.). The electric railway was fun but we also randomly happened across a delightful children’s street parade that was part of the annual Brighton Festival.

  11. Trip to Folkestone. In May I took my train-obsessed 5-year old on a train ride to Folkestone. It was a beautiful sunny day and it was just lovely to hang out with him and go for a walk on the beach.

  12. Superhero video. I occasionally try to make little fun video projects with the kids. In May I filmed some footage of our 5-year old acting as a superhero.

  13. Taking my kids to work. Yet another daddy plus kids outing. In June, took them to see where I worked and my eldest got to shake the hands of our College President! This trip also included a walk up the Monument (something I wasn’t sure if the 5-year old would endure) and they still had energy enough to take a trip up to the top of Tower Bridge.

  14. Family holiday to Le Touquet, France. Our short family holiday to France was simple, relaxing, and enjoyable. Fresh bread from the boulangerie each morning and then time on the beach every day.

  15. Hannover new town hall. We also had a short family trip to Hannover, Germany. The highlight for me was ascending the elevator to the top of the ‘new’ town hall) (it opened in 1913). To reach the very top the elevator has to travel in an arc alongside the dome of the town hall. The elevator also has a glass floor.

  16. Trip to Whatman Park. The boys love parks and playgrounds and so I’m always on the look out for new place to take them. In August - on one of the hottest days of the year - I took them to Whatman Park. They enjoyed the boardwalk walk amongst the trees. I enjoyed the DNA sculpture.

  17. Bexhill Museum. Managing to just fit this in 2023, we took a quick family day trip to Bexhill-on-sea and visited the small, but perfectly formed Bexhill museum. If you are looking for dinosaur footprints, period costumes from the last 200 years, model railways, and a steam powered car…then this is the place to come.

Other

A mixed-bag of things that didn’t neatly fit into the above categories:

  1. Trip to Berlin. I had a long weekend in Berlin this summer. It was my first time visiting and despite getting very ill and needing to take a COVID test (it was negative), I had a fantastic time exploring the city.

  2. Public transport in Berlin. I’m breaking this into a separate category as I was so impressed by how easy (and cheap) it was to get around Berlin by public transport. I was particularly impressed by the BVG app(s) which I was able to set up on my phone before I left the UK.

  3. Cinema Love Song LoFi edition. During my PhD I was in a band and we played several local gigs. I enjoyed writing some of the songs we played and this year I woke up having dreamed about a song that I had written (‘Cinema Love Song’). I decided to try to play the song that day but was shocked to realised that I no longer remembered all the chords. It became my mission to work out how to play it and then I tried recording a ‘LoFi’ version of it using Garageband.

  4. Architecture tour of London. I love architecture and so I spent one Saturday following a self-guided tour in the City of London which focused on new London architecture. It was wonderful.

  5. Ikea store under construction design. Such a simple thing to do for Ikea’s latest store in London, but so delightful (picture is included below).

  6. Playing Ol’ 55. I’m a terrible singer who can barely hold a tune but that doesn’t stop me trying. One week this year I developed a real throaty cough that made my voice very gravelly. That gave me the inspiration to try recording a Tom Waits song.

  7. British Museum. I realised that I hadn’t visited this museum for something like 20 years so spent an afternoon wandering around (but mostly admiring the Great Court).

  8. Weald of Kent Tractor Run. Every December, a local young farmers group organises a ‘tractor run’ which sees something like 100 or so tractors drive around some local villages and towns. All of the tractors are lit up like Christmas trees. It’s all to raise money for a local air ambulance charity.

  9. Travel insurance. In 2022, our youngest son fell ill when we were on holiday in America. He had to spend a night in the ER but was fine in the end. At the time, we didn’t have to make any sort of payment and just gave over our travel insurance details. Eight months later we heard from the hospital telling us we needed to pay $20,000 and that our insurance didn’t cover us!!!This has finally been resolved (our insurance did cover us) but not after a lot of back-and-forth phone calls between our insurance provider and the hospital in America.

  10. Tower Bridge / London Bridge public art. My twice-weekly commute takes me from London Bridge station across Tower Bridge. I always appreciate the views and enjoy the frequently rotating public art sculptures that feature in this area.

  11. Lasagne recipe. Occasionally I like to cook a meal that takes a long time to prepare. The recipe for lasagne that I use necessitates a long, slow approach. One step alone is to infuse the milk that you will use for the béchamel sauce with cloves, bay leaves and an onion for over an hour.

  12. Remembrance day parade. Like every town and village in the country, our town organises a remembrance day service which culminates with a march up the High Street to visit the war memorial where speeches are made. Walking up the main road with so many other townsfolk felt very moving. A real sense of community.

  13. Jigsaws. Once a year we take a short break in some farm cottages that we’ve been going to for a few years now. They have a room between the cottages that is just filled with games and jigsaw puzzles. My wife and I get a bit obsessive about trying to complete such puzzles. Simple pleasures.

  14. Taking EV to France. On our trip to France this year we took our EV across the tunnel. I already get range anxiety in the UK so it felt a bit more stressful in having to plan around the charging network in another country. Thankfully, it went pretty smoothly thanks to Lidl having very reliable charging stations.

  15. Bob Boilen’s final show on NPR. When I lived in America, I religiously listened to the All Songs Considered podcast. This podcast was responsible for me purchasing so much music when I lived there. The main host, Bob Boilen, was such a lovely avuncular figure who so clearly had a love of so many different types of music. Over the years, I’ve not listened to the show as regularly though I still subscribe to the podcast. In October I was surprised to see the episode description say Bob Boilen’s farewell show. After 23 years he was stepping down. I was genuinely shocked by this. I just assumed that he would go on forever. After his co-host (Robin Hilton) introduced lots of songs on the theme of ‘goodbye’, it was down to Bob to play out the show with his final pick. When the opening bars to George Harrison’s ‘All Things Must Pass’ started playing, I just found myself in tears. I’ve never met Bob but I feel that he has been a major part of my life and I was just sad (in a good way) to hear that he was retiring.

 

20 years later - reinventing a (Cinema love) song

At the turn of the millennium I was finishing my PhD in Nottingham. During that time I was in a band (the Sunflowers) and we had a lot of fun writing songs, playing local gigs and recording a couple of albums.

I played rhythm guitar in the band and very occasionally sang (badly, it has to be said). I also wrote quite a lot of songs. One of my songs which I was really pleased with was called ‘Cinema Love Song’ and it was released on our second album (‘Heliotherapy’).

The genesis of this song was formed from my observations of people in the cafe of the Broadway cinema in Nottingham This gave rise to the content of the opening verse as well as the title of the song. After the opening, the lyrics revert to my standard song-writing theme of the time (self-pitying loneliness). The song was probably written in 1999 or 2000. Here is the original recording (note this is not me singing):


Fast-forward 20 or so years and I found myself - for some unknown reason - dreaming about the song on New Years Eve 2022. I woke up and realised that I was unable to remember the lyrics to the later verses. This troubled me greatly…though I don’t know why I expect to have immediate recall of song lyrics that I wrote several decades ago!

I immediately played the original on my phone and then spent the rest of the day trying to work out how to play the song (I have long since lost any record of the chords or lyrics).

It took me a couple of days to finally work out all the chords and - on a whim - I decided to have a go at re-recording the song in a LoFi style (because that’s what all the kids are listening to, right?).

So here are two versions of the song recorded over 20 years after the original. One with (badly sung) lyrics and one as an instrumental.

Enjoy (or not as the case may be)! I’ve provided download links for my two new versions. Maybe this will be the start of a reinvention of other 20-year old songs?

Helping support the first ever LGBT+ STEM Day

Yesterday was LGBT+ STEM Day — the first ever day to celebrate and highlight the role of LGBT+ people working in the field of science, technology, engineering, and medicine (STEM).

In my role as Digital Strategy Manager at The Institute of Cancer Research, it was great to be able to focus all of our social media output on this topic. I'm proud that the ICR is really committed to equality in the workplace.

It was particularly fun to be able to rebrand our social media avatars and banners:

LGBT STEM social media 2.png
Social — LGBT rainbow graphic idea.002.png

I really enjoyed the opportunity to make a 'videographics' which played around a little more with the ICR's logo. The five coloured bars in the ICR's logo are spaced according to the Fibonacci series. There are, of course, six colours in the Pride rainbow…

Interviewed by Front Line Genomics for 'The Short Read' →

For the second time in my life I am flattered to say that I have been interviewed by Front Line Genomics. The last time this happened was when I was a scientist…this time I feature in their 'The Short Read' segment where I provide some answers about what I'm up to now at the The Institute of Cancer Research. 

Read the interview online:

Talking about death and not dying on stage: Keith does Science Showoff!

A few weeks ago I performed a short stand-up comedy set as part of Science Showoff, a regular series of events which are billed as 'chaotic cabaret for science lovers'. Science Showoff is the wonderful brainchild of Steve Cross, who is to science and comedy what peanut butter and jelly is to sandwiches (well, American ones anyway). The idea is to make science fun, entertaining, and (hopefully), funny.

I love presenting and I've always considered myself to be someone who puts a lot of humour in my presentations and I always try hard to make my talks engaging. So Science Showoff seemed like a logical thing for me to do. However, there is a big difference between a science presentation with hints of comedy and a comedic presentation with hints of science.

In addition to having presented at a variety of levels (from lab meetings up to to international conferences) I've also played several gigs in various bands. So I'm not particularly nervous about the idea of getting up in front of strangers. Initially, the idea of performing stand-up comedy didn't really faze me at all, but as the date of the gig came closer, I felt much more anxious than I was expecting to feel.

The most challenging aspect of Science Showoff is that, as a newcomer, you get a 9 minute slot. This goes by very quickly and if you want to tell some sort of story with a beginning, middle, and end, there is very little room for making on-the-fly alterations.

I found myself rehearsing my material in more detail than I have for most presentations that I have given. There is very little room for 'chaff' in a 9 minutes! My original version of my talk probably ran to about 30 minutes and I had to just keep cutting more and more material to hone it down (maybe they'll end up as deleted scenes on the DVD version).

I feel I made things harder for myself by deliberately choosing a topic which initially might seem bereft of any humour potential. My title was: 'Seasonality of Death'. When I first volunteered for this, I knew that I would be doing a slide-driven presentation but I dramatically cut back on how many slides I would normally present and I chose slides that were strong on visuals and kept text large and legible.

The result of my efforts is included below. I'm pleased with how I did, especially with respect to the timing of all of my content. I'd certainly consider doing this again if the opportunity arose and I think it is a great exercise in making you think about all aspects of your presentation skills.

Thanks again to Steve Cross for the opportunity.