WeekNotes 2026-42

I'm enjoying the daily recordings, and I started exploring a new way to visualise OKR progress and check-ins. HF345 went out on Friday, and the 50km walk is still being recovered from.

Daily recordings and OKR rings #

The daily recordings. I'm properly enjoying recording the daily Countdown videos. The days are the ones remaining at Rightmove, but the series is about preparing for the Head Of role: making observations from the daily topics and reflecting on my time as a manager that might be useful in the new job. The latest is 63 days to go, and there are 14 episodes so far.

OKR habits prototypes. Something I haven't mentioned yet is all the work I've been doing on the OKR habits prototypes. This week I started exploring a new visualisation for OKRs, to show progress and regular check-ins. Each OKR gets a ring, and each marker around it is a check-in point, coloured by the status I gave at the time (on track, at risk, blocked or complete). Weekly, daily and monthly OKRs all work the same way, so you can see at a glance whether the habit of checking in is holding up. Tapping the centre flips the ring to show the key results, and tapping a marker opens a check-in with a status and a short note. It's a mockup with made-up data for now.

Four OKR rings with mock data. Each ring has dots around it for check-ins, coloured green, amber, red or blue by status, with the goal, progress and a Check in button underneath
One ring per OKR, with a marker for every check-in
The same rings flipped to show each OKR's key results with progress bars and percentages
Flip the centre to see the key results
The check-in dialog on a phone, with On track, At risk, Blocked and Completed options and a short note field

MKGN #

On Wednesday evening I went to MKGN with some fellow Rightmovers, as we sponsored the event. I always love joining the community for the digital creative talks, and Rich hosts a fantastic session.

The stage at MKGN, with the host and a speaker in front of two screens showing a Peter Dobbin slide, "Concept Art & illustration for games and more", and a seated audience in the foreground

Recovering from the 50km #

A gentler week after the walk, but a return to the pool and my first run in a while: four swims, a lunch run, four walks, an elliptical session and a five-minute weight training session on Wednesday.

Walking

10.3 km

-44.8 km on last week

Running

4.2 km

+4.2 km on last week

Swimming

4.7 km

+2.1 km on last week

Total time

5h 47m

-7h 49m on last week

Total distance

19.2 km

-38.5 km on last week

Week-on-week compares 12 to 18 October with 5 to 11 October. The Strava log's latest entry is Saturday 17 October and there's nothing for Sunday yet, and a few sessions turned up late (Friday's run and swim, and Saturday's walk), so these numbers may still move. Last week's figures are slightly different from what I published in WeekNotes 2026-41 (57.7 km and 13h 36m rather than 56.6 km and 12h 29m) because a swim and an elliptical session were logged late. The walk is still counted at the 9h 43 moving time rather than the 11h 30m with stops. Total time includes the elliptical and weight training, which add time but no distance.

HF345 with DJ Tai #

HF345 with DJ Tai cover art

HF345 with DJ Tai went out on Friday, a feel-good run of disco-soul reworks and vocal house. Dimitri From Paris puts his Super Disco Blend on Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes to open, and it finishes with Kenny Dope's take on The Brand New Heavies and Bobby & Steve featuring Byron Stingily. It runs to 1h 26m. Cover art and the MP3 enclosure were sorted on Thursday night, ready for Friday.

On the HF site this week, the old /newsletter page, which was still the Mailchimp signup, now redirects to the Patreon VIP Club, and the Mailchimp page is gone. That follows on from last week's footer banner, and carries on the move from the mailing list to the club.

Listen to HF345 Join the VIP Club

SuperRams #

I've also been picking up my post match day reviews on the SuperRams.com Patreon. There were three games over the past week, so there's loads of content created and shared with the (small) community: the Wrexham draw, the QPR 4-1 battering and Stoke's cheeky 1-0 win at home.

PETALS #

Blog. A new post went live on Friday, Common ground first, differences second, and when to flip it. It's a response to Gustavo Razzetti's piece on conversations as a team's operating system, mapping the PETALS heatmap onto his four conversations (Think, Connect, Decide, Collaborate) and arguing for starting with common ground when psychological safety is low. Blog tables also picked up padding and light grey borders.

A PETALS team heatmap in teal and orange. Productivity, Enjoyment and Teamwork are labelled common ground, and Learning and Serenity are labelled differences

Dev Time. Thursday's Dev Time was a useful one. Brian and I went through all the Slack requirements in great detail, then used the transcript and Claude to help create all the GitHub sub tasks. I then reviewed them by hand and tidied up the metadata, like projects and milestones.

Marketing site. The old /blog/feed.xml now redirects to /blog/rss.xml, so anyone still subscribed to the old feed doesn't hit a 404.

App. Mike raised in our On The Side Slack community that you could no longer rename a snapshot once it had closed, where the functionality had been removed for some reason. Brian quickly fixed it, and it went out on Tuesday.

On this site #

Watch the Countdown

Habits #

MapTap record

3-3-0

was 3-4-0 last week

MapTap avg

809

+47 on last week (762)

Sudoku avg

3:02

was 3:39 last week

Solitaire avg time

2:39

was 2:50 last week

MapTap: a good week, with 3 wins and 3 losses, and my average of 809 beat Gary's 783 (it was 762 against his 767 the week before). The 14th isn't in the log, so that's six games rather than seven. Gary's 959 on Thursday was the best score of the week, against my 883, which was also my best. Saturday was the closest game of the week, 830 to 829, and on Sunday Gary's 16 in round five helped my 757 beat his 658.

Sudoku: faster again, averaging 3:02 across six days against 3:39. My fastest was 2:30 on Saturday and the slowest was 3:33 on Wednesday. The mistakes count only shows for the first four days (8 in total), because the Yudoku redesign stopped showing it on the 16th. Sunday's will land in next week's numbers.

Solitaire: four daily deals logged against three, averaging 5,050 points against 4,990 and 2:39 against 2:50. Wednesday's 5,416 was the top score, and Saturday's 5,408 came in 2:27 with only 108 moves, the fewest of the week. I'm behind on logging solitaire, so Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday aren't in yet.

Duolingo: I'm back on a Plus account, and the fresh export brought the log up to date. It's all French at the moment, with 15 lessons over six days against 16 over seven the week before. Total time was 53 minutes against 55, and average accuracy rose from 79% to 83%. A few rows in the export had blank XP or an impossible accuracy, so those are left blank in the log.

Entertainment #

Watching: Celebrity Traitors has been the main TV event this week, and I caught up on the episodes I'd missed. It's getting juicy and entertaining, if a little OTT, and it's funny how invested all these folks get in the game.

We went to see The Uprising at the Arc cinema on Sunday. It was a brutal but interesting depiction of a classic story from the 14th century, with King Richard II, but the shaky cam production really bothered me.

Listening:

Total listens

145

+85 on last week (60)

Days listened

6 of 7

was 5 of 7 last week

The Spotify log has plays on every day except Wednesday. A few plays are double-logged. A few highlights:

I'd like to start measuring how many days a month I spend listening to music on Spotify, so I can justify the £22 monthly subscription. The rest of the family use it too, but I want to make sure I'm getting use from it.

More soon.