Process fixes, but no Festive mixes

Another quiet week, client-wise.

I was due to meet up with a potential new client on Wednesday, but I wasn’t feeling well in the earlier part of the week, so had to cancel. We’ll meet in early January, I hope - it’s a really interesting proposition and I’m keen to be involved if I can.

With no other client work required, and in a less-than-energetic frame of mind, I looked back to my internal processes. I have, for some time, been meaning to improve the automation of one of these processes. I have already automated the first part, but the second part remains manual - and time-consuming. So I set myself to reviewing the process to ensure it was still what I wanted, and then defining how to automate the second half. (There will always be a manual part between the two to ensure some sense checking.)

Once I was sure everything was as it should be I then set about creating new views on the data to support the automation.

The other thing that occupied me, work-wise, was continuing to make progress on my AI set-up in the aftermath of the AI for Operations workshop that I attended a couple of weeks ago. Caitlin’s class was excellent. There was a lot that I already had in place, but her 3-hour class gave me plenty of new ideas and tips. As part of the class, you get a 1 hour one-to-one follow-up session, which we did on Friday. To be honest, we didn’t talk a great deal about the class, or operations, or AI, but it was great to catch up and discuss other things.

And that was about as much as I could manage on the work front. Fortunately I pepped up towards the end of the week.

On the creative writing side, I:

• Wrote and scheduled the final 4 posts for the Ode Map’s advent calendar.
• Wrote and scheduled the first Ode Map post for 2026 - “The Poetry of the Fridge Door” (5th Jan).
• Wrote two new poems - both clerihews - the first, “Taylor Swift”; the second for a private commission.

I hardly listened to any music this week, but I had TLC's Waterfalls playing in my head for most of it:

• Balearic Sabbath - “War Pigs” (Bandcamp link)
• Banshee - “I Used to Blame God” EP. (Soundcloud link)
  I really like Banshee, but I’ve yet to determine what it is about her music that I like.

I watched:

• Star Trek: Voyager. One-and-a-half series-worth
• Monsieur Poirot’s Christmas. Because, why not.
• Wake up Dead Man. Very good. I still think the first is the best, but who am I to argue with the rest of the world?
• Strictly Come Dancing 2025 Final. Fab!
• To Cook a Bear. Watched the first couple of episodes. A bit slow, and the dubbing is not great.