Andrew Doran
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.
Latest Posts
Finished reading Sweating Bullets: Notes about Inventing PowerPoint by Robert Gaskins. I’m a big fan of dissections of all things pop, and although the topic of this book isn’t quite the same as a music documentary or a look back at...
Last weekend’s sore throat and feeling parched after a very warm cycle ride turned into something else on Monday. It started as a head cold and then later in the week worked its way down into my chest. I didn’t have any kind of fever; it...
This old Metropolitan Line train at Chesham is nearly ready to go, with its cargo of parched weeds. We’ve properly entered Phil Collins season, with extremely hot temperatures dominating the week. My morning walk from Euston to the City...
I was out the door early on Tuesday to head to Heathrow to pick up our eldest son, who has come back from university for the summer. It’s great to have him back; the house is a very different place with him in it. He arrived on a cold...
Springtime in full bloom. This week felt tough. I ended up in the office four days in a row. The end of each day arrived too quickly as I still had plenty of things left to tackle. It was great to get to Friday when I could get some...
Bubbles looks like another useful website for surfacing interesting things to read from personal blogs. Users can log in with a Fediverse account and upvote items. You can subscribe to a thoughtful collection of algorithmic RSS feeds too.
Voting time for the local council elections in Holborn, London. I walk past this lovely London street on my commute to work. A four-day week due to the plainly named Early May bank holiday in the UK. Recovery from the big bike ride felt...
I can’t read this label without hearing Boycie’s voice in my head.
A quiet week at work. There were two public holidays in South Africa on Monday and Friday, so quite a few of our SA-based colleagues took the other three days as leave. I had some nice gaps in my diary to allow me to get things done. I...
Me, at 5:48am in Chalfont St Peter Community Centre, having just finished the 2026 London Wales London bike ride. All week I watched the weather in anticipation of the London Wales London Audax ride at the weekend. I’m fortunate to have...
Looking out from a viewing point near Ivinghoe Beacon. Photos like this never do justice to how breathtaking the landscape is in person. One of my lifelong school friends recently lost his dad, so on Monday I took the day off to attend...
After listening again to Rufus Wainwright’s cover of the whole album at the weekend, this week, as I left the office, I put on Judy Garland’s concert at Carnegie Hall. By the time I’d made it to the train station I’d been moved to tears...
All of these people saying that Formula 1 is now like Mario Kart. I don’t think they played the original on the SNES; that was proper racing. There was none of this ‘blue shell’ malarkey and artificially being faster just because you’re...
A good, solid week at work. It felt like I got lots done. I had a very busy end to the week, including a lot of socialising and an excellent long bike ride in the spring sunshine. This was a week in which I: Agreed how we will move...