A start page, just for me

I saw a link go up on HN the other day: An app can be a home-cooked meal – and found it really inspiring. What resonated for me was that even though this guy has obviously got some programming chops (he made a messaging app which looks pretty competent, even if it only has 4 … Read more

Oil sponsors? Twitter? Stop that, museums.

I can think of no justification whatsoever for a museum to be accepting sponsorship from an oil company in this day and age. It was embarrassing back in 2000 when I first joined the sector to see Shell / BP / Equinor / BNFL sponsoring galleries, exhibitions, exhibits and interactives. The “but the museum has … Read more

“New Year”

A picture of the sea at Bude

It’s fashionable at this time of year to do a “my past year in review” or “my plans for the coming year” blog post.  I’ve never really seen the point. The “past year in review” ones remind me of those appalling Christmas Family Newsletter things that some people seem to include in their Christmas cards … Read more

Going on silent retreat

I’ve just got back from my longest retreat yet – an 8 nighter – and as one of the most personally significant things I do on a regular basis, I thought I’d try and explain in writing what a retreat is, why it is important to me, and why it might also be important to … Read more

The promise vs the actual

So often the promise of a thing is huge and covered in bright lights; exciting and life changing and altogether wooo. Marketing does this, social media does this, and our natural response is amygdala-like: “shit man, I gotta get me one of those!“. The vision presented by the PR of The Thing is powerful. Examples … Read more

A post about running

I think I first started running when I was about 17; although I have a terrible memory, I do remember going regularly around the hills near my home town, and the coincidence of geography and age only really works if it was when I was in my late teens. Then there was a significant period … Read more

Thoughts on the Remarkable 2

Mook considers tea

I’m two weeks into owning a Remarkable 2. I spent at least a year, maybe two, circling around whether to get one or not and finally took the plunge at the end of July. Key to the whole project to me was spending less time staring at the glare. I wanted something to read and … Read more

Federthingy and Socialwhatnot

I’ve had a very long hiatus away from every single form of social media – I quit Twitter in 2020, and since then have had literally no contact with anything in the SM space. As a serial trier-outer, I’ve been on them all and have often been in the “early adopter” camp (very early to … Read more

I don’t know much about encryption but I do know this

I wrote to my MP (Scott Mann) a while back asking about the current Online Safety Bill wankery doing the rounds. The claim that our Government will somehow be able to read our messages but, oh no, definitely not breaking encryption is one we all need to challenge. I’m not a nerdy enough nerd to … Read more

ChatGPT and Those Awful Tasks…

I’ve spent quite a lot of time playing with ChatGPT now, and like many people are trying to get to grips with what it means to have a tool which can approximate some sort of creative response when asked to write a poem or develop a piece of prose or whatever. The conversation here is … Read more