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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

I know it’s “just” a language model, but…

I’ve been starting to fiddle with ChatGPT a bit more recently, just to see what it can do, and where it fails. Today I had 20 minutes spare – so I asked ChatGPT to make me a Nike logo using SVG. It gave me this: …it’s pretty confident about what it’s created there – so … Read more

What happened to the telephone?

I’ve noticed an interesting phenomena in These Strange Times. I might be late to the party in noticing this, but hey, fuck it, shoot me. Whereas it’s obvious to all concerned – and there has been much written about this – that we’re all spending forever on Zoom calls, this one is everso slightly not … Read more

Kids own too many gadgets

I’ve been resisting writing this, as I know it’ll get up some people’s noses. I know there’s a danger I’ll come across as fairly sanctimonious – and definitely an Old Victorian Arse. But you know, along with getting a bit older is a certain dontgiveashitness, so here goes. My contention is this: things have gone badly … Read more

The life project

My good friend @bealers just posted “Make life a side project” and it got me thinking. My first reaction was something along the lines of shutup-you-crazy-person but now I’m veering slightly more to ah-i-think-i-kinda-see-what-you-mean. But not much. The main thing that I reacted to was this notion of “sideness”. Putting life (yeah, we need to talk about what … Read more

Instant is not now

So it’s that time of year again – December crawls to a close and a new year looms just beyond an enormous mound of mince pies, bad tv and terminal flatulence. There’s something strange about the arrival of a “new year” – after all, it’s just another day but one with a randomly assigned new … Read more

Falling out of love with Twitter

Dear Twitter It’s been a week or so since I last spoke to you. I’ll be honest, right from the start. I’ll just come out and say it: I’ve suddenly and pretty much completely fallen out of love with you. I don’t know what this means. I don’t know if I’ll get my love back, … Read more

is late

What if the hype is actually all hype? What if someone in the press misheard an Apple employee talking, and did that – pretty normal – press thing of inflating it beyond all proportion? What if it became a pretty standard Silicon Valley / noomeedya / excited geek Chinese whispers kind of thing, no basis … Read more

Simple ideas, well executed

Today, following a tweet and a link to this blog post, I went out on a post-Christmas, “balls to it” kind of whim (the kind your bank manager and wife hate) and bought myself a GPS travel tracker. This is a small  (matchbox-sized) unit with a single button on it (on/off), and it basically does … Read more