2026-05-30 03:58:20
This interesting debut novel gripped me from the off with its "Virgin Suicides plus Carrie vibes". Rachel is an outsider in high school; mildly bullied but mostly ignored. A chance overhear of a death metal band plunges her into a world custom built for outcasts.
The book spends its majority trucking through forming a band, nascent gigs, Rachel's mild obsession with a specific painting that becomes really important later, themes of joining a scene and finding kinship; found family when your parents don't "get" you. But also frustration that there are assholes everywhere with the self assurance of any smart 15 year old. I should know — I was one!
Spoiler/Trigger Warning
The main events of the book are kick started by a sexual assault. It's not extremely graphic but it's worth flagging.
Taylor is clearly drawing on her experiences of being in a band and this gives those scenes a depth and colour that is lacking elsewhere in the book. Some contextual inaccuracies pulled me out of the narrative a little; we don't have "school buses" in England, for example.
An interesting theme as it's something I'm into outside of reading. I could have done with a little more killing and a bit less band rehearsal though.
All said, a good debut novel from a musician I like. When it lands, it lands well.
2026-05-24 13:38:17
Hello to everyone but especially the teenage emo lesbian in this restaurant wearing Vans, stockings, and a "I ♥️ My Girlfriend" t-shirt who has clearly escaped from 2005. Nice work.
The washing machine packed in necessitating an emergency replacement; other parents, I'm sure, can attest to the particularly Sisyphean effort of laundering children's clothes. A quick trip to the Sue Ryder and I picked up the last one they had. The new machine is black; gothic and shiny in that way the Eighties thought was classy.
I thought, shivering, that there are things that outweigh comfort, unless ones is an old woman or a cat.
Ursula K LeGuin, "The Left Hand of Darkness"
2026-05-18 04:16:29
It was one of those days that Spring does so well; rounding out a week of sunshine with biblical rains to remind you it's not summer yet, and I managed to get caught in no less than three of the random downpours. On all the occasions though I was wearing boots and a coat because there's no such thing as bad weather just inappropriate clothing.
Random shower thought; as a middle aged white man in the tech industry, I have more in common with literally any other worker in the world than with Elon Musk.
I have been idly thinking of moving these links to their own post. Not sure if they warrant separating; it might oblige me to write something about each link. What do you think — keep them here or move them on? Get in touch by email, hit me up on the Socials™, or elsewhere online.
2026-05-11 04:58:14
The dog lagged, unusually, behind for the whole last stretch of the walk home. When she eventually caught up after much cajoling, the reasons for her sheepish attitude became apparent; she was carrying half a starling and didn't want it confiscated. It was confiscated.
Trekking over the field a touch before dawn and the distinctive call of a Northern Lapwing split the dawn chorus. There's a marshy area where the cow pasture meets the cornfield meets the peat bog that looks like ideal nesting grounds for the little blighters. I hope they do well with their chicks!
I used to really dread being pulled into a client call on the spur of the moment but, the more I get into this project, the easier that becomes. I feel like I've found a groove — this is more familiar territory than some of the other work and it's reflecting in my confidence.
Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive. Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge); by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets); and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist’s business is lying.
Ursula K LeGuin, Introduction of "The Left Hand of Darkness", added 1976
2026-05-10 05:34:22
I must have first read this when I was about ten and didn't think of it again until a few weeks ago when my brother mentioned "The Warlock of Firetop Mountain" and I asked:
what was that book about the psychic children on a road trip that had a title like that??
I was duly reminded of the title and that you should always treasure your hivemind!
But, yeah, that's the plot. It's 130 pages of two kids running away.
Key drops enough exposition on the way to keep it interesting all the way up to the Big Reveal™ at the end. The mechanism he chooses –selective amnesia– can, and does, come across a little convenient. On the other hand, this isn't LeGuin level Nebula Award winning anthropologic science fiction; Key is writing warm folksy children's stories with gently radical undertones.
His characters aren't incredibly well developed; the baddies are just bad, the good guy is a priest who runs a homeless shelter, and the two main characters are a little cardboard. That said, the book doesn't suffer for it.
His ability to centre prejudice without it feeling like an overt lesson is genuinely brilliant.
It clearly made an impression on the Walt Disney Corporation because they turned it into a veritable boat load of merchandisable intellectual property.
2026-05-08 13:16:29
The purpose of a design file is to gain consensus not tell developers what to build.
A design file should be included with a functional specification as supporting information to help a developer visualise the output of the code they are writing.
Because, no matter how much you use Auto-Layout or variables, a design file1 is a snapshot of a site in a single state — usually the happiest of happy paths.
They do not typically include enough information for a developer to build a fully functional application without resorting to (a) estimation, (b) guesswork, and/or (c) pestering.
Design files are useful, they have a definite purpose. A design file is an excellent tool for alignment; show it to various stakeholders for them to agree on (and, please make sure your development partner is one of those stakeholders). It removes some level of ambiguity when everyone thinks of the particular feature. See also, consistent naming of components.
Pharma websites particularly require approval before they can go live (yay, heavily regulated industry!) so design files are uploaded for Medical, Legal, and Regulatory review. It's a fairly antiquated system –a hangover from print like so much digital design– and never entirely captures the full scope of the completed piece of work.
But functional spec exists to cover all eventualities; behaviour for every single known failure state, generic messaging for unknown failure states, edge cases it would take weeks to design. Off-screen things like API calls and retry logic, schema and SEO best practice meta descriptions, og:image, tracking tags, lazy loading — none of these things can be shown in a png.
When budget is design-weighted, investing so heavily in something the user will never actually see means you're actually short-changing the delivery end of the chain.
1: Insert your own design tool of choice; Figma, Photoshop, Sketch/Glint, biro on squared paper