2026-05-02 03:46:47
Happy May Day, Beltane, and Calan Mai!
Here are a few photos from my phone from the last month with neither rhyme nor reason to the theme.
2026-05-01 02:08:58
I have never come across a book so hard to classify before.
Firstly, this book is beautifully written; a triumph for a first person point of view. Piranesi (the character) is kooky enough that effulgent and flowery prose is not incongruous. Framed as their journals, we open in media res with our narrator explaining something fantastical as though it is mundane.
Secondly, the restrained pacing. The drops of exposition happen at exactly the right time and build towards a feeling of being genuinely unsettled.
The capitalisation of many words is a choice. It's quite Germanic and feels alien but persevere because it becomes second nature quickly enough. It seems to inflate the importance of Objects — at least to this English reader — whether they are important or not. But, then again, to our narrator they are important and that's all that matters.
My feelings towards Piranesi change through the book; they are ultimately sympathetic. I went from "awww, we'd be friends" to "I will kill for this person" between parts 2 and 4. In a literary trope, they stand out as the ultimate unreliable narrator — the first person journals of a deranged amnesiac are your only source of truth!
The more is revealed, the more this book slides through genres into something that is all of them and none of them.
Delightful. Literary. Mysterious. A masterpiece.
2026-04-29 19:54:01
I can be a bit of a curmudgeon and focus on the negatives when I feel the pressure. I know it's not good for me to get into that negativity spiral so reflecting like this is important.
So, without further ado, here are some things I have been enjoying lately.
2026-04-27 02:43:40
There are few things more joyous than a small child's birthday party.
I finally finished the mandatory training module on work's learning platform for "how to write good prompts for AI".
Personally, I didn't feel the course addressed many of the inherent issues with LLMs nor the issues inherent in "prompt engineering" but it was a valiant effort even if it taught me nothing I already knew. I don't mean that to sound arrogant.
It does mean I am now eligible for access to the new proprietary model at work and can benchmark it against the other systems we have access to. Yay, science!
Early morning, golden hour, and the nascent morning sun is evaporating fog off the pond in the bog. There's a solitary Canada Goose backlit on a tuft of turf in the middle like an 80s power ballad singer surrounded by dry ice.
I set up a cron job to rclone some directories around so I had copies on my laptop, server, and cloud drive.
Sadly, I forgot that I'd saved something into one of those folders that wasn't in the others and the destructive nature of my rclone wiped it from my drive never too be seen again! I tried a few things for recovery to no avail.
So, yeah. Clone can be destructive, check your backups, folks.
When the Moon rose in the Third Northern Hall I went to the Ninth Vestibule to witness the joining of three Tides. This is something that happens only once every eight years.
Susanna Clarke, "Piranesi"
2026-04-26 02:58:29
Reading Matt's post, "Why I Don't Use A Dedicated Music Player", with great interest.
A dedicated Music Player is something I keep coming back to, time and time again but never actually get around to buying. For much the same reason as Matt; in the cold light of day, I can't quite see the point!
I don't listen to a lot of music by myself away from my desk; mostly while running, driving, or occasionally on a commute.
I like to track my music with last.fm and that's difficult with an mp3 player. As some friends on the fediverse suggested, I could buy a cheap Android phone and just install last.fm and a music player but then I'm carrying two phones 🤷
I really shouldn't use an mp3 player while I'm driving. I think it's almost certainly illegal!
I can honestly do without high energy power metal I listen to while running skewing my listening metrics do that's really the only use case. I have my phone with me when I run though so it seems a waste to buy a device specifically for that use.
What do you think? Do you have any advice or persuasive narratives to sway me? Get in touch by email, hit me up on the Socials™, or elsewhere online.
2026-04-20 04:37:28
I always feel like Autumn is my jam because I'm all goth and shit but I do love Spring. I think the shift has happened now I'm back in the countryside; syncing with the rhythms of nature and bonding with the Earth. Or something. Anyway…
The forget-me-nots from the wood have spread into my garden — or I planted them last year, I can't remember. Either way, a gorgeous splash of delicate colour under the dead willow tree that needs removing.
The Acer is in full and glorious red leaf, the rhododendron has begun to flower, and the pear tree I planted is not yet dead.
There are snowdrops and bluebells popping up around the Wendy House. I briefly considered taking photos but didn't because of reasons.
Fun fact; the Wendy House is named after Wendy Darling from "Peter Pan".
We are moving into a delivery phase at work which as pivoted the focus of the workload from Strategy and Design to Data and Technology. It's meant very busy days and nights where I can't quite turn my brain off properly.
When the world has pushed you to your knees, that is when you learn who you really are! That is when you find your true strength!
Tomi Adeyemi, "Children of Anguish and Anarchy"