2026-08-17 01:56:17
Along with basically everyone, I watched the eclipse using the traditional "colander and a sheet of paper" method. I took a few horrific snaps with one of my cameras but, without a solar filter, they were rubbish.
It was strange because it didn't feel like a sunset despite being basically at sunset. Instead of the usual smooth gradient of light loss, it felt "stepped" — like the amount of light clicked down as if multiple light-switches were flicked off one after the other.
The silence of the birds was eerie.
We brought in a new member of the team this week. Having picked up a project to build an interactive patient simulation tool for an upcoming Congress, we find ourselves in need of someone to do the actual development.
I'm a little sad I don't get to do it but a new dev frees me up to work on a large-scale data analysis piece alongside the technical architecture of a medical education platform.
In the big political news this week, Toad of Toad Hall went toe-to-toe with an actual bin. Sadly for the dwindling institution that is British politics, the joke candidate won.
Typing has a way of speeding me up to the speed of my anxiety
Kobus de Wit on handwritten journalling
2026-08-15 13:31:30
Usually, historically, The Five is never ranked: it's just five things in the order I think of them. But this one definitely is ranked. Maybe I need a new posty type…
Here are my top 5 Irish teas and I will not be taking questions.
Hard agree? Violently disagree? Feel the urge to tell me about a brand I've forgotten? Get in touch by email, hit me up on the Socials™, or elsewhere online. I shared this on my Fedia feed for you to comment on or you could write a tea ranking/rebuttal/reply on your own blog and send me the link — I would love to read it!
2026-08-11 04:25:28
Luring me in with a kooky redhead in a bookshop is, once again, a sneaky lawyer's trick that I'm ashamed to say worked again! Shame on me, etc.
Magic is real, there are objects imbued with magic that allow the holder to conjure the unbelievable; the so-called Unknowable Objects.
They have been hidden from the world for generations by a Society consisting of four unlikely people who meet biannually in a basement like a really naff bookclub or 12-step programme.
Nothing has happened for years until, one day, they learn of the existence of a new object and must obtain it for their collection lest it fall into the wrong hands…
Gareth Brown clearly has a style: a yen for bookshops; he runs a nice line in quirky, learned female protagonists who aren't your typical leading lady; and particularly nasty villains.
That was evident in his debut, "The Book of Doors" (Review), and it's evident again in this follow-up novel, his self-proclaimed "difficult second book". I love the way he weaves absolute horror and despair into a cosy, fantastical universe.
In a masterful show of restraint, Brown centers this book in the same universe as his debut without massive overlap. There is an Easter egg part way through, and a little fan service at the end of the book. But largely, the two could be read as standalone books. In fact, they could be read in either order, which for a debut and a second book is quite impressive.
There's a through-thread of dealing with different kinds of relationships: Magda and her mother, estranged members of the Society, Magda and her surrogate father, a burgeoning romance, betrayals, and dealing with the fact that you are not responsible for the failings of your ancestors. All you can do is try to be better in this generation. Or something — I'm not a philosopher.
There are some genuinely complex ideas in this book. Brown neatly and plausibly deals with the problem of how to identify the unknowable objects, for example, as they are immensely powerful but boringly mundane; a pen, a knife, a chess piece.
His prose isn't flowery by any stretch, but it manages to drive the plot forward at pace without feeling utilitarian. He hits a level of description that's quite tightly evocative.
There were a few reveals that I found quite breathtaking and some reveals I had an inkling were about to happen but didn't detract from my enjoyment of the book when they eventually landed.
If you wanted to dig for a negative, it might be "a bit samey" — but, I'd argue, working in a niche isn't a crime; plenty of authors have made a comfortable living doing just that, some have even made art.
All in all, I feel like it sits at the improbable Venn diagram intersection of "TJ Klune's warm and cosy" and Clive Barker's "unrepentantly bleak".
2026-08-10 04:01:43
#SilentSunday
Car boot sales are so full of broken dreams; musical instruments, skateboards, home fitness equipment. They are also a monument to maturity; books read, films and games completed, toys and clothes outgrown. We also see the inexorable march of progress in the "obsolete" technology on every stall; desktop PCs, watches, calculators, cameras, innumerable phones.
I have been furiously refactoring some internal software at work this week.
It has long been a spaghetti of python scripts with a vague idea of how to pass data into each in the right order that lives only in my head. That is exactly the wrong thing!
I have started to treat it like real software and plan out the flows so I can point it at the input file and come back the next morning to a clean and complete output file (the dream!)
This work was so involved that one day when I was particularly "in the zone" my lunch consisted of eating peanut butter out of the jar at my desk. For clarity, I see this as a highlight of the week.
One of the houses I go past on my evening walks must be having a big clear out. They had an honest box for some DIY stuff last week and now they've started leaving boxes of books and DVDs out with a "Help Yourself" sign.
I got a handful of films I've been after for a while, a couple I had never heard of that sounded interesting, and an enormous atlas.
Thanks, neighbours!
My heart breaks in the silence of your thunder
My heart is hollowed out like a bird without a song
Heidi Curtis, "Hollow Heart"
2026-08-06 15:34:05
I have a small bugbear: the trope that old people aren't tech savvy. A guy at work brought it up this week — a joke about how if you want to do some exploratory testing, just give the app to his mum and she'll find a way to break it. She's rubbish with computers, apparently.
And honestly, as a sweeping statement (I don't know his mum!), that's kind of disingenuous.
It's tricky to define "old". My parents are in their 70s, which still isn't old old. Some of the grads I hear talking about "old people" bandy around ages like 50. Come on! — you're talking about "dumbing things down" for the generation that hacked the Pentagon on their lunch break because they were bored 🙃 I think people default to "the generation above my own" without considering the history of technology.
My mum was born in the British Isles in the 1950s. Sure, she didn't have the internet, but it's not like she was born into a 17th-century Amish community!
She had to learn how to use a car, a typewriter, a telephone, a word processor. She was doing all this at a time when some of the greatest advances in technology were being made.
My dad, now in his 70s, has an engineering background and worked in Research and Development and environmental safety; certainly no stranger to technology.
The people who are now in their 60s, 70s, and 80s are the same people who built computers and invented the internet. They've learned how to program VCRs, operate Betamax and DVD players, and gone from AM to FM to DAB radio, from vinyl to cassettes to CDs to MiniDiscs (and then back to CDs because MiniDiscs).
Slowly, they watched washing machines and tumble dryers turn into something you'd only see in science fiction. Speaking of which — they grew up watching Star Trek, which foreshadowed all the internet and technology we have now.
Old people have been led to believe they're not tech savvy, because they find it difficult to use modern technology — the confusing mess that is "Web 2.0" and beyond.
The internet has become actively hostile to many; entire walled gardens of adverts, jump scares, misinformation, adverts, scams, fear-mongering, and adverts. All marketed as the "safe" part of the web.
Applications (we used to call them "programmes") that change their UI every update. Everything designed for 20-year-olds' eyes. QR Codes, fingerprint scanning, and more meaningless acronyms than you can shake a stick at. Faster, faster, more, more. "Bitesize".
If you're not immersed in that frequently enough to become desensitised, it's an assault every time you open your phone to text your kids or pay a bill.
Physical technology is also hostile. The processing capabilities of modern phones, for example, are mind blowing. Yet vast swathes of the internet are so inefficient; bogged down by aggressive tracking scripts and unnecessary bloat, that it all feels sluggish. Voice technology — once hailed as the future — is patchy at best. Now we have "AI" to "help". Modern technology should be amazing but it's frequently meh.
It's not that old people are incapable of using it — the technology has let them down, not the other way around.
2026-08-06 03:32:12
Andreas tells a story of seeing an image of cats on social media with several many comments decrying it for being "AI generated".
Do we now have the obligation to check each and every picture, video, quote, text, post, etc. that we come across for whether it's human or AI generated? Do we have to apologise profusely if something slips through and we accidentally share slop? Do we have to police each other and check other people's posts and point out to them (with proof!) that they posted or shared or quoted slop? Is this the 2026 version of having fun on the internet?
Like Noisy Deadlines, I think I'm pretty good at spotting generated content — part of my job involves analysing LLM responses so I'm quite exposed to the tells. And, like Matt, I strongly feel that using an LLM to generate content for your blog is missing the point.
I'm starting to see some puritanical behaviour around "boosting slop" as if we are morally reprehensible for sharing LLM generated content. I've written before about how it's impossible to make a completely ethical decision and it's equally impossible to live a pure life by everyone's standards; everyone draws the line of what's "acceptable" just underneath themselves.
I share other photographers' photos on social media. I think that's important for fostering community and, as I am the algorithm, boosting reach and engagement.
I wouldn't knowingly share anything from a Nazi or about fascist ideology. That said, I don't scrutinise every photographer's post history in case they once said something that might be offensive to someone. I simply haven't got time for a comprehensive background check.
Neither do I have the time for a round of digital forensics on every single image that crosses my feed in case it was "AI". I do my best to only follow real people (to the best of my knowledge), I only boost images with alt text, and I won't share anything with a "generated" smell.
That said, where is the "AI generated" line drawn? Modern camera phone use artificial intelligence when making images all the time — HDR is AI. Is it wholly unacceptable to share images taken on any iPhone released after iPhone 13?
Just like sometimes the worst person you know makes a great point, sometimes AI generates a lovely image. If you're in the business of hauling folks over the coals for innocently but misguidedly sharing things on the internet, do better. As Joel says: As humans we definitely should be more understanding of each other
.