Personal blogs

Someone asked me about my stance on not having comments on my blog. I’m not a fan of comments in general and I think commenting on something should be done in one of two ways: …

Even though I'm a sucker for modern science fiction series, I never felt the urge to read the Murderbot books because they seemed a bit uninspired to me. A conscious and semi-depressed robot. How innovative! …

My marigolds have begun to bloom. Reply via email

I use Obsidian the same way I use most productivity apps: simply. My email and my personal notes app have no folders. There are no tags in my task management system. If I’m not actively …

So I haven’t written anything on here for a year and a half. It turns out the old saying is true; freelancing on interesting projects while raising a small human and navigating the US visa …

Thirteen years ago, my wife Dimitra wrote a children’s story about a magical kite for the teacher training course she was doing in England. Today is Clean Monday, a day when Greeks traditionally fly kites, …

I don't love how this painting turned out, but I enjoyed every moment of creating it. (I did the best I could on the photography with a tripod, my phone, and my office lights.) I …

Beginning of Spring An undocumented feature of my long-term weeknote habit is that every now and then WordPress related posts reminds me of another week in the dim distant past when I was rambling about …

Forgot to say last week, in my underslept weekend I managed to submit my 23/24 tax return a handful of hours into the new tax year. A personal best, and a sign that my circumstances …

A personal summary of the past year, after reading a couple of others from friends

It’s such a delight when a plan comes together and unfolds, especially when it’s something you’ve been working on for many years. Today the announcement went out that we’re combining the best technology from Beeper …

Last month I went to Brussels for FOSDEM, for the first time since 2020. While I didn’t go to many talks, I was able to connect with many people there, from WriteFreely users to old …

I updated a couple of my minor apps today so that they look correct on the latest macOS releases. The first, Feed Compass which is an app to help you find, preview, and subscribe to …

I wrote about AI already, but that was about how we’re all going to die. Since then, the conversation has become more nuanced. Now I’m encountering more subtle ideas I think are totally wrong. So …

Listen to upcoming artists at your favorite venues, all on Spotify. Updated every Monday. Put in your city, put in a venue. It doesn’t 100% work for all – e.g., Seattle’s Chop Suey doesn’t seem …

What Have Fourteen Years of Conservative Rule Done to Britain?. The Tories are not qualified to run a country. The Conservative Party, whose history goes back some three hundred and fifty years, aids this theory …

Gateway to ‘Global Britain’ Heathrow Airport Terminal 2, on a quiet Saturday afternoon. Quote of the Day ”He who hesitates is poor.” Mel Brooks Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news Mark Knopfler | Two …

A mouse died somewhere in the walls recently, so we've been combatting the resulting very unpleasant smell with lots of fresh air (not very warm at this time of year) and an air filter. That …

I've decided to migrate this blog to a quarto-based blog format. All future posts will be found here: https://swingley.dev/blog2.

So I just found out that WordPress / Automattic is preparing to sell user data to Midjourney and OpenAI. So it seems that unless I opt out, my creative work will be sold for AI …