Personal blogs

I got new wheels and tires on the van. They look great, but the larger size puts more strain on my little 4.6 V8. I completely blew a spark plug out of the engine from …

So I normally keep my NationStates stuff separate from this blog. But it’s 20 years today since I launched a little web game in the hope that it would promote my novel Jennifer Government, and …

She processes her voice into a birdsong-like sound because of a bird speaking to her in a dream. Via @Vierkantor

Tom Critchlow has written a great essay about The Magic of Small Databases. We’ve built many tools for publishing to the web - but I want to make the claim that we have underdeveloped the …

The latest batch:

Woke up thinking about how different Mastodon feels (even now as its culture has shifted a bit from what I was seeing a year ago) compared to other social media. Other, generally shareholder-value-focused, services hold …

Wilco has a new record coming, Cruel Country. Jeff Tweedy, in his newsletter, shares some of the background promo material, which includes this gem of a graf.The whole record is comprised, almost entirely, of live …

Yes, still here, and still curious about those portions of the earth that are most unlike my own. Thus my recent interest in the goings on Heard Island, an uninhabited blob that can lay fair …

Visualise and/or animate the effects of git commands - a warning that this blew up when I tried using it to visualise a simple git rebase Sapling is Meta/Facebook's source control system, a fork and …

Lady rona finally deigned to come and visit, with comically bad timing. It’s pretty nasty, even after vaccination. On the other hand, the freezer is well stocked, and I had a week off of work …

As I approach my third decade in the games industry, my natural curiosity about new technologies is now mixed with worry: that if I don’t learn them quickly enough, they might also bring my obsolescence. …

these burp cloths are great, get a ton. Skip Hop Baby Activity Center table is life, once baby has some head and neck control. We also used a baby swing and a Baby Bjorn bouncer …

This interview with Tilda Swinton is a delight on so many levels. I commend it to you without question. So much in there about the importance of art, and also the importance of not doing …

Over at Ars Technica, Ben Klemens has an article diving into Mastodon and federation. It’s a good explainer if you’re curious about the standards underpinning the services. The idea of an open web where actors …

When I started writing weeknotes in (checks notes) January 2019 I wanted to find a relaxed writing voice that was less dry than my style at the time. My hero was (and still is) Matt …

I worked at Twitter part-time starting June 2007. I've never talked much about this in public. I'm revisiting it because of the complete disaster Elon Musk has made of Twitter. His sabotage of the company …

It is New Years Day and I’m writing this as a work marker for the year just gone. It’s been a long year, for me. A bit of a slog. What got done? NHS 111 …

O shred shred shred they all go into the shredder The paper into crosscut traces, the paper torn from paper. The trash bills, cancelled cheques and plaintive requests for money, The invoices paid and unpaid, …

After 2 years of procrastinating on this project... it's finally out! My first post-burnout-hiatus interactive thingy: 🥜 Nutshell: make expandable explanations 🥜 👉 https://ncase.me/nutshell/ 👈 This is a tool for writers, to let their readers …

One of the most exciting uses of AI is the ability to improve written work through better grammar and structure. By submitting a rough draft to an AI tool, we can get a revised version …