Recently updated blogs

It’s so cold. It’s SO cold. Kick-off week. The work at M&S is broken in quarterly chunks, so this is the start of Phase 6. Amazing to see the team grow. Really nice energy from the teams I’m working directly with too. An auspicious start. Kick-off meetings took up the bulk of the working week. Next week is workshop planning and watching some teams test new ways of working. Got …

Hello. Everything’s going to be great. It’s been −4 °C this weekend. I record this to remind Summer Me that even though putting the heating on seems unthinkable in the sweltering hell of July, it’s essential in January. Likewise the prospect of opening the window at the moment is ridiculous but I know I’ll be doing it at every opportunity later in the year. Hopefully this will get it through …

I like writing these posts for my website, but I’ve sat down to write this one like 11 times and it either takes on a tone of totally encompassing dread and dystopian navel gazing or I feel like I’m burying my head in the sand and ignoring reality as it happens around me. …I finished reading Victor LaValle’s The Changeling. It was engaging, and I was interested in where it …

After a 2024 full of shows with punctuation in the title, the West End gets the OG musical hit in 2025 with the transferring Chichester Festival Theatre production of Lionel Bart's Oliver Exclamation Mark. Charles Dickens' (Chickens to his friends) story of child trafficking, wifebeating, murder, grooming gangs, antisemitism, alcoholism and a quadruple revolve sees Oliver Twist's (Cian Eagle-Service, alternating with Raphael Korniets, Jack Philpott and Odo Rowntree-Bailly) mother die …

Common Misconceptions About the Complexity in Robotics vs AI A roboticist breaks down common misconceptions about what's hard and easy in robotics. A response to everyone asking “can't we just stick a large language model into its brain to make it more capable?” Contrary to the assumptions of many people, making robots perceive and move in the world in the way humans can turns out to be an extraordinarily hard …

This is pretty late, but really, no hurry. This would probably feel like a repeat of my 2023 review.January 😔 Got disappointed by recent events. 📢 Made a statement that it’s impossible for an app to make everyone happy. February 😮 Gathered quite a lot of attention from an experimental UI that I did for catching up on posts on Mastodon. 🤩 My web app got mentioned on The Verge …

Just spent two hours (!) booking trains and intermediary hotels for a work trip to the UK in March. For some reason, the usually reliable Deutsche Bahn were unwilling to sell me any tickets for the journeys required, which usually means they’re waiting to release them due to e.g. track maintenance or timetable adjustments. However SNCB (the Belgian railways, basically) were happy to sell me tickets and reservations for everything …

Just occasionally, my silly research for this site turns up something wonderful. So, there I was, perusing the archives of that august organ Huddersfield Daily Examiner, when I spotted the following Channel 4 programme scheduled on the 30th November 1992: 11:00 CATHOLICS AND SEX Examining the Catholic Church’s attitudes towards birth-control and pre-marital sex. Catholic women talk about the ban on contraception, and teenagers give their views on virginity. A …

For a change, rather than looking at the past, today’s post is rather topical, and looks at a subject that at first glance may seem irrelevant to the blog – Artificial Intelligence, or AI. When I write a post for the blog, I try to apply a degree of intelligence. I use a wide range of sources – books (old and new), maps, national and local archives, old newspaper archives, …

Looks Unfamiliar with Joanne Sheppard talking to Tim Worthington about p Fax, First Born, Chimera, Next Of Kin, Mother Love, I'm Your Number One Fan, The History Trail, The Yolk Folk, Victoria Plum televised Cluedo and more...!

Last month we held the first-ever LittleJS Game Jam and it has been a huge success! A whopping 571 people signed up for the jam, showing just how much interest there is in LittleJS! Out of those that joined, 35 games were submitted using the theme “Animals”, showcasing the creativity and talent of our community. […]

It was pretty cold this week, so we took advantage of everything being frozen over to spend a bunch of time outside. The Met Office says that the weather is going to turn this next week, reaching balmy highs of like 14 degrees and turning the country into a massive mud pit.ReadingI liked Sam Valenti IV’s review of pop music in 2024, where he basically argues that modern pop music …

Notes for Fringe season 1, episode 3, “The Ghost Network“ 01:04 The camcorder being used by a bus passenger is a Panasonic SDR-H40 (2008) 01:44 The female passenger is carrying a blue Jansport T2650307 backpack 07:20 I assume that when Walter describes the drugs he’s taking, there’s some network TV liability thing that prevents the names of actual psychotics being used. 07:58 Peter’s phone is a Nokia 6110 Navigator (2007) …

In addition, the annual Vanguard Awards will be presented at the event to Sean Wang, writer and director of "Dìdi (弟弟)," and Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie, co-directors of "Sugarcane," who premiered their acclaimed films at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.

Those who follow my blog know that I like a lot the 400 m hurdles event. All the more so, since the decathletes have a fascination for this gruelling event. I have posted on several occasions articles on the low hurdles and there are frequent references to the ones I call the musketeers of the 400 m hurdles. This article is inspired by a post on the World Athletics site …