The Obvious?

Reaching out

2026-03-15T18:34:38Z

Following on from my last post about the passing of Michael Borland, it made me realize how important it is to reach out and connect with people online, and to say how much you appreciate their writing.

It’s too easy to assume that we will all go on forever.

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Michael Borland

2026-03-15T18:32:05Z

Very sad to hear just now about the death of Michael Borland. I never met him but have been following his blog for a while now. He came across as a thoroughly nice, upbeat guy despite incredible challenges from cancer, which I’m assuming finally killed him.

It’s always moving when a relative posts onto someone’s blog, not sure who they’re connecting with, but with the desire to let us know what has happened.

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It’s a sign!

2026-03-14T11:41:14Z

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Happy Birthday Blog

2026-03-03T04:05:45Z

As of today, I have been blogging for a quarter of a century. Now there’s a scary thought.

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I Swear

2026-03-01T09:52:10Z

Watched I Swear last night. What a lovely film. Highly recommended.

(Especially if you are aware of the stoochie at The BAFTA Awards.)

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Old dogs

2026-02-26T20:17:19Z

It would appear that you can't teach this old dog new tricks. I let my enthusiasm for the new and shiny get the better of me when I posted about Current the other day.

I've been using it for a week or so now, and I just can't get used to the way it works. It may be me, it may be the app, but I've gone back, yet again, to NetNewsWire.

There are lots of other RSS readers out there, and friends have recommended a couple, so I'll still keep tinkering — but apologies if any of you were swayed by my enthusiasm and bought Current.

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Psychopaths

2026-02-21T17:15:16Z

I know I have written about this before, but I’m sitting here in my office listening to the sound of gunfire drifting over from the nearby woods and yet again feeling utterly bewildered at the idea of killing innocent creatures for fun.

Once you’ve made that step, taking pleasure in the act of killing a living creature, what’s to stop you moving up the evolutionary food chain if you deem your quarry sufficiently lacking in value?

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RSS

2026-02-19T15:12:27Z

To say that RSS is a big part of my life is obviously an overstatement, but I have been using it since back in the day when people argued about the merits of its different flavours. And since deleting all of my social media accounts, it is principally how I interact with the web.

There are currently about 350 or so feeds in my Feedbin account. Some of them are news sites, although mostly technical and other subject-oriented news. I stay away from anything smacking of mainstream news with their lists of things to be afraid of that you can do nothing about! But it’s mostly made up of blogs. Some of those blogs don’t get updated very often; some of them may never be updated again. But the great thing about RSS is it doesn’t matter, because I don’t have to go and consciously seek out those sites, but just wait patiently until something happens and it’s delivered to me. They don’t add any noise to my signal, but when they do post, I get to see it.

Although I have tried most of the RSS readers that have come and gone over the years, I’ve pretty much stuck with NetNewsWire since it began. There’s a bit of a backlash at the moment about the original design of NetNewsWire, which adopted the same sort of metaphor as an email inbox. We have a list of incoming posts, which you mark as read or unread, and you’re given a total of the unread, which sits ominously, making you feel guilty for not having got round to reading them. Up until now I’ve been willing to just shoulder that burden because none of the alternatives appealed to me.

But Jason Kottke, one of my all-time favourite bloggers, recently shared Current, which is a new attempt to make reading RSS feeds and ingesting the information they contain a more relaxed and pleasurable process. It’s actually proving really interesting.

Even if you don’t download the app, it’s well worth having a read at the thoughts that are behind it, in terms of user interface design and how we consume information.

And finally, if you’re not using RSS, why not?

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Wankers in fancy dress

2026-01-29T07:10:51Z

Why is it that every police thriller these days has to have what I’m beginning to call “wankers in fancy dress”? Pumped up macho blokes in pseudo-military outfits walking in that strangely stylised way that they have as they burst into houses and search them with all their headgear on and microphones and cameras.

I watched One Battle After Another last night and there were lots of them in it. Wankers in fancy dress as far as the eye could see.

I occasionally, by mistake, catch footage of ICE as they terrorise America. More wankers in fancy dress.

How can they take themselves seriously?

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Lessons learned?

2026-01-27T10:48:05Z

It was on this day in 1945 that Auschwitz was liberated. Visiting that camp was one of the most profound experiences of my life.

It is just inconceivable that we continue to demonize, dehumanize and persecute entire populations on the basis of perceived difference.

What does it take to learn?

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The Night Manager

2026-01-11T22:11:03Z

Compelling drama, but I am struggling with the idea of a spy who has the keyboard sounds turned on on his iPhone...

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A word in their ear.

2026-01-07T09:53:40Z

If you are remotely close to anyone who has any power or influence and you see them making crazy decisions, have the courage to stand up and say, are you sure? Are you crazy? Have you lost the plot?

You never know, asking these questions might make a difference…

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Power

2026-01-07T09:19:52Z

The lunatics have always been in charge of the asylum. Anyone who wants to be “in charge” is a lunatic.

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The snow has almost gone but it is still chilly out there.

2026-01-04T14:51:41Z

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My favourite tree

2026-01-02T11:32:29Z

I have taken, and shared, dozens of photographs of this tree over the years but each time the tree is different, and so am I.

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Play

2025-12-09T13:09:43Z

Most of the time, the two donkeys in the small field behind our house plod slowly, gradually munching their way around the field. But every once in a while, they will grab hold of their plastic hay basket, one handle in each of their mouths, and then run around the field side by side. If that’s not playing, I don’t know what is.

The video below is of my daughter’s cat, Cindy, demanding that Hannah play with her.

We used to watch lambs in the field behind our house when we were growing up. Each year, different lambs would play the same game of forming a line, jumping into a ditch, going back round again, and keeping this going for ages.

We think of play in animals, young animals, as being about learning skills, but they keep playing. The two donkeys must be nearly 30 years old, and they still play. Maybe they’re just young at heart?

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Thought police

2025-12-05T20:05:06Z

I am using an audio transcription tool that's based on Apple’s on machine intelligence. It transcribed this short note (at the bottom of the screen grab) correctly. It is something in the most recent episode of Pluribus that I wanted to ask Mollie about.

But goodness knows why it found it unacceptable to create a title for it!

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Just saying...

2025-12-03T08:48:48Z

Anyone who thinks that AI can write literature can only have seen reading as chewing gum for the soul.

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Losing control

2025-10-09T06:27:19Z

“The decision is already in motion before the self arrives to claim it.” - Robert Salzman

My “self” is still kicking and screaming and refusing to accept this. “I” understand this intellectually, and can cite neuroscience to prove it, but “I” still feel that “I” am in control of my life.

Giving up that sense of control can feel like nihilistic drifting. But that is because I’m still burdened by a sense of there being somewhere else I’m meant to be, or something else I’m meant to be doing, instead of being fascinated by, and in awe of, this.

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This might be the last iPhone that I buy.

2025-10-08T00:56:14Z

I am feeling very conflicted about buying a new iPhone. I’ve had iPhones since there were iPhones. I’ve never bought any computer other than a Mac. I have AirPods, an Apple TV, a HomePod, and an Apple Watch Ultra. I love them all and get a great deal of pleasure from using them, especially the way that they work so well together.

However I am feeling increasingly conflicted about using any US based big tech products, even Apple’s.

Back in the day it was easier to side with them as the underdogs, as the rebels. Steve Jobs was a feisty leader who, especially as the son of immigrants himself, would I am sure have told Trump to fuck off.

But Tim Cook, master at supply chain and architect of Apple’s phenomenal financial success, hasn’t. He has joined other tech leaders in arse licking their awful leader. Not only that, but Apple recently decided to cave to government opinion (not even formally expressed or requested) and removed apps that helped people to protect themselves from ICE.

Given the indications that the EU and the UK government are increasingly inclined to meddle in tech with moronic attempts at age verification and demands for back doors etc. I have no real confidence that Apple aren’t going to cave in and, for example, outlaw VPNs as they have in China.

And this is now, with the Swiss wanting very Draconian laws of access and the EU wanting to be able to see chat messages before they get into the end-to-end encryption system! Goodness knows what the political/regulatory/technical environment will be like in the future. I can only see it getting more and more controlling.

I am not mad enough to move to either PCs or Android, both of which are gruesome to use and at least as compromised as Apple. I have always admired Cory Doctorow’s willingness and ability to build an independent tech world for himself and may eventually head in that direction, but it is a daunting prospect.

I may be wrong, and things may change, but for the first time in a long time I’m unsure about my future tech choices.

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Blogging (again)

2025-10-07T07:44:48Z

It was sad the other day to read of the closure of TypePad. It brought back many memories, particularly of having Ben and Mena Trott, the founders of Six Apart the company that developed Moveable Type and then TypePad, sitting in my office in the BBC, discussing the possibility of using Moveable Type inside the organisation. Those were exciting times. Blogging and bulletin boards felt like such a powerful way to connect and share ideas long before they got corrupted and turned into “social media”.

I’m enjoying reading Stephanie Booth’s posts about getting back to blogging, and what made blogging special. And the stuff that Dave Winer is doing to make it easier to connect blogs and comments and feedback is exciting.

I still have a hankering to get back into writing more on my blog, but invariably get caught up in thoughts about whether I should change platforms, what on earth I’m going to write about, and how remote the likelihood is that anyone might want to read it. Who knows?   It feels like it would be worthwhile to be brave and start rebuilding some of what we lost over the last few years, especially as what replaced it seems to be falling apart under the weight of its own crap.

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Little moments of joy

2025-10-06T03:54:32Z

The photos widget on the iPhone gives me so much joy every day.

With a total of over 23,000 photographs in my library it keeps unearthing photographs from our family’s past: photos of the kids at events; photos of holidays; photos of pets; photos that we have all completely forgotten.

There is something magical about having ann unexpected memory of a moment from our collective past pop up and be able to share it again.

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Would anyone notice?

2025-10-04T06:42:32Z

I stopped watching television news several years ago for a couple of reasons. Mostly because it was just a list of things to be frightened of, that you could do nothing about. But secondly, it was because it had become theatre with the presenters being caricatures, talking in a strange artificial sort of way, with sonorous tones and false empathy.  

So I reckon Dave Winer is right when he says that they could replace them with AI actors and nobody would notice.

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Thought police

2025-09-03T03:10:45Z

I’d been hearing good things about Google’s new image generator (apparently known as Nano Banana) and its ability to colourise images. I thought I would ask it to colourise a randomly picked black and white family photo. I picked this one of me and my dad at the beach - and it blocked it as inappropriate content!

It’s me!! I’ve got swimming trunks on FFS!

There is probably now a record somewhere of me uploading what “the system” deems inappropriate content.

There is no likelihood of me getting any human to review that decision.

The inappropriateness or otherwise of images is likely to be determined by systems based on American values of decency - which are very different from ours and block images of nipples while allowing images of guns.

Many moons ago I wrote that in using large online platforms we are building a fascist state one click at a time.

I have also written that once “black box AI” systems start talking to each other we will find our lives controlled by technology that we can no longer control.

We are accelerating towards that future at a frightening speed.

And no one seems to care…

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Commander-in-cheat

2025-08-13T12:00:28Z

Love this by John Niven in The Observer via John Naughton:

“And this week, Trump’s disgraceful reputation was soiled even further (something I thought impossible, like Spud further soiling those bed sheets in Trainspotting) when he was caught – on camera – cheating at golf in Scotland. That’s right, the Dockers-Clad Sweating Oaf Sex Pest chose to cheat at golf at the home of golf. For a golfer, this is like a Catholic not only committing adultery but choosing to commit it in the Vatican. In the Papal Audience Hall. In front of the Pope. From behind. Using a condom. While singing Orange Lodge songs.”

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