Deserves more cultural appreciation and celebration in the UK than he gets, I think. A favourite with cleaning pros (and repairers) and for good reason. 🥳 Happy birthday Hal.

This time last week, I had a little #Railway200 moment, wondering what George and Robert Stephenson would have made of me driving my car onto a train in a tunnel under the sea, to cross the channel in half an hour. Still magical. Happy birthday, trains. 200 years young today.

This weekend's the big anniversary of 200 years of the railways. From the poet laureate and Michael Portillo to podcasts, artworks and hundreds of brilliant local events, it feels like it's been an anniversary well marked: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vMo...

Today on Steph's random Marketplace finds: get your 1m x 1m slice of vintage French goat art. A stylish montage photo and listing that prompts many questions...

What's the best Linux option to recommend to someone repurposing a reasonable Windows 10 laptop ahead of the October apocalypse? Linux Mint or something else?

Slogan ideas… “Smoking hot body or your money back” – crematorium “The first one’s on the house” – chimney installers “We’re not afraid to raise a few eyebrows” – plastic surgeons “We’ll help bring out your inner child” – maternity ward “There’s no turning back now” – neck brace manufacturers

Via @jeremycaplan.bsky.social's newsletter, the SingleFile browser plugin looks to be a fantastic quick-scraping or archiving solution. Just right-click on a page and save out an HTML file with inlined-images and dependencies: www.getsinglefile.com

Fancy a change? Seeking air traffic control for DHSC digital projects - small to large, mostly national not NHS-facing. Open to all flavours of ddat specialists. flexible, diverse team based in London and Leeds. Talk to me, or to one of the team. www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/index.cg...

Inspiring day at #Fixfest2025 in Hackney, the global gathering of people from the repair movement, from BackMarket to academics, and lots of inspiring Repair Cafe folks. Conversation ranged from Linux kernels and toasters to the realpolitik of EU directives

Has anyone I know successfully applied AI to transcribing handwriting from images? I've had the best results from Pen2Txt but something with an API would be better if it exists.

Looking forward to a night out at the BFI tomorrow, watching highlights from railway films through the ages: player.bfi.org.uk/free/collect... #railway200

I've written about one of the most moving digital projects I've ever worked on, Letters to Loved Ones, and how it's made me think about the Second World War generation in new ways: stephgray.com/2025/08/the-...

I ran the numbers on the UK government's recommendation to delete old photos and emails to save water in data centers andymasley.substack.com/p/contra-the...

My wife shared this with me and I’m tellin you… it’s worth the read.

A striking photo of a surrendering Japanese navy commander in August 1945 sent in to Letters to Loved Ones this week: ve-vjday80.gov.uk/letter/ken-b...

I need to start a Tiktok or something about weird finds on Marketplace. Today's is this mysterious chair with extendable arms... ideal if you're Mr Tickle?

If you've wanted to drive an Intercity 125 train, have £400 spare and are free 11-12 Sep, this experience sounds brilliant: nvr.org.uk/product.php/...

It would be great not to have EHCPs in mainstream schools, and for schools to be more diverse and well-resourced places able to support a wider range of students. But until we have that, kids who struggle in mainstream schools need EHCPs: www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Twitter still hasn't lost its crown for breaking news, I guess 😂 Glad to see the special Inspiration exhibition train made it safely to its launch at Paddington this morning - I'm looking forward to visiting at Waterloo next month. railway200.co.uk/inspiration/

An especially good episode of the Great Rail Tales podcast out today, on how railways changed society and the world: railway200.co.uk/podcast/dr-o...

Quite enjoying the results from adding "Use UK English and the house style of 'The Economist'" to AI prompts. The answers feel a lot less like 'on the one hand this, on the other hand that...' essays

It's a year since I volunteered to help a rogue professor turn his prototype into a web app: meed.org.uk/meed-risk-as... The academic/medical/legal system may yet shut it down, but with 3,000 risk assessments made, even if only a few care decisions were influenced, we've likely saved several lives.

Which reminds me, in a world where this nonsense is endemic, shout out to Admiral Insurance whose car renewal quote this week came in at £3 more than last year.

@pubstr.at Spotted this and thought of you... vaughntan.org/publicstratc...

Pause for a moment to admire the marvel that is this tiny workshop, contender for Shed Of The Year 2025: www.readersheds.co.uk/share.cfm?sh...

At a packed tent saying farewell to Podnosh #cock

Government to find £100m a year for the British Indian Ocean Territory - maybe it's time to give that website me and Luke built for it back in 2013 a lick of paint? (still wish we could have persuaded them to go with just gov.io) www.biot.gov.io

Well, that was painless. Took about 3 mins to export and import my 5k links, and the browser extension looks to be nicer too. Thanks @nelson.earth

Damn. Looks like I'll need to find a new way to send links to purgatory, where I know they might be in the vanishingly unlikely situation that I have time and inclination to hunt for them.

Love the feint hint of menace in all the posts

The next Product for the People meetup is going to be in central Birmingham on Friday 20th June - tickets will be released Wednesday afternoon and will likely go fast if anything like previous editions. The usual set-up - a couple of speakers to get things going then an afternoon of unconferencing.

This is a really helpful primer from @hannahritchie.bsky.social on the environmental impact of ChatGPT searches: www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/carbon-foo... Boiling water for a single cuppa takes ~30wH, so you get >10 ChatGPT searches-per-cuppa. I can live with that value/impact trade-off.

Stumbled on my copy of The Satori Lab’s (RIP) daily reflection questions card, so have put it up in my studio as a little reminder. Good prompts. /cc @benproctor.co.uk @reinikainen.bsky.social @jocarter.bsky.social

"In U-295 there is a cartoon, framed, depicting a dying Isolde on the stage and the whole audience in various stages of hysteria. I have wondered whether this is a dig at Hitler." Read the second letter here about a U-boat surrender, I promise it's worth the time: ve-vjday80.gov.uk/letter/john-...

Can anyone recommend a nice place around MediaCity in Salford to hang out with a laptop for a few hours next week? Coworking/cafe sort of place?

Maybe it’s like that time I stretched my leg out under the desk, inadvertently knocked a switch and took out network connectivity for the office over the road

We're up to nearly 200 letters contributed to the Letters to Loved Ones gallery on the VE and VJ Day website. I've had a moving afternoon publishing the latest batch, but somehow this one really transports me back to a spring day in 1945: ve-vjday80.gov.uk/letter/vera-...

I've made a site that lets you check whether the lifts are working at any station super quickly: lifts.matteason.co.uk Please share it with anyone you think would find it useful - I'm really keen to hear feedback and suggestions #accessibility

👋 Anyone got great examples of annual report / review for a public sector org? Accessible, no fluff and waffle, to the point. HTML not designed for print as vanity document? Bonus point if you have any evidence to back up design approach?

I lost a dear friend, a most generous soul. We've all lost a fine blogger, podcaster and community builder. perfectpath.co.uk/2025/04/16/n...

I did that thing where you have a brainwave and register a domain for it before stopping to think it through. But I have at least written a proposition for it now. What do you think? Is this barmy or worth developing? domaincustodian.org

Prototyping day today: I've got a client with a ramshackle site of PDFs, for which we're working on the traditional IA. But I'm also curious to see if a bit of AI trained on the PDFs could help users interact with the classic 'publication download page' (and help me write good summary text)

Busy busy at Beckenham Repair Cafe today. Over 50 repairs worked on, from milk frothers to Macbooks

A Lithuanian equivalent to “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” is nemokamas sūris tik pelėkautuose. It means “the only free cheese is in a mousetrap” * read on for more international cheese phrases (this thread may not turn out grate, but hopefully it will be gouda ‘nuff)…

I've been working on the site for the VE & VJ Day 80, and until recently it's been much like another design/build/publish project. I wasn't sure how Letters to Loved Ones would work but credit to the team at IWM and DCMS, it's really transported me to the 1940s: ve-vjday80.gov.uk/letterstolov...

Has anyone found a way to promote a survey with a prize draw, and prevent bots from completing it, without compromising accessibility too much? Some sort of human-only text question on the form which gives evidence of domain knowledge?

Trump declaring it a very historic day as he dismantles the Department of Education made me pine for Bartlet (as always): www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvb1...

I'm not a gamer but if I were, I would play PowerWash Simulator: store.steampowered.com/app/1290000/... /via scopeofwork

I'd pay good money for a news service that put all the stories of murder and abuse in a separate section rather than on the homepage.

200 for #Railway200 - a new thread! We're 200 days out from the 200th anniversary of the 1st passenger journey on the Stockton & Darlington Railway, on 27 September 1825. To mark it, we'll post a person a day from the Railway Work, Life & Death project's research.