I’d like to be able to claim this this is my 15 year old daughter’s first international independent travel experience 🇳🇴 ✈️ 🇬🇧 , but she’s already had a day out in Göteborg 🇸🇪 without asking.

Go Trump! [Not really]

There are two rational responses to AI-assisted programming: 1) Do the same work in (much) less time. Work less. Enjoy life. 2) Manage multiple agents concurrently, and work just as much as before. At an individual level many would prefer 1. At a population level we'll all be driven to option 2.

Workers have completed the main excavation of the Brenner Base Tunnel between Austria and Italy, set to become the world’s longest underground rail link. The project is a key part of the EU’s push to shift freight from road to rail, cutting pollution and boosting European trade.

A short tale illustrating the need for sovereign European AI: Claude: label. isHidden = true label.wantsLayer = true label. layer?. isHidden = true // Belt and suspenders Me: I'm British. Belt and *braces*. Suspenders are what ladies use to hold up their stockings.

No wonder the rear brakes on my touring bike were protesting for the last day or so of cycling from Oslo to Monaco. No brake lining left at all. Still, they got me down four mountain ranges and around 30000 metres of descent, with a heavily laden bike. 🚲

Too long since I made any truly whimsical software, so last night I added Apple Touch Bar support to the Mac version of the BeebEm BBC Micro Emulator to give important missing function keys f0-f9 in iconic red-orange, a copy key in somewhat less iconic olive-brown and, a Break key in desiato black.

🎵 Too many agents on the go... It's a nightmare scenario... 🎶

Very LinkedIn Agile Consultant: What really matters is continuous improvement. Tiny wins. Every sprint. 🚀 Dev: I used <favourite-coding-agent>. Code’s better now. Not perfect. Very LinkedIn Agile Consultant: NOT PERFECT?! AI SLOP!!

Good numbers today! 25 km/h over 130 km. 🚴‍♂️ In Norway, not Norfolk, too.

It's time I found a new contract, so... If you’re looking for a backend dev (C#/C++), need a hand with build/test/deployment automation, or getting to grips with TDD/agile ways of working, etc. then I might be of use. London, Cambridgeshire, or remote. www.linkedin.com/in/chrisoldw...

Perhaps the quietest place I have ever been. So peaceful.

Another step towards me giving up on the UK completely.

Day 5 of returning from a 3270 km cycle tour from Oslo 🇳🇴 to Monte Carlo 🇲🇨. Boat is by far the best way to arrive in Oslo. As I pass by home, it’s still one of the more beautiful places I’ve been on my travels. 🇳🇴 ❤️

When OpenAI say “Legitimate Ph.D. level expert” they don’t tell you that a Ph.D. is a pre-academic early career trainee research student, mostly figuring out how to do research, rather than being particularly expert in anything.

Day 4 of returning from a 3270 km cycle tour from Oslo 🇳🇴 to Monte Carlo 🇲🇨 “by train”. Cycled from the campsite the remaining 30 km to Kiel, in lieu of Deutschebahn’s comprehensive failure to operated the railway yesterday. Now on board the Color Line ferry from Kiel to Oslo.

Day 3 of returning from a 3270 km cycle tour from Oslo 🇳🇴 to Monte Carlo 🇲🇨 by train. IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOLLOWS Don’t on any account consider taking your bike on a train in Germany.

Day 2 of returning from a 3270 km cycle tour from Oslo 🇳🇴 to Monte Carlo 🇲🇨 by train: The crux – Germany 🇩🇪. This morning I start in Zurich🇨🇭. Let’s see how far north I can get having patched together a bizarre and somewhat fragile route with extremely scarce cycle reservation slots at short notice.

Having cycled from Oslo 🇳🇴 to Monte Carlo 🇲🇨, I now need to get home. Rather than disassemble the bike and fly from Nice 🇫🇷, I’ll take the train. Much like the cycling I don’t have a detailed plan, just a vision to head home, which means North.

Thing about time-series maximums is that they only ever go up.

After 40 days – of which 34 cycling –covering 3270 km and 28664 metres of ascent over four mountain ranges, with the equivalent of over 8 days continuous time on the bike, through 9 countries (🇳🇴🇸🇪🇩🇰🇩🇪🇱🇺🇫🇷🇨🇭🇮🇹🇲🇨) my grand European tour reaches its conclusion at the Grand Casino of Monte Carlo in Monaco.

I can’t quite believe I’ve just cycled over 3000 km from my home near Oslo 🇳🇴 to the Mediterranean in Italy 🇮🇹. 🚵‍♂️

My killer-app for the Apple Pencil is cycle route planning on an iPad. So much easier than with fingers only.

You can go from glaciers to palm trees pretty quickly in Switzerland on a bike. 🧊 🚵‍♂️ 🌴

I remember when it was two or more CHF🇨🇭to the GBP 🇬🇧. Now they’re close to parity.

Today was the literal high point of a cycling idea: To traverse the Alps, starting from home, near Oslo, Norway. I’m not done yet, but it’s more down than up from now on, after 2700 km and 24000 metres of cumulative elevation gain, as I cross Sustenpass at 2224 metres.

I know I’ve cycled a long way from Oslo, but I didn’t expect to run into these guys yet. 🚵‍♂️

Weirdly, I was in Switzerland for the Euro 1996 (men’s) final too, albeit at 2500 metres in a tent on a mountain listening on a shortwave radio. Well done England! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

can you just imagine a world in which we all finally got to live the truth that we already know in our bones, that the internet is a tool, and like all tools, it is of limited use and should have a place where you can set it down and never have to think about it until you pick it up again?

Reminder that a standard hotel cooling fan can develop sufficient static pressure to inflate your wet tent for drying purposes. Helps to have a bit more space though.

Explanation, please? Seen in Switzerland.

I’ in that part of Switzerland where the questions are in French, but the menu items are in German and the coffees are in Italian. Confused me: “Je voudrais une crêpe käse schinken, bitte, et un latte macchiato, sil vous plait.” Seems to work.

Reminder that hotels rooms are a rich source of material for inventions, such as this cycling shoe dryer.

Three weeks on the road 🚲 and eyesight has improved so much! I no longer need reading glasses. Working at a computer is bad for you in so many ways.

I’m really enjoying my cycle tour through Germany, but folks smoking everywhere is a huge blight, especially outside at restaurants. Even on the trail I’ve several times followed e-bike riders puffing away while cycling.

I’ve done enough business travel in my career that I have a “Yeah, whatever.” attitude to restaurant dining. The cure for this is two weeks of cycle touring eating noodles and other camping food.

Me: Cycles half way across Europe Strava: You’re slacking.

German friends, I’m missing a preposition here. “Free for cycles”, “free of cycles”, or something else entirely like “dismount and push”?

At 1200 km in to a European cycle tour, it’s time to take a rest day seriously. 🚲

8 trillion euro #StartupIdea: Germany, but with wireless broadband Internet.

A lot of cycle touring is Type II fun. But not all of it. #Baltic

The British use “Baltic” as a synonym for “freezing”, but it’s beautiful here. 🇩🇪

I generally don’t drink alcohol when I’m cycle touring, but now I will celebrate passing the 1000 km mark on this trip with 1000 cm³ of beer. 🚴‍♂️ 🇳🇴 🇸🇪 🇩🇰 🇩🇪

This is a twenty minute ferry crossing from Sweden 🇸🇪 to Denmark 🇩🇰, of which we’ve been on board for five.

I know the climate is warming, but Swedish wine? 🇸🇪 🍾

Turns out my killer application for Apple Pencil is daily route planning for a cycle tour on an iPad with Ride With GPS. Detailed map interaction with a finger is too clumsy. @ridewithgps.bsky.social

Incredible that so many think Europeans should be punished by hellish conditions for literally hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years before atmospheric CO2 can be reduced, when we have cheap and abundant solar PV generation from which correlates so well with the need for air-conditioning.

Time for us, as a continent, to drink from the poisoned chalice and admit that the Americans were right all along about air-conditioning.

My favourite thing about Sweden 🇸🇪 and Denmark 🇩🇰 is that I can speak Norwegian 🇳🇴 and they just think I’m a funny-sounding foreigner and they go along with the exchange in “Scandinavian“, rather than switching immediately to English 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿.

Bluesky's near-consensus that AI doesn't work and won't be a technology that has major knock-on effects on society is…not grounded in reality. No mater how loudly and repetitively people say it.