Talk about trusted teams done!!! Yay. Seemed to go well. Now hearing about Mob Programming from @woodyzuill.bsky.social. @swardley.bsky.social was ace this morning, extending his normal talk into AI, culture, sovereignty and much more. @randysilver.outofowls.com as fab as ever. #agilecam

Turned a mindmap that was a 45 minute talk into slides today. I know it was 45 mins, because I timed it. Somehow it’s now looking scarily much much longer.

Just connected a microphone to a computer for the first time since "Incident of the Month". Be afraid. Lightly afraid.

Too much driving today, starting at seven bloody am, after a 5:30 alarm. Six hours all told, I think. :( Tomorrow will hopefully involve sitting still or being on buses where someone else is doing the hard work.

So, I am going to be talking about some things that happened, and what I thought about them, in very public on 1st October. Perhaps you’d like to come and hear it? agilecambridge.net/programme/tr...

Chapter one of the poorly-timed side project “let’s completely rebuild the kitchen and dining room, just as I get super-ill, V has a restructure at work, and our daughter moves home from university” is looking largely complete. This is a huge relief.

Think I may just possibly have a working (new) kitchen. (Apparently the next step involves using an app to update the firmware on the oven and hob and dishwasher. Welcome to 2025.)

this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like

The fact that the thing we're calling artificial intelligence *can't do math* and yet we're jamming it into programs that successfully *have done math* for decades, then warning people against using the AI to do math, seems like an excellent summary of where we are.

So the unexpected Edinburgh Moment this year...was a full faceplant just off Cowgate yesterday. 4h in Minor Injuries, getting worrying looks from others. Thankfully nothing is badly broken, no stitches, still (somehow) have my two top front teeth. But I do now look like a Simpsons take on Hitler.

Really shouldn't be staying up until midnight, unplanned. Particularly after this week. Thanks a bloody bunch, Taylor.

Happy 35th birthday to Raise by Bocca Juniors, released on this day in 1990 according to @whatafuckingrecord.bsky.social. What a tune! What a video!

Sending in your biog at last is *nearly* the same as having finished the conference talk, yes?

So that's it. Bank accounts fully closed and locked to me, two months or so after the Companies House Records got updated. I think *that* is the final stage in the anticlimactic fading out of Leaning Forward Ltd. Fully goodbye, my old company. (sniff)

Most of the internet used to be like this. This is actually the default, it took companies enclosing the internet and adding weird, soul-killing incentives to make people behave the way they do now. In a way, there is truly nothing special about Wikipedia except that it survived longer.

If you’d like to pretend you were at the Town and Country Club on 25th March 1988 and about to watch Cardiacs, a premiere of that show is about to be shown on YouTube. Safety curtain is about to lift, I think. youtu.be/KidL8T-Wzy8?...

Not for the first time I am begging angry people to put the phone down, walk through actual streets, go to actual pubs, stand on the touch line at local sports clubs, browse Saturday markets, chat with ramblers on footpaths and rediscover beauty & contentedness.

The single most important truth in public finance elegantly stated.

They have missed out his first name, surely?

When you forget to put away the fancy bike before the building work started. Liking the dusted/undusted contrast in the second pic.

Because clearly nothing of economic value emerges from play.

Too much extroverting. Way too much. Did it well, but… Just want to crawl into a hole.

There are a lot of details in this that make you go “Crikey”:

Paddington to Cardiff train, once more.

So all this happened today.

After 2.5h of watching this problem happen realtime in Norwich, how do you get people to open the DOOR ON THE LEFT FIRST?

Two genuine days of "actually not remotely working...and not feeling guilty about it either" beckon.

Yep; I think people are underestimating the extent to which AI might improve the productivity of people who create problems as well as people who solve them.

"Hands weaving magnetic-core memory, IBM" Ansel Adams, 1956

There are nights when you really want to crack those two annoying bars of that Frank Bridge piano piece. And there are others where you just want to do ambient noodles that turn into smashing the bejeezus out of Video Killed The Radio Star.

Shame I need to run across the track and add the missing apostrophe.

Back in ‘97, I went to my first BBC Arts Summer Party here. And I was allowed to bring a partner. We literally felt like we had stepped into another world. But somehow also a world where everyone else viewed this as just being quite vanilla and the sort of thing one did every day.

Coming back to “I <3 you” by Marina (formerly with Diamonds) after a fortnight off, and so so glad I did. open.spotify.com/track/7DNTmE...

I’m petrified about today’s science news. Genetically modifying crabs to have cheetah genes? This could go sideways fast.

Did a whole working week this week. Just. Four months I’ve been recovering. And it’s been like clawing my way uphill. But I am recovering.

Am going to be in Cardiff on the night of the 22nd. Big thing to do the following day, but if old friends nearby are around for mediumjinks please let me know.

Hello. We are looking for a Senior PM for a year FTC to try and get some AI stuff off the ground. We’ve got a pretty good “test and learn” approach, a pretty mature Product culture (if I say so myself), and want to get things out there. careers.which.co.uk/jobs/senior-...

Just remembered that, back in the early 2000s, fear of DVD piracy was so rife that BAFTA sent me a Cinea DRM-filled DVD player registered to just me, so I could view new films and vote for them. Only the costs of producing the individual disks was so high I was only ever sent about 8 films for it.

Brilliant. H/t @lloydshepherd.com for the spot

See also “hiring the right sort of people”.

Very much this. Replies are good too, especially if you are a born browser/tab-opener.

Still one of the greatest guitar solos. #thesound

Took the Workshop System into the office today, for folks to play around with during the drinks after our all-hands. Realised 2 things: - I have more implicit knowledge about modular synths than I realised - two pairs of headphones wasn’t enough. But bravo to those who gamely showed an interest

So much this. I should also add, it allowed me to download comforting animations to an iPad (at 7am) from a bus stop outside BEIS HQ, that were a key bit of keeping my daughter cheery after some bloody awful spine surgery, when there was no other alternative I could find near the hospital.

Good lord.

Translation. "We published an entirely fake article".

Got home today, a bit knackered, only to find the builder needed me to move most of the wine out of the cellar ready for the electrician and plumber tomorrow. 😬 This is…some of it. I didn’t do it all, but hope it’s enough. 🤞

"i asked grok" "i asked chagpt" yeah well I asked a rare books librarian and they found things I didn’t even know I was looking for, while answering questions about provenance