In tribute to Mark Longair: www.mysociety.org/2026/01/15/a...

Very saddened by the passing of Mark Longair. A decent, intelligent, thoughtful and hard-working force for a better civil society, and practical maker of tools to help that happen. And a lovely man. He'll be very missed.

Wikipedia photos: below the surface of something you see every day lurk some fascinating issues. It's where the ideology of "but if this is a public fact/figure, then we are entitled to a picture" bumps hard into "but images are artworks/scarce assets: intellectual property with a tangible value".

"I've become *that* guy". The court of Poe is in session.

Fire was approx here maps.app.goo.gl/Mruwv9YVr7JY... Wouldn’t plan to be using the curvy bit of the Windrush line tomorrow morning.

Genuine loathing for Onestream broadband. I've quit, but the calls and messages are constant: please please have us back. And yet, if you want to speak to them about anything else... *this* is *why* you get dumped as a service provider, lads

What we in Britain call The Edmonds Trajectory

Bars (not even fancy ones) in London that want a tip on the card machine [for over-the-bar service]? When did that wild idea begin?

Fascinating how the ubiquitous reliance on LLMs has become the third scissor issue sawing its way through friend and industry groups

Finally decided to track down where all the moths were coming from. Oh.

WE NEED THE BEEF SATNAV

You know when someone quote tweets something and it says [blocked] and you wonder what the beef is? Well there's enough stuff in the 'view source' to work it out and I just coded a shit bookmarklet to jump to that post, simply coz I SO wanted to know what the beef was. I will never publish this.

Feels very smol bean government to brief about how everything gets in your way and not be able to say "Every department and minister off the CSAM website by 5pm".

lie back, look up

is it going to rain forever?

An impossible picture. Some will say this isn't a 'real' photo at all. That's because there's no physical way to see this view in real life. It is an artifice. (But all photography is artifice, really.)

It is genital mutilation of babies. There is no moral argument to be made for it. Safety measures?? Training??? It needs to be banned. But it won't. Nor will it even be discussed.

Is anyone in my network pretty good at router configuration? tl;dr, one of my New Year admin jobs is to see if I can stop renting a router and use one of the many in the cupboard. Firmware fuckery and other issues are making this very much less than trivial.

...and favourite 2025 photos part two: paulclarke.com/photography/...

My favourite 2025 photos: part one paulclarke.com/photography/...

Emboldened by my OneLogin experiences, I have now tried doing CH stuff online. My god. How many years of transaction experience, and CH are this shoddy? It's a catalogue of design disasters.

Night owls: it's New Year's Eve, which means it's part 2 of my year in pictures longer write-up paulclarke.com/photography/...

I need bright ideas for managing a very seasonal business.

I now seem to have a OneLogin and a Gov Uk ID check app. What's that about then?

15 minutes into Brassed Off. I'm toast. Wet toast. Never seen it before.

Quite enjoying that ludicrous roaster being widely called out. No doubt straight back to his sensationalist "war reporting" with little substantiation and zero sources. Strong whiff of that mental Twitter guy who pretended to be ex FCO. +++BREAKING+++, oh and RS Archer, too

Anyone here want two tickets to this tonight at 7pm?! Good seats but we're ill and can't go.... www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/calendar/a-b...

My top festive snack was Yorkshire pudding filled with Polish herring. Take that, fusion-phobes!

probly had enough cheese now

I have done things with cabbages you simply would not believe

A quiet Christmas morning read with your coffee, now with fixed typos; thank you @addey.com et al

The year in photos: Part One paulclarke.com/photography/...

Matthew is brilliant

2025 Top Ten. No.1 – After the Arrows. I've taken all the 'usual' pictures of this incredible display team. But this summer, I found something completely different.

I'd missed this piece from @edent.tel on image manipulation. He quotes some excellent references! shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/04...

No, WeTransfer, our recollections differ (also, wrapped-up year summaries for a file transfer service? OUT!)

Such a small but lovely Christmas thing is the massive Big Yellow Self Storage building near the Hammersmith Flyover turning off the S on either side so it now reads ELF STORAGE.

If you can't even win approval for this thesis on *Bluesky*, then I'd say this is, er, not going to fly very well

I ended up at one of their smaller backroom 'prosperity' services once (don't ask). A young Brazilian man shouted at a dozen older black women, exhorting them to empty their purses to achieve the Lord's will. It was an awful scene.

Through a moving train window, but what a country, what a glorious country

2025 Top Ten. No.2 – May Morning. 5am start, a little early mist burnt off by the rising sun, and the Belles of London City Morris having a great time with their horse, Betley

I've just noticed that Tony Hart and William Hanson have uncannily similar voices

The ancient game of ill-fitting public procurement "we glued a series of individually-sensible concepts together, and built a monster" playing out in the cafes of Hampstead Heath

These are my people

New blog post: Why do people leave comments on OpenBenches? https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/12/why-do-people-leave-comments-on-openbenches/ I'm still a believer in the promise of Web 2.0. The idea that giving people a curated space to chat produces tiny sparks of magic. My wife Liz and I have …

‘You are a serious political commentator’ Sophie repeats her affirmations as she peels back the film. The family squeeze up on the sofa, Sophie mutters about the black children in the choir for the king. She always was the odd child, but they know she’s got a job to do. They wait for the ping.

For those of you who don’t know @jonnelledge.bsky.social was the little boy who sang “walking in the air” for the classic 1982 film “The Snowman.” He was recently on Times Radio to promote a book and was convinced to sing it again. See below for a photo of this very special seasonal performance.

2025 Top Ten. No.3 – Dogman.

2025 Top Ten. No.6 – Feria. An unofficial flamenco dance party on the hot flagstones behind Malaga Cathedral, August.