Recent content on Bill Glover
Just a photo dump this week. 
 Week in Pictures 


























 
 dry weather continues 
 
 


























 
 off to his first summer camp

 HTML Day London 2026 @ SET Social 
 
 
 Yesterday I attended HTML Day London 2026 . I set myself the challenge of working entirely offline for the event. Other than offline documentation for HTML and CSS I was on my own. Unfortunately, I was unable to stay to the end to see what everyone else had created but here is what I managed: /html-day .
I returned to commuting last week. Oscar has been attending a science camp in town and this has meant jumping on the district line during rush hour. I do miss the commute. It was my chance to listen to podcasts, read a book, or just observe the world around me. The commute served as a welcome separation between activities at home, and life at work. For many, the commute is associated with rushing…
For many years I used to be able to say that I’d never unexpectedly bumped into anyone I knew. That ended when I sat down in an internet cafe (showing my age I know) in New Zealand and the person next to me lived on same floor as me in our student digs. Weeks later, this time back in London, and I bumped into a school mate leaving Hammersmith Station. Then things returned to normal. There…
It took me most of the week to wash the camping gear. I’ve noticed that most people seem to clean their camping gear in-situ before backing up. I’ve even seen the odd portable vacuum cleaner being wheeled out. But I tend to favour unpacking everything when we get home, setting the tents up in the garden to clean them out, washing them and then setting them up again to dry. In amongst…
I was lucky to be able to get tickets to EMF Camp 2026. Despite being larger than ever, it felt like tickets were harder to get hold of this year. Oscar and I went in 2024 but this time we went as a family and Alicia and Ethan joined us. We loved the event, and the people we met, and in our own ways we all came away inspired. Our son’s nursery sent home a painted dishcloth inspired by the…

 Transit at The Cockpit 
 
 
 Last night I went to see Transit at The Cockpit in London . It was excellent. And, on the off chance you read this before it finishes, you should go and see it. 
 
 “Transit is an award-winning, genre-bending investigation of identity, belonging and migration. Told through a series of vignettes utilising physical theatre, multilingual…
This week is the first full week of summer holidays for Oscar. He hasn’t quite been able to ditch school with early morning swim training each day. This has been a good excuse for us to get up and get out of the house. 
 The weather has been baking hot during the day and has made concentrating on anything creative a little difficult. I’ve been prioritising work that is more mundane…
A photo only update this week. Life events (and hot weather) took over and I’m behind on blogging. I’ll be back on track soon. 
 Week in Pictures 


























 
 box of bricks - the boundless possibility that comes from opening a box of bricks

 EMFCamp Tildagon Badge - retrofitted with the 2026 face plate 
 
 
 So you’re back home from EMF and you want to get your badge on the home Wi-Fi. Typing out your WiFi credentials using the badge interface is tricky. You might be able to manage for one badge, but with multiple badges you’re going to want a better way to do this. There is documentation for how to…

 
 Last Saturday Alicia and I went to see Songs of the Bulbul at Sadler’s Wells East . Everything about the performance was incredible. The simple stage design was visually stunning without distracting from the beautiful performance by Aakash Odedra . 
 This was our first visit to Sadler’s Wells East and, despite it being the other side of town we know we’ll be back.…
The web does not need a consistent look and feel. It never has and it never will. This quote from Adam sums it up. 
 
 “I’d rather someone make a ‘shitty’ web page for their thing than have a machine pump out a soulless plastic one” 
 – Adam , the builder of many wonderful web pages, including omg.lol 
 
 If you want to tell the world about…
I’m reminded that dropping a tool or technology into an organisation without considering the implications on people is one of the reasons technology implementations fail to deliver their promised value. This is true of a software upgrade, it’s true of a new operational dashboard, and it is very true of newfangled tools built around non-deterministic models. These new tools have the…

 1,900 years ago - Pyramid of the Sun, Teotihuacan, Mexico 2014-01 
 
 
 Back in 2014 a friend of mine got married in Mexico City. As many of us had flown in and were visiting Mexico for the first time, they organise a trip out to see the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan . This photo is darker than many of others pictures I took at the time. I don’t remember the stone being…
I’ve been enjoying Alicia ’s continued curiosity and willingness to explore questions that many of us miss. Her recent post got me thinking. 
 What does it mean to have a healthy mind? 
 
 “But I don’t think a healthy mind is one that feels happy all the time. A healthy mind is one that can feel everything. 
 Joy. Grief. Wonder. Disappointment. Love. Loneliness.…
It was nice to have Alicia back this week. The combination of rising temperatures and adjusting to a new family routine meant we had our fair share of grumpy evenings at home. I think the short tempers and exhaustion were fairly evenly distributed across the family. The hot nights saw people sleeping all over the house in search of cooler temperatures or a breeze. 
 I made some progress on a…

 A walk along the pier - Howth, Ireland, 2007-04 
 
 
 Alicia and I visited Dublin back in 2007. Confident that, after many years of visiting as a child, I knew my way around the city, I set off confidently on a tour of the town centre. It was over 40 minutes before I realised (or admitted) that I’d been walking in the wrong direction all alone. I didn’t know Dublin at…
I aim to improve my Chinese reading through regular practice. This video represents a point on that journey. 
 Text: Friend’s Tea - Chapter 8 (我要回家了) 
 Source: Du Chinese 
 Level: Elementary 
 
 
 

Alicia was in China this week and it gave me a chance to spend a lot more time with the boys. The week was exhausting but it was a real delight to have so much time with them. From meals in the garden, to watching the late one evening, to finding ourselves asleep on the floor after a chaotic Saturday. We had fun. 
 Oscar spent time working on his narrative for a class ‘show and…
I aim to improve my Chinese reading through regular practice. This video represents a point on that journey. 
 Text: Friend’s Tea - Chapter 7 (新的开始) 
 Source: Du Chinese 
 Level: Elementary 
 
 
 


 A splash of colour - Dumbo, New York, USA, 2014-07 
 
 
 The first time I visited New York I really didn’t enjoy it. I arrived with my sister on the way back from New Zealand. We were broke and exhausted. I’ve since been back a couple of times and enjoyed it slightly more. Whilst I have no plans to visit in the near future, I do have some fond memories of wandering…
I aim to improve my Chinese reading through regular practice. This video represents a point on that journey. 
 Text: Friend’s Tea - Chapter 6 (新朋友大红) 
 Source: Du Chinese 
 Level: Elementary 
 
 
 

I aim to improve my Chinese reading through regular practice. This video represents a point on that journey. 
 Text: Friend’s Tea - Chapter 5 (小绿不高兴) 
 Source: Du Chinese 
 Level: Elementary 
 
 
 

Summary 
 This week has been dominated by one theme my determination to audit my own tax records and understand why I received a letter from HMRC. I’m hoping that by the end of this, I’ll have resolved any omissions in my tax returns but also I’ll have a greater understanding of my personal tax situation. I don’t think I fully understood how acquisitions can mask…

 first meal in China - Hou Hai Lake 后海, Beijing, 2006-12 
 
 
 This is the first meal I remember eating in China. We enjoyed this clay-pot chicken dish in a restaurant just off Hou Hai Lake in Beijing back in 2006. The area has since been through several regeneration initiatives and I don’t believe the restaurant survived the second of these. I struggled with chopsticks, I…
I aim to improve my Chinese reading through regular practice. This video represents a point on that journey. 
 Text: Friend’s Tea - Chapter 4 (明明和希希) 
 Source: Du Chinese 
 Level: Elementary 
 
 
 


 Church of the Good Shepherd, Lake Tekapo, New Zealand - 2003 
 
 
 In the summer of 2003 I flew out to Sydney to meet my sister who was living there at the time. We spent a couple of weeks travelling around New Zealand. It was winter there and we ended up spending time with friends, but also travelling around both North and South island.

 The view from my window - The first photo with my digital camera May 2023, Chapel Green Lane, Bristol 
 
 
 When discussing first digital cameras, Rob sent me a link to his first digital photo . I had a look back and this was mine. I clearly recognised the significance of this photo because buried in the metadata of the image was the caption you see above. Taken: 2003-05-27 @…

 imperfection - I accidentally jogged the ISO dial forcing the camera to compensate by slowing down the exposure. Imperfection at its best. 
 
 
 Go and read Michelle’s piece on Leaving the imperfections in. . Embracing imperfection, or at least not letting the fear of imperfection hold me back has been a struggle. Whether it is language learning, photography, or a technical…
We started this week with Alicia in Amsterdam, Ethan in particular was not too pleased. We haven’t quite decided what to do over the summer, but I suspect he’s gonna face at least a week without Alicia at home. I’m going to have to up my game if I’m going to inherit favourite parent status before then. 
 Oscar’s school art project gave us an opportunity to…

 Grass Storm - 2012 
 
 
 Back in 2012 we stayed in a cottage down near Ringstead on the South coast of England. The walk from the cottage to the beach took us along the edge of a working farm. One afternoon I turned and looked back, the fields were a cloud of dust kicked up by a tractor raking dried grass. The hay fever sufferer in me winces at the sight of this image but I have…
We couldn’t have asked for a better start to the half term week. We spent the weekend camping with friends just outside London. I’m a lightweight camper, and I’m incredibly stubborn in insisting that we have to be able to carry everything we bring, no car. Packing was fun. Oscar and I have been camping several times before but this was the first time we went as a family. It was…
I aim to improve my Chinese reading through regular practice. This video represents a point on that journey. 
 Text: Friend’s Tea - Chapter 3 (山，在身后了) 
 Source: Du Chinese 
 Level: Elementary 
 
 
 


 The Band, Bristol - 2003 
 
 
 Today’s throwback Thursday takes me back to life in my second year at Bristol, we’d moved out of student halls into a shared flat. We used to use the roof in lieu of a garden. My housemate Pedro and his friend Julius were starting a band and in need of a cover photo for their first album. As the proud owner of a digital camera, I took…
I’ve been asked to talk about AI more often than I’d like. I usually like to speak from a place of personal experience. Being able to relate a challenge to my own experience in a similar context is one of the things that I feel I do really well. But AI is too new, the restrictions on use of AI in a work context are a barrier, and personal reactions to AI are often raw and often…
A friend recently asked me about photography. 
 
 “When you go out with your camera… has there ever been a moment that stayed with you more than the photograph itself? Something you saw or felt that couldn’t really be captured, but remained with you anyway?” 
 
 Thinking about this question got me wondering about what it is that I enjoy about photography. What follows…

 The Drakensberg Mountains, South Africa - 2000 
 
 
 Back in 2000 I took a trip to South Africa with some school friends. We carried everything we needed on our backs and left technology behind. No watches, no music, no phones. I took a film camera with me. I remember how it took several days for us to forget all sense of artificial rhythm and embrace the world around us. We…

 a mark made on film, a moment in time, unique 
 
 
 We’ve spent a lot of time trying to perfect the art of replication. We capture and reproduce ever increasing bitrates, colour depth, frame rates. We grade our colours and match them to paper in an effort to faithfully reproduce an original.
I used to travel every week for work. It was never a struggle to pack, there was always a bag read; enough clothes, a laptop, a book, and a myriad of charging cables. Monday morning would arrive and I’d grab the bag and leave for the station. This week was the opposite. I was in Edinburgh for a couple of days and had no idea what to pack. I left home, only to realise I’d left my card…
I aim to improve my Chinese reading through regular practice. This video represents a point on that journey. 
 Text: Friend’s Tea - Chapter 2 (他们是谁) 
 Source: Du Chinese 
 Level: Elementary 
 
 
 

2026 W19 
 Most countries have the 1st May as a national holiday. For some reason we push the holiday to the first Monday of the month. We kicked off the short week by going to see Oscar perform at the Seeds of Change concert in County Hall in London. It was an absolute delight to watch him perform and we were really lucky to have the extended family join us for the event.
I aim to improve my Chinese reading through regular practice. This video represents a point on that journey. 
 Text: Friend’s Tea - Chapter 1 (小绿的家) 
 Source: Du Chinese 
 Level: Elementary 
 
 
 

I celebrated my birthday this week. My birthday itself was Zoom heavy but we did get to enjoy a meal together as a family. Overall the week has been gloriously sunny, not too hot and that’s made it really hard not to be generally positive. Now that we’ve started to spend more time in the garden it is painfully obvious that our lawn needs a lot of work. The ground is harsh, weeds are…
In a bit of a change this week, I ended up travelling into town three times. A combination of work and social events brought back memories of the daily commute, life in the city. If I’m honest, I do occasionally miss it. As I left Bank station on Thursday evening there was an audible din from the surrounding pubs as people flocked to the streets to enjoy the last few hours of sunshine.
Nanjing & Yangzhou 
 This was my first trip to Nanjing and Yangzhou. My wife was working in Nanjing for a couple of days and we thought it would be a good chance to visit somewhere new. The bulk of my photos this trip focus on the boys and attempt to capture how their relationship is developing and how they experience China. Presented here are a few photos where I turned the camera away from…

 
 
 Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life , The Wombats 🎧 
 Joy Next Door , The Maine 🎧 
 If That Makes Sense , Spacey Jane 🎧 
 Transatlanticism , Death Cab for Cutie 🎧 
 Bittersweet 16, Mckenna Grace 🎧 
 Plans , Death Cab for Cutie 🎧 
 Beyond Mediocrity , 9m88 🎧 
 Radio , 9m88 🎧 
 The Suburbs , Arcade Fire 🎧 
 
 Spot the point at which…
I’m really glad I had the camera on me this week. It was a difficult week. Oscar was off school, Alicia was in Bologna for a few days. Difficult news at work meant that things all felt a bit much. Sleep suffered. 
 I’m glad I had the camera because, looking back over the week, it was filled with happy moments. Oscar and I have really enjoyed playing Monopoly Deal over coffee before…
After a recent incident involving a missing delivery, Amazon sent me an email asking for help in following up with the courier company. I replied only to receive the following response moments later. 
 
 We received your email to Amazon Customer Service. For security reasons, we can only process emails from addresses that meet certain email security standards. This helps protect all our…
My wife recorded several hours of audio during the Bologna Book Fair this week. We’d agreed that she’d send me the audio each evening and I’d run it through local transcription to give her an editable text version of the conversations. 
 When she tried to send me the files, she was presented with the following error.…
Jet-lag is bad enough but jet-lag with children is a nightmare. Poor Ethan has been so confused over the last couple of days. He ignored a suggestion to sleep as it wasn’t dark outside, then we found him fast asleep on the sofa still in his shoes and jacket. I carried him up to bed and just left him to sleep. Around 4am this morning he got up and, realising he was dressed already, put his…