Naomi Alderman spent a fantastic hour on the You and Yours programme yesterday, talking about her new idea (and trial of) a “Couch to 5k esque” plan to help get back in to reading, in the age of distraction. I highly recommend taking a look at Naomi’s great introductory post : First of all, this program, as I’m conceiving it today, is essentially intended for people who have…
Lead by thought
I came across an article from the Library of Congress where they asked attendees at a conference what their earliest memory of the internet is. I love this! I can’t be entirely sure it’s the earliest , but very, very early on I remember a friend helping me create a Hotmail account, and being utterly terrified for a few months that a huge bill was coming for my Mum. I had no concept of…
Finding a process that works for you should come before finding tools. Start with what you need. Tools come with their way of working. Understand the way it works, and what works for you , before thinking you’ve found the tool that will change your life. At least, that’s what I try and remember 😁
Week one of focusing on not being sucked-in to the internet as much has gone well. I’ve thought about writers and video authors that I respect, and either do - or want to - read everything they write. A short list that it takes a lot to get an entry on to. I have then added these, and only these, to Reeder which gives me a single, gorgeous space to keep up to date with the ideas and topics that…
6 Music produces the goods, again. Found this gem of a Mancunian album, with the track “Hitchhikers Guide to The Fallacy” being the one they played this morning 🎵 labrecords.bandcamp.com/album/poe…
Enjoying the look of Dave Winer’s new project rss.chat , a social network solely built around RSS and OPML. As simple as it needs to be. Dave talked about it for a few minutes on a podcast . I keep having thoughts around just how many things can be reduced to a “fancy outliner”…
Currently reading: The Year of Less by Cait Flanders 📚
I’ve taken a smug pride in not being algorithmically captured, my senses rendered useless scrolling TikTok, or Facebook. Scroll with no headphones on in a public place and I will be instantly enraged. But I think it’s time to finally admit the slight, or indeed large, projection going on here. I might not flick through influencers, but I refresh Hacker News and email habitually (in the literal…
Picked up Cory Doctorow’s new book on AI today. Cory’s books are always insta-reads for me.
Does anyone know if the new Siri will work on iPhones that don’t have Apple Intelligence? (I.e my trusty iPhone 14)
CodeSOD: Driven Development : Julien joined a team which bragged about their use of DDD. Everything they did followed DDD best practices, they said. The fact that they piled up all sorts of related buzzwords when talking about it should have been a red flag.
From the FT’s comments section : Someone once pointed out to me that the Whoop, Aura Ring, Apple Watch etc are the modern day equivalent of the Tamagotchi except that nowadays, we’re the annoying stupid thing we’re trying to keep alive.
Hidden vegan gem: cooked breakfast in Wetherspoons, £3.09 👀
Watched: Monsieur Spade S1E2, Episode 2 🍿 This is turning in to a great show. Noir-esque atmosphere and pace, calming and intriguing. Recommended (Channel 4 app)
. @help Any idea why this might be happing in Inkwell (web) please? It happens with all the feeds mentioned here: www.macsparky.com/rss-2/
For me, testing has two main purposes: To prove what I’ve just added works To make sure it still works when someone changes something in the future Okay, there’s definitely more benefits to testing than this - but these, for me, are fundamental. Mutation testing helps with the second one. If changes are made to the codebase, tests should fail. If they don’t, you likely have missing tests. I use…
Finished reading: Meltdown by Duncan Mavin 📚 A pretty exciting read - the story of Credit Suisse’s demise. Quite an obvious basket case in hindsight!
Sweltering day, with two more on the way I hear. We mostly hid from the heat, baked a loaf (not my best) and willed on Spurs to lose (not to be).
It’s slightly old news, but Apple is making video podcasts more of a thing within the Apple Podcasts apps. At least on mine, the homepage of the discovery tabs now shows video feeds in a very prominent position. Now, I personally see this as being late to the party. Yes, video podcast RSS feeds have always been available to use within Apple Podcasts (I have a few, mostly from TWiT ). But I’m old…
Watched: The Gold Season 1 🍿 Finally got around to it, after London Falling mentioned the Brinks-Mat job and piqued my interest! Superb show.
Picked up this gem for £1! Published in 1999. Sadly, so many of the links inside are dead. It’s fun finding the live ones. And classic descriptions such as this one 😂
I’ve just learnt of the “millennial pause”, a condition I apparently have inherited.
I read Keefe’s book on London’s underworld and the sad death of Zac Bettler last week on the plane to Crete. It was utterly gripping. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper…