I don’t know why, but when I start a new blog, there’s a tendency for posts to get longer and more complicated over time. It could be a confidence thing, it could be that I just don’t know when to shut up, but it is becoming a problem. The cycle repeats I have had many blogs over the years. Blogging has been part of my life since the late 90s and early 2000s, although back then we didn’t call them…
As big tech continues its march towards owning nothing and being miserable, I keep hearing that the Gen-Z youngsters who will eventually take our place are rebelling against this. Point & shoot cameras; MP3 players, wired headphones and paper notebooks are all the rage. Just today, an article on the BBC News website goes into more detail. Underpinning a fondness for more basic tech is…
It feels like such a long time ago that we could count on exponential improvements in computing power. The leaps between one generation of consoles in the early days was massive, just as it was between graphics cards in the PC space. However, it is becoming clear that those days are long gone. The computer hardware industry has been ransacked by Grand Theft Autocomplete (AI), collusion by DRAM…
Inspired by a video by Sarah Davis Baker talking about how the internet used to be a place I had an idea. What would happen if I put the internet back in its place? I’m not shy about the fact that my internet use is a little higher than I would like, but curing it sounds like an interesting challenge. The idea The basic idea behind this is that back in the dial-up days, the internet lived…
Whilst I’ve written about my fondness for physical media already, the recent announcement by Sony that it was ending the production of physical PlayStation games from 2028 lit a fire up the internet’s metaphorical rear-end and I think I need to talk about it again. This announcement from Sony coincided with the news that they were removing around 500 movies from the collections of…
One thing that often gets missed in debates around the internet, particularly now that governments are locking everything away behind an age-verification wall is how our relationship to the internet has changed. In the early days, our computers were relatively benign. They didn’t know anything about us besides what we chose to share. Even though most people were running some form of Windows back…
In an attempt to address the harms caused by algorithmic social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, governments around the world are scrambling to put barriers up to stop youngsters from being led astray, instead of, you know, regulating the companies peddling these harms. What seems laudable on the surface, the idea behind age gating certain parts of the internet is flawed for a number of…
Back in 2006 there was a movie starring Adam Sandler, Kate Beckinsale and Christopher Walken called Click . It may have been dismissed as a typically shallow Adam Sandler movie, but there was a kernel of depth to it. On fast forward Have you ever arrived at work remembering nothing of how you got there? If you are still young you may not have had this happen to you yet, but after a decade or two…
After a flurry of activity on this blog, there has been a couple of things in my world that have sent my words packing. It feels like a long time since I have blogged, although it has only been a few days. The seeds of partially formed ideas scattered to the four winds. Sometimes it is best to wait for things to happen, for ideas to form, instead of trying to force words onto the page that you…
As I’ve got older, I’ve become acutely aware of how quickly the sands of time are running out. I started my gaming journey with a Sinclair Spectrum +2, way back in the mid-80s, but games have been a fairly constant part of my life. Lately something has shifted. Fun, not a second job... Gaming in the mid 2020s is pretty bleak. The push towards derivative ‘live services’ that want to occupy all of…
Ever on the lookout for what is good in the small web, I wanted to bring your attention to something that has been quite popular on Mastodon of late. A beautiful essay by Terry Godier. The internet you grew up on isn’t dying. A commercial veneer glued on top of it is. The Boring Internet by Terry Godier The second one is a blog about being wrong about the Fediverse, by Matt Duggan. I never…
I have referenced it in passing a couple of times now, but a few years ago when the Minimalism documentary blew up on Netflix, the whole thing made a lot of sense to me. Back in 2017 I immediately set about trading in everything I could. Life at the time was incredibly and unusually complicated, so simplifying everything seemed like the solution I was looking for. Getting it wrong The thing about…
My Mastodon chum Chris recently laid down a challenge to list some bands that we love based on where we live . Now, coming from rainy South Wales, there are slim pickings to be had in the metal department, but a smorgasbord of guitar pop/rock bands. So, let’s get cracking. Cool Cymru During the 1990s and 2000s a movement began that came to be known as Cool Cymru. There was a wave of new bands…
In my previous post I challenged you to come up with ten albums that you think would see you out. Ten CDs (or vinyl) that you have either always listened to, or you think will stay with you for the rest of your days. A collection you would own instead of renting forever. It is only fair that I try the same exercise myself. The trouble is, I already have the CDs because I've been re-acquiring them…
Back in the early 90s I bought Pearl Jam’s ‘Vs’ on CD. It was a great album that I’ve listened to regularly ever since. I know subscriptions for all of our cultural artefacts are the in thing in the mid 2020s, but have we stopped to think about what that is going to mean as we reach old age? Nothing to show for it On the surface, £10 or $10 per month seems harmless enough, especially when access…
I first started tinkering with linux back when Ubuntu 6.04 was released. April 2006 was my first hint that things were not so good in Windows land, so I started looking for the exits. Unfortunately, as someone who has always bought Nvidia cards, those cards were stacked against me and I never managed to make Ubuntu stick. Thankfully, it is now 2026 and my word things have changed. Kubuntu 26.04…
Just a quick post to share a couple of recent small-web discoveries you may be interested in. The first one is another blogroll -- https://blogroll.org This one is apparently sponsored by the good folks behind Micro.blog , where the Reed & Pickup is hosted. It looks very slick and I should see if I can get the R&P listed on there at some point. Music In a world where many of us are using different…
In an attempt to address the harms caused by algorithmic social media platforms like Facebook, governments around the world are scrambling to put barriers up to stop youngsters from being led astray, instead of, you know, regulating the companies peddling these harms. What seems laudable on the surface, the idea behind age gating certain parts of the internet is flawed for a number of reasons,…
Whilst I was browsing the Kagi Small Web, which has become a bit of an escape of late, I came across a blog post which got me thinking. It talked about sending emails to each other , out of the blue, like we did in the old days. Where did we go wrong? The post sums the current state of affairs pretty well. If I open my email inbox right now, I see two things. The first is my abject failure to…
I’m a little ashamed to admit I’ve thoroughly slept on The Pineapple Thief. I’m a sucker for music which sits at the proggy end of the spectrum, but I also think Gavin Harrison is one of the greatest drummers on the scene right now. Harrison joined The Pineapple Thief in 2017, so I should have been all over them. I’m not sure what happened, but I’m here now. PT It seems like a strange coincidence…
It is far too easy to contribute to the noise and the anger in the world. It certainly pleases the algorithms, but it doesn’t please me . I suspect you’re not much of a fan of it, either. I’ve been thinking about how I want to approach this blog from now on and, I’m going to focus on writing about the things that I find fascinating, or exciting. By doing this I hope it’ll force me to look for the…
Before big tech commandeered the internet from the people and pushed us to the margins, we had our own social network of sorts. Not an algorithm, or a predatory data sponge to follow us around, but a simple hyperlink to another human’s homepage. Rebuilding This morning I had a feeling . A feeling of excitement as the building blocks of a new World Wide Web was forming. This isn’t another…
If you have been following along at home, lately I’ve been prattling on about the 90s internet for the past couple of posts, railing against the constant enshittification of the internet and the mind-boggling greed of some of the biggest companies in the world right now. April Fools Day is one of those days where you can never quite trust what you see on the internet, which admittedly in…
Whilst it is true that the internet is still out there , if you know how to find it, one thing I neglected to talk about was how it felt to be a teenager on the early internet. Nostalgia continues to be a hell of a drug, but I don’t think it is right to ignore how much of an impression it left on me and my peers back then. Different times It is remarkable to think there was a time when most of us…
Capital realised there were limits to how much useless junk it could sell to people. But, what if they could get you to pay for things your brain would otherwise learn to do by itself? What if they could get people to outsource cognitive functions like ’reading a document’ or ‘making some art’ to the point where they can’t do them anymore, but can pay $20 a month to replace what they’ve lost? The…