Observations on what's around me and projects I'm working on.
The UK university clearing process brings together all the features you don't want in a software project. The software isn't used for 8 months of the year, then, on two specific days, thousands of people need it. And it has to work . Any bugs, performance problems, or downtime, and you may as well not bother. You can't try again next week. Clearing is a way to match up university applicants to…
Odd lighting, and a cool bit of lens flare at the bottom of the photo. I thought there would be a good gathering at the seafront in Brighton. It was way beyond that. The beach and Hove Lawns were full of picnickers, with eclipse glasses, cardboard boxes , cutlery holders, colanders. So many colanders. Forget the eclipse itself: it was a lovely gathering of people, offering glasses around to those…
Clearing out the family home, and there's a box of cigarette cards. One set is of "Britain's Endangered Wildlife", from sometime in the 1980s. It tells me that the Dormouse isn't a mouse: Dormouse Dormouse facts Rather than take all my facts from cigarette cards, I did check against the wonderful OneZoom.org tree of life explorer and it's true: Both rodents, but the dormouse is on the squirrels…
It's an app that looks like a social media client, but is driven by RSS. The cute part is that it supports comments and posts. At least conceptually. Timeline view Profile view How they do the posting & commenting, I do not yet know. I presume it's a template for each kind of web hosting platform, linking to the right part of the website. Posting might be a "coming soon" kind of thing. I've not…
I like playing same-screen co-operative video games, and today I learned there's a phrase for that: "couch cooperative".
Saxy This is fine Pirates? Flags, so many flags
"Adolescent" instantly felt right for describing certain ideas from the tech/crypto world. Heard on: Are the tech billionaires taking over? , The Global Story , BBC Sounds / World Service, 14 July 2026.
Chef: Xavier Buendia Booklet used with primary school children Walk from Brighton station towards the sea, and on your left is a charity called The Community Kitchen . It’s what it sounds like: they have a space with equipment and kind people sharing their time and experience. They do lots of things, and last week I learned that one of those things is teaching primary school children to cook. With…
Artwork in Brighton
Cancellation on concurrent tasks is tricky to get right. I doubt I’ve ever succeeded. In the last few weeks I’ve re-learned that: cancellation (interruption) is a request, and you don’t know when it’ll land; and you need to defer cancellation around critical sections—which sounds dramatic, but “critical” refers to a code section you’d prefer not to stop mid-flow. This is in the context of Cats…
Looking down into a basement flat entrance, in Brighton.
I find myself forgetting I have a music streaming subscription, or end up using it to listen to the same things. This is my fault. The recommendations are good, and the depth of content is incredible. For me, though, it had become like an unused gym membership: you know it’s good for you, but you don’t use it. I’ve ditched that, and I’m trying curated albums. I’ve subscribed to Cantilever . It’s…
A heavy sadness when someone utterly brilliant dies. Inman Harvey was the coolest person at Sussex. He looked at things in a different way, and was super influential for me and many others. He carried all this gently, always relaxed, generous, and never assuming he was right. He just seemed up for the adventure of trying things out. * * * I have very few photos of my DPhil days at Sussex, late…
It is the Treat economy that just about keeps British high streets alive. Corner shops rely on what analysts call “the Treat Mission”, where Britons pop out for a little something for themselves. (It accounts for one in ten of all shopping trips.) — How the Treat conquered politics , The Economist , 28 May 2026. That sounds like a huge proportion of all shopping trips, but chasing this down it’s…