The personal blog of David James
Sometimes poetry speaks to you in ways you never imagined, even when it is facile, obvious and down-right pedestrian. This poem was written nine years ago. “AMERICA IS A GUN” by Brian Bilston England is a cup of tea. France, a wheel of ripened brie. Greece, a
Let me start by saying, whilst I have a keen eye for what is fair, I am not a lawyer. That said, I feel like I have a very good sense of what is 'legal' and also what is outside my area of expertise for knowing if it
I've often found that when dealing with both people and data, the meta-data is more useful, more revealing and more interesting than the data, or the person themselves. This is not an absolute law of people and data but when I orient my approach to thinking about
Me: "How many visits does your website get a month?" Them: "Around 100,000 visits." Me: "How are you measuring that, client site analytics or server side?" Them: "Client side... Google Analytics.. why does it matter?" Me: "40% of people have
Let me start by saying this is not a mean-spirited post, I have no ill feeling towards Meta nor the wonderful software developers than doubtless poured their hearts into the product. I have no skin the game, I am simply a user. This is an exercise in prognostication (the
Sometimes it's worth sharing something just because you appreciate it's beauty. The poem below was written by John Clare whilst committed to Northampton General Lunatic Asylum in 1841, prior to this Clare claimed "I was Byron and Shakespeare formerly." and he walked some 80
“The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed." - William Gibson, 2003 As I walked into WHSmiths and bought the 2023 copy last week, I realised I had been reading the magazine 'Wired', and its special edition 'The Wired world in
I recently bought the book 'Creativity - a short cheerful guide' by John Cleese when I saw it in a local bookshop. I've always had a great interest in the creative process, I remember reading 'How to be creative' by Hugh MacCleod (later renamed to
Imagine I told you that you can change your life for the better and in order to do that you have to not do something. That's right you have to not do something. It feels to me as if the pressure (the often subtle pressure, to do more
I began reading " The 22 immutable laws of marketing "[not an affiliate link] after I'd heard it recommended by both Sam Parr and Tim Ferriss , first and foremost I would recommend anyone interesting in marketing to give it a read, its super easy to digest with
For those unaware of the Monty Hall problem , go have a read, it is a fascinating mathematical style problem that centres around one key question: Should you change from your original choice based on new information? Admittedly I've over simplified the issue here, but the key is the
There are things we just don't talk about, soft delete is one of them. Across the globe, data is being 'deleted' when a user asks for it to be removed, but what is really happening? Soft delete. This is when the data is no longer accessible
It was a quiet Thursday afternoon, in fact I was on holiday in the UK, recharging the batteries before taking the kids to the swimming pool. In a moment of inspiration, I decided to write a blog post, create a brand new hacker news account (I'd always been
A review of one of my favourite podcasts, My First Million. What works, what could be improved and what's some of the secret sauce that makes it so enjoyable.
What happens when you turn off all of your Internet advertising? Apparently, nothing. This post explores how I came to the decision to turn off all ads, and what I found as a result.