Since I moved out of the city centre I often miss the opportunity to photograph the bustling streets and unique architecture of my adopted hometown. I often use mandatory office days as an excuse to take my camera and wander around on my lunch break. This particular day I left my camera at home. I reasoned it wasn't...

Fresh for 2026, "The Weight of Sound" from Crystal Lake is classic metalcore; breakneck galloping rhythm session, demonic vocals, technical guitar, touches of synth/effects. Somewhat of a tune in there. From its piano ballad intro, "Coma Wave" transitions through a gorgeous guitar solo that's almost "classic rock"...

Flow charts and diagrams are not as fun as interactive prototypes, but they’re much more important to get right Nic Chan As a technologist, a large part of my job is making flow charts and diagrams to help inform design decisions. And Nic's right — as much as I'd love to be coding whizzy prototypes all day, these...

19th January - 25th January We handed over a project to a client this week. The IT department confirmed receipt of the dashboard files and said the installation had gone live without a hitch. Amazing work! Congratulatory emails and back pats all round… until the client emailed saying everything was broken! Cue mad...

I'm always a sucker for German-language folk metal and Versengold do not disappoint. "Klabauterfrau" tells the jovial yet heartbreaking story of being in love with a Selkie. Or something. "KILLER QUEEN" by Skars reminds me of 1980s hair metal bluesy hard rock like Mötley Crüe or Junkyard. Derivative. The sped up...

Over the Christmas break, a time of consumption for the sake of commerce, I found myself thinking of all the brand spanking new tat destined for landfill after, at best, one use. I buy decent quality stuff secondhand whenever possible (which is getting easier every year) and keep it for a long time. It got me...

We had a guest speaker at work today; a very learned man with a very interesting talk. This is not about that per se. In the Q&A section at the end, he mentioned the overwhelmingly positive and utopian future we are destined to live in — all thanks to AI. AI will cure cancer and solve world hunger ushering in a...

On a photo walk to test out my new Minolta SRT303, I clocked this composition out of the corner of my eye. The 53mm Rokkor lens does not connect to the in built light meter so this whole walk was metred by eye. I don't think I did too badly! Thanks for reading this post via RSS! Let me know your thoughts by sending...

12th January - 18th January The robins are in full throat. It sounds like 40,000 of them singing the same song at slightly different times; none of it syncs up and the effect is jarring. The dawn chorus, magical as it is, naught but a complete cacophony. I took a long walk over the fields to the duck pond because I...

5th January - 11th January The first week back at work is over! A few drinks later and the hectic pace is a dull memory; until Monday morning rolls around. I made a big list before I finished for Christmas of the critical things I needed to do on my return and, as of close of play Friday, I have done none of them....

29th December - 4th January In a quirk of calendular mathematics, this is simultaneously week 1 of 2026 and week 53 of 2025. I celebrated New Year's Eve with a ceilidh, a beer, and a takeaway with my family. The ceilidh was amazing; so warm and joyful and wholesome community vibes. I'll be back there! The new year...

On my homepage, I have a carousel of what I call "testimonials" — some nice things lovely people said about me over the years. For the longest time, I'd pick one from the array to display at build time. As part of my work to reduce build time, I decided to display them all so the homepage wasn't considered "new" for...