Charles Harries

Walking Ghyll, 5 June

Moving, slowly, into the peak of summer. Still windy, lots of flowers.

Walking Ghyll, 3 June

Early summer rain: Ghyll not best pleased.

Walking Ghyll, 31 May

Taking Ghyll out late on a Sunday night, meeting a new friend, flower spotting.

Walking Ghyll, 28 May

Hawthorns dropping petals, elder about to bloom.

Walking Ghyll, 24 May

Out walking with Ghyll for an hour at 19:00 on 24 May.

The 62nd Fellsman

Running the Fellsman again. Went slower, but felt much better.

A Storm of Swords

Ghosts

This is the kind of dumb thing that I think about when it's a nice day and I'm out walking the dog.

Slouching Towards Utopia

Yesteryear

Claude Code for fell running

Claude is also a valuable companion, well, not on the moors per se, but at your desk before you go out onto the moors, to escape from Claude.

On completing half of the Wainwrights

Some thoughts on having climbed 107/214 Wainwrights, and whether I've actually bagged them.

Thoughts on slowing the fuck down - Mario Zechner

Mario Zechner with a much more measured take on how to use the new tools we all have at our disposals.

The code agent orchestra - Addi Osmani

I'm pleased that smart people are thinking about how best to use AI, but a lot of the discourse smacks of ngmi-ism and not actual usefulness.

Wuthering Heights

Krystal - FFSR

The first “slider-based” fast food slow review.

North Lakes Wainwright bagging

A wet recce around the northern fells in the Lake District bagging Wainwrights and spending what feels like hours climbing up to Blencathra

Cognitive debt

What is the cost of not keeping it in our own brains?

How to read and write application logs

Writing logs is important: they are the story of how your application is doing what it does.

Now

Trying to keep positive, while also being extremely productive, whatever "productive" actually means.

AI lowers the effort barrier

What is the value of AI, to me? I am posting this on a Saturday night to keep me off Bluesky where I've been doomscrolling all week.

Karpathy on Claude Code

The AI industry's second-most-listened-to thoughtleader tells us what he thinks about using coding agents.

Now

Posting late, eating sandwiches, running in the Lakes, feeling doomed.

Now

Third installment of these things. Back into running, deciding to do the Bob Graham, getting things done. Feeling productive. Let's see if we can keep this up all year.

Default apps, 2026

I love a default. I love not thinking about things and just doing whatever someone else has decided for me.

Now

Getting back into the rhythm of things, setting a routine, not getting bogged down by snow.

This is a test

Now

A fell race, a bit of snow, a quiet weekend at home.

TV & film at the end of the year

Watching a bunch of tv because I'm tuckered out and I just want to lie on the sofa and have someone tell me a story.

2025

Theme of the year: travelling, running, drinking a lot of beer, then getting super sick and tired and burnt out for months. Positive on balance but let's try a slightly better balance next year.

The Rose Field

Simonside Cairns fell race

Windy day but mercifully no rain. Seems like these fell races are like 80% climbing, somehow.

Not Boring !Camera

A new camera app. Yes I'm reviewing camera apps for the Apple iPhone now. It's a good app ok

App switching

At last, the most efficient way to get from one application to another.

Somewhere to go to do one thing

Missing going to places to do precisely one thing.

La Belle Sauvage

Cruel Little Man

Mike Rice and Vittorio something at The Stand in Newcastle on 17 November 2025.

Bad AI art

AI art is not good art because the story that it is telling is not a true story.

Uniqlo

Uniqlo has done a good job of turning "products that you buy for your body" into a whole, like, lifestyle approach. Capitalism at work for good!

Jasmine Sun: are you high-agency

Am I Not Gonna Make It, or is this all a weird flex calibrated by people on the other side of the planet?

Dan Abramov: Open Social

Dan's recent post about open social platforms is the first time that I've been interested in social media in like... 5 years?

John Ganz: Reflections on Violence

John Ganz on how Events like this week's Event are probably not avoidable in the United States

A couple of things to remember when Something Bad is in the news

Some difficult-to-follow advice to try and keep in mind when everyone on the Internet is talking about a Civil War.

Yield points

Strong opinions loosely held.

A youtube video about doing something meaningful

Why am I not happier? Or why am I as happy as I am?

More Programming Thoughtleadership re: dependencies

I'm still thinking about this thing that everyone pretty much decided to stop thinking about in 2019.

Good system design

Very slowly getting system design through my Thick Skull and onto the surface of my Smooth Brain.

A Game of Thrones

Picking on third-party deps

I'm a computer, stop all the npm installing

Collaborative mapping

A couple of fun collaborative mapping experiments on the Internet. Who says that it's all just political misinformation out there?

The Director

Ghost CMS

Some thoughts on Ghost after trying it out for approx. 10 minutes.

I need jungle I'm afraid

Getting into jungle music. Getting into a very specific type of jungle music. Getting back into a very specific type of jungle music.

Careless People

Skittles

I have a problem with Skittles, and I'm not just talking about the candy (although I am also talking about the candy).

Poem/1

Okay, AI does have its uses. Generating a thousand bad poems every day for 5 years is not one of them.

Maurice and Maralyn

London: Houses of Parliament

Arriving in London and striking directly at the heart of things: the Houses of Parliament, swarmed amply by tourists and sons of wealthy industrialists in electric blue Rolls-Royces.

C2A: Amsterdam, finally

The last day of the trip: the dull ride into Amsterdam and then the victory of riding through the tourist district laden with all my crap.

Tinkers

The Yearling

C2A: Into the Real Netherlands

Riding our bikes below sea level through the heart of the Netherlands.

C2A: Into the Netherlands

Antwerp, the long straight road out of Belgium, entering the Netherlands, Roosendaal, and saying goodbye to good beer.

C2A: Ghent and environs

Into Ghent and then out of Ghent, making I’ll-advised drinking choices before noon — but not the ones you expect!

C2A: The road to Bruges

Riding from the Flemish hinterlands into the heart of tourism country.

C2A: Into Belgium

Entering France, getting lunch, and then leaving France again.

C2A: Dover

Riding the train down to Dover with two bicycles.

C2A: Leaving Hartlepool

Departing Hartlepool by train, with a couple bikes.

Blogs not about anything

I no longer want to read about the latest developments in the CSS Working Group and now only want to read about bike trips that people have gone on or stories that happened years ago.

David's Bob Graham

David completed the Bob Graham Round on 6 June in 23 hours and 47 minutes.

Swaledale Marathon

4 hours and 15 minutes at the Swaledale Marathon.

Project Hail Mary

A Pennine Journey

A.W. on anticipation

A quote from A.W. on anticipation

Dia browser

Here are some bad ideas that you could wage your company on, if only you can drum up the adequate hype.

Some art I like

Art from Japan and Finland that makes me feel wistful but also a little happy.

Slam of the North

Going to a poetry slam in Durham, because 2025 is the Year of Appreciating Art.

Andor, season 2 (2025)

Andor is good television. I actually looked forward to watching another episode each night. And perhaps the highest praise of all: it made Sam care about a Star War.

Postwar

Bob Graham Round, leg 4 clockwise

Out in the Lake District on a fine bank holiday Saturday for a recce across the to-me-hitherto-unexplored Western Fells.

Neptune relays

An opportunity to run all-out in front of a bunch of people who are much faster all-out runners than me.

Macbeth (1623, 2025)

Reading Macbeth, and then seeing Macbeth. This isn't a theatre, I'm allowed to call it Macbeth.

Kagemusha (1980)

Kurosawa again makes me want to go live in a big tatami castle and spend my days sitting on the ground.

Boston Marathon

Running another marathon, still not running it in under 4 hours.

Chernobyl (2019)

Rewatching the Chernobyl miniseries because I'm thinking a lot about postwar Europe. Mostly because I'm reading a book about postwar Europe.

Replacing an oxygen sensor

Replacing an oxygen sensor on the old Fabia, crawling around under a car like I'm some kind of actually competent adult.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - on TV!

You've read the book, now watch Bertie Carvel and Eddie Marsan bring Respectable magic back to English in full Technicolor!

Megalithic Portal

The extremely competent autocomplete machine made me a map of all of the best Rocks in the area. Remind me never to take the extremely competent autocomplete machine for granted again.

How to be Perfect

Conclave (2024)

A good movie for like 105 minutes and then a pretty mediocre one for 15.

E & A in the UK: Wednesday

A local's running guide to Wingate; tattoos in Whitley Bay; a dubious opinion of Greggs; a walk on the cliffs above Skinningrove; dinner in Egton Bridge.

E & A in the UK: Tuesday

Erika and Austin arrive in the UK; meet Ghyll; eat kebabs, donuts, and fish'n'chips; see Leake Church out the window; visit the local shop.

Now: 3 - 9 March 2025

Confronting my own dumbness, and also confronting my susceptibility to the Algorithm.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Shakespeare on Genius.com

The rap lyrics website is my go-to resource for historical and textual context for Shakespeare.

The Hazards of Love

Back in the day when I bought burlap by the yard...

Rationalism

Being irrational.

Alnwick XC

A beautiful opportunity at Alwick Castle turned into a massive tummyache and an 11-hour sleep.

Now: 24 February - 2 March 2025

A harrowing ten minutes on Friday night.

Aider

I've finally figured out how to make a robot write the code that allows me to make robots do other stuff for me.

Now: 17 - 23 February 2025

Going out in Durham to celebrate, using LLM tools for small tasks, embracing my position as DudeBro on the internet.

Anthropic Economic Index

It turns out that everyone using AI on the reg is just me, copy-pasted all across the globe.

Now: 10 February - 16 February 2025

In the office, on top of hills, on trains, in fields, on the computer. Oh I've been ever-y-where, man, I've been ever-y-where

Dufton loop

A run up to the Dun Fells and Cross Fell from Dufton in the Eden Valley.

Under-cabinet motion-sensing USB-C LED light bars

All you need to make your house the talk of the town is some under-cabinet motion-sensing USB-C LED light bars. Trust me.

Now: 3 February - 9 February 2025

February's here. Easily the worst month of the year (sorry Valentine's Day enjoyers). Still dark, and as if on cue: here comes the wet weather, at last.

Max wealth

Not just an old money name from an old timey satire.

Now: 27 January - 2 February 2025

Watching TV, listening to podcasts, working on cars, going for runs. Yes indeed it's me.

Now: 20 - 26 January 2025

Storm Éowyn blew in and knocked over a shed. I tried to sort out some electronics and came across a very unfortunate fault.

Now: 13-19 January 2025

Quiet week. Ride my bike to work (well, to the train), lose my charger, go to Leeds (twice!).

Now: 6 - 12 January 2025

Our one Cold Week of the year saw me finishing my book and watching too much YouTube. At least I'm running consistently again.

Now

A visit to a bothy, listening to heavy music, finishing a tv series, a 5k PR, housework.

Flittingford bothy

The best way to celebrate the new year is to go as far away from other people as you can, then start a fire.

2024

A long slog of a year, no less busy but with fewer opportunities to catch up with ourselves and take stock of how far we've come.

Waffle House - FFSR

A return visit to Waffle House to sample the best it has to offer. It does not disappoint.

Empire of the Sun

I watched The Empire of the Sun on the plane from Manchester to Orlando. It's a good old plane movie.

Perfume

My Brilliant Friend

Florian Gadsby makes pottery

Florian Gadsby makes videos for 30-somethings that can't fall asleep without YouTube

Now

Feeling crummy; finding the bright spots in an increasingly dark end of the year.

T. S. Eliot on causes

A quote from T. S. Eliot on fighting, and losing, for causes.

New Hartley mine disaster

The record of a mining disaster in nearby Northumberland

Domain squatting

The story of why you’re on charlesharri.es.

The Bright Sword

Actually good stuff continues to be good

It turns out that bad things are actually bad, and good things might still be good.

Bad stuff is now good stuff

Lots of internet hand-wringing over people preferring bad stuff these days. Why do people like bad stuff?

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

Now

It's getting cold. We're getting on with work around the house. I'm still training for a marathon. We got covid.

Demon Copperhead

Now

Outside in the waning days of summer.

Parable of the Sower

Garmin HRM 1G not pairing

Your ancient heart rate monitor is no longer pairing with your watch. Your threshold heart rate begins to uncalibrate wildly. A man reaches out of the aether with a paperclip.

The Custom of the Country

Willow Miner trail race

Running the Willow Miner, hosting by my very own running club, Elvet Striders, on 24 July 2024.

Durham Coastal Half Marathon

Running 13.1 miles down a familiar stretch of coast.

Saltwell Harriers Fell Race

Running in the Saltwell Harriers Fell Race in Weardale on 2 July 2024.

The God of Small Things

Now

Trying to get back into things that I stopped doing because of Malaise. It's going ok.

Some photos from France

In the grand tradition of sharing photos from your recent trip to France, here are some photos from our recent trip to France.

Belgian beer, French cheese

When you go to a foreign country, it's your duty to consume as much of the local fare as possible. It helps if that fare has 11% alcohol by volume.

Vimy

Visiting the Canadian National Vimy Memorial and spending a lot of time staring into big craters.

Revin & Maison Espagnole

Midday in Revin on the banks of the Meuse, featuring a smooth veterinarian and an ancient house full of cast iron stoves.

Monthermé

An evening in Montherme on the banks of the Meuse, and a run in the hills thereabove.

Bohan-sur-Semois

A day spent in the quiet Ardennais village of Bohan-sur-Semois, where I suspect someone could have a really lovely retirement.

Hautes-Rivières

Staying on the banks of the Semois and running over the hill to Les Hautes Rivières.

Boulogne-sur-Mer

The French know how to take it easy. You can tell because of the way that Boulogne-sur-Mer is.

Battery Oldenburg

A morning walk through the abandoned remains of a Nazi artillery battery.

Bob Graham Round, Leg 1 anticlockwise

Running alongside a friend's Bob Graham Round attempt, leg 1 anticlockwise.

Popeyes - FFSR

The first dispatch from Sam's mission to review every fast food restaurant chain in the United States.

Rebuilding Ise Shrine

Ise Grand Shrine has been rebuilt every 20 years for the past 12 centuries. Here's a video of them doing it in 1993.

A new computer

For the sixth time in my life, I have a new computer. That's not a very good track record.

Florida, May 2024

Took a whirlwind trip to Florida to see family and attend my sister's engagement party. Yes it was a very good time.

Dhalgren

Stadiums

Climbing the full set of stairs at the Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. Repeatedly.

Robinson, Hindscarth, Dale Head

Climbing Wainwrights again for the first time in a couple years—and not even getting stuck in queues or nothing!

Now

Running, Zoe, leaps & bounds.

Ghyll update

Ghyll is slowly changing from a little dinosaur that eats anything within 24 inches of his mouth into a companion that we take with us nearly everywhere.

Why does anyone buy a Tentbox?

Why am I suddenly seeing so many Tentboxes atop family hatchbacks in Asda car parks?

The 60th Fellsman: race report

Running the 60th Fellsman: 61 miles across the Yorkshire Dales on a beautiful day.

Zoe Explains It All

In Newcastle to see Zoe Explains It All at the Tyne Theatre & Opera House on 10 May 2024.

Now

Fellsman recovery, Bob Graham training, trip to the States, finishing the tiles (finally).

Getting hacked

When your Facebook account gets hacked, you're on your own. You may be saved by either 1. luck, or 2. having two-factor authentication enabled.

Bibō no aozora

The song defining the first third of my 2024. Uh chyeah you know I like the less popular version of it.

Flavour of the Now: hot honey

The product marketing collective has decided that all limited-availability tweakable mass-consumed products must now be offered in a "hot honey"-flavoured variant.

More cache busting

How to cache bust static assets when you're just running a naïve script for website deploys.

Dockerise the website

Docker is very good and very powerful and absolutely not what I need in my life right now.

Lessons learned running 50 km

A quick couple of lessons learned while running out on the fells in the Yorkshire Dales.

UK trail ultramarathon packing list

What I pack when I go out for a run beyond the usual bounds of sense.

Dynomight

Dynomight writes about, it seems, whatever comes to mind; and they do a darn good job of it.

The railway quadfecta

Running west from Wingate on the erstwhile Ferryhill & Hartlepool Railway

Spain: Friday

Breakfast in Los Montesinos, lunch in Torrevieja, out for a run and then dinner on the coast.

Spain: Thursday

A flight to Alicante, a rental car and a drive through the dark.

Replace a sink waste

These are my opinionated instructions for replacing the waste in your British sink.

2024: the year so far

On not doing the things that I usually enjoy.

January updates

Some quick updates on life in the darkest days of the year: fixing stuff around the house, watching crummy television.

Dailying the Porsche

Operating a 40 year old sports car as a daily driver.

Fixing the sink

I uninstalled the sink, refinished the socket that the sink fits into, cut new legs for the sink to stand on, and put the sink back in place. It looks much better now.

Spark plug replacement

Pulling some gross old spark plugs, probably the originals, out of Sam's Porsche 924, and fitting some shiny new ones.

Captain Cook's fell race

Participating in the time-honoured tradition of hurtling oneself down a hillside in the name of an 18th-century explorer.

2023

2023 has been, maybe, my busiest year yet. Stacked to the gills with travel, new experiences, time spent outdoors, time spent in quiet pubs, time spent with Sam & Ghyll out in the wide world.

Homeownership

Some thoughts on Tom MacWright's recent post about homeownership: mostly just anecdata from a homeowners.

Poor Charlie's Almanack

Stripe's hosted version of Poor Charlie's Almanack is a vision of what digital books could be, instead of what we got, which kind of sucks.

Like, Comment, Subscribe

New seatbelts

Replaced driver's-side seatbelt on Sam's Porsche 924.

Battery on Arc

Arc works with my crummy old laptop now! Is that enough to make me want to switch to it fulltime?

AI and the Rise of Mediocrity

Catching up on some reading, TIME is making me think of the vast quantities of plastic currently being sold on wish dot com.

Goathland standing stones

A long running loop southwest of Goathland taking in many of the most popular megalithic sites in the central North York Moors.

Either/Or

Greatham to Thornaby

Running a half marathon through the Middlesbrough suburban sprawl.

Listen to Wikipedia

It's possible to listen to Wikipedia being edited in realtime—and it sounds pretty good!

Norwegian literature

I'm going to read some Norwegian books!

Does web design matter

Is there any point in making websites look good, beyond their normal ease of use? And if so—who are we doing it for?

Southeast Durham

I run 35 kilometers in a big loop around southeast Durham, through the Trimdons, Fishburn, Sedgefield, and Thorpe Thewles, then back home on the Castle Eden Railway path.

Stay True

Sewing

Doing a poor bit of sewing to make a product that didn't fit, fit.

Women and Power

Trust

Aykley Heads XC

Running the cross country fixture at Aykley Heads on a cold, sunny November day. Lots of hills, blessedly little clart.

Scugdale, Bilsdale Moor, Helmsley Moor

Thirty kilometers of running south across some of the most remote parts of the North York Moors.

Durham Lumiere

Out with Striders to check out the Lumiere installations. Most of them were dark but the run was lovely.

Mary Beard in Durham

Attending a discussion of Mary Beard's newest book, about Roman leadership, at the Northern Stage in Durham.

Oil change

Changing the oil at regular intervals is a good way to ensure the longevity of your car's engine.

The Pingu

Quoth the Pingu...

Google the search engine

Google Search has been having a Rough Time of it lately, but don’t feel bad: it’s their own fault.

Vendoring

No build step. No dependency management. Radically simplify the web. Transcend npm. I believe in you.

Web devs: not great

Remember when I said the web is good? I lied! Sort of. It's web developers who are bad.

Priestdaddy

Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad

A book report on a short horror story for Halloween.

Dixon's grave

I got a chance to see (from the outside) the place that Jeremiah Dixon, eponymous of the book I just read, is buried.

Mason & Dixon

Classy Bear

The intellectual rights to Japanese national treasure Classy Bear have apparently been sold to Ralph Lauren.

Stockholm kanelbulle ranking

All of the kanelbullar I ate on my trip to Stockholm in 2023, ranked from best to worst.

No build step

Reconsider whether you need a framework. Reconsider whether you need a CSS pre-processor. Reconsider whether you need dependencies. Reconsider whether you need a build step.

Eighty percent jobs

Would you work four days a week for 80% of your current salary? I might.

Druridge Bay XC

Getting demolished on a beautiful day on the Northumberland coast.

Rabbit Run

Participating in the Hardmoors Rabbit Run, finishing in an OK time, finding myself wishing it had been a bit longer.

Porsche 924

We bought a classic car. It's not one of the nice ones, but it's ours.

Ghyll's shorter tail

Ghyll's had a rough time since got back from Sweden: now he's lost a little bit of his tail.

Stockholm: Tuesday

Last day in Stockholm. The most disappointing kanelbulle.

Stockholm: Monday

Eating our way across Stockholm's neighbourhoods: bullar in Östermalm, fika on Skeppsbro, korvar and meatballs in Södermalm.

Stockholm: Sunday

Going to a building with a big ship inside, coffee and kanelbulle in the fancy part of town, a disappointing pick'n'mix, being mistaken for locals at a kebab place.

Stockholm: Saturday

Visiting Birka, drinking a flight of IPAs at a Whippet Bar, attending a post-metal concert, eating grillade korvar.

Stockholm: Friday

Visiting Skansen, doing a fika, having a life-changing experience with a cinnamon roll, going for a run, reindeer for dinner.

Wrekenton XC

My first outing at a cross-country running event. Rain before, mud during, and lots of cake directly afterwards.

Manual deploys

Dropping CI/CD with GitHub Actions and going back to deploying my website by hand. It's artisan!

Fujichia

A website that is actually a spooky castle that you can go visit from the comfort of your very own personal sofa.

Downhill mile

Running a mile downhill in five minutes and thirty-six seconds.

Alton Towers

A trip to the United Kingdom's answer to Disney World.

Tommy the turtle

Some fantastic rock sculptures on the beach in Blackhall Rocks.

The Idiot

Colour mode

You've heard of dark mode, now check out colour mode.

Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer's a tour de force from a character perspective, but I wish that Nolan had just adapted Rhodes's The Making of the Atomic Bomb instead.

Wolsingham Show

Attended the Wolsingham Show for the first time in a little while. Took Ghyll and it all went swimmingly! I bought cheese.

Websites are fine

The Internet is working exactly the way it's built to.

Close to the Machine

Run a 5k in 21:40

I ran 5 kilometers in 21 minutes and 40 seconds this evening. That's the fastest I've ever done it—but maybe not the fastest I ever will!

Uncanny Valley

Ghyll's favourite album

My dog likes falling asleep to Octava by Phi-Psonics, and I don't know why.

Blood donation

I gave blood for the first time today. It was very easy. I'm a big boy.

The Wager

Big Lime triathlon

A proper post about doing a triathlon: how it felt, what I did, and who couldn't get my name right at the end.

Birnam Wood

Eragon

Weeknotes 7 August

Quiet one round our end.

Lenin's Tomb

Weeknotes 24 July

Living exhausted in the shadow of the Castle Howard triathlon.

Chance at Durham Fringe

A short drama at the Durham Fringe Festival about poverty in the forgotten corners of the United Kingdom hits home.

The Passenger

Weeknotes 17 July

Joining a running club, attending Middlesbrough Front End, getting my bike tuned up, competing in a triathlon

The Book of Goose

Weeknotes 2 July

A busier week than usual: a spa day, a cold, a trip to Scotland, a dip in a reservoir, a walk up Worm Hill.

Why Nations Fail

Fiat Topolino

What a fun idea from usually-not-particularly-interesting Stellantis member brand Fiat!

Weeknotes 26 June 2023

Doing way more running, cycling, and swimming than I ever thought I would. Also: getting back on the motorbike!

U.S.A

Julius Caesar

Saw Julius Caesar performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle on 13 May 2023. Directed by Atri Banerjee.

River Sing Me Home

View Transitions & frameworks

Curious about View Transitions on the advent of their inclusion behind a flag in Chrome Canary

Swimming

On swimming laps in a pool for the first time in like, a decade at least.

From Hell

Ducks

Boone Hall

Boone Hall could do a much better job of owning up to its slave-owning past and educating people about civil rights, but it's too busy selling tickets to view the Big House and patting itself on the b…

USS Yorktown

The USS Yorktown, a decommissioned WWII-era aircraft carrier, is probably only worthwhile to the staunchest of naval warfare fans.

April 2023

Getting back into it.

The Things That We Lost

American Gods

Progress

Channelled some nervous energy into writing an application that counts down the seconds until something happens. Maybe not the best use of my nervous energy.

Learning about learning computers

Trying my hand at learning about artificial intelligence and that whole malarkey.

Strangers to Ourselves

March 2023

A long month of nothing, waiting for my hand to fix itself.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built

The First Circle

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Ninth House

Life and Fate

Reasons for taking pictures

A little bit about taking pictures for oneself.

Defaults

Some thoughts about using the defaults that come with whatever I've already got.

The Lathe of Heaven

Bing Chat aka Sydney

Been getting progressively spooked by AI and the leaps & bounds with which it's been progressing over the past couple of months.

Search

Adding search to my website was a fun project for the weekend, and has made my own website like 40% more useful to me.

A couple more words on CSS nesting

Yes, I'll use CSS nesting. But I won't be using it nearly as much as I would have five years ago.

Back on Apple Music

Back on Apple Music in 2023. It’s alright!

Snow Country

January 2023

Got a bit of momentum behind us on what feels like the darkest month of the year, astronomy be damned.

Databases in 2023

Well, we've officially started the "...in 2023" posts. This one is about database platforms.

AI consciousness

A re-framing of a topic that I don't think about that much.

Sea of Tranquility

Wittgenstein's Mistress

Gettin handy

Feeling very productive.

Last.fm Year in Music

2022 was the first year in a while that I've scrobbled all my music to Last.fm, and the picture it paints is a lot clearer than Spotify's vibe-heavy Wrapped.

The Housekeeper and the Professor

We Need To Talk

The Diary of Samuel Pepys

Started reading the Diary of Samuel Pepys, one day at at time.

JR

2022

2022 was a year of real highs and lows. We got a dog, climbed a bunch of mountains, learned to ride a motorcycle, re-learned how to ride a bicycle, travelled to Europe, travelled to the United States,…

Arc browser vs. Safari

Arc browser is a thoughtfully-designed departure from traditional browsing, and I don't use it at all.

Training AI

Might be tempting Roko's basilisk with this one.

Waiting for AI

I don't buy the idea that AI is coming after creative jobs.

Andor, season 1 (2022)

Andor shows what entertainment Star Wars can provide bereft of lightsabers and flashy space battles.

Italics in Fira

You can make italics a different font, if you feel like it.

Short-form blogging

The rise of short-form content on personal blogs, and an extra thought tacked onto the end.

Nausea

Farewell, Twitter

I'm no longer on Twitter (for obvious reasons) and I share a lot of sentiment about it with Simon Collison.

View transitions with video

The latest iteration of the View Transitions API will actually let you transition video while it's playing.

November 2022

A show in Manchester, a couple of walks, a motorbike accident, a new bicycle, and a whole lotta stumbling around in the dark.

Personal website design archetypes

Some quick thoughts on broad categories of personal website design.

Launch

Memories of me watching a launch, watching a launch from Titusville

The Mountain Goats

November 17, 2022 at The Albert Hall, Manchester

On Mastodon

I'm on Mastodon, and I quite like it.

Server-sent events

Server-sent events make client-side interactivity based on server-side events trivial to implement: no more websocket servers.

Sustainable web development

Sustainable web development doesn't just mean using best practices.

CSS nesting

CSS nesting has been a long time coming, but when it finally arrives, we're not actually going to need it anymore.

October 2022

That's October done and dusted. A bit of general upheaval but we all made it through in one piece. I went to a conference!

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Next.js 13

A bit of hand-wringing over the release of Next.js 13: two brilliant steps forward—and maybe one step back?

The Stranger

The Sparrow

Bon Iver

Saw Bon Iver at the First Direct Arena in Leeds on 19 October, 2022.

2015 Gokibiru 30K trail run

Back in 2015 I did a 30 km trail run on the west coast of Hokkaido, and it was the pinnacle of my running career.

Destroyer

Destroyer's show, much like their music, was intimate and suave and mysterious and wholly exciting—another one off the bucket list.

The web is good now

A couple of notes on Chris Coyier's recent talk at CascadiaJS 2022.

A few more words on writing

Thinking a little bit more about why I keep this blog an what I want to achieve with it (if anything).

I Am a Strange Loop

Notes on "26 things"

2 things I learned from "26 Things from "101 Things I Learned in Architecture School""

September 2022

The weather's finally turned, so I've got to choose my days out strategically or spend the next 5 months soaked through.

Looking back

Some late-night thoughts on the things I'll want to look back on sometime off in the future.

Old solutions, new tricks

Netlify's Edge Functions, like similar solutions from other platforms, are very cool but feel like a solution from 10 years ago.

Effective design

On distinguishing good design from effective design.

Global variables

It feels like it goes without saying in 2022, but please declare your JavaScript variables properly.

Page weight matters

An old story from YouTube, 10 years ago, about why the weight of the web page you're sending over the wire actually matters.

JS1024

You can do a lot with 1 kilobyte of JavaScript if you're a pro code golfer.

New speakers

Disassembling and then reassembling a 2015 MacBook Pro is easier than I thought.

LiebeHeide

LiebeHeide from LiebeFonts is the one handwriting font that I can really get behind.

August 2022

A month of slow meandering back towards a sense of normalcy, with plenty of two-wheeled conveyance and first steps out in the wide world.

Bad coffee

Don't be precious! It's nice to like nice things, but you're just a schmuck and you're not above unlimited refills on cheap IHOP coffee

Blurry gradient blobs pt. 2

More blurry gradient backgrounds on the web

Die With Zero

Replacements for social media

Social media sucks. Yeah that's right Twitter, I'm talking to you.

Converging on peak gradient

We're closing in on peak blurred gradient blob.

Polyphasic sleep

I haven't slept more than 4 consecutive hours over the course of the past couple weeks, and the results are: not catastrophic.

Hard problems in the browser

Frontend roles encompass a vast range of skills. Some of them have been solved by cloud infrastructure providers, and the rest take years of experience.

Hot weather

Hot days are getting more and more frequent & there's not a ton we can do about it at this point.

Austerlitz

Fun w/ hsl pt. 2

I hinted at a fun way to use the CSS hsl() colour function in a recent post. Now you can see what I mean, in action!

Blog v4

We're on v4 of the blog now, after only like 5 years! Hopefully this one lasts longer than the others.

Microsoft Fluent Emoji

Microsoft outdid themselves with their fluent emoji, and now that they've open sourced them, they've outdid themselves again.

Meta's in-app browser tracking

Instagram and Facebook will track your behaviour online if you use the browsers embedded within their apps.

Play.gl

Most PWAs have a certain janky feeling to them that distinguishes them from native apps. But Play.gl, a PWA, doesn't have that jank.

Cache busting with GitHub Actions

If you want to bust your asset cache whenever a GitHub Action deploys your site, it's actually remarkably easy!

Blogging on JS frameworks

You don't need a modern JavaScript framework to power your blog. A PHP CMS will do.

Fun with hsl()

Hue, saturation, and lightness provides a fun approach to colour that allows for some neat programmatic tricks.

WebDriver

I didn't realise that there's a specification for controlling browsers. But there is.

Broken luxury goods

Excessive features powered by tightly integrated components is a recipe for disaster

July 2022

July was exhausting and overwhelming—from weather to life events to sheer lack of sleep—and I’m glad that it’s over.

The Call of the Wild

Red Rising

Writing about writing

Lots of writing about writing lately: the purpose of blogs, writing for yourself vs. others.

Between the World and Me

No Fixed Abode: A Long Walk to the Dome

June 2022

A full month: catching COVID, going to Riga, getting back out on my bike, & thinking long & hard about what I want to do next.

The Remains of the Day

Front-end web development

Frontend web development is hectic, fast-paced, and a lot more driven by thought leaders than any of us want to admit.

The Plot Against America

Almost no CSS

The web continues to require almost no style at all.

GPT-3 greentexts

Just when I thought that we were out of the GPT-3 game, the game pulls me right back in again.

jdan's hashart

Jordan Scales's online SHA-256-based generative art project has me wanting to generate some art of my own.

React in 2022

The public-opinion tide is turning against React, but it's going to be a while yet before usage drops. Here's what you can do in the meantime.