sjg.io

Eleven of the twelve pending app updates on my phone tell me nothing about what changed.

How I massively over-engineered a trivial problem again because I just can't help myself

Copilot's early reputation may be hiding a much stronger proposition.

A few months of tinkering with birds, bats and a Raspberry Pi, and now an illustrated e-ink display for the kitchen.

My wife quite liked TRMNL's Japanese vocabulary plugin, but wanted a few things changed.

I reverse engineered the cloud API behind my Sage coffee machine, turned it into a Home Assistant integration, and accidentally made a small group of strangers' mornings slightly better.

AI has made code, tests, policy, documentation, and organisational machinery almost free to produce.

AI has collapsed the cost of building software again, and the debt this time will not be bad code but agents nobody owns, knows about, or can account for.

Microsoft has switched off Graph access to Teams meeting transcripts by default, breaking already-consented third-party integrations while its own Copilot defaults stay on.

How Steve Gibson's SQRL anticipated passkeys, and why timing and coordination mattered more than the cryptography.

Output is not the same as potential.

A collection of rules, habits, and bits of borrowed wisdom that have shaped how I try to build services, lead teams, and do business with people.

Why the next enterprise AI fight is less about the smartest model and more about the harness: interfaces, runtimes, connectors, skills, governance, identity and agent-ready software.

Agent Skills and AI coworkers create real leverage, but personal productivity gains are not the same as operational automation.

Investigating battery drain during suspend on a Framework 13 running Ubuntu, finding out s2idle is working perfectly, and setting up suspend-then-hibernate as a sensible workaround.

Why your external monitor connects at 640x480 after waking from sleep, and a dynamic EDID caching fix for Framework laptops on Linux.

Sometimes the best pranks are the simplest ones.

Finding documentation of a Kickstarter reward I have no memory of receiving or using, and wondering how many other forgotten indie hardware projects are out there - and how Kickstarter has changed.

A period of experimenting with texture engraving at rLab, creating bump maps from STL files, and using those textures to produce Wirehive branded Moleskines on mass.

In 2014, Asana's founder predicted the imminent death of email.

A look back at my first 3D printer from 2013 - lead screws, MDF construction, and a hand lathed nozzle.

Cloudflare was down again, taking a swath of the web with it—and reminding us that monocultures are a choice, not a law of nature.

Looking back at a door entry system built in 2014 - prototyped at rLab, deployed at Wirehive, and a reminder of the joy of building things that actually work.

Rob Belgrave's original Lightpack Kickstarter project is still working perfectly after 11 years, attached to an ultrawide monitor that just changed hands.

When work expands to fill every gap, you stop noticing how much you are giving up.

Evidence-led guidance for individuals in the Western world.

Why computer literacy matters now, and exactly what to do to reach the 2026 bar.

When one AWS region falters and half the internet stumbles, it tells us something deeper about the state of technology.

Salesforce's grip on Slack is reshaping it from a neutral collaboration layer into a gated CRM surface, squeezing communities and third-party builders.

A field guide to agents that actually ship work: embedded in your systems, guided by policy, and obsessed with closing the loop.

Building a firepit for the forest school woods with a little help from Cursor

How Pax8 is proving the Managed Intelligence Provider model by living it first through Customer Zero.

On the ground for Pax8 Beyond EMEA.

Building a house that's polite, not flashy - using Home Assistant, open source tools, and automation-first thinking to create a transparent, adoptable home system.

The three outcomes my new role at Pax8 is designed to deliver: enablement, automation, and orchestration.

The three kinds of AI work-and why the real ROI is new capabilities, not hours saved.

Why I am fighting the consolidation of the internet and how you can too

The routing layer that makes agentic systems safe and measurable in enterprise operations

Apply product discipline to leadership comms so people know what matters and why, every week.

How we moved from a regional service hub to product oriented pods with worldwide coverage

Linux and networking roots that still apply to AI and modern systems