The lost outpost

[alternative titles considered: BT is failing people; or, late stage capitalism is a human catastrophe] Roughly three weeks ago, I posted this The tech sector is massively failing older people.

As I was settling into bed last night, for some reason, my brain was looping on the “Choose Life” monologue from Trainspotting.

tl;dr: it was not a vintage year, by any means.

There’s an exhibition of retro / classic home computing machines this week (Aug 21-28 2025) at Kingston University, so I had to drop in.

Last Sunday, I had the pleasure and honour of delivering a keynote at the (milestone!)

Three hundred and sixty-four days ago, I started the #100DaysToOffload challenge, in an effort to get myself unblocked from actually writing again.

I finally decided to break out of Bambu’s increasingly-closed walled garden.

A couple of weeks ago, I was on a panel at the PublicSpaces conference in Amsterdam.

One of my favourite spots for making quick apps, Glitch, is going to be going away in a week or so – well at least, web hosting will stop then (they are going to offer redirects for another ~18 months, which is really good of them).

Since I started my role as Head of Communications at Mastodon, I’ve been finding my surroundings becoming more and more… purple.

I’m accidentally becoming a #FediMerch guy.

I was recently interviewed by Michelle Goodall for her Meet the Community Builders series.

Thirteen years ago yesterday, I was speaking at the first meeting of the London Platform-as-a-Service User Group (now, the London Platform User Group, aka LOPUG).

I’m really happy to have been asked to join the new FediForum Advisory Board that is helping to guide and steer the future of the event.

I’ve worked in tech for many years, and one of the events that has been a constant part of the calendar is SXSW.

Our Forge & Craft “mini-masterpiece”1 for the Wimbledon Art Fair for spring 2025, is titled Heliocode.

I updated my Framework 13 to Fedora 42 about two weeks ago, just before the final release.

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of being asked to join Paul Cutler and Tod Kurt on their podcast, The Bootloader.

Last year, I gave a number of talks on the subject of pen plotters / drawing machines, and how they have been used in different ways to realise different forms of art.

A couple of weeks ago I was delighted to join Ozoned on his Fireside Fedi show to talk about… all kinds of things!

Since “The Event” in late 2022, I have not been in a full-time role (which I’m privileged to say, has been my first time in that situation).

I’ve been using my Framework 13 laptop a lot more often, recently.

I’m currently in Taipei – my first visit to Taiwan.

Last night, a friend and I took part in the weekly quiz at a local pub.

tl;dr I created an extension for the GNOME desktop on Linux, so that folks can stream and listen to music from The Indie Beat – an online radio station powered by independent musicians sharing music in the Fediverse, via Bandwagon.