I was very excited to see that Hebden Bridge was hosting a tech conference with Wuthering Bytes’ 10th event, so I took a day off work to go and listen. There were nine speakers across eight hours. In the past, I’ve tended to go to conferences, take a load of notes, then delete them as they begin to feel stale. Hopefully, by writing this up quickly, I can capture and build on some of the inspiration.
My favourite talk was by Libby Miller, Poking holes in reality with prototypes. This touched on how important prototypes are to the creative process. I saw this through the lens of my writing. When Miller talked about how digital interfaces have a mediating/flattening effect, it made me think about how my substack pieces have a similarity in form that doesn’t play to the different stories. ‘Thingness’ can embody an idea. It got me thinking about the physical objects a story should inhabit.
The other provocation in that talk was about how young people in particular find social media alienating. There was mention of a interview subject who rued watching “videos you’re never going to remember. The online world should have brought an end to loneliness, but instead people are feeling worse. The same issue exists with fiction, how it is often consumed in isolation, but works best when it builds communities.
Of the other talks: Loula Yorke did a fascinating introduction to modular synths, giving a glimpse of a deep, complex culture. Dr Herbert Daly did a talk on mainframes, filling in a lot of knowledge gaps. He also gave me a Proustian rush by referring to the old Usbourne programming books (now released as free PDFs). Rain Ashcroft spoke about the history of wearables, including an example from the 1600s, an abacus ring. David Eastman also gave an excellent talk on remaking old video games.
I spent the last week at a writing retreat, which felt indulgent but has been very useful. Firstly, the place I went was fully-catered, which meant I was able to focus on my writing throughout.
I’d expected to produce lots of new pieces. Instead I deleted tens of thousands of words of old notes. There are ideas for stories that I’ve been carrying around for years without ever finishing – particularly ideas for longer projects. I’d sometimes work on these without getting anywhere, so they were a distraction. I also took the time to finally clear the stacked documents on my Desktop.
By the last day, my head felt clearer, and I was able to focus better. I’m hopeful that the retreat will produce a permanent change – working with how I write rather than how I wished I wrote.
Too often, I come up with concepts I’d like to work on, but never manage to fill in any actual sentences. I also tend to work best quickly – trying lots of things and seeing which produces a viable story. That’s difficult, as you’re always starting from nothing, but it always eventually works out.
By the last day of the retreat I felt as if I was taking advantage of my new clarity. I wrote a couple of blog posts in a single sitting, and they as good as the ones I’ve tinkered with for weeks (some of which would get discarded as they went stale).
Spending a week on a writing retreat has taken up a lot of time, but I think it’s been good for me. The question is whether writing will be less frustrating in future.
Update: I messaged the author on mastodon and have a link to the post. See below.
There’s a blog post I read around the turn of the century that’s stayed with me over the years. It was written by Andre Torrez, and was about how ideas are worthless in themselves. I’ve tried to find it a couple of times, but the only trace remaining is a section quoted on another blog.
…that’s what’s got me so bothered about people musing in their weblogs about projects they’d like to do. Stop talking about it and just build it. Don’t make it too complicated. Don’t spend so much time planning on events that will never happen. Programmers, good programmers, are known for over-engineering to save time later down the road. The problem is that you can over-engineer yourself out of wanting to do the site…
That fragment doesn’t really demonstrate why this post proved so powerful to me. The rest of the post talked about how cheap ideas are. An idea that can be easily replicated has little worth – the value is in the execution. Founding up a start-up based on only an idea is pointless if someone with more money can reproduce and grow it faster than you ever could.
I spent a lot of time at technologies meet-ups, and sometimes you’d meet people who had their one big idea. And they’d refuse to discuss details because they didn’t want you ripping it off. But if their idea’s only strength was that nobody else knew it, then maybe it wasn’t all that valuable.
Update: I realised I’d never messaged Andre Torrez about the post and they found it on the wayback machine. The post is as good as I remember.
tldr; I’ve paid for several years of Jetpack backups, but when I needed them they didn’t work, and it was impossible to contact support for assistance. Jetpack are very efficient about billing the customer, less so about helping them.
Towards the end of July I decided to do some maintenance on my servers, and tried to upgrade Ubuntu. I made a foolish error and up replaced the GRUB bootloader config with the default settings. I tried my best to fix the server, but this was beyond me, so I made some backups of the recent data and reverted it to the last OS image I had (which was four years old).
I often remind people to take regular backups, but I should have paid more attention to my own. I used the ancient image I had to restore the basic set-up, dealing with some ‘interesting’ problems along the way, including debugging wordpress arcana. I figured that, once I had jetpack working with my wordpress install, I could simply restore the most recent backup.
This was not the case. Despite following the instructions on the jetpack site, the backups were failing with an unspecified error. I tried to contact support, given that I had a paid plan, but found no way to raise a ticket.
I’ve cancelled the annual subscription to Jetpack, but I had 10 months remaining on my last annual subscription payment. There’s a lesson here about testing backups rather than assuming they work. But, also, I am frustrated and annoyed that a company can take so much money without giving me any access to their support.
One thing that did work well was ChatGPT, which provides excellent guidance on working through problems. Fixing these issues would have taken even longer without that.
July has been an unfocused month with too much clutter, both real and virtual. I prioritised work but, outside of that, I’ve been unreliable. I should know better – the first thing to do when feeling swamped is to clear everything down, making it easy to see what needs doing. By the end of the month, things were better, but July was a little chaotic. All that aside, it has been fun – my first trip to Brighton in over a year, visits from old friends, and the Horkos ceremony. Rosy was in Hebden Bridge most of the time and we had several visitors, including Tom visiting from the US.
Being back in Brighton was strange. So many little things had changed since my last visit. The first thing I did after getting off the train was to visit La Choza which I’ve missed a great deal. The food tasted even better than I remembered. I caught up with a few friends but for once took care not to overstretch myself. It was lovely to celebrate Katharine’s 50th.
It’s been another quiet month for walking – total 375,006 steps, average 12,097, and the biggest day being 20,856. I’m continuing to visit the gym, although it’s hard to adjust to the new routines. I’m also struggling with my ongoing injury, but a new physio seems to have spotted the issue, a weakness in my right leg. I have a new set of exercises which will hopefully fix things.
My writing is going well. I was particularly pleased with a new story, The 4th Film. I produced a complete text for the True Clown Stories kickstarter, as well as an initial text for the secret project, which is now off with a designer. The substack has passed a year old. I considered whether to stop there, but I’ve decided to refocus on short, weird horror stories.
Catching up with Sashimi in Blackpool
I didn’t watch many movies in July and missed several interesting new releases. Terminator 2 was a fun nostalgia trip, although it’s amazing how small it appears compared to modern CGI. Skywalkers: A Love Story didn’t always work as a documentary, but contained some stunning footage. Muffy and I went to the Blackpool IMAX for Deadpool 3, which was a competent MCU movie.
I’d planned to be travelling on July 4th but after the election announcement, Rosy and I decided to stay up all night for the results. After the chaos and mismanagement of the last few years I was delighted to see the back of the old government. I even made party poppers for the results I was most looking forward to. Staying awake was hard work, but I was determined to see Jacob Rees-Mogg lose his seat. I’m not particularly excited about the new government, who seem to have taken expectation management to a ridiculous level. But it’s good to feel like there are adults in charge.
This post was slowed down by me breaking my webserver with a botched Linux upgrade. I wasn’t able to restore things from Jetpack backups, so I rebuilt everything from a four-year-old OS image. I’m not sure everything is 100% back to normal, and I think I’ve broken all the permalinks. A lot of hassle that I didn’t really need.
A few years back, I helped a friend with rhymewave, an online rhyming dictionary. I was delighted when he showed me a link to Still Number 1, a track by Hindi rapper Emiway that refers to the site.
Weird to see H&M selling T-shirts of NIN’s Downward Spiral as fashion:
June was a packed but tiring month. It started with the EMF Camp festival, included a visit to Blackpool, a holiday in Wales and many visitors. I came to the end of it worn out, not helped by poor sleep and hurting my back.
I think this is my favourite photo I’ve taken
Going to EMF Camp with Emma was great fun. I was a little shocked on arrival to learn that my talk was in the largest venue. I’m not sure how many people attended, but I had a decent audience in a 1,000-seat venue. I didn’t disgrace myself, and had some lovely conversations afterwards. The festival was a little overwhelming – it was my first since the pandemic started. I enjoyed catching up with a few old friends, including a visit to ‘the Brighton consultate’. EMF Camp 2024 will be remembered for an ‘orphan source’ incident, where some radioactive materials went missing onsite (now listed on wikipedia).
We had a full house to celebrate my birthday, which was lovely. The day itself was spent in Wales at a week-long gathering of about 30 people, with communal meals, estuary swimming and a Midsummer Ceilidh where everyone (including me) made monster masks. I got a carried away when one of the dances was announced as a competition to see who could dance longest, summoning my best inner-Florence-Pugh, but my partner and I came third.
My walking continues to be a maintenance dose, with a total of 372,184 steps, an average of 12,406. My longest day was my birthday, where I managed a total of 22,115 steps. I started a ‘transformation course’ at a local gym, figuring that I needed a short, sharp shock to help me back to fitness. The first cardio session destroyed me, and showed that my body is not as strong as I would like, given that it took over a week to recover.
I’m feeling a little funny about my writing. I’m approaching a full year of running the weekly substack. I’ve enjoyed it, but I also question the amount of energy that I put into my writing. What do I actually want from it? Part of this is wanting to try new forms as I feel I’m at the limit of what interests me about the things I’m currently writing. I tried a few experiments with Mastodon but they didn’t feel right. And an attempt to work on a new zine in Wales frustratingly came to nothing. But, I guess, the answer lies in writing more than thinking about writing. Stop doing the things that I’m not enjoying, focus on the ones that I do.
I do miss performing. I did a very small spoken word set on a staircase in Wales, where Rosy also performed some of her new poetry. I read five stories in three minutes. I can’t see any way to do this more often, other than crashing open mics – or doing the dreaded one man show. Or maybe this is connected to my frustrations with writing, and I need to think about how I can get more direct response for my work.
Work continues to be challenging, mostly in postive ways; I enjoy being a consultant rather than simply a programmer. We had a ‘miniconf’ at work during June, where I did a talk on computer-generated novels (another performance!) which seemed to go well. Our team had an in-person day in Leeds, and it was great to see my colleagues in real life. I ended the month with a trip to the JManc Unconference, which has me resolving to spend more time programming for fun.
The election started out dull and seems to have gone on too long – but the massive failure of Sunak to run a campaign has been amusing. I’ve already decided I won’t vote Labour due to their stance on nuclear weapons. But, given the polling for my constituency, that’s not a difficult decision, since the Tory candidate is unlikely to win. While a Labour victory seems assured, the national mood seems a long way from 1997. Britain feels tired out, and it looks like we’re a long way from anything improving.
Reading continues to be slow. I’ve still not finished Annie Jacobsen’s nuclear war book since I can manage only a small section at a time. RF Kuang’s Yellowface was an entertaining and dark satire. It was very much a book about writing, and contained some interesting reminders of how aiming for ‘success’ can leach away the joy that gets people into writing. Hanna Bervoets’s We Had to Remove this Post was a wonderful and disturbing novella about content moderation.
No new movies have blown me away this month, and the latest season of Dr Who underlined the usual rule that it works better with intimate dramas than the fate of the universe. The best film I saw was a rewatch of Three Kings, which I gave 5 stars.
My best friend’s daughter invited us to come with her and some friends to see Bikini Kill. Watching the band onstage, I realised how much Olympia punk had inspired me and what it has meant to me. After so many years in corporate life I’m hardly punk myself, but I’m still inspired by that passion.
I wrote a little last month about the joys of personal archives, like digital photo albums or these monthnotes. There was a great article in the New Yorker by David Owen, How to Live Forever, which looks at how such things unlock memories. He quotes Marilu Henner “By really exploring your past, or remembering it in some way, you get a piece of your life back. Your life becomes longer and richer, and kind of stretches in the middle.” I’m into the fifth year of these monthnotes, and they are already valuable for that, particularly with the mushiness of pandemic memories.
Life comes in ebbs and flows and June has been intense. I’ve also been overwhelmed with to-do lists, and worry that they’ve distracted me from what I actually want and enjoy. Something to focus on in the coming month.
I’m delighted to see Chapelle Roan blowing up. I’ve been listening to her on Spotify for a while but it’s great to hear people being excited about her in the real world.
I’m increasingly frustrated with people on trains listening to music without headphones. Someone on Mastodon blamed this on the loss of headphone jacks.
I tried to get into Tiktok, but the magic algorithm doesn’t seem as wonderfl as promised, showing me mostly rollercoasters and footage of musician Flora Algera.
When I was young, I loved the Dennis Pennis interviews. Pennis was a character played by Paul Kaye who attended celebrity events and asked the stars unexpected, often insulting questions. This shattered the illusion of celebrity a little, showing how staged a lot of the other interviews were, and I found it fascinating.
I saw Pennis live once, when he was introducing the Prodigy at Glastonbury. When the band’s equipment failed, plunging the gig into silence, Pennis was sent on stage to entertain the crowd, which he did by singing Hebrew songs.
Notoriously, while Steve Martin was in the midst of a career slump, Pennis asked “How come you’re not funny any more”. Martin was asked about this in a recent Guardian interview:
Before I go, however, I mention that the line has come back to haunt Kaye: he has said it is now the one thing strangers say to him in the street. Hearing this, Martin tips back his head and lets out an almighty laugh, warm and rich, yet curiously lacking in schadenfreude.
I won’t be voting for Labour in this year’s general election due to their stance on nuclear weapons.
In an article published in the Daily Mail, Keir Starmer reaffirmed Labour’s commitment to nuclear weapons saying that “he would be willing to press the button and use nuclear weapons to defend the UK – in stark contrast to Mr Corbyn“.
Nuclear weapons do not provide any means of defence. A system like Trident exists only to commit genocide as revenge when the policy of nuclear deterrence fails.
While nuclear war gets less attention since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there are still over ten thousand warheads controlled by nine different nations, with the possibility of more countries gaining nuclear weapons in future. This is an increasingly unsafe situation, since even a ‘limited’ nuclear war could kill billions.
Annie Jacobsen’s recent book Nuclear War: A Scenario brought home to me how brutal and appalling a nuclear attack can be – as well as how easily responses can escalate. Given the number of near-misses our luck is going to run out eventually – particularly given that much of the nuclear infrastructure is based on the assumptions of the 1950s.
We need to deal with the danger these systems pose, and it needs to be done urgently. Instead, Labour are promoting Keir Starmer as eager to use nuclear weapons. I cannot support that.
I’m spending the week at a creative festival/retreat, which is a great opportunity to think about my writing a little.
A good place for thinking
I started the 2020s wanting to produce more writing in public. Since then I’ve published 7 zines of writing, and almost a year of a weekly substack. I enjoy short stories, and I’ve been more engaged with my writing than ever before. But I’m also feeling a frustration/excitement around form.
Back to my MA days and even before I’ve been fascinated with fragments. What is the smallest meaningful unit of fiction? With social media we are used to consuming narrative as interspersed streams, extracting narrative without convenient beginning, middles and ends. Paragraphs and chapters seem less interesting than self-contained pieces of text. Story is important, but it’s not everything. Our lives are composed of moments more than plots. And I think that fiction should reflect this.
There are antecedents – Kafka was a master of aphorism and fragment. Moorcock’s New Worlds stories of Jerry Cornelius were divided into tiny chapters with tabloid titles. Neil Gaiman described epics in single comic-books caption.
In the past, I dreamed of a novel being published by a major house. I think that polluted my writing a little. Now I’m giving up on that, moving beyond it. I talked with Kate Boucher this week about the importance of having a practise, of art that satisfies ourselves as much or more than it satisfies an audience. Moving beyond having a market for a fitness function.
I want to play, to open up multiple threads without thinking of any possibly publication. To see what emerges.
Life still feels pretty good at the moment, but it also feels like hard work. Part of this is that I was committed to giving three talks between May 28th and June 12th. I’ve also continued to feel like I was a little behind with everything. May brought two bank holidays and neither felt particularly relaxing. However, it was lovely to have lots of guests in the house during the month, including several visitors for Rosy’s birthday.
Walking continues to be a maintenance dose, with my target at 8000 steps a day. The daily average was a mere 10,489 steps a day for a total of 325,147 over the month. The highest total was 17,150 from my friend Laurence coming to visit, and being given a tour of the town. I’ve actually committed to an exercise programme starting in June which will hopefully get some control over my fitness.
My weekly writing on the substack continues, and I was particularly happy with Skin Fever, a piece I wrote for Wednesday Writers. I also released a zine, Once Upon a Time in Brighton and Hove, which is basically my sixth South Downs Way collection. I’ve not done very much promotion of this – I sent out some free copies, but these haven’t received much response. I’m pleased with how the writing is going, compared to where I was a year ago, but needs a change in approach to build momentum. The substack has been great for getting me to publish stories, but I want to focus on larger works. I’ve an idea about experimenting with novella-sized fictions, which can be shared on the substack as works-in-progress.
The local elections were at the start of May, and felt like an imposition as I’m not feeling particularly engaged with party politics. At the end of the month, the government announced the general election for July 4th. I’ve long expected that this would be closer than the polls are claiming but the shoddy launch suggests this will not be the case. The chaotic Tory campaign has been entertaining so far.
I watched slightly fewer movies than usual in May, and a couple were re-watches. I went to the Blackpool IMAX to watch Furiosa, which was bitterly disappointing. The best thing I saw was And the King Said What a Fantastic Machine, a documentary about the history of film. This was delightfully sprawling and full of provocative footage, a little like an Adam Curtis documentary, but without the overarching narrative.
I also watched most of Castle Rock season 1 before running out of steam. It felt a little too much like a drama, but it was interesting to see Stephen King done as an aesthetic. Dinosaur was a charming BBC comedy series. I tried watching Baby Reindeer. Despite it being a true story, I couldn’t believe that the main character would not immediately spot how odd/dangerous Martha was. The new Doctor Who series is good, but I’m taking time to settle into having a new Doctor.
My reading was a little less disordered than it has been, and I finished six books. Joelle Taylor’s The Night Alphabet was a patchwork novel, sometimes frustrating, but ultimately one I’m glad I read. Kathleen Hanna’s biography Rebel Girl was inspiring, but harrowing in places. I also read part of Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario but I’ve been taking it slow as it is so terrifying. Stephen King’s new collection You Like it Darker had some excellent stories. King has reached the stage of his career where everything feels elegaic. While some of the stories were simplistic and unremarkable, there were others that were moving.
Rory Stewart’s account of his time in government, Politics on the Edge was interesting. Stewart was undoubtedly effective as a minister, but the reasonable tone he takes against the idiocy of everyone else makes you wonder if there’s sometimges another side of the story. His portrait of Boris Johnson’s time in the Foreign Office is withering and suggests that the current system isn’t working.
I’m continuing to enjoy music, but I’m missing the music papers and the context that they gave context to upcoming releases. Nowadays music simply appears on streaming and I miss the background that reviews and promotional interviews gave. Among this month’s new releases was a Ghostface Killer album, but a homophobic slur made me drop that pretty fast. I also went out to a live gig when Zheani came to Manchester.
I’ve been mostly logged out of Twitter and Bluesky, having tired of social media’s current form. I’ve been posting regularly to my mastodon account, where I probably have more monthly posts than readers. But its good to return to the original feeling of microblogging. I’m completly ignoring Threads and Facebook. I have an account on the latter as I need to contact some local groups, but I am not adding anyone who’s not based in the valley. Given Facebook continues to allow problematic content, I want to give it as little support as possible.
On Rosy’s birthday, sat on the sofa with her and Olive, we went though the years of photos on my phone. It was a great way to to review memories – nights out, festivals, walks, hangover selfies – seeing us grow over the space of minutes. I think it’s good to have these sorts of archives. These monthnotes are another example.
I’ve no idea why there was a pair of peacocks on the houses opposite
The first of my three talks was for work, about Java on Serverless. I put a lot of work into it but, when it was delivered, it felt light and inconsequential. It could probably have had more technical details. Otherwise, work has been going a little better and I feel more on top of things. Consultancy means being busy on many simultaneous, unrelated projects, and I’m finding that doing tasks promptly is helping me to feel less swamped.
I finally got a decent photo of one of the local deer
Since Christmas, I’ve been wearing a beard, but decided to remove it this month.
I picked up a free sunflower from the station cafe at the start of the month, but it stubbornly refused to grow, despite me taking very great care of it.
Rosy and I discovered the Merlin app, and have been using it to identify local birds.
I made my first drive since January and discovered that I’d wrecked the car battery through driving so rarely.
On a drive later in the month, I had more car trouble. I am tiring of driving and wondering if train/taxi might be a cheaper combination for my rare journeys.
Rain coming in across the valley
Lists of advice on the internet can be trite, but I found this suggestion from Kevin Kelly incredibly moving: “When you think of someone easy to despise—a tyrant, a murderer, a torturer—don’t wish them harm. Wish that they welcome orphans into their home, and share their food with the hungry. Wish them goodness, and by this compassion you will increase your own happiness.” I love the idea of wishing for redemption rather than harm.
