This has been a tough year - I've found it hard to get back in to reading. A few books knocked me off my stride and the lack of a commute meant less downtime for reading. Nevertheless, 46 books isn't too bad! Of note, for the first time in ages I read a couple of paper books! Like some kind of old-fashioned cave-man! Myself When Young from 1938 is astounding. If you want to understand proto-feminism or how society viewed itself, it is a must read. The Intergalactic Omniglot was a book I…
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It's my birthday! Therefore it marks the end of another year of me hurtling around Earth's yellow sun. So, as is customary, here's my year in review. I'm not really sure what happened to the last year. As the philosophers once said, "the years start coming and they don't stop coming". The biggest personal item was snapping a tooth and the long journey to getting implants. I've had my head drilled, and now I'm just awaiting for the crowns. I haven't read as many books as I wanted - fewer than …
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If you explore this blog's archives, you'll see that I've been blogging continuously every day since the start of 2020. Before that, I was blogging every month since mid-2008. Today, I am very hungover. Although I usually write a bunch of posts a few days and weeks in advance, I find myself looking at my publishing calendar and seeing it blissfully empty. Part of the reason I blog is that I truly want to learn something new every day - and I want to share that knowledge. Whether it's a cool…
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I'm terrible at networking. I forget people's names minutes after meeting them, I never have business cards and lose the ones I'm given, and I can't go five minutes without burbling some nonsense. But I recognise that networking is a skill and, like any skill, it takes practice to succeed. I've always been told that success isn't always about what you know, but more about who you know. So how does someone who is introverted, bad at small talk, and terrible at sending follow-up emails get to…
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I wrote my first public blog post on 2004-05-11. I immediately followed it up with a brief review of my BlackBerry. I kept up the blogging for a few months, then it trickled off. I preferred posting on Usenet and other primitive forms of social media. But, by 2007, I was back to blogging on my own site again, and I never really stopped. This blog fluctuates between being a diary, an excuse to rant, and technical writing. It's my site and I can do whatever I want with it. That's rather…
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This is a retropost. Written contemporaneously in February 2019, but published much later. My life is weird. Again. Looking out over London from the top floor. The Eye is glittering and the Palace of Westminster is glowing. Someone pours me a glass of (very expensive) champagne, as the Secretary of State laughs at my witty bon mot. Is this my life now? People of distinction and influence listening to what I have to say? It isn't an oak-panelled room, with deep armchairs, where cigar-smoking …
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One of the things I love about having a database-backed blog like WordPress is that's it opens up a delightful range of possibilities for displaying content. I've read and reviewed around 300 books over the last few years. So I wrote a scrap of code which goes through all my book reviews, grabs their cover and rating, and displays them in a nice grid. You can visit it at shkspr.mobi/blog/library You know how when you're at a friend's home you rummage through their bookshelf? That's the same…
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Well, that year happened! I quit my Civil Service job. Started my own consultancy. Then took on a new job working 4 days a week. Busy! I wrote a 50,000 word set of sci-fi short stories for NaNoWriMo. Contributed to lots of Open Source projects and did a few responsible disclosures - but got no bounties. Got sent some weird gadgets to review. Went to some splendid restaurants. Saw some decent shows - including The Who!. I did a few interviews for magazines and podcasts - but nothing like as…
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Rather pleasingly, I averaged one book a week this year, 52 in total. 24 by women - although that doesn't include compilations which had a mixture of genders. So fairly even handed. As per usual, I alternated between fiction and non-fiction. I find my brain gets confused otherwise. I also set my eReader to have a different font per book so they don't start bleeding in to each other. This year, I deliberately set out to read some older books - not just those on the modern best-sellers list. …
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Hello! Thank you for reading what I write. Sorry to ask, but… who are you? I was chatting to a friend about what it is like running a blog, finding new topics, keeping up with a daily schedule, moderating comments, etc. And they asked, quite reasonably, "who are your readers?" And, honestly, I have very little idea! The only analytics I have on here is basic WordPress JetPack statistics. I can see which posts are popular. I get a sense of which countries you are in. If you leave a comment, I k…
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Jon Hicks has a lovely blog post about his site's design. In it, he briefly touches on something I find interesting: Blogging like it's 1972 I also finally realised that there's nothing stopping me from adding journal posts dated from before I started blogging. So I'm going to start adding key life moments as much as I can. A blog isn't an immutable chain of events. There's nothing to stop us travelling in time. When I go digital sperlunking though my history, I often find interesting…
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My year starts in mid-November (my blog, my rules). Last year, I read an astonishing 85 books! That is too many books. This year I was doing lots of reading for my MSc - which was mostly academic papers. I also didn't have any long relaxing breaks. But, nevertheless, I'm happy to have read 42 books. Not bad! A few stats. The gender split was roughly 50:50. Some of the books were compilations and I think a few of the authors are non-binary. I'm pretty happy with that balance. As per my…
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