Technology

Thoughts on AI

As an artist, I often get asked what my thoughts are on AI, specifically AI-generated images. The very short and straight-to-the-point answer is: I don't like it. And not just because it relies on stealing the work of artists the world over. One reason for me goes much

Personal

Commonplace books

I've been finding myself leaning more towards traditional or analogue ways of doing things. I haven't used my Kindle regularly for years (only recently for our trip to Malta), favouring actual printed books. Having tried journaling digitally for convenience and have it fall by the wayside,

Comics

Don't get ahead of yourself...

Progress on my comic has been slow. General day-to-day life takes it out of me a lot and generally by the time I get a chance to do some work, around 8 or 9pm each night, I'm knackered and just ready to shut off and rest. Couple that

Personal

Takes me back

My pal Kraig sent a message on a WhatsApp group with a link to a Studio Ghibli playlist on Spotify. I put it on this afternoon and left it playing in the background. After a while, the track above started playing and it triggered something in me. I think I&

Music

Music to work to

It's Friday afternoon, I'm doing a very monotonous task at work (lots of re-formatting content, lots of copying and pasting) and I'm listening to one of my "go-to" playlists on Spotify, one of their curated playlists: Cinematic Chillout. I've been

Personal

Malta, August 2023

Since 2013, we've been going back to Malta every couple of years to go see Lu's family out there. The last time we were there was 2018 and when we learned we were going to have another baby in 2019, we figured 2020 would be good

Social Media

End of social? (For me, at least)

Twitter continues to circle the drain. Since Elon took over, the steady increase in spam accounts and ads for shit products has resulted in a very poor experience. I used to love Twitter. For years, it was consistently the best place for discussions with friends and a great way to

Personal

488 miles for 5 minutes

Last week, I had the gut-wrenching realisation that I'd lost my passport. As we're just a few weeks out from flying to Malta for a holiday we've been postponing since 2020, it's safe to say panic immediately set in and prompted frantic

Social Media

The genius of Threads onboarding

With Twitter continuing to circle the drain, the race to take it's place is picking up pace with the FOMO-inducing invite-only approach of Bluesky and open floodgates of Threads by Meta. I joined both this week so had the opportunity to reflect on the stark difference of the

Personal

Memories of Jedi...

This week's podcast discovery is Missing Frames, a show where the host is joined by guests who haven't seen a particular film (sometimes they'll have one guest who has seen it, one who hasn't), they have a short discussion beforehand, go away

Film

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Last week saw the release of what is said to be the final Indiana Jones film, at least with Harrison Ford playing the character (I think the jury's out on whether Disney/Lucasfilm will go ahead with some form of prequel series on Disney+). Understandably, the last outing

Animation

Art History of Studio Ghibli

I meant to write about this last week and totally forgot. On Wednesday, 21st June, I went with my buddy Kraig to a talk about Studio Ghibli. The title was "The Art History of..." but right out of the gate the speaker, Dr Shiro Yoshioka, let us know

Personal

Juno

Lu's cousin recently adopted a cat and soon found herself with a litter of kittens to deal with. We already have a cat so initially didn't entertain the idea but once pictures started getting sent around, we decided to give one of them a new home.

Gardening

Gardening stuff

One of the reasons that made us choose to move into our house back in 2021 was the garden. We came from a house with 3 tiers of decking and a driveway at the front, not much greenery and not much space for the kids to play safely. We now

Life in Numbers

Life in Numbers: May '23

Creeping towards the halfway point in the year, it strikes me how fast this year is disappearing. It doesn't feel all that long ago when I wrote my January post. Podcasts: 32 episodes, 42 hours I had a week off this month which usually means my podcast listening

Music

Foo Fighters: Preparing Music for Concerts

I've been a fan of Foo Fighters for a long time. I was a fan of Dave Grohl even before Foo Fighters were a band. So when the news hit of Taylor Hawkins' passing last year, there was a sense that maybe the band wouldn't

Travel and places

Bridlington, May 2023

My earliest memory of Bridlington consists of vignettes blurred by the passing of time. I remember specific arcade games, Street Fighter 2 (of course!), Return of the Jedi which I rediscovered at Arcade Club in Leeds, even the game tie-in with Micheal Jackson's Moonwalker! I remember sitting by

Personal

Hooking them in...

My youngest son has been obsessed with a show called Spidey and his Amazing Friends for a good while now. If you're unaware of it, it's basically a Spider-man show aimed at audiences too young to read or watch the films. Recently, Disney+ also dropped a

Life in Numbers

Life in Numbers: April '23

Do I need to write an intro each month? I dunno, maybe I'll just get straight into the meat of the content... Podcasts: 55 episodes, 53 hours Those following these specific posts will no doubt have guessed that podcasts are my main source of content consumption these days

Covid

Lockdown longing?

I was thinking the other night about the lockdown period. It was horrible being highly restricted in where we could go and who we could see but one thing I realised I missed was the Friday nights. Like everyone, we got into a habit of doing Zoom calls with friends.

Art

Trapping shadows

I came across this video via This Is Colossal and it's an interesting video to watch. Sculpture is a mystery to me and it seems like magic how people can do it but one thing in this video made me stop and pause for thought, when the sculptor

Reading A Clash of Kings

I've seen A Game of Thrones, the TV series, many times over the years so I know the general story (at least, as it's told through that medium). I'd always heard the books are far more dense and are different in many ways from

Music

John Williams, composer of our childhoods

The other day, I came across an article on Classic FM's website showing a short video of John Williams playing a piano but included in the article was a short 15 minute interview and I just felt like a doing a short John Williams appreciation post. Here are

User Interface Design

Eyes forward

Paying attention to what your competitors are doing is certainly useful to help gauge where you're at compared to them but what's critical for me is remembering to keep your eyes on your own path ahead. Recently at work, there was a discussion which I obviously

Personal

Trying out journalling

This month, I decided to start a journal. A real, hand-written journal. I've tried journaling a couple of times before and it didn't really catch on but something about this time is slightly different. I'm trying to take a bit of a step back