I was pleased with myself on Saturday, congratulating myself for doing a proper weekly shop. But it’s only Tuesday, and already supplies have been depleted, the fridge all but bare. What would have been a week’s supply of fruit now lasts barely days. Any treat, polished off within hours. Either we’re a household of very …
A fine day to resume my role as tree surgeon. Today’s job taking on the hazel and cherry trees blocking our view. Argh, nobody told me I’m going bald. Ignore that. Look: I’ve got myself a new gizmo. It’s at this stage that I wonder what I’ve done. How on earth am I going to …
Is it the collapse of time or memory? The weekend is here again, and I can barely comprehend where the week went. It seems like mere minutes. But then, life as a whole feels like that, fifteen years zipping past in an instant. Were it not for our collections of family photos, I might forget …
Feels like Christmas: I’ve been gifted a brand-new box of teabags. Small pleasures.
I’m suffering from another mood crash today. Nothing serious. Just the standard, “I’m a failure.” I know what’s brought it on. A complete lack of productivity at work. The inability to deliver on my promises. An unfinished job hanging over me. But it led me to ponder on the career successes of all I knew …
The tech support conundrums of my nonagenarian neighbour increasingly flummox me completely. He does keep me on my toes.
It’s a scandal. The nation is up in arms. What now? A catastrophe! Supermarkets have started selling pots of own-brand hummus without resealable lids! This is a step too far. Environmentalism taken to extremes. How will we survive decanting it into another container? Or putting a saucer on top? Surely this is the death of …
Wandering in my garden under the warming sun at lunchtime, it occurs to me: “I have so much to be grateful for.” If only the weird biochemical imbalance in my body would let me express joyful gratitude instead of heaping more melancholy on my head. “Just snap out of it,” you might say. If only …
Digital transformation is the answer to the health system’s woes, says the government. Of course, we’ve been here before. Way back in 2005, I was charged with providing support to the project manager responsible for delivering aspects of the last national programme for IT in our locality. Since then, we’ve been through wave after wave …
A sign of how unfit I am. Just a single day’s gardening on Saturday has overwhelmed my body, gifting me heavy sleep and aches all over. Now I’m thinking what I actually did to warrant this response. I cut a couple of hedges, cleaned the patio, and cleared the rubbish away. Nothing overly taxing. So …
Over twenty years ago, I knew people with doctorates in Artificial Intelligence. That was long before it was a buzzword, when it still seemed novel and inconceivable. The pair I knew were writing algorithms for medical imaging startups, aiming to automatically detect cancer tumours in CAT scans. That’s machine learning I can believe in. Beneficial …
Produce of the casual English garden.
Standing in front of a wall of booze and cigarettes, the shopkeeper points at my flapjack. “Careful, my friend,” he laughs, “it looks like you’re getting an addiction.” It’s true. The secret morning flapjack on the way back from school really is my guilty vice. Though you won’t find a single wise sage reciting a …
Save us from Generative AI videos. They all, without exception, suck. First, there’s the script: utter crap. Then, there’s the selection of stock video clips stitched together randomly. Finally, it’s the annoying synthetic narration. That assertive, male, Americanish voice which cannot pronounce uncommon or foreign words. If you have talent, create something wonderful yourself. If …
