About

Hello and welcome to my little slice of the internet. I work as a freelance web developer and content designer, but this here, is my space to collate my personal musings, interests and miscellanea. It is also, my commonplace book where I transcribe interesting passages from my readings.

I enjoy sailing, swimming, running, skipping with my selection of Crossrope jump ropes, long winter walks, and being a very talented couch potato. You will also find me writing here and making a relentless habit of reading anything of interest.

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I'm still moving in

I've been tinkering around on the internet since the early noughties, and there have been many other iterations of this blog. I am in the process of collating most of that content here - excepting juvenilia - where I hope it will stay for the forseeable future.

Please bear with all the metaphorical boxes in the metaphorical hallway. I'm working on it.

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Colophon

Here's how this sausage is made.

I proudly hand code this site using HTML, CSS, vanilla JavaScript and XML. I've coded everything myself except the JavaScript for the contact form, for which I use the free version of Letterbird because:

  1. I didn't want to code the form myself, but I also didn't want to add a naked email address to the site. Spam is a pain.
  2. It's rather excellent.
  3. I like the work that the Good Enough guys are doing. (Check out Pika, their blogging platform. No need to code or to worry about servers.)

I prefer to write in raw HTML, in Visual Studio Code. Sometimes, I write in Obsidian using Markdown, because Markdown is wonderful. Thank you John Gruber et al. I then convert the Markdown files into HTML using Pandoc. On my phone, I've used iA Writer for ages, but I've recently changed to Obsidian.

I do not use Content Management Systems (CMSs) or Static Site Generators. I have nothing against them, as I've used them myself in previous iterations of this site. After lots of trial and error over the years with various platforms, I finally settled on hand coding in 2024. I'm still mighty pleased with that choice, despite having to update hundreds of pages when I need to make site-wide changes.

Fonts

Noto Sans regular for both headings and body.

LLM free zone

This site is fully created by a human for other humans. As AI slop proliferates at pace, human-made internet things have acquired primacy. Therefore, I do not use AI on this site. This blog serves multiple purposes for me, including self-expression and exploring what I think. I find that using a tool like AI short-circuits that process.

I like reading other people's human-made blogs and connecting with the flesh and blood web denizens who share the same interest of building and tending to their quirky corner of the internet. I see my blog as being in conversation with these minds. If you're similarly minded, that's your cue to get in touch, should the urge strike you.

Call me a luddite, but (whisper it) I just don't enjoy using LLMs. There's a lot of hype and hysteria around LLMs at the moment, to which I don't subscribe. If a technology tool doesn't serve me, I leave it out. But do please wake me up when the robots revolt and come for us in our sleep.

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Contact

This good, old-fashioned, but effective contact form is the best way to say hello. I'm not on social media.

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Privacy policy, Cookies

This site does not collect your personal data or track your online behaviour.

We do not send cookies to your browser.

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Last updated: 5th June 2026.