The Mouth of a Cave, 1784, Hubert Robert

Përshëndetje familja! Welcome to my little post-it note on the inter-web. I’m currently walking from England to India so if I’m slow in replying to your messages that’s my excuse — even though I’m always slow in replying regardless of what I’m doing, anyway…

So far this year has taken me from the far north of Shqipri (Albania), into and across Kosovo (and up it’s tallest peak, Gjeravica), into North Macedonia through the Šar Mountains, and up and over Mount Korab, the tallest mountain in both NM and AL, and into Greece.

Climbed Mount Olympus, briefly returned to Albania to spend more time with Jess, and then back to melting in the heat of Mediterranean days only to barely reconstitute in the night and repeat, repeat, repeat.

At last, in September, crossing Bulgaria, it has cooled down. Pretty soon I’ll be complaining about cold nights, and rainy days.

Come take a look at my progress, or lack thereof.

Updates from the road are mostly going on in the WhatsApp group, if I forgot to add you then flick me a message. If you don’t have WhatsApp then I will slowly be adding those updates to this site too but I’m already half a year behind on that so don’t hold your breath! :D

There’s a little bit of non-walk related stuff below too.

oh, and I’m a prolific quoter. On the rare occasions that I do dream of something like work, it’s in a role that might be best likened to that of a librarian. I dream of connecting the right people, to the right idea, at the right time. If you like the things I write, or more especially if you don’t, then take a gander at my collection of quotes and you’re sure to find a clipping of something much better.


Farewell Istanbul

Istanbul, city of cities

The origins of the bug in the machine, Thomas Edison, Capt. Grace Hopper

Effective collaboration builds on a foundation of alignment

What do we mean when we talk about work?

Substantive collaboration occurs within a strong shared context

Accumulation is not a substitute for creative work

Imitation is more integral than repetition in generating novel creative directions

Integrity requires a context of use

An evening's conversation on personal, conceptual, and creative integrity with Kyle

I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom, Jason Pargin

Kindness through distortion

Arrested in Istanbul, now what?

Reality in the second degree?

Stone hotel, pool night

A table, a chair, a square

Avash, avash

Pëllumbas, the peaks, Peskopi

Going slower and looking closer

Sunshine, windburn, summat to do with summits

The first hundred days

Picturing people on the walk

Hurdling over the Dolomites

Between the mountains and the First Two Pages of Frankenstein

From Triglav

What's not to like?

Finding joy

At play with photography in Innsbruck

Why the walk?

✉ More photographs than footsteps or words

✉ Thinking about the shape of the walk

✉ I hope the cows don't mind

✉ Joining the North Downs Way

✉ A walking day

✉ The last of the familiar faces

✉ Catch up with mum

✉ Sensible shoes

✉ A trip down memory lane

✉ A warm welcome to the walk

Books (maybe) for the walk

The countries in between

Links sans commentary

A love of files

Linking forwards

How to find your mum's keys after she's given up hope

Out beyond the edge of the map

My future children and me.

Via Francigena

Walking to the Himalaya

Before the walk

Dreams of a community

Why I like small spaces

What's the difference between the shell and a terminal?

A command by any other name: The utility of aliases and wrappers in the shell

Writing simply

A place of focus

Systems designed around the average person are doomed to fail

General purpose, not always fit for purpose

A micro exhibit of good design

Six of seven

It's not enough to respond in kind

Ideas, braids, snakes and ladders

Subsetting fonts for faster responses and rendering

Symbiosis in thought and design

Not another Eble

Bad Eble the third

Durable design of digital artefacts

An Eble a day keeps the doctor away

Stuck in the web

Once more into the deep

Egypt through the eyes of David Roberts

Planting begins anew

Wandering on, journeys I have in mind

Keep your daily notes separate

What's in a tent? (besides me)

A stream of truthlessness

Putting the useful in a uniform

Reduce friction at the point of creativity

Taxonomies should be emergent and asynchronous

Premature labelling inhibits exploration

Good jeans are nice, but joy is better

Dashes, firewood, and philosophy

Away for Easter, away for work

Chilly reminiscences and guilt

Marshmallows, money, life, and logs

Big birds and battle cries

Back to the wild, nodes, Dorian Taylor

Data structures, late night fixes

Not getting what I see

The matter of me

A day off

I lost a thought today

To be a child again

We shape our software; thereafter our software shapes us

Tool sheds and mountain tarns

An evening of shovelling, shelving, and kimchi

The sunburnt country

The new middlemen

Steady states

Anti fragility

The man who walked too fast

Quotes are not notes

✉ Afghans, speculators, and Timothy Snyder

The forests of Northland

Beauty and the beach

A short walk

A feast of links

✉ Art, ideas, and how we share them

I should have kept a journal

Rooks all the way down

Puffer fish and buried men

Good at nothing

Lessons from the back of beyond

Why fragments?

Taking pictures with words

Write the things

A walk between two Wednesdays

A short walk beneath a long white cloud

Today I'm rich

Half a world away

On my way to creation

A thought for tomorrow