Finished reading: Orbital by Samantha Harvey 📚

Finished reading: Poems by William Blake, selected and introduced by Patti Smith 📚

Great quote from Hunter S. Thompson: “It is not necessary to accept the choices handed down to you by life as you know it. There is more to it than that — no one HAS to do something he doesn’t want to do for the rest of his life. But then again, if that’s what you wind up doing, by all means convince yourself that you HAD to do it.

Finished reading: Principles of Sustainable Finance by Dirk Schoenmaker and Willem Schramade 📚

Finished reading: A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver 📚

Finished reading: Stasiland by Anna Funder 📚

Some useful definitions of diction, tone and voice from Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook. Diction: “‘Watch your language!’ you may say to someone who has just expressed himself with the help of slang or an expletive. What you really mean is ‘Watch your diction!’ Diction means word choice." Tone: “The overall effect of the diction of a piece of writing, in addition to other elements, such as choice of subject, imagery, design of the poem, etc.

Finished reading: A Life on Our Planet by Sir David Attenborough 📚

Finished reading: A Path Through the Jungle by Prof Steve Peters 📚 What a fantastic book. Strongly recommend it to anybody looking for some practical, step-by-step advice for taking more control of your mind. A quote that hit home: “Every day that we get up, we change. We are a different person from the one who went to bed the night before. By making small changes to your thinking and behaviours, over time, you will move yourself in the direction that you want to go.

Delighted to have been awarded a distinction in my journalism diploma from the London School of Journalism. 🎓

Finished reading: Invisible Doctrine by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison 📚

Finished reading: How to Read a Poem by Terry Eagleton 📚

As the dust settles on the US election result, those who care about what it means for the climate may find some strength in these words from James Stockdale. “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end — which you can never afford to lose — with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” He was a U.

Sir Jonathan Bate has commented on the shift from humanities to STEM subjects among students seeking well-paying jobs. “The irony of that, of course, is that if you speak to employers, they really like English students because the best of them can write, communicate and think critically. The deeper irony is, with the AI revolution, the people who are really going to lose their jobs are the computer programmers.”

Venus is shining bright as the sun goes down. Seems like the only star in the sky.

Finished reading: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou 📚

Every now and then something happens in my life that reminds me of the importance of having a compassionate mind, both towards others and towards myself. For example, a stranger was quite rude to me the other day. It was completely unprovoked, surprising and caught me off guard. Instead of turning to anger or losing confidence, I thanked them and understood that their life may not be where they want it to be.

Big fan of iA Writer. Its measured approach to incorporating AI in its writing tool is interesting. Instead of adding OpenAI & Co. to our app like everybody else, we figured that visually separating artificial and human text was the kind of problem we had to solve. So we did. Here’s a link to a blog post with more detail about iA Writer’s Authorship tracking feature. Looks cool.

Stopped for a lunchtime drink at a bar in Rome and, unknown to me, a French girl sitting at the next table was drawing me as I was talking on the phone. She’s talented. She explained that she’s an art student and likes to do this when she travels.

The room in Rome where John Keats died.

Walked past some old building in Rome around sunset tonight.

“Being kind to others is mostly about your actions. Being kind to yourself is mostly about your thoughts.” From James Clear’s newsletter.

Finished reading: The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson 📚

A beach at the Porto Selvaggio nature reserve in Salento. You need to walk through woods for 30 minutes from the nearest parking spot. Worth it every time.

Finished working my way through the Earth’s Changing Climate course by Professor Richard Wolfson, available on Audible or directly through The Great Courses. Old (2007), but still a solid intro to the science behind climate change.

Great article by Helen Thomson in The Observer about the mental health benefits of taking walks in nature. Throughout the pandemic, I tried to take a long walk in the countryside every day. Doing this helped me get through a difficult time, that’s for sure, but I didn’t really give much thought as to why. The article explains some good reasons I can relate to. Although it may sound great to people living in cooler parts of the world planning a summer holiday, one of the main downsides of living in southern Italy is how unbearably hot the summers are.

Finished reading: Cosmos by Carl Sagan 📚

Finished reading: Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks 📚

Finished reading: The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray 📚

Finished reading: A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle 📚

I’ve been looking for a markdown editor that’s nice to use, keeps everything in sync and plays well offline. I frequently work across macOS, iOS and Linux. The fact I use Linux on my old Surface Pro when out and about throws a spanner in the works and narrows my options somewhat. Decided to give Obsidian a spin. Liking what I see so far, especially the option for making subheadings foldable in the editor.

Finished reading: Ultra-Processed People by Chris van Tulleken 📚

Finished reading: Vulture Capitalism by Grace Blakeley 📚

I’ve been comparing Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro with OpenAI’s GPT-4o. The consensus from my research seems to be that most people think that ChatGPT is by far the better product. However, I find Gemini offers a better experience for me. I use it to help with lesson planning, learning Italian, studying iOS development and for help across other more general things. It’s also become a new first point of call for much of what I would otherwise just Google the old-school way.

Finished reading: The Cold War by Odd Arne Westad 📚

Finished reading: The Collected Poems by Robert Frost 📚

Finished reading: Poetry in the Making by Ted Hughes 📚 This is a great short book about poetry and the craft of writing it.

Finished reading: The Murders in the Rue Morgue and Other Tales by Edgar Allan Poe 📚

Finished reading: The Inferno by Dante 📚

This quote from software engineer Kent Beck pretty much sums up where I keep going wrong. “By far the dominant reason for not releasing sooner was a reluctance to trade the dream of success for the reality of feedback.” Dreams of future success may be a comfortable place to hang out, but they’re a complete waste of time. Finish the work. Put it out there. Listen to what other people think about it.

Young vines preparing to soak up the summer sun.

Finished reading: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho 📚

Finished reading: Bright Wings by Billy Collins 📚 Drawings of birds and poems about birds. What’s not to love?

Over recent months this website has morphed into a public log of my reading. I’m ok with that. I guess the beauty of having a personal website is that you can use it as you want, and it’s ok if that changes over time as it rides life’s ebbs and flows with you. With no hunger for likes or algorithms to appease the freedom feels real. Hopefully I’ll find the time to post a wider variety of things here soon.

Finished reading: Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris 📚 Funny and beautifully written.

Finished reading: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams 📚

Finished reading: Regenesis by George Monbiot 📚

Finished reading: Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad by Austin Kleon 📚

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you just are who you are, forgetting the power you have to take action and become who you want to be. Let’s not let the challenges of the past and the present hold you back from moving forward towards where you want to go. Keep taking those steps, no matter how tiny they may feel. They all add up if you just show up and keep moving.

Finished reading: Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller 📚

Apple recently shared a great Q&A with its UX writing team from last year’s WWDC. Lots of good insights here. If you’re a writer it’s worth checking out the article in full, but I want to share their advice for explaining technical concepts in simple terms: First, remember that not everyone will have your level of understanding. Sometimes we get so excited about technical details that we forget the folks who might be using an app for the first time.

Interesting to hear Malcolm Gladwell talk about his writing process on MasterClass. He shared how he breaks every piece of writing down into small, numbered sections before stringing it all together and figuring out what goes where and working on transitions. He didn’t mean sections like chapters in a book or even subheadings in an article, he suggested that his sections are often far more granular than that. Sounds pretty basic.

Finished reading: The Creative Act by Rick Rubin 📚

Finished reading: Naples ‘44 by Norman Lewis 📚

This has been a year of discovering American sports. Feels like they never stop, except for the ads. Chose Chicago as my base, don’t ask me why. It amazes me how frequently Americans stop me in the street to talk about the Cubs when I’m out in my cap, even in some of the most remote corners of Europe.

The Merlin Bird ID app really is a remarkable piece of kit. Its Sound ID feature tells you the type of bird you can hear after recording only a few seconds of song. Works more often than not for me here in Italy, even when the bird song is quite faint.

Finished reading: Wild Mind by Natalie Goldberg. This book was recommended at a poetry event I attended a few months back. Thought-provoking advice on the craft of writing, scattered with a dash of memoir and lots of good prompts to fight the blank page. 📚

Can’t remember how I stumbled upon The Odin Project web development curriculum, but I’m glad I did. I like the way it points you where to go to dig deeper into the topics, and it offers a nice blend of different learning materials and assignments. I find it way easier to learn new things by reading about them instead of watching videos. Pissed that it’s taken me so long to figure that out.

Italian Sundays are made for passeggiatas. Here’s a shot from our stroll today in central Lecce.

Hit a 77-day streak on Duolingo today. The gamification of studying Italian is working wonders. Duolingo has become a daily habit, and this also trickles through to other tools I’m using to learn Italian. Wish I found this app years ago.

Enrolled in Harvard’s CS50x: Introduction to Computer Science course. Enjoyed working through an older version of this years ago before abandoning it about halfway. Let’s see if I can make it to the end this time around.

Finished reading: Dickens and Prince by Nick Hornby. It’s a niche one for sure, but right up my alley. These two geniuses had more in common than first meets the eye. 📚

Whoa, we’re half way there 🎶

Finished reading: The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play by Neil A. Fiore 📚

Finished working my way through the Learning How to Learn course on Coursera. This was recommended as a helpful resource at the start of The Odin Project. So much depth. It’s great for anybody looking to learn something new and study more effectively, especially if you’re procrastinating or finding your subject difficult to wrestle with.

When I close my computer and head outside, sometimes it feels like I’ve stepped through a time machine instead of a door.

Finished reading: Dreyer’s English by Benjamin Dreyer 📚

In a chapter in Baseball 100 about Japanese baseball player Sadaharu Oh, Joe Posnanski compares baseball training in Japan to spring training in the United States. Training is much more gruelling in Japan apparently. He explains how, culturally, the sport is just viewed differently there. When American manager Trey Hillman managed a Japanese team and tried to make some training sessions less intense, in an apparent effort to do the players a favour, the players weren’t happy about it.

I’m currently listening to The Now Habit audiobook by Dr Neil Fiore. 📚 It’s about beating procrastination. My main takeaway so far is the idea of replacing ‘I have to’ do [task] with ‘I choose to’ do [task]. If there’s something to do, and I’ve agreed to do it, then that was a decision I made instead of facing the alternative. So just do it and stop whining, or make the decision not to, deal with the consequences and move on to the next thing.

I’m currently rereading Dreyer’s English to brush up on some American grammar and enjoy the excellent prose of a man so in love with the craft of writing. While chatting about this book on a call with somebody this morning, the conversation turned to hyphens and dashes. Lots of people don’t give much thought to the fact that em dashes (—), en dashes (–) and hyphens (-) all have different lengths and should be used for different purposes.

This paddle boarder had the right idea. Need to get myself one of those for days when the sea is as beautiful as this.

Watched: Noam Chomsky’s ‘Independent Thinking and Media’s Invisible Powers’ course on MasterClass. 🎥 Well worth the time. Being sceptical of the information we get is perhaps more important than ever. About two billion people are voting this year in a world where AI makes it easy to facilitate misinformation and disinformation on a massive scale.

Finished reading: Chokepoint Capitalism by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow 📚