Paul Clarke

As I'm waiting for a big video to export, I shall tell the story of how I nearly died in a Greek trireme.

Isn't the big failure here from the commissioning client for not screaming at the very start "wtf is an AI-enabled pensions service? Fuck that shit please deliver one that is accurate-data-enabled with a side of good-uptime-enabled and leave it at that"

My college has published this extraordinary statement. www.oriel.ox.ac.uk/news/college... is it even a statement? What is being stated? Current provost is a piece of fucking work with plenty of form re the bloody statue, and whatever oily deal he did to get his peerage

Parked up for coffee

August to October is a DISTANCE, isn't it?

Saw Martin Taylor at Kings Place last night. One of the greatest living guitarists, as always fresh and exciting to see live. He tears music into tiny pieces and reassembles it, clearly getting as much joy from it as we are. Some utterly transcendental moments

How did this person manage to start and run a business?

These fancy Sony headphones are *fine* I guess, but so loaded with cruft and feature bloat. I *do* need them to reduce ambient noise and play what I ask them to. I do *not* need constant notifications about their internal state, possible integrations, software updates etc. Puts me right off.

Put a box under your laptop, and look at the camera. Thank me later. (That's literally the only difference between these pictures, taken 30 seconds apart in identical lighting)

it is too dark

Lies I find myself telling as a parent: oh, no, we can’t play with the playdoh anymore, it’s asleep

Just remember. The people who surround you are very much not normal.

I love that the new music-on-transport 'policy' was written by someone who has never, ever been on city centre transport at night outside the West End/City

eyeing up that boiler switch like

I don't think the banjo is the problem

You know you're getting old when Walliams' Day comes round faster every year

Nearly home

The neediness of my accounting system to know if daddy loves it yet is unmatched. Every bloody week. I've done a couple of responses "no, you are cranking the prices until I scream and flee, you are accounts software I have no feelings for you other than keep it cheap and fuck off with the AI balls"

Yes!! Winner! It's the BOOJ

Sound people: is there a word for that effect where sound slows and deepens to a very loud ultra low bass fry? A sort of mwowwww-w-w-w sound. Much beloved of docking spaceships in space operas, and extremely daunting things happening in slow motion?

Seems to be big traffic light failures in Holborn/Clerkenwell. One just assumes nation state antics these days

I love it when blokes like this show up and act as if they’re the first person in the building who knows how to think.

And like a tedious numbers hack...

How I caused my extremely genteel secretary to explode (in ice-cold fury).

Event photography: when you think your dinner is going to be 3 x courses, in a 5 x stars hotel. And it turns out to be a packet of Maryland cookies.

Out of nowhere, a memory comes back at me, hearing the music. A works outing (joint US/UK team) to St Mary's Cathedral, Newcastle, to hear the Northern Sinfonia playing Barber's Adagio. We'd booked the tickets weeks earlier. The date was 12 September 2001. I will leave you to imagine the atmosphere.

@southlondongirl.bsky.social The one night you don't ask, I release all the demons of a week in a Hilton and cook like a king!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

I'd like to live in Westminster on an income level compatible with occasional forays to nick fuel, but perhaps that's just me

I see the new DG has fallen straight into the politicians' trap of "saying stupid, ill-considered and largely fictional things about AI". Why must they do this?

Someone asked me recently what good public service digital leadership looked like. My answer was long, but essentially boiled down to "not parroting this kind of shit" 👇

Nothing makes my head smash into the table faster than yet another clever-clever post about em dashes (yafuckingwn) illustrated by... en dashes. If you don't know the difference you shouldn't be allowed to post anything, anywhere. And you probably say 'pecific'. {Izzy Hands voice: TerWAATT}

Well that filled a Saturday: scampered off train in Herts and realised my coat and keys were still enjoying their journey. To Birmingham. Limped home to get spare keys. Saw the lost souls coming back south. Jumped on train at Euston, all exactly where left. Get a keyring tracker, kids.

We really do need a proper reappraisal of Oprah given some of the absolute frauds and woo she popularised. Dr. Oz. Dr. Phil. That 'psychic surgeon' who was raping hundreds of his followers. The Secret. The Satanic ritual abuse hoax.