Intro I wanted to share a quick tool I’ve been using recently to up my writing - emacs-langtool. This is a tool that bring spell and grammar checking tools you would expect in modern word processing suites into Emacs. It is also free, open source and can be run locally without an internet connection. Set-up Download Languagetool and extract it into a folder on your system. Also make sure you have Java installed too....
Intro Change has an energy barrier. To do anything new you need help to get over that hump, make a change, and enjoy the rewards of your new situation. I have written in the past about my efforts to remove distractions by limiting my phone’s functionality with, if I’m being honest, the aim to remove doom-scrolling and short form content. Ideally becoming a more present person who, when they do consume content, consumes high-quality content mindfully....
Link to article: Consistency Matters Non-AI thoughts I have been happy to watch the rise of Calleb Hammer, a finance YouTuber who has made a name for himself sharing financial content about people in some of the most dire debt you can imagine. His approach, and something that was at least rare when I was growing up, is his relentless focus on the future and how we need to make steps now to make that vision happen....
Link to article:How to Feel Bad & Be Wrong Non-AI thoughts The below article highlighted some key concepts that I feel have a direct impact on my personal and professional life. Avoid the “hard question” in favour of the “easy” one is something I think we can all relate to. The example of working hard correlating to doing good work is something also explored deeply in Slow Productivity. Clearly this idea of doing the right thing in the right is coming up in a number of places....
Link to article: So you wanna to de-bog yourself? Non-AI thoughts The below article really helped to clarify some of my thoughts in the area. I have long been aware of the “activation-energy” problem and something I have tried to mitigate in my own work. I saw this most jarringly when I was made redundant in 2022. I had been unhappy in my role for some time, even looking for new opportunities elsewhere, however it was this big push that was the drive needed to find a new role that got me into the, much better, place I am today....
Motivation As cloud adoption increases, so does the complexity of managing costs. As with any organization, we constantly face challenges related to optimizing and mitigating the risks of cloud spend. With the risk of cloud costs spiralling, it became clear that a more structured approach is needed. Enter FinOps — short for Financial Operations. It’s a discipline that focuses on maximizing business value from cloud spend, allowing companies to make more informed financial decisions around cloud usage....
When it comes to my own productivity, few techniques have helped me as much as time blocking. Earlier this year, I shared some thoughts on this method, praising its ability to slice through the cacophony of daily tasks and distractions. However, in the months since and, as the post-holiday workload surged, I think it is worth a revisit to this topic. The essence of time blocking, for those unfamiliar, lies in its simplicity: allocating specific blocks of time to individual tasks or types of work....
In the whirlwind of technological evolution, generative AI emerged as a beacon of transformative potential. Less than two years ago, the advent of ChatGPT set the tech world ablaze with predictions of a seismic shift that promised to redefine industries, economies, and the fabric of our daily lives. Goldman Sachs, with the precision of seasoned soothsayers, foretold the displacement of 300 million jobs.1 Yet, as we stand eighteen months into this future, the landscape is markedly different from what was prophesised....
Running Linux and working in Cloud and HPC it is common for me to be stumped when problems appear. Indeed that is where the fun is. However, after receiving a link to download some photos from a recent even, I was shocked to see the images were in .heicformat.1 I have never heard of this and was shocked that something as simple as an image file could not be opened easily on my fancy, sleek, XPS-13....
Thoughts here are my own In the ever-evolving landscape of technology and artificial intelligence (AI), the decision by the new Labour government to shelve £1.3bn of funding promised by the previous Conservatives leadership for tech and AI projects will cast a long shadow over the future of AI, and scientific compute, innovation in the UK.1 This move, while framed as a necessary adjustment to restore economic stability, underscores a deeper, more systemic issue: the vulnerability of technological advancement to the whims of political change....