Despite the horrendous pricing, dubious politics and the downright annoying hydration breaks which are really just a not so subtle way to introduce more adverts…I’m really enjoying the 2026 World Cup. I didn’t enjoy Scotland’s result against Morocco but the tartan army invasion of Boston was joyous and I loved the many many pic’s and vid’s from Jobi Liquors.

The timing of games isn’t ideal but the quality has been excellent. Next up, its only the number 1 rated side in the world, Brazil. In both games we’ve not really turned up so here’s hoping we’ll rise to the occasion on Wednesday.

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Scotties in the City launched in Glasgow this week. 40 large Scottie dogs have been placed across the city and I stumbled on two this morning. There’s one at Devonshire Gardens and the details on it are amazing. So much to read. The other I found today was at the Botanics and looked fantastic in the sun. Looking forward to finding more…and I do hope they remain graffiti free but seeing the state of Gt Western Road and other bits of the west end recently I have the fear.

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🔗 Links

• Moments – Instagram is so far removed from a place to share photo’s now and while there are many alternatives, Moments launched in the last week and I like it. Will it stick? No idea, but you can find mine here.
• Why I email complete strangers – Lovely post on emailing people on the web. My random emails are not so nice!
• I Love the Computer – this struck a chord. From tinkering on my Amstrad 464, my first Escom PC all the way through to Mac’s, gaming PC’s and my recent custom NAS. I too love the computer.
• Tim Cook Says Apple Price Increases Are ‘Unavoidable’ Due to Memory Costs – this was inevitable but it will be interesting to see just how much iPhones and Mac’s rise later this year. Cook also taking one for the team as he stands down on September 1st, so he’s owning some bad news when he could have stayed quiet.
• A tale of two browsers – looking forward to seeing just how much Safari is improved later this year. Firefox now my default and it’s been fast and stable unlike Safari. I gave in and installed iOS 27 on the iPhone. Working well so far.
• The AirPods Effect – I bought AirPods when they first released and lucked out given the low stock. At the time they looked odd and I can remember staff at the underground asking about them and amazed at the price I’d paid. Now they are everywhere alongside so many alternatives. Changed days.
• How Things Got So Bad At XBOX – great overview of the crazy downfall of XBOX. Not sure they can recover.
• GTA VI – Pre-order June 25th, out on November 19th. Finally…just over 13 years since GTA V.
• Calvin and Hobbes and the Price of Integrity – still a favourite of mine after all those years.

A quite miserable fortnight thanks to a cold/flu/covid bug. Last few days have felt much better but my sleep has been all over the place which hasn’t helped. Thank goodness for the World Cup which against the odds has been an antidote to much of the negative days to day news

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It might not last so let’s remember this moment – Scotland top of their World Cup ground after the first round of games. It was a must win game and after a bright start and but for a few good moments Haiti had better chances and Scotland rode their luck…but they did it. What a fantastic result.

Was also great to see the tartan army out in force and enjoying themselves. Social media was full of the Boston invasion and the noise when Flower of Scotland was sung at the game was one of those spine tingling moments. SO much emotion.

While we didn’t play well let’s be honest – it doesn’t matter. Previous tournaments we’ve been unlucky losers, playing well and not getting results or just being pish. To get off to the best of starts is such a relief. Next up – Morocco which I think will be our toughest game. Let’s go.

It was also great to see Lewis Hamilton win today for the first time in two years and also get his first win with Ferarri. Slight fortune with a safety car but likely he would have won anyway. Also a British 1,2,3 on the podium for the first time since the 1960’s. So good.

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WWDC 26 felt different. Shorter keynote, bit of a reset on things promised but not delivered and a tad more honest? The fixes/back to basics on Liquid Glass, especially on the Mac, are really welcome. So much of the Mac looks a mess thanks to the half baked decisions in Tahoe. Golden Gate is also a much better name. I switched off a bit during parental controls – they look well intended but also a reaction to legislation across the world rather than something Apple believed in deeply. If they did this should have been in place for years.

Apple Intelligence was the biggest reset. What they showed looked similar to 2024 except this time they showed it actually working including the normal delays you expect when using a chatbot. If it lands as demo’d it will be a useful step forward for Apple who are massively behind on AI capabilites. It might even make Siri useful. The one major negative is that WatchOS 27 when it launches won’t support my gen 1 Apple Ultra. That feels unusually aggressive from Apple and is turning my watch into subscription hardware. Do not like.

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🔗 Links

• Why are we suckers for Astrology, the Myers-Briggs, and other pseudoscientific personality tests? – It’s all bullshit…but I’m an ISTJ.
• US Gov asks Anthropic to ban ‘foreign national’ access to Fable, Mythos – This is the threat that comes from America and China being at the forefront of AI. Europe, and UK needs to join them, needs to build its own sovereign AI capability. Whats stop America deciding a country or firm n longer has access based on his whim.
• Cosine rallies UK giants to build a sovereign AI model – important, BAE part of this too, but the money being invested doesn’t look enough when you compare to that of the large American models.
• Five AIs predict the World Cup – be interesting to see where the predictions end up at the end of the tournament.
• With the World Cup looming, there’s still no clear replacement for sports Twitter – if there’s one thing I miss about Twitter is the tweets when there was a large sporting or news event. Made you feel part of the crowd and despite looking, I’ve never found a good alternative.
• When does Nigel Farage speak for the nation. When it suits him – Farage skewered yet again. Hateful person.
• WWDC 2026: Between Seasons – a lovely post from Federico Viticci on his trip to Cupertino and some reflections.
• Lego Batman Easter Egg – This is joyous. Cabel Sasser took the code in the game, fired up a C64 image and well…just watch the video. So good.

A hot week which ended with manflu for me. Nothing worse than a summer cold. Domestic football season is over but all attention now on the World Cup. Sad news that Billy Gilmour won’t be there after picking up an injury in yesterdays warm up game and its pretty remarkable that Tyler Fletcher is his replacement. In Steve Clarke we trust, but that’s some call.

📺 Media

Race Across the World came to an end and what a glorious series it was. Spoilers ahead….but I was so pleased that Jo and Kush won not only the game but also were the team that really grew on me through the programme. Felt the most real of all the teams though none were in any way bad. Producers of that show really know how to select the right pairings and also produce an amazing series to watch.

The Boys came to an end and it was all a bit of a damp squib. The first two series stand out as by far the best and the last episode was a bit of an anti climax. For All Mankind also finished this week and I found season 5 to be the weakest so far, especially the last episode with some all to convenient loose ends tied up.

Loved Project Hail Mary and 28 Days Later: The Bone Temple and good to hear they’ve green-lit another 28 Days film to wrap everything up.

🔗 Links

• Disney erased FiveThirtyEight – An act of internet vandalism. While the original author look to bring the content back, there’s good work being done to establish a full index here.
• Celebrating Doodles – Google Doodles are an art form and this is an amazing searchable collection of every doodle.
• Google Changes Its Search Box for the First Time in 25 Years – Quite the change and given the hit an miss nature of its AI summaries, I sure hope they know what they are doing.
• Project Glasswing: An initial update – Looks like the Mythos update isn’t all hype.
• ‘Men and boys need to see this’: Jo and Kush and the joy of Race Across the World – 2 young men being kind to each other and to people they met on their journey – a great antithesis to the typical male stereotypes we see on social media today.
• Plex is tripling the price of a lifetime pass to $750 after doubling it last year – I love Plex but this is a sign of things to come. They are moving in a direction opposite to it’s origins IMHO, so time to look at alternatives like Jellyfin.
• The Face of WipEout: Building Feisar in Lego – This is stunning…I may have to buy this.
• Valve raises Steam Deck prices by more than $200 – Ramageddon claims another victim. Such a high price for a four year old console.
• Wired pulls plug on UK print edition as it focuses on global subscriber growth – End of an era. I fear for Edge Magazine in the face of higher prices.
• What Is a Dickover? – Gruber nails it yet again. Modern web can be so tiring.
• The 40 Most Rage-Inducing Problems in Tech – and here’s a list of more dickover type problems that blight tech.
• Broadband and mobile bills are soaring in the UK – depending on who you talk to – surprise surprise, the UK looks very different to the European market.
• 28 Summers | A Scottish FA Film | Presented by EE – It’s just over 80 minutes long but I loved this documentary released by the SFA that covers the road to the World Cup.

A packed week at work, always struggle the week after a holiday – no time to catch up on the mails from the previous week and a back to back diary. Can’t quite believe Starmer has held on – a caretaker PM now. What I really enjoyed this week was the morning walks – glorious. Not so glorious – some micro power outages at home. Had a handful over two days, not unique to me but happening to others in the area too. Glad I picked up a UPS for the NAS.

Also enjoyed a cracking brunch at Sunny Acre, the southside of Glasgow has some great places to eat.

Finished watching Season 2 of Daredevil which was pretty good, and The Cage on BBC was excellent. All caught up on The Assembly which is such a special programme – Nicola Sturgeons episode was funny, emotional and ended with a great version of Dignity.

🔗 Links

• Rain, Pubs, A Home Away From Home: Inside the ‘People Make Glasgow’ Editorial – The Star Bar looking better than ever
• Why Everyone’s Picking Up a PSP Again in 2026 – still an amazing looking handheld thats 22 years old!
• I Bought a “Junk” PSP From Japan: Here’s How It Went – another PSP post that didn’t lead me to eBay. Honest.
• How I Moved My Digital Stack to Europe – some great alternatives to the usual US based tech firms.
• Yellowkey – some of the cyber vulnerabilities being disclosed right now are amazing. This one could lead to real breaches of personal and corporate data.
• Muslim socialist destroys New York by taxing the rich, eliminating the deficit and improving public services – I’ve seen a couple of posts saying Burnham won’t make a difference, UK is toast, economy is bust. There’s always a different way as Zohran Mamdani is demonstrating.
• You can make an app for that – Claude and Codex really do make app building pretty straightforward. How much waste is there though from people running almost identical apps but built and deployed independantly.
• AI psychosis – this is a thing.
• Halt and Catch Fire – a wonderful TV drama (if you haven’t watched it then find and watch it immediately) but I never thought much about the title – this post explains it all.
• The Mandalorian N-1 Starfighter : Cross Section Artwork Process – seeing early reactions, this might be my favourite outcome of the Mandalorian movie

A week off work – much needed. Lots of tinkering, house chores and downtime. Also stumbled on two cracking Post Box toppers, one celebrating Star Wars day!

Found these on my daily walks, now on day 3344 of consecutive walks of at least 30 mins…but the weight is still growing!

Politics unavoidable this week and Labour, particularly Keir Starmer, are in a right mess.

Some thoughts on the past week:

• We need an update of the voting system to better reflect vote share. Regional list votes help, but you can still see issues when you look at overall votes cast. From 2021, Ballot Box Scotland had a good analysis on options. Sir John Curtice also had a good analysis on how FPTP has now turned against Labout and Tories.
• Winners – Greens, Lib Dems and Reform. Also SNP but on a reduced vote share and number of seats. Losers – Tory’s and especially Labour given just two years ago they were probably favourites in Scotland.
• Seeing narrative that Scotland has moved more right wing – certainly more obvious due to Reform but 31 Tory seats in 2021 now read as 29 right wing seats.
• More nationalist supporting MSP’s than union supporting for the first time in a while. SNP said if they got a majority they’d move to have a referendum. That’s quickly pivoted to saying it was a manifesto commitment despite not having a majority hence they will move to have one.
• Also seen a few comments that until independence is settled SNP will always be largest party. What does settled actually mean – Scotland is independent? It’s probably more likely given Wales and Northern Ireland are all now being run by nationalist supporting parties. But settled assumes a split in the union, and although number of MSP’s tells one story, opinion polls still suggest 50/50 split and a quick tot up of number of votes from Thursday shows independence supporting parties got around 1.87M votes vs 2.57M for union supporting parties.
• Given rise of Reform and the number of MSP’s that were standing down there’s going to be a fresh look in the Scottish Parliament. Not convinced there’s any increase in talent.
• Will we see Labour use their majority in the UK Parliament to actually do something? I expected a more radical government but they’ve been shackled by committing to Tory spending plans despite the world being on fire and events causing massive impact. Unless Starmer pivots quickly, which is unlikely, then he and Labour are toast.
• Sticking to a manifesto is noble but futile…especially the left is called out when they want to deviate from a commitment but nobody actually holds parties to account on failed manifesto pledges. SNP pledges from 2021 are part fiction as an example, but was hardly a topic in the latest election.
• And speaking of holding to account, given the rise of Reform, will journalists actually do their job now and hold them to account? If they don’t like the questions and threaten to walk away…let them.

🔗 Links

• Why You Take Notes But Never Get Smarter – I felt seen reading this. Lots of notes, tons of bookmarks, when do I think and learn? So doing a lot of cleansing as I moved to Obsidian and rethinking working week to bake in more thought time.
• The era of AI malaise – For all the benefits of AI I can’t be alone in finding it tiring. Breathless release after release, constant threat of upending jobs. And how can I forget – the constant slop on social media.
• Behind the Scenes Hardening Firefox with Claude Mythos Preview – Anthropic made a splash announcing and at the same time limiting access to Mythos but results published here are impressive. This is an arms race.
• How Britain ate, flirted and scored each other – nice use of AI and data to mine almost 20 years of Guardian Blind Dates
• Taken – god, this is eye opening. What a website knows when you visit…and stores. Nothing is for free especially on the internet.
• Dusk – It’s 20 years since the release of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on the GameCube…and you can now play a much enhanced version on PC and Mac plus iOS and Android. Love it.

A busy fortnight, lots on in and out of work. Looking forward to the coming week – my first holidays of the year and a much needed break.

Good catchup with colleagues midweek at Ardnamurchan Restaurant in Glasgow although food was just ok, and not helped by one of the staff dropping leftovers down my back. At least the company was good.

🔗 Links

• Apple CEO Tim Cook is stepping down – Bye bye Tim, hello John Ternus. Not a surprise as widely tipped for over a year but the timing feels right. Apple are making more money than ever and seem to have a slate of product launches ahead so it makes sense that Ternus, a product guy, is now running the company. I’d hope it leads to a more open and less litigious Apple but unlikely.
• Another Day Has Come – Gruber nails the stepping down of Cook and links back to the death of Steve Jobs.
• Japan’s Cherry Blossom Database, 1,200 Years Old, Has a New Keeper – fascinating article and who knew the data kept was so old and intricate.
• The Beauty of Bonsai Styles – love a good Bonsai
• The loveless election: Why a win for the SNP is not a vote of confidence in the status quo – next week Holyrood election fills me with dread. SNP coasting despite their performance and Reform might even come second. Awful.
• How the Tech World Turned Evil – Greed, right wing politics and control are blighting tech leaders. Seeing more and more posts on moving away from big tech and to non American solutions…even self hosting of basics like mail, calendar etc.
• Flickr: The First and Last Great Photo Platform – amen – still love Flickr.
• Artemis II Photo Timeline – Hank Green vibe coded a great site for viewing Artemis II photo’s…pulled from Flickr of course.
• When your Digital Life Vanishes – Backups!!!
• I’m done renting my digital life – Another trend is a move back to physical – blu-ray’s, cd’s, vinyl or doing it yourself via a NAS. I really need to write up my NAS build from last year.
• The one change that worked: I swapped doomscrolling for reading comic books – I’ve been doing similar. Less late night scrolling, more reading.
• BEWARE SOFTWARE BRAIN – The rise of AI has a downside
• The West Forgot How to Build. Now It’s Forgetting Code – Tales from the defence industry but related to AI – you still need knowledge
• Do I belong in Tech anymore? – And this cautionary tale shows how AI can impact on a persons mindset and career
• Why does it take so long to release black fan versions? – Noctua make great PC fans and I used a lot of them in my NAS build – nice they answered a question I had last year – why are black fans always later than their default colours?
• XOXO – Always looked at this internet/tech/media festival with a bit of envy. The topics were always interesting and the speakers varied. This site pulls all the XOXO content into one place. Easy to lose hours.

Out for a walk down the canal today and this magnificent creature was protecting its nest as the rest of the walkers/runners/cyclists passed within feet. Hopefully in the weeks to come there will be a few cygnets.

Rest of the week has been a bit meh. Lots on but a feeling of little progress at both work and home. I have cast my postal vote in the Scottish Elections. So many parties I’ve never heard of, so many people likely voting for Reform. It’s a shite state of affairs.

Finished of season 2 of The Pitt – glorious. If you haven’t given it a try already then seek it out pronto. The Capture finished well on the BBC and if that’s the end after series 3 it was pretty well done although there are some jumping off points if they want to do more. The last season of The Boys has leant in heavily to right wing culture and government and its playing almost as a satire to the current US government. Satisfying.

🔗 Links

• Backblaze has quietly stopped backing up your data – This is not great behaviour from Backblaze – time for me to look at alternatives.
• Codex for (almost) everything – Anthropic and OpenAI are releasing new features it feels like almost daily. Codex updates in the last week brought features previewed in Sky and it’s pretty powerful to see Codex background controlling many of the apps on your Mac. AI + agents makes for a pretty exciting future.
• Introducing Claude design – Web based but another interesting AI tool from Anthropic. Definitely given me some good/better design options for my website.
• Why Japan has such good railways – In depth review of the rail system in Japan. Hadn’t realised how much was privatised.
• Video Game Devs Explain How Pausing Works And Sometimes It Gets Weird – Who knew how much goes into pausing a game.
• Amiga Graphics Archive – always loved the look of Amiga games even though I couldn’t afford one. This is a great trip down memory lane.
• WipEout Anti-Gravity Racing Series: Desktop Wallpapers – these look great – Lego builds of the ships from WipEout. I’m going to have to build one at some point but the desktop wallpaper will do in the meantime.

A four day work week – need more of those. As ever there’s lots on at work and already looking ahead to 2027. Also using Claude and agents more and it’s delivering promising results. Also promising, no snow this week at least in Glasgow.

Also a week where I focussed on finances and got a pile of small but building tasks out the way. After a chat with Shak on Friday also spun through my digital, entertainment and utility subscriptions across the year. Feck me. Quite the total and I still keep finding more I’ve forgotten. I need an intervention.

🔗 Links

• Sam Altman May Control Our Future—Can He Be Trusted? – Long, detailed investigation with lots of input from around the tech world including Altman himself. The animation at the start of the article says it all.
• Sam Altman Blog – A few days after the article Altman’s house was attacked and he posted on the impact the article and fallout has had.
• Project Glasswing – This feels one of the more important AI press releases in the last 12 month but at the moment, thats all it is, a press release and PR from Anthropic. However the idea that they are finding bugs that nobody else has and also how AI is behaving is super interesting and pretty scary.
• Is Hormuz Open Yet? – Certainly vibe coded but a really useful site especially as it’s now America and not Iran that is going to block the Hormuz.
• Artemis II successfully completed its mission. Loved images from the Lunar Flyby and also these iPhone Wallpapers. Images look spectacular on OLED screens.
• A Truck Driver Spent 20 Years Making This Astonishing Scale Model of Every Single Building in New York City – What an amazing thing to do for 20 years. Would love to see this in person.
• Thom Yorke | Live at Sydney Opera House – I love Radiohead and Thom Yorke and this is a great 90 minute video from a live event he did in November 2024. Someone has done the hard work and turned this into wav and mp3 files.
• Productive procrastination – this sang to me when I stumbled on it this week. Much to unpack.
• Train Jazz – what a clever and unique web app. Be great to see for other cities like London – Glasgow’s would be a bit quiet 🙂

A packed fortnight including a long planned and successfully executed application upgrade at work. Great to see the team work so well over a long weekend and despite some hiccups we got there.

Its also spring and if there was any doubt that Glasgow gets some crazy weather, here’s the start and end pictures from my walk yesterday.

This was in the space of 90 minutes – I was frozen and soaked through by the end of it. And we go from a feels like temp on Sunday of -5 to a feels like of 18 on Tuesday. Lovely!

Last week saw Artemis II launch on its fly-by mission to the moon. Nasa did a nice short recap of the launch but its the photo’s released so far that have impressed. Hello, World is an image not taken by a human in over 50 years. So much detail when you study it and taken on a Nikon D5 according to Flickr. I’m also loving they are using a Flickr Album to share hundreds of photo’s from the launch. I’m not as enthused at the tech they are using feels like an extension of the 70’s nor that the USA is currently bombing the hell out of Iran and threatening WW III – puts things in perspective.

Apple also turned 50 on April 1st. So many great articles and videos over the last week, some of my favourites below:

• Apple at 50: a visual history – Nice look back at some Apple milestones
• Apple Just Showed Us Rare Prototypes—Even Tim Cook Hasn’t Seen Them – WSJ getting some rare access at Apple
• Apples Best Product Ever – A rundown of the top 50 Apple products as voted for by Verge readers
• The Talk Show – Apple at 50 – The two johns, Gruber and Siracusa, discuss Apple’s milestone

🔗 Links

• A French Navy officer accidentally leaked the location of an aircraft carrier by logging his run on Strava – maybe think about the data you share online?
• ‘Her head was broken’: parents at Iranian school bombed by US describe their worst day – Its a war crime – and nobody will ever be prosecuted.
• My Astrophotography in the Movie Project Hail Mary – great story, amazing images
• Why So Many Control Rooms Were Seafoam Green – Colour theory!
• Peak dedication – Over 30 years to make a map of Scotland – love it
• A Dot a Day Keeps the Clutter Away – a maybe too over the top way to organise?
• The Last Quiet Thing – I get it. I have so many notifications blocked on the Apple Watch and the Phone. Too distracting.
• Physical and digital Switch 2 games will have different prices, Nintendo says – digital games cheaper than physical…at release. Finally!

📺 Media

Speaking of finally, finished of Season 4 of The Boys ahead of its final run starting later this week. More than a bit squiffy in places but ended well and sets up the final run of episodes. The Pitt season 2 has again been superb – and it’s finally available to watch in the UK via HBO Max. Not so good – War Machine. Terrible film with dodgy plot and effects.

BBC also on a strong run. The Capture season 3 has been excellent with some good twists and it was great to welcome back Race Across the World. Still one of the best shows on the BBC and the team do so well at getting the right pairings for the race.