Bit of an abbreviated week note as we have not long got back from seeing my sister up in Suffolk. The last time we were up there, about a month ago, I bought a picture in a little art exhibition – and today was when I could collect it.
My little office is slowly taking shape!
Writing
I’ve been writing a bit of a blog post/rant about British technology journalism and quite how stuck in the past of CIX, “kit”, “your scribe”, and using “we think” for an article written by a single solitary person. Still, I don’t know if I’ll ever publish it because it’s a bit shouty. And the readers aren’t much better (see every comment thread on The Register for more).
I also wrote something about Substack Notes, published it on Substack, and then realised that I already loathed Substack enough to want to delete my account – which I promptly did.
Reading
I finally finished Becky Chambers’ Record of a Spaceborn Few after a month of putting it down and picking it back up again. It took quite a while for me to get into it: Chambers’ work is heavily character-driven, and this one weaves together the narratives of quite a few characters. But after about halfway, when there’s a single point of plot which changes the whole thrust of the book, I raced through it. And (not for the first time in her work) I got a little emotional.
I love how she writes: I’m almost sad that there’s only The Galaxy, and the Ground Within and To be taught, if fortunate left to read. But I’m taking a break and diving into Ken MacLeod’s Beyond the reach of Earth instead, just for a bit of a change of pace.
I also quickly finished Make Something Wonderful, the collection of speeches and quotes from Steve Jobs created by the Steve Jobs Archive (and available for download for free). I am very familiar with almost everything in it. Jobs, and Apple, were the subject of my work for many years, and the return of Jobs to Apple happened when I was actively reporting on the company. But seeing all this familiar material laid out as part of a historical narrative makes it clear how much Jobs developed throughout his life. Of course, he wasn’t a saint; this isn’t a biography. But it’s taking the best of a person and using it to inspire thinking in others, which is no bad thing.
