How the heck is it October already? That's just not possible.

It's been a relatively quiet week. On Tuesday I was going to go to Waterstones in Canterbury to see Mark Stay talk about his latest book, but didn't feel great so I stayed at home. I suspect the reason I didn't feel great was basically that I didn't have enough caffeine: I accidentally made morning coffee with decaf, which is probably some kind of crime against humanity. Coffee-drinking humanity, at least.

On Thursday I went to the Good Bad Books event at the Barbican. We drove in, which is crazy, but even taking into account the charge for ULEZ and petrol costs it's half the price of the train. The prices of train journeys, even bought in advance, off-peak and discounted, are stupid. Once you have more than a single person, it's probably cheaper to drive if you can, even though fuel prices are again on the up. I hate it, but there it is.

The event was the culmination of a series of workshops. I went to the last one on horror writing and the story I wrote got selected to go in the book produced for the event, which was INCREDIBLY EXCITING. I have had my byline in so many magazines I've lost count, and probably had a million words published, but none of them have been fiction and that's incredibly exciting. I didn't even think it was that good a story, although I'm told otherwise -- so I'll take it.

This was also a week of computer maintenance, and I'm not even vaguely finished. The autumn new operating system bonanza -- new versions of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, Windows and even Chrome OS -- meant that a lot of machines suddenly wanted to download multi-gigabyte updates. Which would be fine if our home broadband ran at anything other than glacial speeds.

Cue me carting around various laptops to the University Library, where I can sit and update things at much faster speeds. And of course read some really good books. Having a borrower's ticket, though, is turning out not to be much of a money saver as I have a tendency to want to buy some of the books I find. Thankfully they are mostly second hand, obscure and cheap.

One other small good piece of tech this week: it turns out there is a version of iA Writer for Windows, which makes me very happy indeed. iA Writer is a great Markdown programme which includes some great editing features, such as the ability to highlight all the verbs, nouns, adverbs and so on in different colours. This makes it really easy to spot where you are being repetitive or where the adverbs are taking over the text.

And finally, Saturday saw us pop along to the Gulbenkian to see Acid Brass – acid house, played by a proper brass band. I first saw them 26 years ago, at the Barbican performance of KLF's Fuck the Millennium – a gig which lasted (if I remember) 24 minutes (there was some numerological connection to the number which Jimmy and Bill were obsessed with). There was dancing.

Things things which caught my attention this week

1. This video shows a meeting between the legendary Hayao Miyazaki, who made some of the most beautiful animated films in history, and a bunch of AI dudes keen to show him their generative movement system. It does not go well. I think I agree with what Miyazaki-san says at the end: "We humans are losing faith in ourselves."
2. iFixit dropped the repairability score for the iPhone because of its parts pairing scam. Sigh.
3. When thinking about global warming, it's worth remembering that it really is the fault of the rich. Eat them. All of them.

Things I have been reading

I finished The Entropy Exhibition by Colin Greenland this week, which is an interesting (and out of print) look at the influence and influences of New Worlds magazine and its coterie of writers. They're a fascinating bunch: from the older ones (Brian Aldiss, J. G. Ballard) to the young punks (Michael Moorcock, M. John Harrison) there was a lot of really interesting stuff going on.

I have also started re-reading Malcolm Bradbury's The History Man, which I first watched in television form (starring Anthony Sher) when I was a teenager. It was one of the things which persuaded me that maybe I should go to polytechnic rather than sign on or work at the railway painting trains like my father. My ambitions, at that age, involved being in a band and owning a transit van to take us to gigs. My life has taken many odd turns since then.

Also reading – I'm going a lot of reading – New Worlds: An anthology edited by Moorcock from 1983. This was a library find, where I have ended up buying a second hand copy. I had this book when it first came out, and lent it to my friend Stanley. Predictably, I never got it back. Wherever you are, Stanley, give me a shout.

Things I have been writing

I've been writing some notes for a potential novel, but I'm not sure it's got legs. We shall see. I don't think of myself as a novelist, at all, but I'm willing to give it a go.

I spent Monday down in Brighton visiting my friend Vicky, who I haven’t actually seen face to face for a ludicrous amount of time. Astoundingly, we have known each other for 26 years, since I was a reporter on MacUser magazine, and she was an editorial assistant on Macworld, our biggest rival. We used to bump into each other at press things, then in Camden, back before it became a hellscape of tourist nonsense.

She moved down to Brighton after I did back in 1998 – she eventually introduced me to Alice, a homeless girl who became my flatmate at exactly the right time to pull me out of some major doldrums. As is occasionally my way, we had lost touch after I moved into London – but now with the time and space to not feel like my entire life is about work, I’m gradually getting back in touch with people. And it was great fun, although my feet hurt afterwards (you walk a lot in Brighton!)

Tuesday was, of course, the Apple event. There wasn’t anything there which made me want to rush out and buy a new watch or phone – I’m happy with what I’ve got, and I suspect that the next time I buy a phone it will be something more repairable like the Fairphone 5 rather than another iPhone. I’m somewhat done with glued together devices which end up being shredded when all that’s wrong with them is a broken port.

One Wednesday I had a session with my coach, which sounds a lot more la-de-dah than it actually is. Since leaving Bauer, I have had a few sessions with her to look at the kind of work that I want to do in the future, starting with working on what my values are. I’m past the point where I’m going to hold my nose and commit myself to a permanent relationship with a company that doesn’t share my values. We also took a long look at what I’m actually good at and how that relates to what I enjoy.

All this is stuff that you just don’t get much time to think about when you’re in a full-time job, so it’s been good to have the time to do it. Fundamentally, I’m good at leading teams through difficult times, whether that’s a change of strategy, structure, management or just a changing market. I’m good at getting people pointed in the right direction, and understanding the emotional needs they have – if you understand what people’s emotional needs are, it’s a lot easy to get them performing as part of a team.

We often discuss processes and structures and all the “scientific” bit of leadership, but we often forget that people are driven as much by their emotions as their rationality. The best performing teams are in a safe, secure place: without a feeling of safety, people cramp up and underperform. And that’s an emotional thing.

Thursday was my mum’s birthday. Mum passed away a few years ago, but she would have been 92, which sounds all kinds of weird. I know I’ll never stop missing her, no matter how old I get.

Yesterday I was back in London at a workshop about horror writing with Hardeep Pandai and David Steans, which was fascinating. One thing which came out is the relationship between horror and comedy. I think the archetype of this is Iain Banks’ magnificent first novel, The Wasp Factory. It’s a colossally horrific book (The Irish Times memorably described it as “a work of unparalleled depravity”) but also filled with black humour, and in some ways the humour acts to draw the reader in. There’s part of everyone that loves Frank Cauldhame because he’s just funny and the things he does are as much baroque comedy as horror.

I’ve always thought that The Wasp Factory is a massively underrated book. While people still talk about Brett Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, Banks’ book is overshadowed by his later science fiction work and some of his more literary novels. In some ways, I don’t think Iain wrote a more perfect book, and if I ever write something that’s even a tenth as affecting, I’ll be a very lucky human.

Things I have been reading

I’m slowly trudging my way through Neal Asher’s War Bodies, having given up on it after about 20 pages. If I were sensible, I would just drop it, but I hate not finishing books – it’s a bad habit to get into – and I’m determined to get to the end. It’s not that it’s bad, or at least not as bad as I thought after 20 pages. But it’s pretty clear that Neal has run out of road with the “Polity universe” it’s set it. Of course, when you have a universe that readers love, it’s all too tempting to go back into it for both creative (there’s always something else to explore) and commercial (publishers will want you to do it) reasons. But sometimes things run their course, and I think the Polity is done.

I would really love Neal to go back and write something more around the universe of Cowl, though. I think that’s his best book, with one of the best ideas around time travel I have ever read.

Things I have been writing

I wrote a piece of micro-fiction about a man who turns himself into a crab, which is about as bizarre as it sounds. I also started some notes about a story which involves Greek mythology, werewolves, and some interesting mystery elements. What’s fascinating is that I don’t know yet how its genre might play out: the background I’ve started writing could easily flex to being a weird crime novel or a straightforward horror. More work required before I actually start writing (which is always what I’m tempted to do!)

I also wrote something about how the recently released properties feature in Obsidian could end up a game changer for how it can be used. I’ve got a much longer post about the plugins I use for Obsidian to make it a good environment for writing, which just needs an intro writing before it’s ready to be published. Maybe this week.

I'm writing this slightly later than normal after we got back from a trip down to the Bristol to see our lovely friends. There's a bunch of pictures on both Instagram and Hipstamatic (which is totally great and has encouraged me to start taking more pictures).

Other than that, this has been a fairly quiet week, with only a Society of Authors local meetup of note. It was good fun to catch up with some other local writers.

This week is going to be a bit busier. I'm in Brighton tomorrow, then it's another SOA meeting on Tuesday over in Whitstable, then next Saturday in London for something at the Barbican. And I probably should look for some work at some point…

The three things which most caught my attention

1. Everybody's Everywhere, the documentary about Lil Peep, is available on YouTube. I wish he had lived longer: the kid had a way with words, and it would have been interesting to see him apply them to the concerns that come with a longer life.
2. I'm poking something about Technocracy with a small sharpened stick, and I'm interested in Michelism and John B Michel. If you have a weird mind, you might want to take a look too.
3. Michael Tsai, whose blog you should have in your RSS reader (like it's 1999), wrote a post noting discomfort about the smartphone as single point of failure in our connected lives. He's right: it is, frankly, scary.

Things I have been writing

I resurrected Technovia, and wrote something about the "climbdown" of the UK government over access to end to end encrypted messages was nothing of the sort. Then of course there was Elon Musk sabotaging a Ukrainian attack because he is a naive, gullible idiot. And of course there was the news that Brexit is basically going to give you a worse version of Windows in the UK. Well done, Brexiteers!

I also started working on my next short, more on that next week.

Things I have been reading

I've finished four books in the last week. The first was China Mieville's A Spectre, Haunting, which I have been reading for a while and finally got around to completing. China sometimes sounds like someone who did a PPE degree crossed with a Socialist Worker seller, but it's still a good book and I would definitely recommend it if you're interested in Marx.

Next came Russell Davies' Do interesting. A short book full of sound advice on how to get your mind moving, with little activities. Another recommend.

I finished Tansy Hoskins' The Anti-Capitalist book of fashion, which is yet another recommend. Even if you're not that interested in fashion, it's a good deconstruction of how a lot of modern Capitalism works, from the exploitation of workers in the developing world through the creation of alienation of various kinds in the developed world through media.

And finally -- four books! -- it didn't take me long to read Cory Doctorow's The Internet Con. If you are in any way interested in tech you need to read this book.

Time is strangely stretching. When I started writing this post I had to check my calendar to see what I have done this week, and found that events I thought have happened the previous one had, in fact, been within the last seven days.

That's partly down to Kim being away, and partly due to not working. When you don't have the rhythm of work, you lose one of the main things which anchor you in time. There is a pace, a way of being, which is set for you and that you don't have to consider. All of which is a challenge to me: while I am not working, I need to reestablish that pattern.

And yet this week has been pretty full. Monday, of course, was a bank holiday -- and what do you do on a bank holiday other than go to the seaside? Myself and my friend Edward headed down to Margate for a bit of a mooch around. It was surprisingly quiet, much more like a regular Sunday than a Bank Holiday Monday, which is probably not great for the local traders. I have heard that the great post-pandemic British seaside boom was over, but this was the first time I saw it with my own eyes.

On Tuesday I went into London to catch up with an old colleague, deep in the heart of News UK. It's an impressive building -- and it was good to have a chat to someone who was both a big influence and a good mate.

After that I went to the V&A to see the Diva exhibition, which I would absolutely recommend. And it's the first exhibition I have been to where I think there's a benefit to having the proffered headphones: divas definitely need a soundtrack, all the way from Victorians to today.

The V&A is one of my favourite places in London. I became a member there quite a few years ago, and would occasionally sneak off work for an afternoon's "inspiration" there, sitting looking at lovely things, clearing my head and writing stuff in my notebook. It's one of the things I miss about London: there is space like that in Canterbury, and few enough in Kent as a whole.

The rest of the week was taken up with bumbling around, washing, and generally wasting of time. I spent a chunk of time working on setting up Obsidian to make it a better environment for writing, experimenting with plugins which let you do things like post directly to Micro.blog, make your use of Markdown and punctuation more consistent, and so on. It's now pretty plugin-heavy but it's really coming together.

The three things which most caught my attention

1. Primary documents in "Making the Macintosh" is a brilliant collation of documents about the early Mac. I could spend a month reading this stuff.
2. An absolutely fantastic interview with M John Harrison, who remains my favourite writer. With bonus almost-retelling of the story of how Iain Banks made him write another space opera.
3. An interesting report from 2020 on the ownership of shares on the stock market. What's fascinating is how this has changed from (in the UK) largely pension funds to foreign investors, and what that means for the governance of our largest companies. the shift from mostly individual investors to mostly pension funds had a big impact on the way companies saw themselves, and who they saw as the important people to serve, and this change to being owned by people who largely have no particular interest in the health of UK society is also an important one.

Things I have been writing

I'm writing a big blog post on how I have customised Obsidian for writing. It's currently about 1,500 words and I should finish it off in the next day or so. This post was written in Obsidian, as are most of my weeknotes, because one of the best things about it is the ability to create and use templates very easily. That means it's brilliant for articles like this.

Things I have been reading

I've been REALLY enjoying – if that's quite the word – Tansy Hoskins' The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion, which I highly recommend to anyone remotely interested not just in clothes, but also anti-capitalism.