Today I… stayed up to watch the finale of Stranger Things (and wasn’t disappointed), took a morning walk with old friends, spent the afternoon with both my godmother and goddaughter and concluded it by getting hooked onto new series of The Traitors and The Night Manager. Pretty good start to 2026, I’d say.

Delivering a small Indiekit-shaped Christmas present, with a new beta release that includes some quality-of-life improvements alongside localisation for Brazilian Portuguese. Feliz Natal!

The mission patch for the CHIS (child health information services) discovery features Mavis howling to notify all nearby polar bears about an unvaccinated cub. She does so by standing atop a block of nearby cheese (sounds like chis).

The mission patch for the release supporting seasonal flu vaccinations features Mavis and her 2 cubs getting their boosters; one with a doughnut, another with a diamond.

Getting close to completing the fourth and final section of Bradshaw’s Guide. As of today, you can now find descriptions for all 1338 towns and cities published in the 1866 edition. Next up; adding the final set of routes and stations.

Completed it mate.

DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH, LANDO NORRIS! WORLD CHAMPION! 🏆

I have re-watched Die Hard and can confirm: it is a Christmas movie (no matter what the British public may think).

The mission patch to celebrate the digital services supporting the Autumn/Winter 2025 seasonal vaccination campaigns.

I absolutely bloody love Haim, and they didn’t disappoint this evening.

Attempting to avoid tourist treadmills in France and Spain.

Enjoyed drinks and a curry in Birmingham this evening alongside 6 familiar faces to celebrate an astonishing anniversary; 20 years ago this month, 4 web developers met in Walsall, and the Multipack was born.

The concourse at Euston station is now a festival of Rail Alphabet 2. Yet move beyond that and… well, God knows what font has been chosen for the gantries above the approaches to platforms (which themselves still use NR Brunel). One day there might be some visual coherence on the railway, but today is not that day.

Trying to buy tickets for a major tourist attraction in Barcelona. Three separate attempts fail to complete (session expired). Go to the attraction hoping to buy tickets in person; online purchases only. When speak to an official, tells me to use Google Chrome (I’m using an iPhone, which is a whole other issue but needless to say, this is not an option).

Just a small, insignificant example of how this century has rapidly turned into a techno-centric idiocracy.

Trying to buy tickets for a major tourist attraction in Barcelona. Three separate attempts fail to complete (session expired). Go to the attraction hoping to buy tickets in person; online purchases only. When speak to an official, tells me to use Google Chrome (I’m using an iPhone, which is a whole other issue but needless to say, this is not an option).

Just a small, insignificant example of how this century has rapidly turned into a techno-centric idiocracy.

Thanks to severe train delays, I have a morning to spend in Paris. Last night I booked into a charming hotel in Saint-Paul, and just met some of its extraordinarily friendly staff at breakfast. Going by previous experiences, I didn’t think any of this was possible! Paris might be growing on me.

Favourite tree doing favourite tree things.

♫ Lucky by Radiohead

Played this in the car driving around Kent with Jon at the weekend, and now pleasantly stuck in my head.

Caught up with the Apple Event. Took me 30 minutes to realise I was watching last year’s event.

Probably the last post-work rays of sunlight for 2025.

With the NHS.UK Eleventy Plugin you can focus on writing content instead of writing code.

Stop the slop.

I found a Benchmark. Harder to find than I thought it would be.

Tonight I watched Nye at the National Theatre, a play about the life (and death) of NHS founder, Aneurin Bevan. Beautiful and haunting, the very last scene completely broke me. Forget ten year plans; Nye had a vision, and he absolutely delivered on it.

Many years ago I read about Book Mountain, a curious pyramid-shaped library in Spijkenisse, the Netherlands. Today I finally stepped inside.

Good services are verbs.
Bad services are nouns.
AI services are whimsical, opaque or vAPId.

As teams at GDS prepare to launch a refreshed brand for GOV.UK on 25 June, so the X-GOVUK community has been updating its projects in preparation for this go-live date.

Poster I created to mark Good Machine’s first firebreak week.

I’m not convinced that the designer of a $10,000 gold watch (now obsolete), who gets driven around in the back of a Bentley, and who spends his spare time in coffee shops ‘inventing the future’ with the likes of Sam Altman, is capable of designing products for the rest of us.

Happy M&S cyber incident update day for those who celebrate.