Converge in der Essigfabrik Köln – für Oliver Plöger ist das kein gewöhnlicher Konzertbesuch. Seit er die Band über das Album "Jane Doe" entdeckt hat, gehört...

That was a very long, and warm May. I've been feeling super uninspired for the last week or so, which is frustrating. It's all part of it, though. It's still weird for me to think of photography as something that benefits from daily practice as much as it does.

I had a productive birding day, made a music player app because Plexamp was annoying me, cleaned my bike, began to make friends with a crow, saw a swarm of bees, went to a car show, and went to London with Tabitha.

Looking back over all my posts this month, I think I've been struggling for longer than I realise. The grid still looks cool, but the quality has definitely dipped. I'm going to hit 500 consecutive days this month, and I'm starting to wonder whether I should take a break. How long should I keep plugging away to no avail before just admitting that maybe a break could be a good thing? This is why I don't like streaks; you get an unpleasant meta-pressure.

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Music

Looking back, it's been a big month for new music, but I don't feel like I've listened to that much. I tend to listen to singles and go "yeah that's good" and promptly forget about them. I guess that's just how it goes for singles unless you listen to the radio. I wonder if there's something I can do with YouTube playlists where I add the songs I add here, then I can listen to them more easily. As if this newsletter doesn't take long enough!

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new loathe. A band I always enjoy, and never think to put on.

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new northlane

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watch yo step. This was on some sort of sports. I don't remember what but I did enjoy it.

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new evanescence guitars sound so good

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derek paravicini - take on me. I'm a simple guy: I see a Take on Me cover and I click. This guy is incredible.

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heaving. - faces of you. It's fairly by-the-numbers post hardcore/melodic hardcore, but I like by-the-numbers post hardcore/melodic hardcore.

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ok goodnight. Radio-friendly prog. I like this, but I did not enjoy their album on a full listen. Also find them quite awkward to watch.

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lisp - favorite regret. I don't want to even talk about what has happened to my YouTube music recommendations since I watched this. Sometimes curiosity is disproportionately punished.

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new hippotraktor

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new the ocean. I like it because it's The Ocean, but I prefer them before the lineup change. If you're squeamish, don't watch the end of this video.

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Daði Freyr - Too Much Not Enough. This is going to be the soundtrack to our summer.

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Aldous Harding - Train on the island

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girli - it's just my opinion

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Periphery - A Pale White Dot. Not normally a Periphery fan but liked this.

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Marmozets - CO.WAR.DICE. I had Marmozets' first album and liked the opening track so much more than any of the rest of it that I never got into them. This record is far more consistent.

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'68 - They Are Survived. Still holding out hope that Josh Scogin is going to be the new Better Lovers vocalist because I enjoy being disappointed.

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Elder - Through Zero. Normally too far on the proggy side for me but I found this one more accessible.

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YouTube

3D printing a pinball system. Honestly the amount of engineering that went into this is crazy. Would love to do this but I don't think I can even be bothered to download and print it. via Chris.

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I've been watching so much Baseball lately. Like a lot. Including older games, and this spanking the Blue Jays gave the Red Sox was entertaining, if a little heartbreaking.

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Max in a SuperGT Pro. Your monthly reminder that Max Verstappen is ridiculous.

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This is a video on the different types of pitch in baseball. It's unbelievable what these guys are doing with the flight of a ball. My favourite is the curveball.

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Google has released the Fitbit Air. This seems to be exactly what I have wanted to replace/as an alternative to my Apple Watch.

I love normal watches, but I also like being able to monitor my activity etc (although at the moment all I need is an app that says "you don't exercise enough" for that). I will never double-watch, but the Fitbit Air means I don't have to. Not delighted that it's Google, but I'm not paying $200 a year to Whoop.

So far it's good, and my daily screentime has halved (and that includes a day where I was on Maps for most of it) which is probably the biggest surprise. Actually what I kinda imagine is going to happen is this will entirely wean me off smart-watches and activity tracking altogether. I'm not planning to be a professional athlete - I just need to be more active, and I know the days when I haven't done enough. If anything, these trackers are probably actually bad for that!

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Dan and I have been kicking cyberdeck videos back and forth for ages, but this one is the winner. Absolutely unbelievable amount of work to put into a thing.

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Do cyclists think they're above the law? I don't normally click these kinds of baity videos, but actually there's some good insight on this one. I haven't cycled on the road regularly since before Covid, and going out scares me at times now. Particularly when pulling away from junctions and rejoining roads when cycle-paths end.

Worth a watch if you're a cyclist, or if you're a motorist who gets frustrated with cyclists' behaviour on the road (and you're willing to develop a little empathy!).

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I thought this guy's voice sounded familiar, then I saw the octopus in the tank. Magnetically hovering guitar strings. I watched plenty of this through clasped fingers.

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I've also been watching a lot of Nate Bargatze lately. His shows are a real comfort watch - no difficult subject matter, just funny stories and amusing turns-of-phrase. I like him and he seems like a wholesome guy, which I can't believe is something I want from a comedian. Age. Anyway, he was on Last Meals and I enjoyed that.

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Live sports broadcasting is an incredibly complex thing. I've watched a few things about how F1 all fits together and it's super interesting to me. Marques got access to look at how the NBA runs live broadcasts and it's cool. I'd appreciate a bit more depth but I don't think you can expect that from this format!

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I still can't believe that I watched, and got emotionally invested in, a 35 minute documentary about a Celeste speedrunner, but it happened.

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I've played a fair amount of Mina the Hollower over the weekend. It's super difficult and annoying in places, but something about it keeps dragging me back in. I love Yacht Club, and enjoyed this minidoc on the making of the game. It's more about how development of the game even started in the first place, but even that's interesting in this case.

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Absolute buzzer-beater from Mat Armstrong, as he services and fixes the issues he had with his Veyron. I am very keen to see this car finished. Hope he brings it to Silverstone this year.

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Links

Kimera Evo38 Martini. I love cars.

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Charlotte sent me a link to an obscure pinbadge, but it reminded me of a little-known fact about me: there is a species of Ivy that is named after me.

It doesn't happen often any more, but I should keep this in the bank for if I ever have to answer one of those "tell us something interesting about yourself" things.

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Some of Xteink’s credit card-sized e-readers are losing their best feature. This was disheartening. I haven't experienced this issue, and I saw somewhere that it's only happening on devices that weren't purchased directly from Xteink, but still. Can we just have something that's good without people trying to ruin it please?

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The Accursèd Alphabetical Clock. I love this kind of thing. An alphabetical analogue clock? I want one now.

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Ghostty Is Leaving GitHub. Feeling relatively smug about never having thrown my lot in with GitHub. We use self-hosted Gitlab, which isn't exactly without issues, but I'd rather own those issues myself than rely on GitHub to not get acquired by MS and flushed down the toilet. Could still happen, I suppose.

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Remember when every single .de domain didn't work for like a day?

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I think the most surprising thing about this is that the Hantavirus outbreak was this month?! Feels like forever ago.

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Baseball commentators are on another level. I had to look up a word: Pulchritude.

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I Bought Friendster for $30k — Here’s What I’m Doing With It. This is so cool. Installed it, but I don't have any real-life friends any more so it's not exactly been a flurry of activity.

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The VZ-6617: A Variable Frame Medium Format Film Camera. I often miss shooting 120 film, but then I look at the price of film and development, and I'm all good staying on digital actually. This looks cool, if a little cumbersome.

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“What have you tried?”

There are lots of challenging things about the disconnect between people when reporting issues. From the classic "it's not working", to the 2,000 word essay with maybe 50 useful words; it's so difficult to know how to effectively report issues.

I've tried so many things over the years to try to get people to come to me with actionable reports on things. Some people get it, some don't. I'm easy to annoy at times, and I think this question, and maybe a couple of other simple questions like it, will be great for me to push back on insufficient bug reports without seeming like a grumpy jerk about it.

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If The Wind Rises was about cars, Audi's Auto Union Lucca would've been in it.

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Mayo. When people do this with soap, shower gel, and shampoo, it makes me irrationally angry.

I don't mean spraying it on my fries; you know what I mean.

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David wrote this month about reaching out to people online. Blogging can be an insular activity, and I can't tell you how much I love getting email, replies on Mastodon, from people who've seen something they liked on my site, or even disagreed with and just wanted to talk about, or correct, or anything. I am a chatterbox.

Sites like Instagram, Facebook try to make you care about the likes, but one comment/reply/email is worth 100 likes.

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Project Hail Mary Star Map via Luke

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KIDMOGRAPH - Distant Planet IV. I used to follow a tonne of these animated GIF artists on Tumblr. Kidmograph just started posting again recently and I love what they're doing.

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My Typical Day According to My Thirteen-Year-Old. Accurate.

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1998 Porsche 911 C2S "Arsham". I love this colour. The listing calls it "vanilla yellow" and I get where they're coming from but it's more of a sherbet lime colour to my eyes.

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Clean Athletes Stole the Show at the Enhanced Games. Pretty cool.

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Hikawa Grip and Stand. These things look so satisfyingly tactile. Didn't realise that they're designed for people who have mobility issues with their hands.

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Marcellin Pizza Axe. I am interested in both sharp things, and pizza, but this looks annoying to use. I have a rocker-knife that works great because I can get the whole diameter of the pizzas I make in one action. It's not an axe, and it's not a very beautiful object, though.

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OLIVER JEFFERS x ANICORN – TIME AND SPACE Watch. Beautiful design. I don't think I'd wear it (which is fortunate because I don't have $1,000 to drop on a watch right now), but the craftsmanship of it is unbelievable.

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AI/LLMs

There's no getting around it: I'm frequently reading about AI at the moment. I know many people hate it, or aren't interested, so I've put it all together in one section so you can easily ignore it if you want. I'm sick of it all and it directly concerns me. I imagine everyone else is even more done with it than I am.

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Running local models on an M4 with 24GB memory. I've been saying for a while that I want to upgrade my laptop to something more capable of running models locally, but it's so expensive and I don't really need it. Yet.

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It's a bubble

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I Am Happier Writing Code by Hand. I am, too. I'm forcing myself to do at least one day a week by hand, even if it just shines a light on how much slower that is. I'm worried I'll get addicted to the instant gratification of "here's my todo list...oh you're done already?!".

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You Are The Driver (The AI Is Just Typing). I kinda agree with this. The analogy falls apart because there's no such thing as driving without using pedals and changing gear and all that (except in automatics and modern cars - you know what I mean).

I see AI as more like being chauffeur-driven, and then the comparison doesn't work, because all you're doing is telling someone where you need to be, then they do all the work. Maybe that means it especially does work? You get to be a good driver by doing lots of driving. That puts people like me in a fairly limited-window position where we've built up good experience doing all that driving, so we know when an LLM is doing something undesirable.

If you've never driven, you don't know things like checking your mirrors for cyclists before pulling away, or how big of a gap you need before merging with traffic. You get that from experience and practice.

I see this article as more of a consolation piece for developers who don't feel like they're doing anything worthwhile any more, and I just don't think these simple analogies that don't stand up to scrutiny are helping. They don't help me anyway.

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I was talking to Charlotte about how I have a graveyard of iPhone apps, and features on my site, that I made with AI and didn't actually need, or lacked the vision or drive to finish properly. So I just burned tokens because it was easier than considering whether I wanted the software enough. Or just because of the novelty of it all. It's now easier to build something useless than it is to consider whether you're about to make something you even need, or that you're willing to support.

Turns out, I'm not the only person having these thoughts.

What I've learned is that I prefer to use software that other people made, because when it goes wrong, someone else is probably going to be responsible for fixing it!

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OK that's enough waffling from me for another month. Hope you have a great June, and I'll see you in July!

02.05.2026 18:30h: Spilles, Düsseldorf. With Swift Exit and SoilentX. AK €5.

I had a great time at beyond tellerrand today. Amazing speakers pictured above include Oliver Reichenstein, Niels Leenheer, Marjan van Aubel, James Victore and Annie Atkins.

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Almost 18k steps today. That's a lot of moving around, but obviously totally worth it. Also, thanks to everybody who came up and said hello! It is always nice to put faces to people I have up until now only communicated with online. Looking forward to day two!

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We went up to a car boot sale this morning. The light was absolutely perfect for me to spend an hour trying to rip Martin Parr off.

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Lots of badminton this afternoon so went for a nice long walk with the dog.

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What a joy to be in Prague last month. I loved seeing friends, sights and the sounds of my second home. And the food! Thank you for the warm hugs and kind welcome back. I needed that more than I can put in words.

Welcome to the very first episode of How I See, the official Leica podcast, dedicated to the art, passion, and philosophy of photography.

In this opening episode, street photographer Matt Stuart reflects on his photographic journey and the path that led him to where he is today. He speaks about the influence of skateboarding on his life and work, and how consistency, positivity, and repetition have shaped his distinctive approach to street photography. Alongside personal insights, Matt also shares practical tips and thoughtful advice for anyone interested in photographing life on the streets.

I write stuff here. Sometimes the stuff is good. Sometimes it reads like I wrote it at 2 AM after an argument with a YAML file, which is because I did. But one decision I made early on was that I didn't want to offer an email newsletter.

2014 Jim Jarmusch, Tom Hiddleston, Tilda Swinton, Mia Wasikowska, John Hurt, Jeffrey Wright

Suggestion for feed reader devs. Put a Check Now button on the page for a single feed. It shouldn't overburden your system because it's just doing an HTTP read and a little parsing. Not much more work than reloading a page in the browser. The benefit is you can see a current view of the news according to a specific feed without waiting. Makes the web roughly instantaneous for every feed, even ones that don't support rssCloud. FeedLand has such a button.