16 August, 2024
Hertz doubled the cost of my car rental. Here’s their process design trick.
This year, during my family holiday, I discovered how Hertz – and many other car hire companies – have crafted a process involving dark patterns to trick stressed travellers into paying far more than necessary for their car hire. I’ve used Hertz several times over the years, particularly in the 2000s, so I expected good […]
30 May, 2024
Taller buildings let us design better towns
I lived in a range of places as a kid, partly because my father was a bit of an itinerant who didn’t know what he wanted in life, other than that I mustn’t live with my mother. Go figure. Eventually I got to settle down with my grandmother, but in the process I learned a […]
20 May, 2024
A new manifesto for the web
This blog post has now been re-arranged with the manifesto at the top, and the reasoning that led up to it beneath. Because, after all, placing the important content six or seven hundred words in is hardly being pure, is it? Web Dogma 24. By me. Content First. All articles, images, and graphics must be […]
16 May, 2024
AI is predictive, not intelligent
I hope you haven’t missed the big AI revolution going on right now? No? Yes? YES? You have no idea about it? Where do you live? On Mars? Ah OK, you were kidding. AI is being talked about everywhere, new devices like the Humane AI Pin or the Rabbit R1 are very much about it, […]
11 May, 2024
Design Dilemmas: When bathrooms become battlegrounds
In the world of transgender rights, the battle for the bathroom has reached fever pitch, especially in the USA. Now, I’m not here to referee in this brawl – because on one side of the debate you have the ‘TERFs”, and on the other, the trans rights activists sometimes labelled “handmaidens”. Both are terms about […]
3 May, 2024
A little change on this website
In the past, this website was sort of my place to keep family and friends in touch. I first set it up in 2005, just before going away to Peru on travels. It was a great. Facebook had been invented but wasn’t generally available or popular yet, other platforms weren’t well thought through or scattered, […]
28 December, 2023
The productivity paradox
I came across this chart recently and it gave me pause for thought as someone whose life work is designed to improve productivity. It shows that from 2008, although we know technologies have been growing in power, productivity growth suddenly dropped away from the trendline following the global financial crisis. Why? This is where I […]
28 June, 2023
Recovering from a heart bypass. The physical and mental challenges.
Having a coronary artery bypass isn’t much fun and comes with challenges. Four years later I thought I’d describe some more of my experiences.
4 September, 2022
Steps and missteps on my path out of poverty
At 18 I was skint and got made homeless. It took a lot of graft, patience and mistakes to get out of that and into a moderate middle class lifestyle. Here’s how.
15 February, 2022
Interesting times in the world of software
About a decade ago, I was at a conference and talking to a fellow developer (I still call myself one, even though I don’t code so much these days) when he giddily told me about the funding he’d got for building a new piece of software he was hoping would make it big. It was […]
26 April, 2021
I broke my heart in five places and got it fixed
A year ago, I was sitting, shorn of all body hair and waiting to go in for a five or six hour operation. I knew the next two weeks would be hell.
5 December, 2019
The great pension scam, how people were conned, and how young people fixed it
In my previous post, I discussed the importance of separating wealth from income, and to stop beating up a chap called Rob Barber who made the mistake of having a high income but not feeling rich. I get exactly where he’s coming from because I’ve been in the same position. In fact, it was more dangerous, […]
23 November, 2019
Wealth, income, and why that bloke on Question Time with £80k was wrong (and right)
There’s a bloke who’s been on Question Time who makes £80k a year and claimed he’s not in the top 5%. Which clearly makes him a moron and a subject of derision, right? Sock it to the wealthy! They’re all bastards who need putting in their place! Well actually, he’s not. A lot of people […]
18 November, 2018
The EU are bullying the UK
A short screenplay, by me. It’s a Monday morning at a small train station on a mainline. It’s bustling as business travellers head to London for their week’s business. The air is cool, with people blowing little clouds of steam as they head into the station from their taxis and cars. Mr Hock, a late-middle […]
12 October, 2018
Why learning to lose is the path to winning
Last night was the count for the local by-election, in which I stood as a Liberal Democrat candidate. I lost. I came third. And I’m OK with that. But this isn’t a political blog, at all, even though I’m involved in it. So if you want the results, they’re here. Once upon a time, I […]
17 December, 2017
Why political parties lose support by winning.
People do like to look back angrily, don’t they? Yet many a time, their anger today doesn’t reflect how they really felt back then. If you look at the Iraq War, and the UK’s involvement in it, most people supported the action. For sure, an awful lot of people today don’t think it was right […]
25 February, 2016
Staleys in the Isle of Man
One of the funny things about children and their memories is just how fallible they are. Full of false memories and forgotten realities. I lived, for a while, somewhere on the outskirts of Douglas on the Isle of Man, when I was about nine years old. The family I stayed in had a boy about […]
22 February, 2013
Finding a missing person in South America (and elsewhere)
I promised, ages ago, that I’d write up some tips on how to find somebody who’d gone missing in South America. Recently I had an email from somebody in the same situation which has spurred me into action. Since 1997 I’ve found or been found by my mother, my brothers and my sister. Here I’m […]
18 July, 2012
It’s OK, Coming Second Isn’t So Bad
One of the lessons I’ve learned, from motorsport and life in general, is that coming second is actually OK. You’re brought up in school to believe that winning is important. Anything else is being a loser. Well, they’re wrong. The minute you learn to accept that you win by being the best that you can […]
26 February, 2012
Why You Should Be A Secularist
All these arguments about Britain being a ‘Christian’ country at heart (see Baroness Warsi here, here and most importantly here) are so much bull, and I’m tired of it. It’s part of an attack on the growing secularist movement but framed in such a way that it’s designed to scare the religious into thinking they’re going to be […]
10 July, 2011
Blog “Reboot”
Hello – here’s the refreshed blog. I’ve decided to revert to a more typical blog format, after many months of soul searching on the issue. I previously had a layout based on a framework we used at interconnect/it for a couple of clients But not only have I opted to switch to a blog layout, […]
8 September, 2010
Extreme Landscapes
I’m now back in Arica following my trip to San Pedro de Atacama and Bolivia. I have a couple of things to deal with here before heading back to Lima for my flight home. I’ve been foiled by this computer in the hotel from getting a decent image gallery up from the last eight days […]