Only the delete key can save Windows 11
Thursday, April 30, 2026
Microsoft made sure the upselling worked. While the basics were left to rot.
Longform Reviews & Essays
Hitting snooze on sunrise
Tuesday, April 28, 2026
The halogen bulb in my wake-up lamp went. The replacements I’ve tried don’t look much like a sunrise.
The Downgrade
Friday, April 24, 2026
My MacBook Pro met an unfortunate end at the AWS London Summit. Replacing it has been more complicated than expected.
The G5
Thursday, April 16, 2026
After a disappointing experience with a PowerMac G5’s design flaw, the author now carefully selects durable technology to ensure it lasts for five years.
Small language, big world
Sunday, April 12, 2026
I’m a big fan of Small Language Models. The technology to distill a Large Language Model down to something that generates tokens at decent speed is now there. I had a Python application costing me 17 cents per run in API calls, so I started to muck about with Ministral-3-3B-Instruct-2512 under llama.cpp, and after some tuning got good results. Ministral is energetic and verbose. I had to be clear that inventing answers when the input was thin was not acceptable.
AI coding as VB coding
Tuesday, April 7, 2026
Rachel Thomas over on Fast.ai. Vibe coding provides a misleading feeling of agency. The coder specifies what they want to build and is often presented with choices from the LLM on how to proceed. However, those options are quite different than the architectural choices that a programmer would make on their own, directing them down paths they wouldn’t otherwise take. Much as people might hate reading it, AI coding strikes me as the best version of Visual Basic that could ever be created.
Artemis II is heading home
Tuesday, April 7, 2026
From CNN: After 7 hours, the Artemis II flyby is wrapping up. Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman thanked the NASA science team for putting together such an exciting observing program for them, as well as “some great, truly human experience moments here.” “We were well prepared, and we appreciate all of you, and this is what we do best when we all come together and work as a team,” Wiseman said.
PostgreSQL has performance work to do
Tuesday, April 7, 2026
My initial reaction to reading that Linux 7.0 had halved PostgreSQL performance was that the kernel team had broken userspace and would revert it. Then I read this: AWS Engineer Reports PostgreSQL Performance Halved By Linux 7.0, But A Fix May Not Be Easy - Phoronix “The fix here is to make PostgreSQL make use of rseq slice extension: lkml.kernel.org/r/2025121… That should limit the exposure to lock holder preemption (unless PostgreSQL is doing seriously egregious things).
Moonraker at the half point
Tuesday, April 7, 2026
I’ve been drawing out reading Moonraker because of how much I’m enjoying it. The first third contains a high-stakes gambling sequence better written than most suspense set-pieces I’ve seen elsewhere. Bond is very low-tech here. The buttons he pushes aren’t on devices, they’re on people. He isn’t quippy. He smokes a lot, and you know he’s tough. Not because he says so, but because he acts when required. No second-guessing, no hesitation.
Black Nail Varnish
Monday, April 6, 2026
Influencers. A bigger, messier sequel that loses its way in a pointless romance arc, but CW remains a compelling villain and the franchise still has legs.
The Sword and the Salmon
Saturday, April 4, 2026
Russia’s shadow fleet is rerouting along the Irish coast to dodge Royal Navy seizures. Ireland’s military intelligence are talking about the consequences. Ireland might need to dust off some mythology.
AI's Database Moment
Friday, April 3, 2026
AI is like databases. They started on the mainframe, now you have a half dozen on your phone. The same shift is coming for AI models.
Stranger Things Ends with a Shrug
Friday, January 2, 2026
The finale of Stranger Things is a mixed bag, balancing character resolution with structural flaws and criticism over inaccessible storytelling.
The Weight of Failure (When Failure Costs Nothing)
Wednesday, December 31, 2025
Lola Kirke’s memoir reveals her struggles with failure, familial expectations, and the harsh realities of the arts while exploring themes of privilege and personal identity.
Oliver Sacks’s sin wasn’t the literary license he took with patient accounts, it was allowing his exaggerations and fabrications to be treated as medical fact. He had a responsibility to his profession and the scientific community. He shirked it.
Not in Kansas Anymore
Saturday, December 6, 2025
The Wizard of Oz reformatted for the immense 16K wraparound screen of the Las Vegas Sphere is a technical marvel. Very flawed, but worth seeing. To start with, the screen is amazing. It’s not a full hemisphere but as your neck won’t go back that far without you falling out of the seat it doesn’t matter. It produces enough light to illuminate the entire space and that first moment you see the sepia coloured skies of Kansas expand around and above you it’ll bring a smile to your face.
re:Invent 2025: Treachery, Cunning, and Werner Vogels
Friday, December 5, 2025
Inside AWS, re:Invent starts sooner than you’d expect and you end up working on it for longer than you’ve planned. Through treachery and cunning, I avoided going for years. There was always someone else to pass my ticket to until 2024, when there wasn’t. After an extended professional breakup, which I initiated, Las Vegas and I were back together again. I swore the place off years ago after too many other tech conferences, but Vegas and its infinite hotel beds are inescapable.
Dracula: A Love Tale
Monday, November 17, 2025
“Dracula: A Love Tale” presents a visually appealing but ultimately shallow romantic narrative that fails to capture the depth of female empowerment found in the original story.
F for Fake
Thursday, November 13, 2025
Orson Welles' docudrama “F for Fake” explores themes of authenticity in art through the charming yet deceptive stories of fraudsters, blending soulful monologues with moments of self-indulgence in a creatively low-budget production.
The Institute
Sunday, November 2, 2025
Television adaptations of Stephen King’s works often struggle with character development, but the engaging cast in the new series The Institute provides a refreshing take on familiar themes.
Talamasca: The Secret Order
Monday, October 27, 2025
The show fails to deliver a compelling supernatural spy thriller, lacking tension and engaging storytelling, ultimately making it unworthy of viewers' time.
Tron: Ares
Friday, October 10, 2025
Tron: Ares features a simplistic plot with underwhelming action and characters, failing to live up to its predecessors while lacking memorable elements.
Thomas Harris: Red Dragon
Saturday, August 16, 2025
Media has made killers cute. We've given them sardonic voice overs in TV shows. Some have become "I can fix them" characters in books. They'll kill only the bad people, or so the authors would have us believe. That's not how these people work. The reality is that everyone around a serial killer will be in some way damaged or destroyed by them. Other people's pain is their point. Red Dragon, written in 1981, doesn't do cute.
Dante: The Divine Comedy
Tuesday, August 12, 2025
When Dante wrote this narrative poem he did so in Italian instead of Latin to make it as accessible as possible. Alas, I can't read 14th century Italian so I have to depend on translators and their copious amount of footnotes. Over the past 700 years the footnotes have piled up at the bottom of the page like centuries of snow. Dante would be horrified. Ignoring the opinions of academics and slogging my way through the translated poem, this is a groundbreaking piece of creativity.
The Naked Gun (2025)
Saturday, August 2, 2025
In 1996, Liam Neeson starred in the historical drama Michael Collins; likewise, Pamela Anderson was in Barb Wire. If you had told me at the time that they’d reboot The Naked Gun franchise together, I’d have laughed at you. In this reboot of a franchise that first started in 1982 with the six-episode Police Squad!, Neeson’s Frank Drebin Jr. takes on Danny Heuston’s reverse effective altruist green technology billionaire. Anderson’s crime writer has a family connection and a score to settle, which brings her into Drebin’s life.
Superman (2025)
Saturday, July 12, 2025
Superman (2025) isn't a movie by someone who studied Richard Donner's Superman. It's a movie by someone who studied Christopher Reeve's performance in Superman. David Corenswet gives Clark Kent/Superman a Reeve's like charisma even though he falls short of giving his Superman a Reeve's like presence. The cast here outstrips the dialogue. Unlike prior Superman movies everyone can act. Rachel Brosnahan is a modern update to Hildy Johnson's fast talking 1940s reporter in His Girl Friday.
The Bonfire of the Vanities
Monday, June 2, 2025
The Devil’s Candy doesn’t need a review. People set out with the best intentions and a lot of money. They made an unloved movie from a popular novel. That’s it. But I’ll mention that Melanie Griffith puts in a better performance in film version of The Bonfire of the Vanities than Tom Hanks or Bruce Willis. Needy and damaged in the book, but dynamite on the screen. Tom Wolfe despised the characters he wrote about in his novel.
The Phoenician Scheme
Friday, May 30, 2025
A stronger entry than Asteroid City, but it’s smaller scale than The French Dispatch. It’s a three-hander film where the interplay of three characters drives the narrative. Benicio del Toro gives a charismatic performance as magnate Zsa-Zsa Korda. A shrewd entrepreneur of strategic foresight who is amoral. But he’s a striver, and he’s so likeable that even enemies who want to see him dead can’t help but like him. Liesl, Korda’s 21-year-old estranged daughter played by Mia Threapleton is the morality absent in the Korva genes.
When The Going Was Good by Graydon Carter
Friday, May 30, 2025
I finished reading Graydon Carter’s memoir “When The Going Was Good” last weekend. Committed to getting the most value out of the least amount of personal effort, he succeeded. Carter’s lazy ambition is impressive. I couldn’t guess to how many hours of the week he spent eating at some work related event. The man’s social battery appears endless. The book, true to its title, recounts the magazine industry’s fall from influence and subscribers.
Until Dawn
Friday, May 30, 2025
Horror movies done well are cheap to make, pack in viewers and make much more money than they cost. The good ones leave an impression. Neither "Death of a Unicorn" nor "Drop" left enough of an impression for me to write a review but Until Dawn is different because it doesn't try to adapt the source material. It does its utmost to ignore as much of the source material as possible.