Adactio: Journal

After reading The Morrigan I was hungry for more retellings of Irish myths and legends. I tracked down the 1994 novel Finn Mac Cool by Morgan Llywelyn. When I was devouring modern retellings of Greek myths, I commented on an interesting difference in the tellings: The biggest difference I’ve noticed is the presence or absence of supernatural intervention. Some of these writers tell their stories with gods and goddesses front and centre. Others tell the very same stories as realistic accounts…

People talk about the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of large language models as though all tasks are comparable. But it strikes me that there are three broad categories of work that large language models are applied to: Compression. Transformation. Expansion. Compression is when you feed a large language model something big that you want to make small. Summarise this book. Give me the gist of this meeting. Large language models are generally pretty good at this, which makes sense given...

Times are tough out there. I know that a lot of people are looking for work, which can be a very stressful experience. One of the things that can make the job search stressful is uncertainty. There’s a real taboo around talking about salaries. This taboo ends up benefiting employers and punishing potential employees. There’s an information gap that can be exploited (see also: job postings that don’t list salary ranges). That’s why I’m always pleased when people voluntarily share their inco...

Sometimes I look back through my blogging archives and notice what’s changed over time. For example, I used to write quite enthusiastically about the arrival of a new operating system from Apple. That is no longer the case, to put it mildly. I’m currently holed up on Sequioa, trying to resist all the nudgings to “upgrade” to the tacky design nightmare that is Tahoe. I feel like the protagonist of Pluribus. I used to write about software I really liked. Sometimes it was software made by App...

Four years ago I wrote about something that has long puzzled me in the world of front-end development. Trust: The mindset I’ve noticed is that many developers are suspicious of browser features but trusting of third-party libraries. Developers are more likely to trust, say, Bootstrap than they are to trust CSS grid or custom properties. Developers are more likely to trust React than they are to trust web components. That post got some thoughtful responses but I never really unders...

People of Brighton, mark your calendars: Saturday, April 4th. That’s when Salter Cane will be playing in The Hope And Ruin. It’s not just Salter Cane though. We’ll be joined by Skyscrapers from Lewes, and The Equatorial Group from Eastbourne. We’ve played with them before, and they’re superb! Tickets are available now. They’re £8 in advance. It’ll be £10 on the door. So please get your ticket in advance! Doors are at 7:30pm. Skyscrapers will be on stage at 8pm, The Equatorial group at 9pm...

I was in the library the weekend before last when I spotted something on the shelf of recently-returned books. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. I knew the film adaptation was coming out later that week. Ideally, I’d like to read the book before seeing the film. It would be a race against time! The film would be out in days, and the book is over 450 pages long. Could this nerdy white guy rise to challenge and overcome the odds? As it turned out, it wasn’t all that arduous. Project Hail Mary...

You should come to UX London in the first week of June. Why? Because it’s going to be awesome, that’s why! You probably knew that already. You probably already decided to get a ticket because you’re smart like that. But don’t dilly-dally! Early-bird tickets are available now but in just over one week, they won’t be. So get your ticket by Friday, March 27th. If you get your ticket now, it’s a win for everyone. You get a cheaper ticket. We know for sure that you’re coming. Every time someo...

When I was summing up my reading habits in 2022 I said: I think the lesson this year is: you can’t go wrong with Octavia E. Butler or Ursula K. Le Guin. I stand by that. But maybe I’d recommend some Ursula K. Le Guin books more than others. A Fisherman Of The Inland Sea is a good collection of short stories. But it’s not a great collection of short stories. If you’re looking for a great collection of short stories, read The Unreal and the Real. When it comes to Ursula K. Le Guin, the...

On March 12th, 1989, Tim Berners-Lee submitted Information Management: A Proposal. This would form the basis of what became the World Wide Web. On March 12th, 2026, Web Day Out happened in Brighton. Coincidence? Yes. Yes, it is a coincidence. But it’s a pretty nice coincidence, you must admit. It was a day dedicated to the World Wide Web. Not just the foundational languages of the web—HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—but also the foundational ideas of the web. “Share what you know!” That was t...