Bill Glover

I returned to commuting last week. Oscar has been attending a science camp in town and this has meant jumping on the district line during rush hour. I do miss the commute. It was my chance to listen to podcasts, read a book, or just observe the world around me. The commute served as a welcome separation between activities at home, and life at work. For many, the commute is associated with rushing around, but for me it has always been a chance to slow down. This week though, it was a reminder of…

For many years I used to be able to say that I’d never unexpectedly bumped into anyone I knew. That ended when I sat down in an internet cafe (showing my age I know) in New Zealand and the person next to me lived on same floor as me in our student digs. Weeks later, this time back in London, and I bumped into a school mate leaving Hammersmith Station. Then things returned to normal. There were no more surprises.

It took me most of the week to wash the camping gear. I’ve noticed that most people seem to clean their camping gear in-situ before backing up. I’ve even seen the odd portable vacuum cleaner being wheeled out. But I tend to favour unpacking everything when we get home, setting the tents up in the garden to clean them out, washing them and then setting them up again to dry. In amongst the cleaning of camping gear, my head has been spinning with ideas of things to do post-EMF. I’m feeling full of…

I was lucky to be able to get tickets to EMF Camp 2026. Despite being larger than ever, it felt like tickets were harder to get hold of this year. Oscar and I went in 2024 but this time we went as a family and Alicia and Ethan joined us. We loved the event, and the people we met, and in our own ways we all came away inspired. Our son’s nursery sent home a painted dishcloth inspired by the Manky Tea Towel museum at EMF.

Transit at The Cockpit Last night I went to see Transit at The Cockpit in London. It was excellent. And, on the off chance you read this before it finishes, you should go and see it. “Transit is an award-winning, genre-bending investigation of identity, belonging and migration. Told through a series of vignettes utilising physical theatre, multilingual performance, poetry, dance, multimedia, practical lights and music, Transit delicately navigates the feeling of being ‘too foreign for here, too…

This week is the first full week of summer holidays for Oscar. He hasn’t quite been able to ditch school with early morning swim training each day. This has been a good excuse for us to get up and get out of the house. The weather has been baking hot during the day and has made concentrating on anything creative a little difficult. I’ve been prioritising work that is more mundane in nature. This is work that is no less important, but requires a different kind of focus.

A photo only update this week. Life events (and hot weather) took over and I’m behind on blogging. I’ll be back on track soon. Week in Pictures box of bricks - the boundless possibility that comes from opening a box of bricks

So you’re back home from EMF and you want to get your badge on the home Wi-Fi. Typing out your WiFi credentials using the badge interface is tricky. You might be able to manage for one badge, but with multiple badges you’re going to want a better way to do this. There is documentation for how to change the wifi settings using a computer, but for some reason following these never saved the new credentials on my badge. Here is what worked for me (on firmware v2.1.1).

Last Saturday Alicia and I went to see Songs of the Bulbul at Sadler’s Wells East. Everything about the performance was incredible. The simple stage design was visually stunning without distracting from the beautiful performance by Aakash Odedra. This was our first visit to Sadler’s Wells East and, despite it being the other side of town we know we’ll be back. A well designed, modern theatre, without the rigidity and formality that I often feel with in some of the more traditional venues in…

The web does not need a consistent look and feel. It never has and it never will. This quote from Adam sums it up. “I’d rather someone make a ‘shitty’ web page for their thing than have a machine pump out a soulless plastic one” – Adam, the builder of many wonderful web pages, including omg.lol If you want to tell the world about something, make a page for it. The page you make is not shitty, it has character, personality, and authenticity. You cared enough to make it and that alone says a lot.…

I’m reminded that dropping a tool or technology into an organisation without considering the implications on people is one of the reasons technology implementations fail to deliver their promised value. This is true of a software upgrade, it’s true of a new operational dashboard, and it is very true of newfangled tools built around non-deterministic models. These new tools have the tendency to go off and do their own thing. Where the needs of employees are considered, it is often as an…

1,900 years ago - Pyramid of the Sun, Teotihuacan, Mexico 2014-01 Back in 2014 a friend of mine got married in Mexico City. As many of us had flown in and were visiting Mexico for the first time, they organise a trip out to see the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan. This photo is darker than many of others pictures I took at the time. I don’t remember the stone being this black. I suspect the strength of the morning sun and the camera doing its best to expose the image is what gives it

I’ve been enjoying Alicia’s continued curiosity and willingness to explore questions that many of us miss. Her recent post got me thinking. What does it mean to have a healthy mind? “But I don’t think a healthy mind is one that feels happy all the time. A healthy mind is one that can feel everything. Joy. Grief. Wonder. Disappointment. Love. Loneliness. Awe. Fear. Hope. Regret. All of it. Because all of it belongs.”

It was nice to have Alicia back this week. The combination of rising temperatures and adjusting to a new family routine meant we had our fair share of grumpy evenings at home. I think the short tempers and exhaustion were fairly evenly distributed across the family. The hot nights saw people sleeping all over the house in search of cooler temperatures or a breeze. I made some progress on a new iteration and structure to my blog. I want to keep using Hugo but my current layout isn’t working for…

A walk along the pier - Howth, Ireland, 2007-04 Alicia and I visited Dublin back in 2007. Confident that, after many years of visiting as a child, I knew my way around the city, I set off confidently on a tour of the town centre. It was over 40 minutes before I realised (or admitted) that I’d been walking in the wrong direction all alone. I didn’t know Dublin at all. On our second day, we took the DART out to Howth and went for a walk along the clifftops. This photo was taken on our way out to…

I aim to improve my Chinese reading through regular practice. This video represents a point on that journey. Text: Friend’s Tea - Chapter 8 (我要回家了) Source: Du Chinese Level: Elementary

Alicia was in China this week and it gave me a chance to spend a lot more time with the boys. The week was exhausting but it was a real delight to have so much time with them. From meals in the garden, to watching the late one evening, to finding ourselves asleep on the floor after a chaotic Saturday. We had fun. Oscar spent time working on his narrative for a class ‘show and tell’ session. He took in the Pocket Operator KO and had grand plans for how he was going to make a rhythm using sounds…

I aim to improve my Chinese reading through regular practice. This video represents a point on that journey. Text: Friend’s Tea - Chapter 7 (新的开始) Source: Du Chinese Level: Elementary

A splash of colour - Dumbo, New York, USA, 2014-07 The first time I visited New York I really didn’t enjoy it. I arrived with my sister on the way back from New Zealand. We were broke and exhausted. I’ve since been back a couple of times and enjoyed it slightly more. Whilst I have no plans to visit in the near future, I do have some fond memories of wandering around the streets in different parts of the city. When we were here, we wandered into a small gallery that was dedicated to art that…

I aim to improve my Chinese reading through regular practice. This video represents a point on that journey. Text: Friend’s Tea - Chapter 6 (新朋友大红) Source: Du Chinese Level: Elementary

I aim to improve my Chinese reading through regular practice. This video represents a point on that journey. Text: Friend’s Tea - Chapter 5 (小绿不高兴) Source: Du Chinese Level: Elementary

Summary This week has been dominated by one theme my determination to audit my own tax records and understand why I received a letter from HMRC. I’m hoping that by the end of this, I’ll have resolved any omissions in my tax returns but also I’ll have a greater understanding of my personal tax situation. I don’t think I fully understood how acquisitions can mask significant changes in tax liability. As a result, my spreadsheet skills have been getting a real workout. LibreOffice has been…

first meal in China - Hou Hai Lake 后海, Beijing, 2006-12 This is the first meal I remember eating in China. We enjoyed this clay-pot chicken dish in a restaurant just off Hou Hai Lake in Beijing back in 2006. The area has since been through several regeneration initiatives and I don’t believe the restaurant survived the second of these. I struggled with chopsticks, I struggled with the different textures, and with things I’d never heard of let alone considered edible. But I enjoyed the meal.

I aim to improve my Chinese reading through regular practice. This video represents a point on that journey. Text: Friend’s Tea - Chapter 4 (明明和希希) Source: Du Chinese Level: Elementary

Church of the Good Shepherd, Lake Tekapo, New Zealand - 2003 In the summer of 2003 I flew out to Sydney to meet my sister who was living there at the time. We spent a couple of weeks travelling around New Zealand. It was winter there and we ended up spending time with friends, but also travelling around both North and South island.

The view from my window - The first photo with my digital cameraMay 2023, Chapel Green Lane, Bristol When discussing first digital cameras, Rob sent me a link to his first digital photo. I had a look back and this was mine. I clearly recognised the significance of this photo because buried in the metadata of the image was the caption you see above. Taken: 2003-05-27 @ 11:42:47

imperfection - I accidentally jogged the ISO dial forcing the camera to compensate by slowing down the exposure. Imperfection at its best. Go and read Michelle’s piece on Leaving the imperfections in.. Embracing imperfection, or at least not letting the fear of imperfection hold me back has been a struggle. Whether it is language learning, photography, or a technical demo at work, the desire for things to be perfect has always been present. It has taken a conscious effort to try and embrace the…

We started this week with Alicia in Amsterdam, Ethan in particular was not too pleased. We haven’t quite decided what to do over the summer, but I suspect he’s gonna face at least a week without Alicia at home. I’m going to have to up my game if I’m going to inherit favourite parent status before then. Oscar’s school art project gave us an opportunity to practice some more cyanotype. The theme was My Happy Place. His first attempt to draw a piano ended up in tears, and so he settled on drawing…

Grass Storm - 2012 Back in 2012 we stayed in a cottage down near Ringstead on the South coast of England. The walk from the cottage to the beach took us along the edge of a working farm. One afternoon I turned and looked back, the fields were a cloud of dust kicked up by a tractor raking dried grass. The hay fever sufferer in me winces at the sight of this image but I have no memory of hay fever being an issue on that trip.

We couldn’t have asked for a better start to the half term week. We spent the weekend camping with friends just outside London. I’m a lightweight camper, and I’m incredibly stubborn in insisting that we have to be able to carry everything we bring, no car. Packing was fun. Oscar and I have been camping several times before but this was the first time we went as a family. It was really nice to see both Ethan and Alicia embrace the experience.