Archive

October 2026

Saturday, 3 October 2026

↗ "Ebenezer" trailer

8:22am

New trailer on YouTube for the film "Ebenezer".

As ”A Christmas Carol" lover, this is actually looks okay (this could be the first non-terrible film Johnny Depp’s been in for a decade – he’s been on an awful run). And it has that Victorian vibe I like, whilst also feeling a bit different and fun. And I like Depp’s mannerisms.

I also think "Ebenezer" is a decent title. It’s been used before. But it beats yet another "A Christmas Carol" which will only make finding the version you want even more confusing.

Book mentioned: “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens

People mentioned: Johnny Depp

FilmsTrailer

Footnotes are now supported on Walden.blog

5:51pm

AI has implemented footnotes for me, apparently. So I'd like to try them out. Let's give it a go...

This should have a footnote.1 This is the first footnote

This is the second footnote.2 Another footnote. Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since 1966, when designers at Letraset and James Mosley, the librarian at St Bride Printing Library in London, took a 1914 Cicero translation and scrambled it to make dummy text for Letraset's Body Type sheets. It has survived not only many decades, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised thanks to these sheets and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker and Microsoft Word including versions of Lorem Ipsum. With some text after it!

Let’s see if I can add a footnote on mobile.3 This should work!

Another?4 One final, baby footnote

TestWalden

Friday, 2 October 2026

7:58am

I hate reading the Introduction chapter of a book, and will often skip them. They’re usually dull.

So I love it when a book simply doesn’t use the word “introduction” in its introduction. It tricks me, quite happily, into actually reading it.

The book I’ve just started has done it – "The Pen: A Human History" by Simon Garfield.

And you know what? I enjoyed the intro chapter.

Book mentioned: “The Pen: A Human History” by Simon Garfield

Books

Embrace tagging chaos

12:16pm

I've written before on one of my old blogs about tagging and the importance of not keeping it too organised. I had a habit of not wanting to create a new tag uness I was certain I'd use it again for other things.

I also had a bit of a habit of of nesting them, creating monstrosities like travel:england:resource:walking.

I'm now more relax. I have 2,871 tags for my 21,229 bookmarks on Pinboard.

Because they're created by my brain, I often suprise myself when I see a tag has already been created for something I'm bookmarking.

Today I was bookmarking a page about a graphic for a blueprint of Sherlock Holmes' flat. The website was old looking – lots of plain HTML. So I tagged it old.web. And to my suprise, I'd already used that tag for a page about Charles Darwin and a Usenet archive.

BookmarkingMetadataPKMPinboardTechnologyWebsite

Walden.blog now supports books

1:05pm

I often reference the book I'm reading in posts. It's good to have a central place to see all my posts about a book, so I was adding a unique ID. For example, B204. An ID is a lot shorter than having to write out the book title and author. However, it also doesn't tell the user anything about the book, and my tags list was getting clogged up by these IDs.

So, I got Claude Fable 5.1 to build a separate metadata system for books! They're like tags, but just separated out for books. And it means I can show the title, author, year published, and also cover art!

It needs a bit of tweaking, but it will do for now.

Note: please ignore the books attached to this post. I'm just testing out the ability to hopefully add multiple books to a post.

Book mentioned: “Everyday Life in Medieval London: From the Anglo-Saxons to the Tudors” by Toni Mount

Book mentioned: “The Pen: A Human History” by Simon Garfield

BooksCodingTechnologyWalden

Thursday, 1 October 2026

7:35am

Now that I’m on the BulletJournal train (adapted slightly by me) I thought I’d give the Leuchtturm1917 x BulletJournal x Dreggriffel pen (that’s a lot of collabs) a go.

Don’t know why I did. I’ve already found the perfect pen: uni-ball Jetstream 101. And this one cost £29! (the uni-ball costs £6 for 3!)

It’s a pleasant enough looking pen, with decent weight. But doesn’t write as well as the uni-ball – and isn’t as comfortable.

Oh well. Maybe I’ll keep it at my desk and use it when I plan my day.

BulletJournalNotebooksPensProductsPurchase

20% EXTRA FREE

7:44am

You often see products with something like 20% EXTRA FREE on it. I always presumed it was a fairly new thing.

But I'm watching an episode of Only Fools & Horses from 1989 and I noticed Del-Boy is drinking a can of Heineken that has it on it. So apparently it's a nearly 40 year old gimmick.

BeerOnly Fools & HorsesProductsTV

Everything Microsoft is ugly

7:50am

I like using a Mac because it's largely beautiful (less so these days, I admit).

But I have to use Windows for work. And my goodness every day I am shocked by its ugliness.

Even with the rise of everything being browser based (thus things look largely the same on Mac and Windows) it's still an issue.

Windows is a bit like religion – I don't understand how people can choose it.

AppleDesignMicrosoftRantTechnology

AI is in its Uber era

8:16am

AI is in its Uber era. The leaked finances of Anthropic and OpenAI show both spending more than they earn, with venture capital covering the gap. You get a great deal today. The playbook is is the same as companies like Uber: lose money until rivals fold and you can't work without the service, then raise prices.

On a Claude Pro or Max plan, Anthropic probably spends £4–5 on compute for every £1 you pay.

AITechnology

10:43pm

All these years after its invention I still find FM radio remarkable.

You’re telling me this a tiny, thin cable hanging out the back of my alarm clock can pick up music/speech from an antenna goodness knows how far away‽

Sure, the quality isn’t the best. But it’s still miraculous.

MusicRadioTechnology