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Feeling rough today for some reason. Good nights sleep and no sugar last night. I woke up a little groggy as always, but felt fine. But now? Pretty rough. Oh well.#

I'm writing this with that little fancy German pen with BulletJournal branding. I still don't get the hype. £28 and the ink is cutting out as I write! Let's switch to my £3-5 Uni-ball Jetstream 101. See, this is so much nicer. Sure, the ink isn't as thick or as black and sharp. But the ink doesn't cut out. And it's so much more comfortable to write with.#

I've put a cheap £25 fountain pen on my birthday list (and some cheap ink). I'm very curious what it's going to be like. I'm sure it will take some getting used to. But hopefully it will improve the look of my writing in my notebooks. I'm slightly concerned about comfort and ink smudging (with me being left handed). But hopeful it will [be] better than my beloved Uni-ball Jetstream 101, which is proving harder than you might think.#

Sometimes I count myself a very lucky beneficiary of the factory age.#

I always love finding instances in history books of people moaning and worrying about new technologies or the decline of the next generation.#

Here’s one of a man moaning that the steel nibbed pen isn’t as good as the quill and that it’s worsening children’s handwriting:#

But not everyone approved [of steel nibs being used to write over the quill], no matter its quality or place of origin. In 1862, an unnamed correspondent for Scientific American found that all pens with a steel tip were barbaric, and all who used them hoodwinked. The greatest casualty was handwriting. 'Do not ninety-nine persons in a hundred use steel pens,' the magazine writer complained, 'and has more than one out of the ninety-nine the effrontery to say he can write with them? Lord Palmerston was quite right: the handwriting of this generation is abominable; and as new improvements in steel pens go that of the next will be worse. There is neither grace nor legibility in the angular scrawl that prevails now.' (p49)#

There needs to be a name for the disappointment of someone showing you something at work that's clearly AI generated.#

Especially when it has been done last minute and not even humanised a bit.#

They're trying to run you through it. But they know about as much of the contents as you do.#

And it's always so long. And lacking basic, but important context/knowledge that a human would know.#

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.#

AI slop had made it to magazine covers.#

I saw this Sherlock Holmes magazine in WHSmiths at Victoria Station.#

I’m sure it saved them £200-500 in paying a designer and the moneyfolk rubbed their hands together with glee.#

But I didn’t buy it because of its awful AI cover (I love Sherlock Holmes and would enjoy this magazine, I’m sure. And the contents looked decent enough). How many others have skipped it because of the AI art? You wonder if that money they saved was cancelled out by lost sales.#

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Log — 13.17: I got a lovely little twenty twenty-seven weekly planner from Hatchards the booksellers the other [day]. A delicate, vintage looking thing, it has gilded edges, rip-away corners, and plenty of different sections. Made of vegan leather, it's a delightful little thing. Aside from one issue: the "dates of note" are all US dates of note! Hatchards is an English institution and its stores and brand reek of Englishness. So for its branded planner to have US dates of note is an outrage. Offer it as an option, sure, but to make it the default is tantamount to treason. Boo!#

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One of my least favourite feelings is waking up on a Saturday knowing you’ve got some DIY to do this weekend.#

I thought the mosquitos were done with me, but they’re not. I’ve woken up to three bites on my foot. One of which is on the underside, which means walking is annoying.#

Mosquitos tend to do this with me. They bite me on unusual places. Feet, face, ear and elbow.#

Google Maps on the web is painfully slow these days. It's close to unusable at times.#

One my least favourite parts about buying coffee from a coffee shop is the to-go containers – they keep the drink hot for ages. Useful for some people I'm sure, but not for me. I haven't had caffeine all morning and I need it.#

But I bought this drink 30 minutes ago and it’s still way too hot to drink. ☕️#

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I always try and smile if I meet the eye of someone I'm passing. But I'm shocked by the number of people who don't smile back. Maybe their brain just doesn't process the encounter fast enough for them to smile 🤷#