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Now

Short life updates inspired by nownownow.com

May 2026

Home: our tiny garden in its semi-wild state continues to bring in a crazy amount of springtime wildlife given our proximity to the city. This year we've had ground- and wood-nesting bees, beetles, butterflies and robins, and a family of blue tits has made a home in our nest box. A grey squirrel has been eyeing up the eaves of the roof too, and has required gentle persuasion to move on. Despite the wildness, it is not untidy, and I have now grown 7 varieties of rose in the borders and a beautiful wisteria over our boundary wall. My wife & I have decided that we don't want to spend another winter with a leaking roof so replacing that is our next big expense.

We don't have children (just the dog) so I have enjoyed being an uncle and godfather to a very world-wise 1-year-old who has even come skiing with us.

Books: I mainly enjoy fiction, and most recently I've been reading the following, in no particular order.

…all of which I can recommend, but none can beat Children of Time, my favourite from last year. I was pleasantly surprised with Bob Mortimer, who fills the same niche as Terry Pratchett and Jasper Fforde.

Games: friends & I have made an ill-advised foray into the worlds of ContractVille (39 hours) and Farming Simulator (70+ hours). This is terrible news, as we will never be able to look at a field or building site again without passing judgement. In single player, I've been enjoying puzzle games like Blue Prince and The Case of the Golden Idol.

I recently ditched Windows entirely in favour of Omarchy. Like magic, 100% of all games I play simply work out of the box. I've even stopped checking compatibility before purchase. One downside, however, is that my Windows-based VR headset no longer works, so I am waiting patiently for Valve to release the Steam Frame before I can get another Beat Saber fix.

Our latest board game aquisition is Barcelona, a Christmas present, which may be our biggest head-scratcher yet. It's a great economic game with a lot of depth but if you are to pick it up, make sure you budget a couple of hours for a single game. Other friend groups — mostly those of us without children to look after — have been spending our evenings in pubs either discussing the downfall of humanity or playing cards; we're doing our bit to prop up the ailing hospitality industry.

Tech: not too much going on outside work. I recently upgraded all of our networking gear to Unifi which works a treat. I am now up to 4 raspberry pis with not a great deal to host on them, but I am likely to cave to peer pressure soon and buy some radio kit for Meshtastic tinkering.

Work: it's an exciting time to work at Dstny as we increase our headcount — we are doing the opposite of most tech firms at the moment. Right now we're transforming our Operations teams (and adding a new one) to be product-aligned, with separate Reliability and Platform Engineering groups. Interesting days ahead.


Nest Box 2026 Tractoring 2026

February 2025

Work at Dstny and Factorio take up a lot of mental energy, having been promoted to Head of Infra & Ops and making it off-planet (respectively) quite recently. I've found enough space to work on a couple of new pet projects in the last 12 months though: Certificate City and SIP Chef. Both are ideas generated from frustrations at work, and the former now has a public proof-of-concept.

In the new year, I managed to get back into skiing via a trip to Morzine-Avoriaz with some ex-colleagues, something that I've been meaning to do for a few years but never had a good opporunity. Skiing in a big group is loads of fun and quite a different vibe to small family trips.

Learning the guitar has slowed since I started during the pandemic, which is mainly because I've hit a reasonable standard where I can play most campfire songs - I'm now picking it up occasionally to play for fun, try out new techniques or work on my theory. My wife has started taking drum lessons very recently which means we can hopefully play together soon.

2024 was a sad year for both us in terms of bereavements, but the circumstances gave us plenty of opportunity to reconnect with extended family, which we can be thankful for.

Bertie the labradoodle deserves a blog all to himself. He's an adult now but shows no signs of slowing down; off-lead walks can be challenging as he still wants to chase anything with 4 legs. We've been taking him to agility classes to keep his brain working, he's often top of the class and a Certified Good Boy.

We've now lived in Bristol for 5 years and achieved more with the house than we expected, from damp-proofing and renovating the utility room to converting the 19th-century stables outbuilding to a music/hobbies studio. There's more to do though: we're looking to finish the loft conversion that a previous owner started, which might require a new roof. Scary and expensive but worth doing. We've packed in our allotment plot, partly due to time constraints and partly because we've found ingenious ways to grow vegetables in our tiny garden using deep grow-bags. Maybe more gardening in the next update.


Morzine 2025 Bertie 2025