Now

Short life updates because keeping a real blog is too much work.

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.