Author
My life has been one long mission to figure out how to make usable web things for humans. Expect a lot of that here: web tech, design systems, accessibility, branding, platforms and AI’s effect on writing, software and culture.
I’m into music (particularly electronic and post-rock), film, modern fiction, visual design, gaming and sci-fi of all flavours, particularly cyberpunk and post-scarcity space opera.
I live in Edinburgh with my partner and son.
Site
anglepoised has existed in some form or another since 2001. It was shortlisted in The Guardian’s inaugural Best British Blog competition back in 2002 and – honestly – it’s all been downhill from there.
My favourite type of blogging has always been collecting & curating things I’m interested in, particularly links and quotes. Matthias Ott put it nicely:
For years, we’ve mainly talked about owning your web in terms of publishing – own your domain, own your posts, own your voice. But that was only ever half of it. The other half is what you point to. Your blogroll. Your /links page. The RSS feed, the monthly roundup, the annotated reading list. The “here’s something worth your time” email you send to a couple of friends. All of that is curation.
I’m also trying to do more woolgathering in public.
Feeds
Yes.
If you’d like to know more: What is a feed?
Colophon
The site is built with Astro, which I love. It lives on Cloudflare, which I tolerate.
The current theme is a fork of Astro Nano.
I keep links in Raindrop and quotes in Readwise, both of which I’m very happy to pay for. These are published daily, using GitHub Actions and some glue scripts that I refuse to read.
I use the privacy-respecting Goatcounter for analytics, because it’s nice to have a little situational awareness.
AI policy
Writing is thinking and it turns out I actually quite like thinking, so I write everything myself. I use a variant of Simon Willison’s proofreader skill when I remember.
Code is not the kind of thinking I’m into these days. I’m not averse to using AI for this, in the same way that I’m happy to pay an electrician to rewire my house. At this point in my life I have a pretty good idea of how to run the cabling, but I’m more interested in plugging my kettle in and making a nice cup of tea, you know?