Earlier this year I was recommended this book. I won’t dive into the reasons too much but it’s safe to say I was burning out. If you work in tech you’ll be familiar with the term burnout.

I have never been piled with high urgency tasks and silly deadlines but I do put pressure on myself. At the time I was riding a wave of productivity. I wanted it to keep going. The more I agreed to, the more it didn’t feel right.

The book’s first distinction is to define stress versus stressors. It’s important to realise when we’re stressed and what we can do to fix that. This book teaches it well. In the short term, getting on top of your stress can give you just enough to get out of the cycle. The causes of stress are different things and need addressing. The difficulty is if you’re stuck in the cycle you won’t have the energy to be able to break it.

A great concept introduced earlier on is the Human Giver Syndrome. Typically a personality type that wishes to please others will burnout to these external demands. I have often been called a people pleaser, so it was validating to see that it’s not just me and that it’s a studied and identified principle of stress.

The book does a great job at teaching you how to complete your stress cycle. It’s not going to be the same for everyone. For me I know that creative expression is by far my most powerful outlet for fixing stress. If I’m deep in stress I find it difficult to get started. For example, writing this piece took a lot of effort despite my love for writing.

Ultimately stress is something that’s given to you. It’s a societal issue. We can’t control what other people do to us or the demands from the systems above. We control what we see as acceptable. If you’re stuck in a stressful environment you may need to get out. This isn’t always something that can be controlled. It may be something we need to endure to get to the next step.

One cheat code for stress is physical activity. I’ve started wearing a Fitbit to bed which tells me that my sleep is fragmented and poor and I lack basic exercise. I know this and I didn’t need another piece of tech and an virtual coach to tell me. My eating habits are inconsistent and my basic routine doesn’t exist. I react to everything rather than taking action. In a world where everyone is controlled by a smartphone this is problematic.

If we do something we love and we do it for the right reasons we won’t burn out. We become recharged by the things we do. It’s important to identify what recharges us and keep them at the forefront of our minds. It’s important to know why we’re doing them.

As always with my analysis it’s important to state that there is often more complexity than I’m sharing. I try my best to understand basic psychology and its impact on us as healthy humans. This book is a good reminder to stay out of trouble. Read it. And then read it again.

Last year my YouTube algorithm pointed me to Motion City Soundtrack’s video for She is Afraid. I adored the grungy sound and poppy hooks. They released The Same Old Wonderful Wasted World in September 2025. What a cracking title.

I didn’t know much about the band. I still don’t. I had a few of their tracks liked in my catalogue. I assume their most popular is Everything Is Alright. What I do know is it’s honest raw pop punk. A touch of emo, a touch of indie.

The album grabbed me. The beautiful opening track and the thumping beats throughout the piece make it great. Those poppy hooks crop up all the time and they’re a work of art.

I’m glad to have discovered this band.

After a bit of a hiatus from going to gigs myself and Amy restarted our shared passion by taking a trip up the M1 to Nottingham to see Thrice at Rock City on a Tuesday night, 17 March 2026. Thrice are well known for their emo hits from their 2003 album The Artist in the Ambulance. Their early sound reminds me of student nightclubs. I didn’t start my uni studies until 2013 but was still a frequent week-end drinker with my friends around that time (including Mosh Tuesdays).

When I said to friends and colleagues I was going to see Thrice most replied that they’d never heard of them. My (ahem) older college peers knew who I was talking about though. The demographic at a packed Rock City was certainly reflective of this.

Thrice started strong with hits from their newer record which I was more familiar with. I wasn’t cool enough to listen to their older records when released. Their newer albums Horizons/East and Horizons/West really caught me though. A much evolved sound compared to the emo anthems of previous eras. I prefer the lower register in the sung melodies and the slower but funkier pace of songs like Albatross.

Thrice were soon into old-school territory mixing in hits from decades gone by. It was a glorious and dynamic set throughout. The songs meandered beautifully. The thumping bass lines and chugging guitars cut through to my diaphram. It was a humbling experience.

I can’t recommend this band enough. Check them out if you can.

I watched Anne-Laure Le Cunff on a Big Think video on YouTube. It was telling you life isn’t linear and neither should self improvement. We’re told that everything is linear. Progression has a start and an end. Do this to get there then do that. The video affected me.

A lot of self help literature stems from toxic productivity. This is only good for busywork. From these statements I knew this book was going to work wonders for me.

The early book discusses the problems and how to identify your stories. Often we go through stories written by other people but we don’t realise. We run through scripts following our past, the crowd, or our perceived passion. This was the introduction to the theme of experimenting.

We’re all great at recording ourselves and tracking our habits. In doing so we can observe what we enjoy or what we gain energy from and figure out how to drive ourselves. We can take actions on these things and reflect.

The experiments have constraints. They can’t be based on infinite timelines and should be really simple. If you want to paint more your goal should not be to become an established artist but instead to join a painting class for a set number of weeks. These are pacts. The pacts should be lead by our curiosity.

The main takeaways of these pacts should be things that are purposeful, actionable, continuous and trackable. These ingredients lead to something tangible which help us reflect.

Time management is replaced by the nonlinear energy management. When we think about our weeks as measures of action or enjoyment we very rarely think about set days. A holiday can last a fortnight but be thoroughly enjoyable as can a single event such as a concert. These are qualitative rather than tracking your hours.

There’s a lot of typical self-help guidance too which is always good to remember. It’s not all rubbish in the wider self-help world so it’s good be pointed towards the helpful parts. Some such examples in this book are trial and error cycles, the persist, pause, or pivot moments to react to feedback either from yourself or from others.

Another good theme that struck me fairly hard in this book was about looking outside yourself. Sometimes the problems we have require an environmental change or a shift in the processes that we don’t enjoy. Not everyone has the luxury to pivot here but it can be liberating to know if you get there that you’ll be able to apply this mindset to your daily life.

The final chapter was a good reminder that experiments can change and should do. If we’re not happy after carrying out our pacts we should change things. Simple but effective.

I thoroughly recommend this book. A great read.

• My sister delivered two beautiful girls. They’re doing well. We are blessed to have such loving family. Me and Amy went to town to celebrate and ate at Arts Greek which was far too much glorious food.
• Got the timetable out for the Countesthorpe Festival Chorus. The Come and Sing event is on Saturday the 7th and we’re all looking forward to it.
• Had a call about an unannounced app I am prototyping. It’s great fun tinkering with these things.
• Had another call with my party function band Everything In-Between to go over admin and the packages we offer.
• Visited my new nieces on Wednesday. It was a precious moment. It was great to see everyone doing so well.
• A cheeky steak at Middletons with a friend. Great stuff. Diet starts tomorrow?
• Saw Suzi Ruffle with friends at the Y Theatre. She’s such a great act and I was fascinated for the entire time she was on stage.
• Visited friends that have moved to Nailstone at last after a turbulent moving process. It reminds me that I never want to be involved in a house move ever again. Good to finally see them in their beautiful new home after all this time.
• Started off the weekend with a trip to Nottingham to pick up scores for the choir. Easy journey there but got stuck in typical awful Leicester traffic on the way back.
• Birthday celebrations for a friend in town followed by a night to the Free Trade Inn in Sileby to watch Altered Ego rock and celebrate the new owners taking over.
• Visited the New Inn in Enderby with family. We’re all beaming about the twins.
• Continued the birthday celebrations for a trip to Grange Farm in Oadby. Glorious food but far too much, again.
• Continued reading Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. There is some great stuff in there.

• The week started off with a poorly Izzy. It was all very horrible but she’s been fine since. The vets were very good and offered us advice. She was a tired dog for the rest of the day but soon perked up after a good sleep.
• Set up Ubuntu on my laptop via WSL. Apparently it’s the way to go for bleeding edge development these days. It all seems to be working really well. VS Code has no issues working with the remote service. Docker works like a charm. And yes, it’s very fast.
• A glorious takeaway from Dipali in Blaby. Diet starts tomorrow?
• Playing with another new app prototype in my spare time. I should’ve been tidying the house. Exciting stuff though.
• Rehearsed with Everything In-Between. We’re sounding amazing. I was dialing in the tone on my new Helix. It’s frustrating but when it’s right it sounds great.
• Set up an old tablet we used to use for open mics. It has a great screen but a slow refresh rate and less RAM than should be able to adequately run Android properly. I’ve been using it for reading my RSS feeds and newspaper articles. It runs Kindle very well too.
• Navigating the modern world of health apps and managed to use the NHS app to triage and get a same day appointment. I’ve had a persistent headache for a while now. Turns out it was a neck muscle and I needed to adjust my monitor height…
• Used the treadmill for the second time. I’m not breaking records anytime soon. I will get healthy before my body collapses from sitting at a desk for 12 hours a day.
• Played Clair Obscur streaming to friends. I still blame controller latency for missing a parry most of the time.
• Resumed teaching music theory to a friend. We covered chord voicing and some more note to fretboard training.
• Rehearsed with Amy Dx and band. Tightening a few screws ready for our gig in march. Sounding absolutely wicked.
• Met up with a few members of an unannounced project at Carlton Park in Enderby. Great chatting and I managed not to over-caffeinate myself this time.
• A great evening with friends in Blaby enjoying a takeaway from the Thai Kitchen at the Plough Inn in Littlethorpe. So good to catch up. Belly laughs and good chats.
• Started reading a book called Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. I’m a slow reader but the first few pages were eye opening.
• Enjoyed spending time with family at the New Inn in Enderby. We didn’t take Izzy with us this time. It was too muddy in the fields. Hopefully we get at least some dry weather going forward and can easily take her out again.
• Enjoyed an evening at the Railway open mic in Countesthorpe with Altered Ego. Great hosts! I played a few originals this time.

• Back to work after a week off. Managed to tick some things off the list before getting stuck back into coding. Later in the week I managed to fix a really irking developer experience bug that had been plaguing me for months.
• Continued coding various unannounced apps. It’s great getting early feedback from users and being able to quickly iterate. The newly activated Google Cloud CDN has actually meant that my deployments don’t take time to refresh the cache which I thought was an odd side-effect.
• Got the cars cleaned professionally. They were in dire state. One of my considerations wasn’t how damp they’d get inside. This has lead to me buying a giant dehumidifier which has been working really well to dry the cars.
• Had a glorious steak meal at Middletons in Leicester with a friend. Superb.
• Had a glorious calzone at Oggi in Kibworth with Amy for an early Valentines meal. Great times.
• Having sworn off food for the week my goldfish mind soon forgot and I was at my third meal out with a friend at Pesto in Desford. I could only manage two small plates but it was delicious nonetheless.
• Played through the second half on Doom: Knee Deep in the Dead on my Switch Lite. An absolute masterpiece. I managed to look fairly competent using the built in controls on Hurt Me Plenty difficulty.
• On Saturday I gigged with my old duo partner Tasha. We used to run too many open mic nights and Tasha still does. We were invited to play the Valentines Winter Sessions at the SoundHouse in Leicester. We were thoroughly unprepared but shone on the stage (if I do say so myself). We received great praise which was very nice!
• A lazy Sunday. The weather has been awful so we mostly stayed in. I did manage a stint on our new treadmill. As I type my legs are cramped. I really need to work on my fitness.

• A week off work to celebrate mine and Amy’s four years together. We didn’t plan to go away but we must arrange something soon. A thoroughly nice time taking life at a slower pace but still filled with good stuff.
• We walked to Blaby for hot drinks. It was mostly spent doing admin at the post office. All good fun.
• I prepared the Countesthorpe Festival Chorus registration for the event in March. It will celebrate 25 years of CFC events.
• Me and Amy hit the Hive & Honey in town. It was glorious. The food was incredible. Tapas style dishes. We grabbed hot drinks soon after as I needed a coffee to revive myself from the food coma. A nice time at the Tree too.
• I worked on a new app proposal for another unannounced project. First time using Firebase as a back-end for quick prototyping. Fairly happy with the outcome.
• Met up for a different unannounced project at Jenno’s. A pint of coffee wasn’t the best idea but we had some good discussions and it was nice meeting people that I’d been in contact with for a while for the first time.
• Bradgate Park with Amy. We took Izzy and she loved it. Dogs aren’t allowed off lead but she had a great time. She let it be known she wanted some of my toastie from the café.
• Continued teaching music theory. Some work on typical guitar shapes and triplets in rhythm. An interesting topic but one that gets overlooked.
• Helped my brother with a coding project. I know very little about Dot Net and C# but we got a simple app made in a an hour or so. It was a fun learning experience.
• Headed to the Lancaster Arms outside Desford with a friend. The weather was bitter but they had the fire on. Was a nice catch up.
• Me and Amy continued our theme of challenge eating for the week with a trip to Lime Tree for a nice evening meal.
• Continuing the theme we headed to Axe & Square with family for lunch. Very good and lovely to catch up with everyone.
• Throughout the week I continued app development on the another of my three unannounced projects. This one’s got some beta testers at it so it’s nice to get feedback and fix the glaring issues.
• Had a call going over the prototype I had built earlier in the week and the plan for it.
• Booted up Google Cloud Platform console and got on with some cost saving measures, including consolidating my SSL certificates and adding a CDN to my services, which I thought for some reason would increase the cost. Not sure what the budget will look like in the coming months but was a good exercise in slimming things down.
• Rehearsal with Amy Dx and her band with my newly acquired Helix Floor. I’d spent hours dialing in the tone before hand. It went really well and my tone was good. It was better when I realised I needed cabinet emulation (I rehearse through the PA).
• Okapi in Blaby for a baby shower for my sister and her expectant twins. A lovely time celebrating with a glorious afternoon tea, continuing the theme of challenge eating for the week. I don’t think I’ll need to eat for another week after that!

• After a long wait after pre-ordering in November, my Retroid 6 portable game console arrived. I’ve owned the 4 and still have the 5. I chose to put the stick above the D-pad to compliment the original configuration so that I can easier play modern games with the enhanced processing power.
• Picked up a Helix Floor model (a guitar pedalboard modeller). It’s a well gigged unit that’s been going strong for 8 years. I’ve previously owned the HX Stomp which has similar internals but instead of being a small three button pedal it’s a full 12 button pedalboard with an expression pedal. It’s glorious and will take me awhile to get to grips with.
• Attended AI Paired Programming at BJSS Nottingham tech meetup with a friend. It was an inspiring talk. I use AI to code extensively at work but have shied away in my personal projects for ethical reasons. Seeing how able it now is but more importantly what it will always fail at opened a lot of discussion.
• Had a treadmill delivered. It took a lot of effort to prepare the room and set it up. It’s hefty! That was more than my exercise for the week. I have yet to use it.
• Lots of admin with tax deadlines and other bits to sort out. I spent a significant amount of time collecting documents for various things. I am now sick of the Gov.UK website (despite it being very good).
• Given the talk I attended earlier in the week I gave Google’s Antigravity a go. I have a Gemini Pro plan with my phone purchase. This was a mistake as I’m now addicted to vibe coding. I have since built and deployed a feasible app, along with authentication and a database back-end, thanks to this inspiration.
• Attended the Iliffe acoustic charity concert for the British Heart Foundation. It was a glorious evening with friends. We know Liam & Sean well from their shifts at open mics. Baker & Crane were sublime too! A lovely evening with fantastic music supported by great friends.
• Continued teaching music theory. I was treated to too much amazing food afterwards. Good times.
• Practised and rehearsed with Amy Dx and band. We’d had a couple of months off but it was good to remind ourselves we still sound awesome. Some new songs in the pipeline which I almost managed to remember.
• A beautiful evening in Desford with friends eating too much Mexican food. Lovely chats and great times.
• Took Izzy out to see Karol and the family again. They’re getting on very well (the dogs and the family). Enjoyed catching up with family at the New Inn in Enderby.
• Finished the week streaming Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 with friends. I’m finally getting the hang of this game. I am now less prone to spoilers. During some frustration with perceived latency from the controller (over Bluetooth) I plugged it in. It did make a difference. I’ve ordered a dedicated wireless receiver for the Xbox controllers.

• Wrote up my website pieces for A Million Miles in a Thousand Years book review and my new Connections album announcement. I’m almost getting consistent with the website.
• New phone. I spent hours installing and transferring everything. I opted to go from scratch which is probably not the best idea. Everything I have is backed up to cloud services so it’s not too painful. Had to get the passport out for a few things.
• Continued teaching music theory to a friend.
• Took Izzy out to be joined with a local Golden Retriever in the area. They’ve met a few times and are best of friends by now. It’s great watching them chase each other and play.
• Registered and put up another website for an unannounced project. It’s just a placeholder for now.
• Rehearsed with Everything In-Between at Rewind Studios. It’d been a while but we mostly remembered what we do! Sounding great.
• Joined the Red Lion open mic in Sapcote hosted by Altered Ego. A great time featuring the amazing Madison Blues. Very rarely someone else sings Biffy Clyro but this was one of those nights!
• Joined the Countesthorpe Festival Chorus committee call to discuss the upcoming 25th event. The wheels are in motion! Took a few actions away. We’re a well oiled machine at this point.
• Ate at Frame in St Martin’s Square with Amy. Glorious food. I nearly burst. Followed by a lovely evening and catching a wicked band playing 60s/70s rock n’ roll.
• A wonderful afternoon in Desford with friends. Great company, great food.
• Had a lovely time at a birthday party for my young nephew. Great to see family and friends. Loved seeing the young un’s play together.
• The debut open mic for Altered Ego at The Railway in Countesthorpe. As usual they smashed it. A packed out pub with lots of familiar faces. A great evening.

It was 2021. We were all coming out of the pandemic. I’d gone through a lot of change and moved to a flat. I soon meet my now fiancee.

‘Connections’ is my second album of attempted alternative rock. It’s about friendship and love. Without these connections I wouldn’t be here today. It’s a bit of an easier listen compared to my first album ‘Grief’. The vocals are still scruffy and the mixing is questionable. If you’ve been with me at an open mic in recent times you will have heard some of these songs.

You can listen to ‘Connections’ by Polar Bites on Spotify.

There are similarities to ‘Grief’ in the way it sounds. As I wrote then:

I’m proud of it. The drums can sound tacky. The vocals, to my best efforts, are rubbish. But it has feeling and meaning.

Compared to ‘Grief’ it’s a less selfish piece. It was written for friends to celebrate them.

Some of the songs come from the cutting floor of King Brick. These were demoed in 2016. In 2019 I wrote ‘I’m a Mixer’ but knew it was too happy for the ‘Grief’ album. Work on the album really ignited when I wrote ‘Short and Sweet’ and ‘The Path to Better Things’. The rest was gradual until the final two song ‘Slow Goodbye’ and ‘Never Gone’ were finished. I found it difficult to focus on these because I needed them to be as good as I could get.

When it comes to mixing and mastering I’ve taken what I learnt from my first album especially on bass and compression. Previously both were too harsh. Given the space in the sound from taking everything back and aiming for lower volumes I was then able to use reverb to add depth and shape the mix with finer granularity.

It’s available now on most streaming services. I’m proud of the songwriting. Some of the songs came very naturally and some took years to write. I very much enjoyed writing and recording this album and revisiting the memories I’ve got with these connections.

I had been recommended this book from watching self-help influencers rave about it. I read it in a few sittings and was absolutely gripped. I couldn’t put it down. This may not sound extraordinary but as someone with as poor concentration as mine, who only managed to read 3 books in 2025, it was basically a miracle.

Despite the great story I was tentative to continue after the start. It was overly cliche about a writer who was bored. The author obviously has done well and needed to find something else to do. He idolises himself.

That said this soup of stories was a great read. The concept is actually quite beautiful. I was put off by the lack of acknowledgement of the authors privilege but he obviously has talent when it comes to writing and storytelling. I laughed a lot and felt for him when we was down or idling.

A beautiful concept driven well. We should all strive to make and share stories. If we are in a rut we should change things if we are fortunate. It calls out for the reader to assess their own values. As someone who strives for calm and creativity it scared me thinking about disruption and adventure. It depends on the person but I’ve had enough excitement for now. It does make me think and question that though!

• Updated my website’s RSS feed to provide all types of posts. Previously it was only forwarding posts under the ‘writing’ section. This was by design, so as not to muddy the feed with reviews and demos, but given the sparseness of my published writing I thought it was worth a change.
• Went on a big walk with a friend around the fields around Desford. I thought it was going to be a light walk. I nearly passed out. Great fun and great catching up.
• Continued my music theory teaching to a friend.
• Amy cooked a bloody gorgeous lasagna. I ate too much and fell to sleep pretty much instantly afterwards.
• More walking. I headed to Blaby and grabbed a flat white while I was waiting. Great fun listening to audiobooks as I went. I should make a habit of walking more.
• Resurrected my Meetup profile in anticipation for attending a tech meet in Nottingham later in the month. Looking forward to this!
• A very wet walk with Amy and Izzy to Blaby and back. We knew it was going to rain. It was light when we set off, a lot heavier getting back. It didn’t matter!
• A great evening and a delicious meal at Chutney Ivy arriving just after the theatre rush. We attended an open jam night arranged by Honeyguides at the Real Ale Classroom. It was lovely catching this event and chatting to new faces in the community. I did a bit on the guitar and bass, naturally.
• Desford to see friends. We collected a beautiful takeaway from Great China in Ratby. A glorious evening.
• New website and press kit for Amy Dx. Using the trusty SvelteKit framework. A bit overkill but I know it well by now. Happy with the outcome.
• Announced the release of my second album ‘Connections’. It’s been five years in the making. I’m very happy with it.
• Setting up a new phone is always a pain. I should have faith in the built in transfer rather than doing everything from scratch. I secretly enjoy it.
• Seeing out the owners of the Sir Robert Peel. A great night with great friends. We got the guitar out and had a singaround. We had to really!
• No visiting Karol this week as we had family plans. Was still nice to host and visit family though.
• Managed to end the week playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 with my brother and a friend. I’ve just passed some humorous storytelling and am now facing what I believe to be a pivotal moment of the story (given on how excited both are to see my reaction at this point). I was flattened a few times up until this point but I’m still having great fun.

I started reading Ali Abdaal’s debut book on a flight to Bucharest and in short bursts throughout my work trip. As the title suggests, it’s self-help for the “feel good” genre. I know Ali Abdaal from his YouTube channel and was fascinated by his rise. He’s obviously hyper-intelligent and didn’t mind putting a shift of two in back in med school.

It covers productivity and blockers to it in a way that makes you reassess your systems. It talks about the typical advice we’ve been given from the likes of James Clear and Mark Manson. It twists them into attempting to make work feel like play. I thought this was a silly idea but it drives some good points.

It’s best advice comes from how to avoid blockers in work life. It advises you to check your values and asses your reasoning. It does require you to have done the work beforehand to know where you’re sitting in this flowchart of a book. It covers light psychology too for those of us that haven’t heard it a thousand times.

The chapter on burnout is particularly good. It offers great advice about how to avoid this in the first instance. Making work energise you is a difficult task but Ali has achieved a lot through gruelling shifts.

Again, fairly typical advice that probably isn’t new to you. But what is great is the stories Ali pairs with the advice. The writing is very well done and friendly. You feel like he’s talking to you genuinely trying to help you out rather than patronise you.

The discourse in productivity can be quite toxic. We need to take a step back and ask ourselves why we’re doing the things we do. Ali covers this fairly well where others would gloss over it. It covers balance and reasoning well but is ultimately a really good reminder to look after yourself while doing these things.

• Back to work! Spent most of Monday remembering what I do for a living and figuring out what messes I’d left myself in.
• Taught a music theory lesson to a friend. I’ve been doing this regularly and it’s great to revisit some of the technical stuff behind the music I so thoroughly love.
• Visit my parents and grabbed my brother for a birthday celebration. The traffic was awful but we had a lovely time.
• Me and Amy headed to Fort Kochi, a new restaurant in Blaby. It was delicious. I risked it opting for the hot spice option but managed.
• A few open mic updates adding January dates from Altered Ego and updating the schedule for the SoundHouse. I also pushed some review writing for my website.
• Submitted my second album ‘Connections’ for publishing. I had listened to the final tracks for a week or so to make sure I was happy. Watch this space!
• In the evenings I’ve been attempting Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 on my PC with a twist. I struggle to play video games but having friends cheer me on and help me out has been great. I’ve streamed my sessions on Discord chatting away and gathering advice. It also keeps me accountable.
• Visited Nandos in Fosse Park for a glorious time and good post-holiday catch-up with a close friend. All is well.
• Booted up Quake Brutalist Jam 3, a glorious community driven overhaul of the original Quake game from id Software. I would never survive on my own due to my inability to “get good” as my brother calls it. He helped me out on a cooperative multiplayer session, although sadly modern Quake source ports still suffer the same issues we’ve had before trying to play the game together.
• Worked on a logo for an as-yet unannounced project. I do not consider myself to be a graphic designer but I’m fairly happy with it! As with any tech related product, the logo and branding are surely the post important steps.
• Me and Amy caught another episode of Severance on Apple TV. We’re about midway through the second season. I love it but it hits too close to home.
• An evening of rather heavy snow! It doesn’t affect my commute like it used to…
• We headed to Leicester town for a meal with friends before heading to an annual gathering for a friend’s birthday celebrations. It was a lovely time. We were eventually turfed out by the bar-staff as it was closing time.
• Hosted a lovely gathering on Saturday evening. Cheerful takeaway food is the perfect antidote to the January blues. Izzy enjoyed playing with her friends and was very well behaved. She was sad after everyone had gone.
• Managed some Pokemon Shining Pearl on my Switch Lite after a bit of an absence picking it up. I say a bit, it was 6 months. I managed a half-hour session mostly frolicking and remembering how to play.
• Izzy and Karol the guide dog enjoyed another good run together. The weather held out despite the harsh cold wind. They enjoyed playing with patches of snow and ice. We weren’t rushing around this time so enjoyed a lovely time with family at the pub.

I finished reading The Sight of You by Holly Miller in October 2024. I had been slowly reading it throughout the years prior. It tells the tale of Joel and Callie underpinned by a supernatural element. The story is beautiful. The imagery flows and traverses the ups and downs of life, love and loss really well. As the story darts between pivotal events in the characters lives the theme of sacrifice becomes clear and it’s haunting to read.

I do consider the book to be overdone. Everything is rather extreme. This isn’t a bad thing. We read books to escape. If we wanted to be bored we’d watch Coronation Street.

These highs and lows along with the elements of supernatural do break the immersion for me. It’s hard to believe in a story like this. Regardless, the poiniency and deepness in every chapter does make for a gripping read. Great stuff for fans of romance.

• I took the week off as annual leave to get through (and over) the festivities.
• We took Izzy to a local dog field with a friend. She recommended it as it is fenced off and open to the public. It was perfect to see her running around with our friend’s dog. Izzy was nowhere near fast enough to catch up with her new friend.
• I recorded a quick snippet from one of my tracks “The Path to Better Things”. The song was written in 2023 and will feature in my upcoming album called ‘Connections’.
• Against my better judgement I bought a cheap tripod stand for my digital camcorder. I should’ve researched and bought a proper camera stand. Even a simple adapting screw for a sturdy tablet stand I already own would’ve been a better move.
• Did my annual back-up of my recordings and Doom levels. As I write this I realised I forgot to include the photos from my camera. I didn’t bother backing up any Godot projects or paintings as I haven’t made enough progress to justify the effort.
• We hosted a New Year’s Eve gathering including copious amounts of Duck Game, as it should be. We prepared far too much food and there was enough booze on the table to sink a small ship.
• My sister and brother-in-law hosted a wonderful buffet. It was great catching up with family after the crazy but lovely festive period. There was too much food for someone who’s been eating like it’s his last meal every day for the last three weeks.
• I finished reading Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff. It was a great read and inspired me. I’ve started posting these weekly updates because of the book.
• We went for a walk around Everard’s Meadows. I brought my camera and took some photos. It was rather chilly! Izzy enjoyed playing with other doggos.
• I finally recorded the last few takes for my second album ‘Connections’. I recorded some vocals and a guitar solo that I’d missed. I mixed and mastered the tracks. They are now ready to be published.
• A busy Sunday before returning to work. A lovely day taking Izzy out with Karol the guide dog followed by a feast in Oadby, and then an open mic hosted by Liam & Sean at the Plough in Wigston. It was my first time at this venue and the first time playing my Acoustasonic since its new setup.

The album is nearly finished and this demo has been live for 8 months. I’ve only just written this post for it.

There are reasons for that. “Slow Goodbye” deals with one of the most profound and upsetting moments of my life and I’m sure the life of others. It deals with losing someone close. Sadly there are two tracks on this album that cover lost loved ones.

Listen to ‘Slow Goodbye’ on SoundCloud.

The lyrics are pretty self explanatory. I don’t want to discuss the details. I wrote a song I hope he’d enjoy. I’m happy with it as a kick-ass rock song. I’m trying to normalise life in doing so.

Before I write up my year in 2025 I wanted to rant about our futures. It’s difficult to separate ourselves from our environments and the world we live in. Despite the ranting paragraph that follows, I will aim to keep the rest of the post positive.

In 2025 the world feels like it’s been a skip fire. I’m not sure if this is my bias but I’ve not seen many happy write-ups. I live in the UK where division and hate have taken the lead over empathy and hope. It’s been truly horrid reading the news and seeing some connections on social media spout the horseshit rhetoric that we’ve seen ruin countries countless times in the history books. I’m not a news journalist and I don’t claim to be, unlike the shills and grifters reposting the anti-democracy bots that have seemingly flooded our feeds. That’s how it feels to me.

I feel it is important to note this and add the context because I feel connected with my wider community and the world. I can’t pretend it hasn’t affected me. My hope is with empathy and love we can turn these times around.

That being said, this is my 2025, not my views on the world around us. I will get back on topic.

Personal

For me the first half of the year was calm. I busied myself with work and music while the house saw some improvements. We have a functional and finished bathroom.

In February we stayed in York. It was a lovely trip. I took my camera and shot some photos around the walls in the golden hours. We managed a fair bit of walking and found some great tapas.

In May we headed up to Manchester for a friend’s birthday celebrations. We found a great bar and sang together at what was technically an open mic. Trust me to find one when we’re supposed to be taking a break!

In June we visited friends in Bristol. The weather was kind and I loved the city.

In the second half of the year we painted the bedroom walls. It took a while, was mostly fun, but I’d be hard pressed to make a career out of it. We managed it just in time for our wardrobes to be fitted, which has added a lot of storage. I’m very happy with them.

In September we took a week off from work to relax. What actually happened is we were very fortunate in being able to adopt a failed assistance dog from a local charity. Izzy has been a huge part of our lives since and I couldn’t imagine life without her.

At the same time I proposed to Amy and we are now engaged. I am luckier than words can write. It was lovely to share this news with friends and family. I look forward to spending the rest of our lives together.

The year has been full of friends and family too, with bowling trips, cheese nights, and Friendmas celebrations to name a few.

Work

I am grateful to work for such an effective company at the top of its game. Every minute I’m there I’m learning and growing at a rate I could previously only imagine.

In March I travelled to Bucharest to meet with the team. It was glorious fun and hard graft. It set us up for a year of success and I’m proud to have been involved with some brilliant new products.

Music

Myself and Tasha ran many open mics at the Grand Union and Baton Rouge in Leicester. I have loved my time with the vibrant and diverse community. After running four a month for most of the year, a combination of low footfall and general fatigue on my part meant that they have since come to an end.

I haven’t attended many gigs in 2025 because I overdid it in 2024 and my back aches thinking about it. Friends gasp when I tell them I haven’t bought tickets to the upcoming Biffy Clyro album tour.

I have been involved with two bands in 2025. Everything In-between has been glorious fun to be a part of. We’ve played a few festivals and a golf course hall. I have also picked up the guitar for Amy Dx after seeing her play at Firebug in town. We’ve played a few gigs since and they’ve been very rewarding.

My alt-rock alias Polar Bites continues to progress albeit at a slow pace. Towards the end of the year I have finished 9 out of 11 tracks. I only require two more vocals takes to complete the album. I’ve been promising my second album ‘Connections’ to the masses since 2023. Three years on I think we’re there. I also re-released ‘Grief’ and published it on streaming platforms. It has been fun being able to easily listen to my own music, as narcissistic as that sounds.

Coding

Early in the year I became focused on building an app for bullet journaling and focus planning. Ultimately when it came to using the app it couldn’t compete with the likes of big tech and established apps that I previously used. It turns out Google Calendar is quite an engineering feat. I enjoyed my time building the prototype and had great fun learning different code to the day job.

I picked up the Godot game engine and started prototyping a 2D platform brawler. It’s a steep learning curve but has been thoroughly enjoyable.

And then Doom… I started working on two new levels and fleshed out a few others. That certainly increased my serotonin levels.

Downtime

I struggled to relax as much as I’d like but given my creative projects I’ll let it slide. I have played roughly 30 hours of single player computer games and read almost 3 books. I have enjoyed listening to a biography of Terry Pratchett despite only being a few hours in.

I have sat down and watched a bit of Severance and more of King of the Hill. I’ll continue to press on with my focus in consuming media.

To the future

I wanted 2025 to be calm but the world had other plans. I look forward to wedding planning and continuing with my ever-growing list of projects. We’ve got more ideas for the house and maybe we’ll see them happen soon.

Other than that I would like to apologise to the reader for the grim undertones in this post. I can’t pretend to not be affected by the state of our world.

There has been a shift in the tech world that has left me with a sour taste. I have seen too many good workers lose their jobs to fools gold. I can’t imagine what horrors 2026 will bring with these economic bubbles but I’m sure a lot of tech bros and an orange moron will obtain unimaginable wealth from the carefully crafted downfall of our civilisation.

That said we have to fight this. We have to live our lives and enjoy the present despite the state of things. In 2026 I can only hope that the world recovers.

It was over a year ago I attended this gig. I don’t know why I’ve slept on reviewing it for so long. One of the reasons could be because we attended so many gigs in 2024 and it exhausted me a bit, as brilliant as it was.

Jimmy Eat World need little explaining. They’re awesome and for damn good reason. Genre defying.

They played the Victoria Warehouse in Manchester on 14 November 2024. Pup supported and were a joy to hear live too. I’ve long enjoyed Pup. I thought they played 2000Tress in 2019 but I am mistaking them for Puppy. Similar vibes and comically me in mixing them up.

It was a glorious gig. Jimmy played for ages and every second was incredible. They don’t miss. Their songs are varied and dynamic. They’re an inspiration in my own writing.

I’d previously seen them supporting Frank Turner (with Leicester’s own Grace Petrie on the bill) in an arena in Brum. I’m sure I’ve seen them before that too, but I can’t recall. Maybe supporting Biffy?

Glorious band. Go and listen to them now!

This song goes back to 2016. I was upset at the shift in dynamics with a friendship group and wanted things to go back to the way they were before. It’s a typical ask when one yearns for the past rather than looking forward.

I played it at a couple of open mics in Leicester back before I really knew the scene. I was introduced to a few events through the community at an Alpha course. The softer songs often went down better in the stripped down format. I’d want to play punk rock and aggressive music which didn’t really fit the moods of open mics.

The song is possibly a nod to Jamie Lenman’s ‘It’s Hard to be a Gentleman’ as I was devouring his album ‘Muscle Memory’ at the time. It’s a simple composition with a rising harmony over a major key. I used to play in drop-D but very recently adapted it to standard tuning. It also sounds good in drop-D with a capo on the second as there are some harmonics I can hit and I prefer the chord voicing. Ironically it’s easier to sing in E-major, whereas at the time I was singing everything a bit too high for my vocal range.

I chose the name “Amy” because I wasn’t close to anyone with that name at the time. Another very ironic choice. In earlier iterations it was often sang “matey”, which is an awful word to use in a song.

Listen to ‘Broken Satellite’ on SoundCloud.

It’s a simple song with a very simple structure and harmony. It stays in one key and floats around the typical chords. I’ve had some good feedback about it. I aim to record a version in E-major to better suit my voice for my (still) upcoming second album ‘Connections’. I may add fake strings, synths, a piano, and a few guitar licks that I want to tease out. I may just keep it simple.

This post is about my thoughts on AI rather than a practical guide to its use.

I put off writing this for a while. If you’re a software engineer you’ll be well aware of the coding assistants taking over our poor IDEs. If you live under a rock you might not be aware of the “AI revolution”. At work I have been pressured into taking up using AI for everything. This is keeping up with competition. It has significantly changed how I work. Rather than routing through a codebase and working out which metaphorical nails to hit (where I need to write my code) I am now prompting agents and working with them to complete my tasks. It has increased my productivity significantly.

However, given the state of AI in its infancy as it’s being used today, I can’t help but shudder.

I am not happy with the state of AI in the world. My main complaint is attribution and flagrant abuse of copyright. Anything else scraping and plagiarising all the world’s information would be illegal in any sense. My second complaint is pushing unwanted features to users. The list goes on but is not limited to: overall usefulness, dilution of output, rotting our already ill culture. When there’s so much slop out there it just makes everything bland or worse and useless when used as content. I suppose that’s a win for real creatives as their work now shines brighter because of it.

AI will change the world. It already is. I imagine easier interactions with our current systems. Our daily drivers with software are awful. The interactions I have to make remind me why I do my job. UIs are terrible, UX is an afterthought. I shudder when I have to register for a new system to pay my bills or manage something. I just know the system I have just signed up to is going to be a joke to use and I’d be better off filling in a paper form and handing it to a human. AI will circumvent this and let us interact with our systems with greater fluency.

AI will streamline everything we can imagine. But it needs to do it tastefully. In the short term sacking droves of support staff may seem great for the bottom line but the technology is not ready. At the very least the infrastructure to support these agents isn’t understood. There is a human cost to this. Someone working in a call centre can transition into supporting these models and working with AI, but when I see the headlines about reducing headcount for quick wins I just imagine an economic bubble bursting to the detriment of us all (apart from the financially resistant class, but that’s another essay…)

There are problems but they’re not the problems of AI. When adopting AI we need to emphasise care and ethics. Sadly the progression of technology has not got a good track record for this. Despite all of this I remain hopeful.

My disclaimer:

• I do not use AI for writing on this website
• I do not use AI to code this website
• I do use AI to fix bugs and add features on my personal projects
• I do use AI extensively at work for everything

I may write up my practical uses for AI (there are many). I should better explain my AI usage for this website (although currently close to nil, I do use AI for searching and exploring sources). I will (at some point) explain my rationale for using AI in other personal projects.

I wanted to understand what my drivers are. To do so I undertook an exercise to define my personal core values. I’m ashamedly stuck on self-help media. I mop it up on YouTube, I read books on light psychology that could be condensed into a few bullet points, and I write to myself and reflect on my direction. A lot of the self-help media focuses on how to get to a place. That’s great and all, but I’m fortunate to be in a situation where I don’t require constant forward motion and exponential growth. There are some areas I’m working on but mostly my needs are met.

There were a few areas outside of my psychological needs that I wanted to explore. Side-projects and progress at work for example. Despite all the self-help and productivity knowledge and my enjoyment in reflecting on my own goals it all felt a little flat. I soon understood it was because I had no clear direction and a lot of the collective mindset out there is focused on growth and the next thing. There were things I wanted to achieve but the reasons were not clear.

To make sure my intrinsic reasons were in order I listed them and revised them. I then made sure they were synchronised with what I was doing in my daily life.

The definition of a personal core value

A personal core value is a category of an area of work or life where your focus lies. The stronger your association with the value the stronger your drive to work on it is. You may value your financial position. The drivers for that might be autonomy. The way you get there may be through progressing at a career or working in your own business. You may value family and friends. You might value altruism, honesty, fun, or humour. The list goes on and it doesn’t have to fit in with another framework (although it helps to be able to cross reference). It has to be personal to you.

One of my core values is the ability to be creative. I knew I liked creating things but I didn’t know what for. I’ve always believed there does not need to be a reason for such things but in the days where my mind wonders it’s nice to remind myself why I should keep on track.

I value creativity because I am driven by self-expression and sharing stories. I also value creativity because it’s a form of relaxation. 90% of what I create goes in the bin and I’m sure that rings true with a lot of creative people. But the act of creating is where I get my buzz. Be it sitting here at my desk tapping away on my keyboard writing this article, drawing something that I know will end up looking less than impressive, or teasing out a chord structure on a guitar. The journey gives me far more joy than the destination.

Ordering values, drivers behind values, and connecting values

From my experience I have found that values can change. We’re adaptable in nature so it makes sense that our values and drivers change too. It helps to order a set of core values. This can be done with by comparing each value against the others. There are plenty of online quizzes that will sort this for you. This can help tease out conflicts too. If you have two values competing against each other with similar ranks it’ll help to figure out which one would ideally take precedence.

Once you have a list of your values the next step is to figure out why you have them. You can use ready made prompts to quiz yourself on each value and go from there. Consider how you act on the value in your daily life. Ask “why” a lot. If a value is too general it might need splitting up to achieve this. I value human connection but that can be broken down into different values with different drivers. Some examples of connection values could be social, friendship, family, or partners. Each value may be driven by a different need and may have different weights.

Some values may be required to enable other drivers. For example, you might value your home life but without a job you can’t afford the rent. That puts a dependency of work on your home. It’s helpful to listen to this dependency tree. It’ll help you guide your reflections. For example, you might be struggling at work but you might value pretty shiny things. This could give you reason to focus more on your work.

Using your personal core values

I have a list of core priorities. It helps to trim them down to keep focus and prevent scope creep. I have 6 categories and a few of them broken down with different drivers. Underneath I have a detailed paragraph for each value highlighting my drivers. If a value is an enabler for other values I write that here too. Lastly I have a list for my enabling chain which orders how the values interact. This priority will be different to how you rank intrinsic values but can be just as important.

I write to myself. You may already keep a journal. Having this clear framework at hand means you can reflect better knowing why you’ve taken specific actions or made certain decisions. It also acts as a guide if you need to realign priorities in your daily life. It’s basically a self-help cheat sheet tailored to you.

Because personal core values can change it may be worth revisiting this exercise every few months. If you feel your actions in daily life aren’t rewarding then the values mayb no longer hold true. They might also need tuning as priorities change. Life changes are typical to everyone.

It’s also worth pointing out that the activity of defining personal core values can be fun and therapeutic in itself. It doesn’t have to bear fruit. There’s nothing lost in trying this exercise and putting the contents in the bin. You may still reap emotional awareness from it.

I need reminding why I get out of bed sometimes. If my routine is flaking or my plans don’t sit right I can revise my values and remind myself why I do it all. It’s rewarding when done correctly. I compare it to self-therapy.

You might not need this. Your reasons may already be clear or you can drive yourself without a reason. For those that need meaning it may be a good start. That, or hiding your phone and deleting social media!

I was probably nine years old. It was the mid-nineties. My auntie had a games console that blew me away. I’d visit and spend hours playing Sonic games. Back home we didn’t have games consoles. I recall my Mum discussing with her neighbour about getting one, but the Nintendo 64 was newly out and surpassed the Megadrive in most ways. It didn’t have Sonic though so I wasn’t interested.

I was obsessed with the blue hedgehog. During those years I spent some time in hospital with a broken leg. My parents provided me with comic books of the pesky cartoon hero. I remember cherishing them with the captivating stories, the glorious (truly awesome) artwork, and the features about the games. My dad gifted me a pencil drawing of Sonic which I proudly display to this day.

Sonic Mania remixes the brilliant platform Sonic games that came before it in a brilliant and tasteful way. Everything feels how I remember it but looks so much better when compared.

During my playthrough I also played the original series under supervision of my friend Neil. Neil is something of a Sonic expert. I remember the first time watching him play Hydrocity on Sonic 3, eating up the screens in fractions of seconds and stopping at the perfect pixel in an instant when needed. He’s also credited for Sonic 3 Complete, a famous patch for Sonic 3. Knowing him personally has helped my Sonic journey.

I played mainly the Steam version. I played on my PC and on my Steam Deck either handheld or connected to a TV. I have taken the Steam Deck on trips with me where I’ve made some of my greatest progress on the game. I also have the Switch version for some reason but saves do not persist cross-platform. I also played on a Meta Quest 3 via Moonlight streaming to my PC. That’s how good modern wifi is.

There were plenty of moments where I had to persist to progress. Flying Battery Zone was a killer. I would constantly fall to my death. A year passed and I was still at it. I kept at it and can now do it with ease. Stardust Speedway Zone took me months to get past because of the final boss form Metal Sonic as Giga Metal. I eventually managed it because Tails glitched behind the boss, constantly hitting him. I still struggle to beat it to this day. The Titanic Monarch boss, the final boss of the main story, took me a year to get past. In my last session I flew through the proceeding acts as if I was an expert. It was glorious.

To be honest this is not the end of the game. I got to the screen and Robotnik sneered at me with most of the emeralds. I had collected two. I can now resume and select the stages to find the rest of them, allowing me to transform to Super Sonic and presumably defeat the final boss.

I’ve loved my time with Sonic Mania. I will continue to persist to find those last emeralds and see what other endings and challenges await. There’s plenty more to keep going, including different characters to play. All in all this is one of my all time favourite games. I wish they would remaster some more of the Sonic 3 levels in this way. Sonic Origins comes close as a modern way to play the games, but you’ll noticed the drop in animation frames for a start.

If only Sega would listen to the experts. I have no idea if we’ll see a second modern pixel-art Sonic game. I dearly hope we do.

I hadn’t heard of Four Year Strong and I’m absolutely livid they were not on my radar. I was guided to their video for “Maybe It’s Me” by the YouTube algorithm. The song isn’t overly heavy, making use of acoustic guitar for its main riff. It uses an interesting chord progression, starting on the second chord in a major key.

Released in August 2024, “Analysis Paralysis” absolutely rocks. I was initially confused by the harsh and very heavy instrumentation throughout each song, mainly because each song is mostly in a major key. Turns out they’ve been doing this since 2007 according to their discography, with one track in that first album summing up my point succinctly, being titled “Beatdown in the Key of Happy”. This lends to a pop-punk vibe, but decorated with triads and borrowed chords from relative keys it’s a lot more complex, and almosts tricks the listener into a sense that this isn’t actually happy stuff. I tried to ironically analyse the music from track 10 of this album, “Rollercoaster”. There’s a lot going on, and it’s firing off in all sorts of keys. But it’s still mostly in a major key.

I’m almost a year late writing up this review. I sat for hours listening to this beautiful gritty piece and I enjoy revisiting it. They toured the UK including Rock City Nottingham in early 2025, but I was a bit gigged out by then. I regret not seeing them.

There are too many good tracks on this album to highlight. It’s cohesive and makes for a brilliant time. I am excited to have found this band that I absolutely resonate with.

In October 2021 I released my album ‘Grief’ to Bandcamp. You can read my write-up about it on this website. In my writing, I talk of remastering and releasing the album to streaming services “hopefully sometime later this year”. That was two years ago. I’ve got plenty of faults, but estimations are one of my biggest.

As my second album ‘Connections’ nears a finish I spent a few days taking the old versions of the songs from ‘Grief’, remixing and remastering them and putting them on streaming services.

You can listen to ‘Grief’ by Polar Bites on Spotify.

It’s also on most other streaming services. Releasing an album was a process I wanted to be familiar with before I wanted to press go on the ‘Connections’ album. The process was smooth and I am happy with the results. The remixing process was fun and I was able to take what I’d learnt in the four years since and apply it. The songs now have more space and less aggressive compression.

Hopefully I can keep the momentum going and get the last parts of my second album finished in good time. I’m excited to share it all with the world.

In 2024 I attended a lot of open mics, mostly hosted by the hardest working musician on the Leicester open mic scene, Fran of Francesca Hatton-Murden Music. I’ve been attending Fran’s open mics since 2021 and it’s a thoroughly enjoyable time. I started by playing my own music from my Grief album and then progressed to mostly covers of Biffy Clyro songs.

My main reason for attending open mics is my working situation. I work from home and other than bumping into my girlfriend Amy between Zoom calls, there isn’t much socialising in working hours. I need connection (so much so that it’s the focus of my second album). Open mics are a great outlet for meeting people.

I’ve met many wonderful people from the Leicester open mic scene. Myself and Tasha formed a quick connection around our taste for alternative music. A few months in and we started duetting together. Before long we had done a few gigs and were approached to run a couple of open mics in Leicester city centre. I couldn’t refuse the opportunity to start these new things.

We’re currently running open mics on Thursday’s, twice a month at the Grand Union and twice month at Baton Rouge in Queens. There’s more about us on our website and for those inclined we’re also on Instagram and Facebook.

If you’re partial to an open mic night I couldn’t recommend checking out the scene in Leicester. There are loads on, so much so that I curate a list on the Leicester open mics website. If you’re a seasoned performer or new to playing, check it out. There’s a great community in this wonderful city.

I started writing this post at the start of April 2025. It’s now the end of June. I appreciate the irony given the title but it was never intended.

Like a lot of full time software developers I host a personal blog. Like most full time software developers with a blog I will sometimes go months if not years without updating it. The current dry streak here is nearly six months. This post is an attempt at breaking that.

I wanted to write about what causes a personal project to stall and why that’s not always a bad thing. I’ll explore my own views and findings in a few hundred words.

Defining a map of projects

I find it difficult to define my goals. What I want to be doing changes with the weather. I have many interests and ideas. The vastness of this becomes overwhelming when it comes to actually finishing a thing. Even defining the categories of things is hard (I try map these on my website and in my personal systems to varying degrees of success). Some examples of “things” I am currently mulling over include songs for my Connections album, levels in Doom, features for an app, and articles for this website.

No perfect schema exists for any group of things. I’m a software developer by day - I know this well! I scribble down ideas in notes and hope that these seeds of imagination will turn into something tangible. Often this is not the case. I will often spend significant time on a thing only for it to be discarded.

I never look for a finish product but I want to spend my time on these creative projects. I may get 20% of the way through and get bored. That’s legitimate and that’s positive. Next time I may reach 30% on a different thing. The point is I enjoy the time I spend. If I keep doing it I might even become vaguely competent.

Not breaking things down

A big culprit it causes my momentum to stall is the size of the task being to big and often tied to other things that should be non-blocking. An example of a current issue is: I want to write a post about Sonic Mania, which I finally managed to get to and ending for earlier in the year. The problem was I didn’t have a category for game reviews coded into the website. This prevented me writing the post while the idea was still fresh in my head. This caused guilt and shame and the idea still sits in my notes.

Another is the system I partially migrated for managing my website posts. Previously, I’ve written everything in a large Google doc. I have my ideas and fixes (and other things) listed in bullets at the top, and then I start writing underneath in a pageless document. This was fine and there wasn’t anything wrong with it. I still wanted to improve it. I had made an effort to move away from Notion for my bullet journal, into an app I had built myself. After using the app for a few weeks I found that I wasn’t enjoying the user interface and experience as much. This prevented me updating my bullets as often. (There’s a whole different story about Notion which I’ll get to in a separate post.)

I literally wanted to rebuild my website from the ground up using different tech because I was unhappy with how the content couples to the code and URL structure.

As is evident, this collection of non-blocking distractions caused my progress in writing this article to halt. I did a few bits, including a migration to the latest Svelte framework and a conversion of my Tailwind in CSS to pure Tailwind (another story) but never returned to update this post.

If it was considered that these items were separate things and not dependent on each other I may have progressed faster.

Fear of rejection

I tell myself I’m busy and often I can be. As I’ve said previously about my comment about what I call “mood weather” other things have taken my attention (specifically running open mics at this time). The day job has also seen my attention shift there as I focus on upcoming project work with the team. The greatest barrier to all of my problems and one that I’m not particularly conscious of most of the time is fear. Fear of rejection and fear of failure cripple me.

Despite claiming I am happy with only finishing 20% of a thing, over time it gives me dread. Looking back at large lists of unfinished things and partially thought-out ideas makes me close the tab and move on. This might be a dopamine problem, but there are other factors too.

Importance is another. What is deemed important is a heavy driver for me. It’s a difficult concept for personal projects where there aren’t others involved. Is my latest music album important? Or my Doom levels? There aren’t deadlines or other people depending on them. When I’m working on the Leicester Open Mics website or the Countesthorpe Festival Chorus emails there are others who’s work depends on it. This pushing it up the importance list and gets it done.

Fear is a horrid thing. It’s supposed to stop us walking into traffic or approaching a lion in the wild. For things on a screen, there isn’t much that fear should prevent. When it comes to being creative fear is often down to “am I good enough?” or “will this be well received?”.

There are a lot of conversations around art and what is good and what is not. It’s all objective. My creative output is not being judged nor do I require it to do well to earn a living. There is no pressure other than my own. The more I produce, and the quicker I adapt and learn what I’m doing, the better my output will be. My SoundCloud demos are a great example of this where the quality arguably improves significantly over the years (or even decades). This is art 101 - do more, get comfortable. YouTube personalities often go on about their terrible first efforts. I value this approach.

To summarise

It doesn’t matter if a thing is late or never finished. If it has importance it will get done, but importance shouldn’t be the only driver. Break things down and prevent distractions of non-blocking items to get things done. Enjoy the process not the product. Do more in short bursts. Get comfortable. No-one is judging you.

It’s been 25 years since the turn of the millennium. How surreal. I wanted a calm 2024 focusing on work, spending time on my creative projects, and spending time reading and playing games. I didn’t hit the mark but I’m making good progress.

Personal

In 2024 myself and my girlfriend wanted to improve the house. We managed to arrange new doors and windows and install a new shower. The bathroom is in a half finished state but it’s usable and doesn’t leak anymore.

In June we travelled to Stockholm. It was an incredible experience taking in the sights and the delicious restaurants. Taking a boat tour around the archipelago was a highlight. It’s a vast and beautiful place. I also enjoyed the Photography Museum very much.

In July we stayed with friends in Cornwall getting very lucky with the weather despite the occasional but swift downpour. The roads are dire but the beaches and towns are wonderful.

In November we took a weekend to Salford in Manchester for a gig. I wasn’t expecting such a nice place and I enjoyed my time there.

Work

I continue to learn and be amazed by the talent of my colleagues and consider myself very lucky. I worked on some difficult projects and took the lead to manage a release again.

It’s not been the smoothest year for the company but we had to demonstrate resilience and that’s what we did, adding new processes and procedures to prevent problems in the future.

Despite the bumpy ride I still enjoy my time at work, even though working from home all of the time can be a bit socially isolating (although I more than make up for it after hours!)

Music

I continued to attend many, many open mics around Leicestershire. I even snuck in a couple of gigs as part of a duo.

In November I was approached by new owners of the Grand Union in Leicester to help with running an open mic. The first few have been very successful and we will continue with this into 2025.

The Countesthorpe Festival Chorus have continued to tick along hosting two come and sings in 2024.

And of course I attended more gigs than I can probably remember. Highlights include Alkaline Trio, Sum 41, Jimmy Eat World and Alien Ant Farm with InMe.

As for my own musical projects - I’ve struggled. I’ve written one song this year and have gotten close to finishing a few more. My second album is close, but it’s always that last bit that takes the longest!

Coding

In April over the bank holidays I took my time off to write more code (as you do…) and built the Leicester Open Mics app. It was fun to work with Svelte again and build something a bit more bespoke. The app is still small and focused but it’s often used and does its job well.

I continue to maintain a few websites and projects. In October I started making a large Doom level. Looking ahead I would like to get into game development again, but we’ll see…

Down-time

It’s a familiar story. I have read very little, watched very little, and played games for barely a few hours in 2024. What I have managed has been incredibly fun but I keep yearning for the days where I can sink my time into these things.

I managed some fair reading while I was away on my travels. As the winter holiday season approached I enjoyed playing Pokemon Shining Pearl and Sonic Frontiers, making good progress in the early game for both.

To 2025

I wanted 2024 to be calm and for me it wasn’t far away from that. In 2025 I want to continue the trend, progress at work, enjoy the down-time, maybe make a few Doom levels, and release that second album.

Small improvements compound over time - I think we all need reminding of this!

It’s 2024 yet the pop-punk revival of the early-00s continues. I am here for it.

Sum41’s latest album Heaven x Hell is incredible. Every song is a banger. It goes on a good while and all of that time is well spent.

The gig was back on 30 October 2024. I’m no stranger to Nottingham’s Motorpoint Arena. I saw Slipknot there back in 2009 and have attended many gigs there since. It’s a great and efficient venue. It’s also pretty vast.

Support came from LA punk rockers The Bronx, who I was familiar with. They played a blinder from start to finish with powerful, unstoppable, gritty rock. I was in love.

Sum41 were on in no time and from the first chord to the final (actual final) encore, there was nothing but celebration.

Sum41 are calling this a farewell tour. I refuse to believe it mostly because I don’t understand why such an awesome band would call it a day after releasing such good music.

But it’s their legacy that played the part here. I enjoyed the newer stuff thoroughly but their back catalogue shined. It’s difficult not to resonate with every song from their setlist. I remember the times and places where I heard these incredible sounds.

It was a fun gig. It was a sad gig. It’s a gig I’ll never forget.

Last month saw new owners take on the Grand Union bar in Leicester. I am now hosting the open mic nights there with Tasha as part of our acoustic duo.

We ran our first event earlier in the month and it was a success with faces familiar and new turn up to perform and watch some of Leicester’s finest acts.

We run the open mic on the 2nd & 4th Thursday of the month. The schedule can be found on Leicester Open Mics.

If you’re Leicester based and have a slight interest in music you can join the event on Facebook.

The Grand Union is a great venue run by friendly staff and is a great space for hosting music, food, and drinks. I adore my time at open mic nights. The community in Leicester and the surrounding villages is second to none.

Sometime around late 2008 myself and Luke sat in my parents’ garage. I was inspired by the new wave of Vertigo of Bliss inspired bands around Leicester. I wanted to create an epic instrumental and then put some lyrics and melody to it.

I wrote the lyrics to match our recent teenage drama. There are seven questions in the song asked to my friend about a broken-down friendship group. It was all rather toxic.

Seven Questions was born.

Listen to ‘Seven Questions’ on SoundCloud.

The song became one of our go-to tracks when we wanted something to play. Later when Kev joined the band he added his amazing touch to it, which is lacking on this track because I’ve changed keys since we’ve last recorded.

Originally played and recorded in drop-D, I’ve no idea how we sang that high. Later I went through a phase of tuning our guitars down to drop-B, and it became easier to sing. Now I play it in standard tuning in the key of A. It sounds much better.

It also features a 7/8 verse, which was cool at the time but sits pretty naturally.

I love this song. I always have it in my repertoire after all these years.

The lyrics can be found on the King Brick website. I hope to release this in an altered form with the rest of the band in the Brick Breaker project.

A few weeks ago I updated my website to include reviews. At the moment, only one review stands in each section: Books, Music and Live. I’ll add more mediums as I write them up (I currently have a prompt for a game review).

Recently I’ve separated demos into their own section. I didn’t feel like they fit under the “posts” idiom especially now that I’ve extracted reviews into a bespoke section. I used to like the feel of everything being in a single feed similar to a social media timeline. The more I curate what I’ve written the more I feel it flows better to separate it.

I put off extracting the demos section because I felt it would be better to put them into a separate website altogether. I haven’t built a website specifically for my musical projects yet, so this makes sense as of now.

I’m still not confident in posting my creative work across its varied domains. I’m doing well posting demos (although I’m still behind in writing at least one of them up). I’ve also been working on websites and games but have yet to show my work there.

The same applies for my social accounts. I’m terrible at updating anything creative and non-personal. I have several Instagram accounts for my music and game development but they remain stale.

I still enjoy my time being creative. As I continue with this young website I hope to find a flow.

The Countesthorpe Festival Chorus are hosting a Come and Sing event at Countesthorpe Academy on Saturday 2nd of November. They host a great community of singers who get together under the direction of Giles Turner.

We’ll be singing Rutter’s Requiem.

The event is free for everyone but donations towards the running of future events is encouraged to those that can.

For more information including registration details, please visit their website: www.countfestchorus.co.uk

Zach Byran has recently released a smashing country album. “The Great American Bar Scene” is a masterpiece.

I never liked country music. I was told early on by guitar tutors that country music was simple and too easy to play. All you needed were four chords and a capo.

Fast forward to the modern day and I can’t get enough. “Stick Season” by Noah Kahan has been in the UK charts longer than I can remember, holding number one for seven weeks.

When I started attending open mics again after lockdown I noticed a passion for country music in my fellow open mic goers. I tried to ignore it and hoped that alternative rock (or the likes of Biffy Clyro) would penetrate the genres. The opposite happened and I came to appreciate music from the deep south.

Is it simple? Undoubtedly. But given a simple metric and harmony means that each lyric can take the centre stage. Melodies are prominent, allowing for the best emotive forms to break through the noise.

Zach Bryan’s hit “Something in the Orange” took my breath away. I remember the first time I heard it sung at an open mic. I also remember the following few dozen times…

Bryan doesn’t miss with his fifth studio album. Featuring the likes of John Mayer and Bruce Springsteen, it’s filled with clout.

“Pink Skies” was the first single released before the album. It’s a harrowingly beautiful song, tainted with sadness and hope. My standout tracks are “28” for being another haunting song, “American Nights” for making me want to dance, and “Sandpaper” for its anthemic hooks.

Every track on the album is great.

At the time of writing Zach Bryan has 33.6 million monthly listeners on Spotify. I guess this country stuff is popular for a reason…

Van Gogh is famous for his self-mutilation and art. From episodes of Doctor Who to countless other cameos on TV, I had witnessed a patroyal of a man who suffered a very human condition. I can only hope his suffering was met with the joys of life. His visions captured in his work certainly point that way.

In September 2022 I travelled to Amsterdam with my girlfriend. It’s an incredible place and I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. One of the attractions we visited was the Van Gogh Museum.

Van Gogh’s work left me stunned. From his self portraits to his luscious landscape views. Everything he committed to canvas was outstanding.

Art is a means of communication. Often that comes with emotion. Van Gogh’s dynamic works show a depth of humanity I had little experience of. A lot of joy and so much sadness.

Often it is thought that Van Gogh was colourblind, leading to his vast use of light and colour in his work. Another health condition it’s believed he had was of his mind. He experienced extreme moods from depression to madness. This gives the depth of his communication and his higher connection with emotion a greater meaning seen committed in his paintings.

I was hooked. I wanted to learn more about how this magnificent man lived.

Martin Gayford’s The Yellow House tells the story according to its subtitle, of Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles. The book carries a depth of a historian and art critic with thoroughly researched and opinionated accounts of Vincent through the letters with his brother Theo.

Having the two artists often capture the same scene together shows the contrast between Van Gogh and Gauguin, in their lives and their work.

I view Van Gogh as a celebration of those that are different. Whereas neurotypical folk can often suggest those with differences as less, Van Gogh is proof that they can be more.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Yellow House. Gayford’s writing is clear and not too dry. His understanding is deep and well researched. I would heartily recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the brilliant Van Gogh.

It’s 2024 and we have new albums from Sum41, Alien Ant Farm, Green Day and Alkaline Trio. Pinch me, for I must have tripped and fell into a time machine.

I couldn’t get enough of these latest offerings. I had to see them live.

Alkaline Trio were supported by Lowlives, who were really really good. They were headline stuff. Their songs caught me and their noise punched me in the stomach.

A swift turnaround and we were greeted by the opener from the new album, sounding absolutely raucous.

Alkaline Trio played a great mix of old and new. Everything sounded fresh, fast and loud.

I couldn’t have asked for anything more from this incredible act.

A special shout has to go to the new tracks. “Bad Time” sounded amazing in person. “Versions of You”, “Break”, the list goes on. Long live this wave of pop punk rock!

I needed a track to start off my new album. Called Connections, my second album is a celebration of friendships.

Listen to ‘Flowers’ on SoundCloud.

Flowers as a title refers to my first college band with my close friend. It pictures the first King Brick rehearsal. We lived tired and mundane lives without direction. The dynamic shifted and it added some chaos. We became close over college and discovered drinking and smoking and playing in bands in our awkward teenage years.

We lived these times through the late 2000s (the decade not the millennium). We became obsessed with the usual teenage things, wishing our life was an episode of Skins. In reality we were more Inbetweeners.

The song celebrates this connection and these times. It opens up with a wall of sound and a very slow but melodic pace. It’s a contrast to a lot of my songs which tend to be aggressive and in your face.

In celebrating this connection I also reflect on our values. Smoking and drinking and trying to find a girlfriend are all understandable aims for a teenager. Despite our then shaky morals it shaped who we became and we are better for our reflections.

After a few odd evenings and bank holidays spent coding when I should’ve been doing things others consider “fun” the Leicester Open Mics app is now available for all.

Myself and my friend Neil enjoyed laughing at open mic hosts at the end of a night when they would fumble around trying to figure out when their next event was, despite the often clearly listed schedule. It turns out it’s not easy for a human to say “third Wednesday” and come up with a concrete date.

It turned out that doing this in code was much easier!

The Leicester Open Mics app is really a website, but it can be installed as a Progressive Web App. It lists a curated series of events. I’ve tried to include as many as I can and I’ll keep adding more.

The home view is a schedule of upcoming events. Selecting an event lists the series, address and information about the hosts. You can see what events a specific host is putting on too.

In the end it was 10% coding and 90% asking musicians and hosts when their next event was. There’s probably a percentage that should involve scrambling around trying to get a photo of the hosts, but you get the idea.

The app has received good feedback and I believe it’s well used. There are many more open mics around Leicestershire that aren’t included in this app, but believe me I’m trying my best to get the information to add them!

If you’re reading this and would like to add yours, please get in touch.

I’ve started recording videos of myself playing the guitar and singing along. I’ve put them up on a new Instagram profile to promote my solo music.

View Polar Bites on Instagram.

Polar Bites is anything that I write by myself. It tends to be the cutting floor for song ideas that are rejected by my friends who I share bands with.

In 2019 I had the idea to write four concept albums. I semi-released the first of these called Grief in 2021. Grief is available on Bandcamp for those with strong ears.

The second album is a few songs away from completion.

I will use this instagram profile to promote all things Polar Bites but while there isn’t much to promote I’ll put up videos of myself covering Biffy Clyro (and hopefully other artists).

I’d love to get this project off the ground with a full band. One can dream…

Morphine was nearly a track on my first album. It carries on from the idea of grief and being helped back into reality. The irony is that sometimes the friends who help you back are also going through some horrible things.

Listen to ‘Morphine’ on SoundCloud.

It’s a thank you letter to a close group of friends. It celebrates them and acknowledges what happens.

I started writing this song wanting it to sound like Tellison. At times it comes close.

It’s also my first time recording in standard tuning since before I can remember. I wasn’t comfortable in anything other than drop D, and the song was originally written like this. I realised it had no need to be in drop D, given it was a simple harmony in G major. I practised with this “new” tuning and it settled in well.

When recording in standard tuning on my Telecaster, it sounded like a country song which I did not like. I put a bit more distortion on the virtual amps and tried to regain that Tellison post-rock sound.

Morphine took far too long to write. I think I settled on the song a year ago. I had trouble teasing out the bridge and the prechorus. But we got there!

I’ve thrown up some old lyrics and put them on a new website for King Brick.

King Brick are a noisy band and a project that I wish to revisit very soon. Although I have been saying this for ten years.

I was inspired to set the page up after one of our friends at an open mic tried Googling the lyrics myself and Luke were singing. It’s hard to tell if it’s a song by Biffy Clyro or me…

The website is incomplete and hopefully a restart of something that will go on. I registered the domain in 2007 (I think) and it’s been through a few iterations since then.

In this post I will detail my experiences with hosting on the cloud and why I came to do so.

The problem

Before migrating to the cloud I was using a VPS instance with a hosting provider I had been using for around fifteen years. I’ve loved the support I’ve had from them. Every concern or question has been addressed.

I was running an older version of Ubuntu Server and given my recent playing with SvelteKit I had come to realise the latest version of NodeJS I could run wasn’t enough to do much with.

When I raised a ticket to wipe and reinstall the instance I was told they no longer provide support for their VPS packages.

This was a shame. I’ve loved having their support for many years. It looks like they’ve pivoted to providing managed hosting instead now for PHP applications. This wouldn’t be enough for my wants.

It brought about an opportunity. I could have gone with a Digital Ocean instance or something similar, or I could’ve looked for free options for static hosting. I joked with a few friends that I was going to put this thing on a cloud with Kubernetes and automatic deployments. Then I started playing around.

Playing with Google Cloud

Google makes this easy. At the time of writing you get 300 dollars to play around with to see how cost efficient your solutions are before committing to putting your credit card on the line. I still have concerns that if someone wanted to disrupt me, or if I became popular for some unlikely reason, this could be expensive. I have set up an alert for projected costs, but there is no easy way to turn it off automatically at a price point threshold.

Still, 300 dollars gave me the confidence to play around with a few things to see how well they scale and at what cost.

So far I have used 3 great british pounds of my free trial money, and it’s been a couple of weeks. In that time I’ve built and run containers, set up a SQL instance, load balanced some traffic from a public IP, and stored some static files.

Jumping into Google Cloud’s console was daunting, but I had some supervision from a friend and the excellent documentation. The interface is frankly gigantic.

Static website with Cloud Storage

My first exploration was to chuck some static content into a cloud bucket and point a load balancer at it from a public IP. Setting up the storage was easy and I followed a great guide from their official documentation to make this work.

Google makes it easy to update Cloud Storage with an Rsync command built into their gcloud utility.

Using a Cloud Load Balancer instead of Nginx was a bit of a trial, but once I got the hang of URL maps and the load balancer console, I was cooking on gas.

I’ve managed to set it up to direct multiple hosts at a single IP address, feeling that this would reduce costs.

Running web apps with Cloud Run

My next challenge was running a Directus CMS instance so I can feed these static sites at build time. For my blog I use flat files but for a few projects I’m using the Directus API and its beautiful user interface instead.

I was worried when starting a Cloud SQL instance that my pennies would escape like raindrops from a cloud. That didn’t happen. I imagine this is the most expensive part of my setup but there are options for smaller instances using fewer CPUs and less memory (although Google recommends you do not use them for production apps).

Cloud Run lets you run a Docker container or it will build an app from source code. I built my app with Directus installed as an NPM package and ran it (there is a simple repo demonstrating it on GitHub).

After changing some environment variables on the container and setting up a connection to my SQL instance (as per the guides in the documentation) I was again, cooking on gas.

The beauty of this is you can specify how long the container stays active for. If I don’t receive any traffic from Directus for 15 minutes the container shuts down. It’ll take another ten seconds (or thereabouts) to start up from a request from a cold start but it proves that you’re not wasting CPU cycles with idle applications.

Cloud Functions and Cloud Build

My next steps will be using Cloud Functions and Cloud Build. I would love to press a button or push to Git and see my websites automatically update. I have a few tasks that would be well suited to Cloud Functions too. I’m looking forward to playing with these.

I’m not ready to call myself a cloud architect yet (and I doubt I ever will be!) but I feel confident playing around with the cloud now. I get the basic concepts of the simple apps I’ve described. It’ll be a while before I’m playing with virtual private connectors and ingresses.

Google also provides automatic CDN and wires a lot of the load balancing for you. I do not require faster load times so I have made sure not to use these but it’s nice to know they are there.

Considering my job title is “Front-end developer” I feel like I’ve done a fair job on this! But most of all I’ve had a really fun time doing it, apart from waiting for Google managed certificates to propagate on HTTPS…

Over the weekend I received an opportunity from a friend to build a website for a choir. I got straight to work looking for an appropriate framework to use for web development in 2024.

I wanted something that could spit out flat files, but I also wanted a dynamic website with JavaScript for menus on smaller screens and contact forms. I wanted the website to take content from a different store. I have a Directus instance running and it’s easy to set up content and let editors make changes.

I had a quick think about Eleventy and Hugo. I could wire them to take content from an API, but I would have to inject the JavaScript old-school or use a lightweight framework component for the contact form.

React was the easy choice with many offshoots that can render on the server-side. Ember is my tool in the day job, but I didn’t look into it for rendering flat files.

And then I stumbled on Svelte.

The documentation and the interactive sandbox tutorial had me up and running before I had even decided it was a good idea. I fell in love with how simple everything was. The developer experience was truly beautiful.

SvelteKit is the part of Svelte that renders and serves files. It handles routing and server actions all in one place.

I jumped at this option and had a website working in no time at all.

When I deployed the initial website I realised my ancient hosting setup couldn’t handle a version of Node that could run it. I’ve written about my VPS before and how it needs an upgrade. This wasn’t an issue for SvelteKit though. It can build static files using a different build adapter.

The only issue is I wouldn’t be able to handle server actions through SvelteKit with this option. That wasn’t a blocker though. I can still collect the content at build time and point the contact form to my Directus instance using ‘fetch’ in the browser.

All in all it was a dream to build and manage. You can check out the final product - a website for the Polyphonics Choir in London.

As I start writing this it’s now 2024. That’s a scary number to write but I remember saying the same about 2023.

Personal

When I looked at what I wanted to achieve this year the goal was simple. Both myself and my girlfriend decided that we should aim to move into a house we could both comfortably live and work from. Reaching it would require a lot of effort.

In January I put my flat up for sale. I’d been living there for just under a year. The plan was to move in with my girlfriend which I did in April.

In late January we travelled to Tenerife. It was an amazing resort holiday within walking distance of beaches and more restaurants than I could count. It wasn’t peak season for the area and it wasn’t as hot as it can be. This suited us fine and we had an incredible time doing very little.

In June we had an offer accepted on a house we really wanted after viewing a few houses early in the month.

In September I sold my flat. I was very happy to be able to move on.

In October we moved into our new home in Whetstone, Leicestershire. I couldn’t be happier to call this house our home.

It has been fun sharing our home with friends and family in the last few months. We’ve hosted many dinners and gatherings.

Work

In April I celebrated one year in my job. I’m very lucky to be working where I am with a lot of very talented and highly competent people. I feel like I’m working with some of the best engineers with a great infrastructure and developer experience.

I have learnt more than I could imagine throughout 2023. In previous employment roles I worked as a fullstack developer. In my role now I am a UI developer. I’ve learned the nuances of Ember JS and modern ways of working for the browser.

I’ve taken on a role to lead a project. It’s been going really well and I’ve enjoyed it. I would like to develop my skills with people rather than code throughout 2024.

Music

Because of my hectic personal life in 2023 I have not had the focus to put much into my music. I’ve written a handful of songs and done little recording. I have attended many open mics around Leicester, Loughborough and Hinckley.

In July I hosted the last open mic night before the closure of The Parcel Yard in Leicester. Hosting these evenings has been a joy and it’s been heart-warming to see new performers develop in confidence and ability as they kept attending.

I have attended many gigs around the midlands. Seeing Blink-182 in Birmingham was a highlight.

Software

I haven’t touched much code other than in my day job, again given the move.

In March I relaunched my blog using a static site generator. I’m still not sure how I feel coupling the code with its content. I’m getting used to it.

In December I restarted a project that I had wanted to get built for a few years. I don’t want to roll my own CMS but I would like to have a quick front-end for content management.

Recreation

I haven’t put much time in to video games. I have played Sonic Superstars, and a variety of other Sonic games including Sonic Frontiers, which so far I adore. I describe it as Nier Automata but you play as Sonic. I did start Mass Effect using the version from the remastered trilogy. I carried on with Pokemon Violet but have hit a wall with it.

I haven’t read many books, although the books I have read I’ve really enjoyed. I managed to read five in total, mostly non-fiction.

Onwards to 2024

In 2024 I would like to calm things down a bit. I would like to focus on work and my creative projects. I would like to sink more time into reading and playing games.

It’s not a new outlook - I’ve asked for something similar for many years! But in 2024 I feel like I finally have the foundation to do that.

It took me a surprisingly short time to make and build a website using Eleventy. It’s a simple static site generator for Node JS and it brags about being quick and easy to grasp. From my brief experience, that bragging was wholly justified.

I had some prior designs from 2019 for what I wanted the website to be. The content was very rough and it used a lot of tacky free stock photos. It’s also a project that I’ve long abandoned, but still keep around to put a badge on things.

Bespoke Media was my idea of a design agency run by myself. I still have a couple of live projects attributed to it and I keep it around. I have no plans for it but if I do get any leads from it that I think are well aligned with me I’d like to rekindle that.

I attached Tailwind CSS to it with help from an article I’d found online. I have strong concerns about Tailwind as I’m a vocal proponent of a simple web. There was no need for me to add Tailwind except I’m quicker using it than I am with basic CSS at present.

Eleventy has native support for Pug, a templating syntax that I fell in love with a long time ago when it used to be called Jade. This meant I could mess around and have fun with a simple way of writing HTML.

You can see my efforts on the Bespoke Media website (nothing much to see really) and the source code on GitHub.

The design of the website needs some love. The fonts are too small on bigger screens and the layout is dull. It doesn’t do much but to be honest there isn’t much I need it to do. It’s got a contact button on it and that’s enough.

I’d like to look at ways of plugging dynamic content into a static site - something like an API that provides content rather than using static Markdown files. There’s a lot to like about using flat files to serve content. Version control with Git and the ability to use any editor of choice are a couple of examples I can think of. But I miss the simplicity from the user’s side about having a CMS as a service that one can use at any time and any place, without needing access to version control software and manually syncing the files as I currently do.

I’d like to think about adding a continuous integration pipeline too. Something where I can press a button and have the site deploy itself.

I liked using Hugo and I’m a big fan of Golang. But I dislike its templating language and haven’t really grappled with the data layer. Knowing Eleventy uses plain old JavaScript means I can probably extend it with ease and a lot faster.

I’d also like to redesign this blog into a more comprehensive format. Something with listing and discovery upfront rather than a list of articles where I ramble.

Here’s to playing with the modern web. We’ll see where it goes.

King Brick was a three-piece band I played in with my best friend and my brother during my time at college. We gigged from 2008 to 2013 around Leicester.

Listen to ‘Roll the Dice’ on SoundCloud.

‘Roll the Dice’ was an opening song to our sets. The problem was it was a screamy punk ordeal and required a lot of energy. Living primarily on McDonald’s and Embassy Number 1 Reds meant we were not the fittest bunch. This meant that our second song (and the rest of the performance) would suffer because we would be desperately trying to catch our breath between words.

The song was inspired by a book Luke had read. I don’t recall the exact details but it was a brilliant motif.

Here I’ve prepared a demo for the upcoming ‘Brick Breaker’ project. It’s a revisiting of all things King Brick across a big old album. We never released much back in the day but we always had plans.

The differences between the original version are mainly in the vocals. I haven’t got a thrash metal screaming voice these days, thanks in part to healthier living and in part to the vocal damage ten years of cigarettes does to one’s voice. The vocal part is spoken as if it was through a megaphone.

In future versions we will ramp up the screaming aspect of it. I recorded this in my old flat where I didn’t want to cause a police incident. We will get around to this when we get to properly recording the vocals.

Twitter was a great place. I loved catching up with everyone’s updates. It painted a good picture for the most part.

I kept away from the dramas and trending sections. I consider myself political and would follow lots of left leaning accounts. There were some that were just looking for fights. To be political you have to be aggressive. I picked my battles and stayed away from trolls and accounts that only forwarded doom. Unless we’re talking about the 1993 video game, in which case I followed hundreds of accounts.

It was nice to see so many distant projects and people share their lives. I was never actively involved but I enjoyed watching from afar.

This didn’t happen overnight. It took a lot of curating.

Starting again

To start again in Threads and Mastodon is exhausting. Many of those people whose updates I dearly loved are no longer there. I’m sure new accounts will come and go and I’ll have that feeling of a home again.

I’m an active user of Facebook but I keep most of my interactions private. It’s a great place to keep up with friends and family.

Instagram is a similar place. I find myself posting more to share the beauty in the benign.

Threads is interesting in that it hasn’t found its place yet. It’s still a very early app and doesn’t have the following of its rivals. I hope this can be a great place for my creative projects.

The problem with the current state

There’s a problem and it’s called Meta.

As discussed I consider myself political. This means I can’t look at the behaviour of Meta and sleep well at night. They’re a company with a poor history, and I don’t feel good letting them use my data.

I feel similarly about Google, but they own my life. Every email I’ve sent since 2006 and everything I search for is recorded by them.

But I love it. I love the accuracy that my actions can be predicted even when I’m not sure myself. The stronghold of data these companies have it’s useful to me.

It’s a horrid paradox.

The future in decentralised social networks

I’ve found hope in Mastodon. It works really well and proves a decentralised web can work. But my following is not there. I follow mostly software developers and have yet to find musicians or writers or artists. Maybe I need to look harder.

The idea of a decentralised web is something I’ve wanted since I first logged in to MySpace. With the Fediverse it’s finally getting a chance. It’s been great to see it go from proof of concept to viable thing.

I want the open web and open source to win. But I will go with whatever is easiest for myself as a user. I want as little friction in what I do as possible. That’s why capitalism owns me.

It’s not good but it’s true.

I am very happy that my house move which has dominated the majority of my 2023 is nearly done. It seems like a long time ago we had the idea to move. In January me and my girlfriend made the decision to start this project. Since then it’s been all go with admin and moving stuff.

There’s still a way to go. We’ve got lists of lists of things that need doing. Seeing us check something off it every day feels good and keeps us honest with our progress. Hopefully by the end of the year we can relax.

My project idea with King Brick didn’t work. I couldn’t get the time to learn the songs and direct the band. It’s sad but restarting it is something to look forward to in the future.

I’m looking forward to using my spare time to be idle. I’m looking forward to making music again. The list of things I’m looking forward to is near infinite.

That’s it for this time. Thanks for reading and I’ll catch you next time, hopefully writing from my new home studio and office.

No one has probably noticed but I’ve been quiet on this blog. I’m in between moving houses. This is always a fun time (sarcasm intended) and one that distracts me from any creative projects or idle time. I’ve still been attending regular open mics and have squeezed enough time in to rehearse a few sets for them. I haven’t been writing new music, which is a shame.

I have managed some idle time playing through the classic Sonic series with a friend. I’m also very close to finishing Sonic Mania, after starting it many years ago. I’ve been reading much less than I wish I did. I get distracted easily, and when I have things to do they sit in my mind until done. With the seemingly never-ending need to move stuff into storage I currently always have something to do.

I have another project brewing in the background. I rehearsed with King Brick a few weeks ago. The idea was to see if it was viable to play a gig at my birthday later in the year. It seems like it’ll work. There is a lot more preparation and practice required, but I’m looking forward to it.

Work has been busy which I like, although at times stressful. I’ve felt great with my output in recent weeks and I’m coming to the end of a six month project. I also need to update my personal VPS and do something about it. It’s on an older version of Ubuntu than I’d like. I need to wipe it and start again, but I need to catalogue what’s on it so I can back it up safely.

I always try to keep a busy social calendar. The open mics are part of this, and I’ve met some great friends attending gigs around the county. I’m very lucky to have a big friendship circle and always have a few evenings in the week spent with friends.

I’m really looking forward to settling down with my girlfriend in a house we can call home. I can’t wait to set my guitars up and get writing and recording again. I can’t wait to relax in the evenings playing what most consider a horrific backlog on Steam, which most games I own untouched. Similar to my Kindle library.

I can’t wait to host friends and family after we move in. I’m no Ainsley Harriott but I’d love to be able to cook well. Maybe one day.

And that’s pretty much it. I hope you are well, whoever is reading this. Drop me a message if you’re reading, or update your space on the internet in return. It’s always nice to see how others are doing too.

‘Peaceless’ started off with the title ‘Speechless’. The brief was about losing my voice and asking for help, but it turned into another moan. It’s another cry for help in a situation bathed in illness.

Listen to ‘Peaceless’ on SoundCloud.

The song was written with a riff that I found that pretty quickly developed into an instrumental. I searched for breaks and a chorus and they arrived pretty organically. I like the melody a lot.

One issue was its similarity with a new song released by one of my favourite artists - Jamie Lenman’s ‘Words of Love’. The harmony and melody are different, but the harmonic pace is the same, and the instrumentation is virtually identical. In an earlier demo I had a similar transition in the verse which I later took out because it was too much the same despite it sounding really good. This was obviously unintended but it happens a lot when I write music.

It was written for the Connections album but looking back at its brief it doesn’t really fit. It would fit better in the Grief album, but that chapter is supposedly closed. I’ll consider changing its lyrics or putting it into a different album. The song is mostly strong for its instrumentals, so I’m not too hesitant to rewrite the lyrics.

I like the structure and its journey from a post-grunge song into a more classical harmony for its bridge and back to some sort of heavy post-hardcore riff at the end. I’m very happy with this track.

As a developer I’m fortunate to be able to host and code my own blog, but that isn’t what I wanted to do. Initially I launched this blog on WordPress.com. I assumed the benefits would be huge and I could get on with writing.

It would be no hassle

It wasn’t difficult to set up a WordPress.com blog, but it wasn’t easy or graceful. At the time I couldn’t launch the website because the button for setting it live was broken. It made an error on a blank page. This was fixed by using an incognito session. The writing experience once set up has been great though.

It would cost very little

All of this was free, but it was a pain to negotiate. There were lots of anti-patterns and bad user experiences trying to sway me towards the paid options. I even had to search the web to figure out how to launch without a domain (which would require payment).

There would be fast loading times

It seems fast, but I bet it wouldn’t score well on a benchmark. The fast options such as caching and CDN features were paywalled.

There would be a sleek writing interface

Once you’re past the horrid and legacy admin screens the new editor in WordPress is a joy to use. I couldn’t mark down the experience of writing or even customising the theme. I want a beautiful experience when I write, but I wouldn’t mind firing up an IDE to set the thing up.

It would index well in search results

I wasn’t expecting the top result for my name or topics, but I was hoping for something. It did not index in Google at all. I’m not sure if this is because I was using a free domain (jackgutts.wordpress.com) but it did not show a thing.

It would be discoverable

Not indexing in search results was bad, but I was hoping that being a part of WordPress.com would allow me to be visited by similar sites. This was true to an extent and I got a single piece of feedback from another blog on the same platform. The related posts feature wasn’t horrid.

Advertising would not be intrusive

The adverts were horrendous. I’m not sure if the theme I was using injected some third party services, but being a popular theme on WordPress.com I would hope this would be vetted. A giant block of adverts similar to what you see in a tabloid website all with images and very questionable content followed my writing.

Onwards to DIY

My current setup is now a Hugo static site built on my gaming PC. I’m manually pushing the distributed files to an old VPS instance I’ve had with 34sp.com since I was sixteen (though it has been reset a few times). For nearly two decades they’ve been amazing and I’ve had no issues, but I’m not exactly straining it.

The downsides to this setup weigh about the same as with WordPress.com, but the reading experience should be much nicer. There are no adverts here, it’s hopefully more discoverable because it’ll be indexed in search. It is not sleek. The writing interface is plain text, and I’m not a fan of writing in Markdown, nor manually pushing my writing like it’s code. It’s probably very fast despite my VPS being the lowest spec I could select. Sadly this amounts to a lot of hassle.

Next steps

I like the idea of static site generators. I don’t like the idea of writing my files in Markdown. I want an interface available to me on the web and through my desktop, laptop, and phone. I want it to be beautiful when I write. I want it to be really really simple, and only do the things I want it to.

One day I will look for a way to seed a static site generator with written content from a nice application. I had a brief play with Ghost and that came close but was messy when I wanted to change the theme. There was too much going on and it would max out my server resources hosting a heavy Node app.

I wanted to avoid SPAs because I don’t want the user to render an application in their browser. It would make the experience slower and hurt the purist buried somewhere deep inside my soul.

I need to play around with what’s out there. I need to experiment, and be less angry and have more fun.

Thanks for reading. I’m not sure what you’re doing if you’ve made it this far but I apologise and I’ll stop ranting.

Now I’m back in the saddle! ‘Going Out Tonight’ is a tribute to our old selves. It’s a story about heading into town with friends in our early twenties, written as a mock King Brick song circa 2008. It’s an imagining the voice and tone of band’s early days.

It starts off with a punky riff, something not alien to listeners of The Offspring. It descends into vocal chaos (much emphasised by my poor singing attempt on the demo) before hitting a chorus that would fit right in with The Arctic Monkeys or We Are Scientists.

Listen to ‘Going Out Tonight’ on SoundCloud.

The song has a simple structure, but a problem came when I realised the intro was very similar to Jamie Lenman’s latest song ‘Words of Love’. I wanted to do what he already did, adding blasts of loudness in a 32-note rhythm. I couldn’t find a way of doing this without completely ripping him off, so I opted for a gradual crescendo into the chorus.

I’m happy with the result. It’s going to be a difficult one to record vocals for, but that’s part of the charm. The indie-landfill scene often throws singing quality under a bus, and the complicated descending arpeggios were never going to be easy to sing for anyone.

‘Going Out Tonight’ is going to be a part of my latest album. It’s a track that breaks up the feeling of longing that most of the record will have, making for a nice refrain before I finish the album with a bit more of an angrier angle.

I’ve written my first song of 2023, after a bit of a dry patch. ‘Bleeding’ is a love song about illness and care, and goes out to my amazing girlfriend.

Listen to ‘Bleeding’ on SoundCloud.

It started as a rhythm guitar riff covering the first few bars. It’s a simple 12/8 motif that rises to the major third and gently steps down. It’s not dissimilar in harmony to two songs on the first Biffy Clyro album – ‘Just Boy’ and ’57’. They all share the same key, and ’57’ has a similar motif on the major third, albeit in triplets, but ‘Just Boy’ has that 12/8 groove.

I didn’t purposely set out to impersonate Biffy (any more than I’m usually inclined to). The riff came to me when warming up on the guitar, and it follows a similar sound to a track I wrote in 2016 called ‘Infinity’. I’ve gigged ‘Infinity’ at open mics and I recorded a quick acoustic demo in lockdown.

The harmony is a simple tonic to the forth and back, with the a differentiating fifth played in the first inversion, using the C♯ as the root note for the chord. This blends nicely with the melody which lands on a E, making the top of the A major triad.

To demo this song I used my webcam microphone rather than set up a stand and a condenser mic (the mic stand was in my car, all the way outside). Because the vocals are rough, I didn’t think they’d warrant the effort. I’m sat down, and singing the start of the chorus in falsetto, even though it really only goes up to a high E (an entire octave lower than Justin Hawkins’ ‘I Believe in a Thing Called Love’) . When I sing this live I struggle to hit the note, but if I give it enough air and don’t sing it too loud it gives a nice timbre to a chorus. I’ve since recorded other demos with my webcam mic and although incredibly lazy, it works quite well. I’ve obviously record the vocals properly when I come to release it.

I’m very happy with this song and how it’s turning out. It took me a while to find its chorus, but when I did the whole thing clicked fairly quickly.

I like ballads. They work better at open mics. It’s quite hard to play songs that incorporate thrash and post-rock when it’s just you and an acoustic guitar. I will aim to write more soppy songs.

Every third Thursday of the month I host an open mic at Leicester’s Parcel Yard. Last night was our March event and it was great to see so much talent and support.

It’s an informal event. The Parcel Yard is a great venue for music - a huge space and a friendly vibe.

The next one is on Thursday 20th April 2023. I’m looking forward to hosting regulars, new faces, and stragglers too!

Sign up to the event on Facebook.

It would be lovely to see new faces. If you play or sing or enjoy great music, please come along.

In 2019 after a long absence from songwriting, I spat out a couple of tracks. I had recorded a cover of ‘Revolution’ by The Beatles in the style of Biffy Clyro covering Franz Ferdinand. To call the track far-fetched would be an understatement. I wanted to reuse some of the motifs. The resulting song was ‘Tone Control’.

Prior to that I was demoing a song for King Brick. It was called ‘Time Rot’. I had a few old songs I wanted the band to learn but they didn’t take the bait. ‘Time Rot’ was one of the tracks that they didn’t hate.

I recorded these two songs on my own and fell in love with music again.

I had an idea. I wanted to record a project for myself and shape the music over four albums. The first of these was ‘Grief’. Not a sunny subject but an important one to me. I set out with an outline of the songs and what I wanted to achieve with each track – what it would be about and how it would sound.

As I sat down to get started on my solo project, lockdown hit. What could’ve proved a creative period (and did for many) set me back. I wasn’t in a great place and I relied heavily on my friends.

At the start of 2021 I experienced a huge personal event that saw my health decline. What came after that was a wave of creativity that unblocked the rest of the album just as I had gone through a heavy form of grief.

I wrote and demoed the rest of the album that year. By October I had the full set. I released ‘Grief’.

You can listen to Grief on Bandcamp.

Musically the album is alternative rock taking influences from Biffy Clyro, We Are Scientists, Arctic Monkeys and others. I’ll let the description from Bandcamp do some talking:

Grief could be the chronicle of a moody 30-something. Arguably it holds a more important message about mental health.

It follows my experiences with problems and dealing with them. It explores what happens when feelings are left and not altered. It follows other people’s effect on me through their behaviour and through their own issues.

The themes are deeply personal. The music for the album is aggressive without being too obscene. The guitar is the main instrument with hints of electronics.

It’s a selfish piece of work. I wrote it for an audience of one.

It was recorded all from my bedroom. The guitars are tracked through a Line 6 HX Stomp and modelled by Presonus Studio One Ampire. Listening back they could with much less processing. The drums and synths are sequenced. The bass is direct and then modelled as the guitars. The vocals are recorded with a cheap Behringer condenser mic through a Focusrite Scarlett interface. I use Presonus Studio One as a DAW.

I’m proud of it. The drums can sound tacky. The vocals, to my best efforts, are rubbish. But it has feeling and meaning.

I will look to release Grief on streaming platforms to coincide with my second album’s release, hopefully sometime later this year. Bandcamp is great but it doesn’t provide discoverability, nor is it used by many for music consumption. It’s hard to make a Spotify playlist of songs that aren’t there.

I will remaster Grief before I upload it. I’m not interested in changing much else, but the drums may get a rework. They’re currently too loud (I used near the default MIDI velocity which is quite high). But really the problem is the compression. Everything is too flat. The bass is also too loud. Oh well – you live and learn.

I love music. Hopefully this is the start of something that keeps me creative. We all need an outlet in our lives. This is mine.

Welcome to my new blog. I’m Jack, a musician and software engineer. I live in Leicester in the UK.

I’ve started a blog to write about my creative projects. My current project is Polar Bites – a collection of alternative rock songs I’ve written and recorded. I released my first album in 2021. Grief is available on Bandcamp. I’m working on my second album and hoping to release it in the coming months.

I demo my music and upload it so I can play it back to myself. My demos can be found on SoundCloud. SoundCloud also hosts my older recordings and old band rehearsals. I consider it a general idea-pad for whatever I’m recording at the time. I add and remove stuff on a whim. Generally when I release music I remove the demos as SoundCloud has limited upload storage.

I’m involved in other projects and I’m always open to starting new ones. Most of what I create doesn’t end up finished, but that’s fine. It’s another reason I want to chronicle what I’m doing, so that I have a body of work to look back on, no matter how incomplete and fragmented.

Other things I’ve done in the past include bands, game development, programming, and a bit of digital painting. I once had a good go at writing a novel.

You can find me at open mic nights around Leicester. When I’m idling I’ll be playing Doom or listening to Biffy Clyro.

Thanks for reading!