https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/ Recent content in Posts on dhewi https://www.dhewi.co.uk/%3Clink%20or%20path%20of%20image%20for%20opengraph,%20twitter-cards%3E https://www.dhewi.co.uk/%3Clink%20or%20path%20of%20image%20for%20opengraph,%20twitter-cards%3E Hugo -- 0.125.7 en-gb Sat, 27 Jun 2026 11:43:32 +0100 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/ai-writing-transparency-declaration/ Sat, 27 Jun 2026 11:43:32 +0100 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/ai-writing-transparency-declaration/ This, here, is a good exercise and analysis for any of us who write online (or write at all, I suppose, but for most of us that’s online). Blink if you’re human If you haven’t read it before reading this – and you should read it at some point, at least – it teases apart what could count as “writing with AI”, and argues that rather than either getting all ban-heavy, or requiring labelling of AI-written material, better simply for those of us who write for ourselves to be transparent about how we do what we do. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/a-cat-and-an-absence/ Sat, 06 Jun 2026 11:14:21 +0100 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/a-cat-and-an-absence/ Across the street, a cat is sitting on a doorstep. It’s raining. Yesterday, the neighbours were clustered together, talking, but I was taking an urgent call, and it was school pick-up time. Later we found out why. Not having seen the lady opposite for a couple of days, another neighbour went to see her and there was no answer. Worried, she called the police, and they forced entry from the garden, and found she had died. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/whats-stopping-us/ Mon, 11 May 2026 19:41:17 +0100 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/whats-stopping-us/ When things aren’t going well, and people are dissatisfied, the most popular calls are usually for things to be stopped. “This is bad, and it should be banned.” “This is unfair, and it shouldn’t be allowed.” “That is dangerous, and people should be stopped from doing it.” The odd thing is that much the same happens when people are very comfortable. It becomes very important to stop anything that disturbs that comfort. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/the-pitfalls-of-process/ Fri, 10 Apr 2026 10:37:12 +0100 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/the-pitfalls-of-process/ My day-to-day work is all about processes. Processes are a good thing. They mean repeatability, predictability, they can be honed until good outcomes are guaranteed. I work with computers, and software that enables business to run efficiently. If you can’t define a really good tight process, that software can’t help you, usually. Computers are great at process because they don’t make mistakes. If there is a problem, it’s because of the process, not the computer. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/the-value-of-paying-properly/ Tue, 17 Mar 2026 14:02:29 +0000 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/the-value-of-paying-properly/ Sometimes I’ll see a LinkedIn post of the kind that everybody mocks. It’ll be along the lines of “this massive cost is actually a good thing because it’s making me hustle harder.” And yes, I laugh along, because these people are either deluded or grifters, no exceptions. Nobody should pour huge sums into pointless influencemaxxing or publicised secret masterminds, thinking a big-spender mindset is going to grow them rich, and if anyone claims to, they probably have an eye on what you might be willing to pay them. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/decoupling-aptitude/ Mon, 09 Mar 2026 18:15:45 +0000 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/decoupling-aptitude/ Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be a photographer. At times I’ve wanted to be professional, but any time I simply wanted to take photographs. When I finally got a camera in my teens, I didn’t change my mind. There’s something about framing an image that has a very deep appeal. I got a good camera, and by that time cameras were already getting clever, with autofocus and auto exposure. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/how-to-hold-their-interest/ Thu, 05 Mar 2026 16:55:33 +0000 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/how-to-hold-their-interest/ I had a light-bulb moment the other day. George Michael’s music is a garden, not a journey. That may make a kind of intuitive sense to you. More likely you’re wondering if I’m mad. For all I know you’re not in my age-group and have no idea who I’m talking about or why. For now, hold the thought, at least, that music can be like a garden, or like a journey, and that these can be contrasted. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/society-evolution-has-no-mercy/ Wed, 18 Feb 2026 13:00:11 +0000 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/society-evolution-has-no-mercy/ Two books I read in recent years stay with me and keep bouncing off each other: One is called “The Invention of Good and Evil”, and one of its core themes is that human society is the product of evolution just as much as any species. That what that society considers important and moral and ethical is shaped by its response to the pressures on it and the solutions collectively found that allow it to thrive. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/more-death-than-tv/ Mon, 10 Nov 2025 18:50:09 +0000 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/more-death-than-tv/ I’m an odd person in several ways, and some of those – not all – are down to how I grew up. This isn’t where I’m going to go into the detail of that. But there are a couple of things that feel like major differences that have an ongoing effect in ways that surprise people. One – no TV I grew up without a TV. Also without radio or recorded music, but it was the TV that people noticed, for example at school. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/project-management-is-a-disastrous-necessity/ Mon, 20 Oct 2025 16:11:20 +0100 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/project-management-is-a-disastrous-necessity/ I have a love-hate relationship with project management. But it’s 95% hate. It’s OK, I’m a grown-up and I don’t show it. I do what needs to be done, I show up at the meetings, complete the tickets, update the statuses, I keep people in the loop. Inside, though, my inner teenage anarchist is ranting and rebelling. Probably more, the better and more professionally the project is being managed. Notice, in my list detailing my compliance, there’s no mention of the actual work being done. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/whats-wrong-with-prove-me-wrong/ Thu, 18 Sep 2025 19:24:15 +0100 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/whats-wrong-with-prove-me-wrong/ “Prove me wrong.” This is a topical phrase, as I write, for tragic reasons, but this is not about that. It’s about me trying to work out why I’m uncomfortable with it, really. Because I wouldn’t expect to be. By instinct, I’m close to a free speech maximalist. Saying things and being able to say things feels extremely important to me. And countering bad ideas by talking about them is better than suppressing them. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/how-to-manage-an-irreplaceable-person/ Mon, 15 Sep 2025 18:25:47 +0100 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/how-to-manage-an-irreplaceable-person/ Toby is brilliant. And a problem. Somebody I know calls everybody of a certain type “a Toby”, because that was the name of the first one she encountered. If you come into a company as a consultant and begin asking questions, Toby’s name will come up a lot. Because Toby knows the things that everybody else just takes for granted. Toby can do the things nobody else can do, and understands the things that nobody else can quite grasp, so everybody else leaves them to him. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/ways-to-think-about-mountains/ Tue, 19 Aug 2025 21:24:07 +0800 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/ways-to-think-about-mountains/ I don’t think about mountains much at home in the UK. In Taiwan, I think about them a lot. They’re right there, though they aren’t what most people associate with the place, I think. Taiwan is shaped by mountains. It’s a leaf at the edge of the pacific, twisted a little in the water so the spine is off-centre, and the spine is rugged. So the mountains make the land what it is, and in many ways human society what it is, too. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/a-socialism-of-power-instead/ Fri, 15 Aug 2025 12:02:26 +0800 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/a-socialism-of-power-instead/ I have a problem with socialism. I can discuss it intellectually and rationally, and see why it appeals to others. But, like a lot of core political things, I conclude that most of us have emotional instincts, and one of mine struggles with the concept of taking things from some people and giving them to others, no matter how well-intentioned and for everyone’s good. So, while I do accept redistribution is necessary to some extent, and am open to discussion about what that extent might be, fundamentally those who believe in equality of resources are always going to have an uphill struggle persuading me. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/know-your-class/ Thu, 03 Jul 2025 17:13:01 +0100 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/know-your-class/ “It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him.” I have never really understood the English class system. I’m English. Very English. I nodded to myself when Hugh Grant said we’re born one gin-and-tonic below par. And we all swim in this sea of class consciousness, whatever we might like to say about it being a relic of the past. For all we ignore it and pretend otherwise, it makes a massive difference to almost everything experienced by anyone, like me, who comes from a very obvious long-standing English background. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/we-like-familiar-best/ Wed, 04 Jun 2025 15:46:53 +0100 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/we-like-familiar-best/ Some time ago, working for a company that was growing fast, I was asked to write an article to appear in a trade magazine. That wasn’t my job, but they liked my writing and my know-how. When the result was passed around the upper levels of the company and the sales team, some people loved it. But overall, it made senior people too nervous, and it was revised beyond recognition, with just the core message still retained for those who could detect it. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/definitions-and-gender-wars/ Thu, 17 Apr 2025 19:33:11 +0100 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/definitions-and-gender-wars/ In the nineteen-nineties, there was a small chain of shops devoted to men who wished to be, or seem to be (both were catered for), women. I discovered this after reading the autobiography of the transgender owner, part of an exploration that was very important in my life. Visiting the shop in London blew my mind. There’s no doubt in my mind that if things then had been like they have been in the twenty-twenties, I would have gone the whole way down the gender reassignment road, the sheer inevitability carrying me. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/artificial-thinking-is-not-out-there-yet/ Tue, 01 Apr 2025 18:58:34 +0100 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/artificial-thinking-is-not-out-there-yet/ Wrestling with the theory of Artificial Intelligence is not a new thing. Two books have occupied space in my head for many years now that still have some of the best questions, at least – The Emperor’s New Mind Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid What they have in common is that they attempt to deal with consciousness, and they take Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem as a basis for it. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/friday-clamour-of-rooks/ Mon, 24 Mar 2025 07:22:38 +0000 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/friday-clamour-of-rooks/ Dusk is later than it was, And, waiting on the path outside karate, It isn’t dark, just getting grey. As we wait, the air is full of shrieks, Cries and clouds of shapes around the tallest trees. The rooks are busy, noisy, crowded, And possibly the tree above us is their pub, With all the noise their sharing of the week. I have no clue what any rooks are doing. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/cleverness-is-overrated/ Tue, 11 Mar 2025 19:13:03 +0000 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/cleverness-is-overrated/ If you like, feel free to abandon this post and read this instead: Beyond Elon Don’t worry, the title is basically clickbait, but the essay itself is very good, and says what I’d like to say myself, very well. If you’re still here, or have come back … When I was at school, the teachers loved me. I was the kind of child they went into the career for. I came from nowhere, a family with no expectations that had nobody with a university background, and I picked up pretty much everything effortlessly. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/evolution-beats-design/ Wed, 05 Mar 2025 18:00:00 +0000 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/evolution-beats-design/ We humans think we’re great. We also think that what humans are good at must be most important, and overestimate how good we are. When evolution arrived as a theory, it had a tough job convincing everybody, as is well known. Scepticism runs deep about it even now, partly because it’s deeply unintuitive. Looking at the world, we see that it’s full of amazingly functional things working together. Considering that we, as humans, spend a lot of our time trying to create functional things, it’s very difficult not to imagine that what we see is deliberately designed to do what it does. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/you-are-everywhere-and-always/ Fri, 24 Jan 2025 09:38:54 +0000 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/you-are-everywhere-and-always/ Bear with me, we’re going on a little thought experiment journey. You may, at some points, feel disoriented or wish to get out. The exits are there, there and there. Ready? We start inside your head, at this very instant. You are you, you are here, this is now. If you’re like most people, you have a very strong sense that you have a self, and that instant is part of a flow that self is experiencing in time, with a past and a future. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/only-people-who-have-changed-their-minds-are-serious-people/ Fri, 10 Jan 2025 16:18:42 +0000 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/only-people-who-have-changed-their-minds-are-serious-people/ I only really trust someone’s judgement when I know they’ve changed their mind on something important. Sometimes I’ve said this publicly, and people bristle. Changing your mind isn’t seen as positive. Being right is important, and sticking to things is strong. People like being right, and want to be seen as strong. The important fact, though, is that those two things are opposed to each other. Most people arrive at adulthood with a fairly firm set of opinions about the world. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/a-big-lost-painting/ Tue, 17 Dec 2024 08:25:53 +0000 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/a-big-lost-painting/ More than ten years after I left school, my old secondary headteacher rang my parents and asked for me. She had a painting of mine. Back in that odd time halfway through GCSEs, fifteen years old, after mock exams, after the older children had left school entirely, but before the summer holiday, the school had arranged a week of “activities” rather than lessons. I chose to spend the whole week doing art. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/this-is-where-populism-should-go/ Mon, 18 Nov 2024 20:03:23 +0000 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/this-is-where-populism-should-go/ Politics has become poisonous. I don’t think it needs to be. Government doesn’t work. I think it can. I have some ideas, and because I have no power and no platform, writing them down here is the best I can do. The positive ideas will be at the end, and it gets negative first. Bear with me. The ideas make more sense with the framing. What do you MEAN, government doesn’t work? https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/you-are-you-because-you-have-no-free-will/ Fri, 25 Oct 2024 16:37:24 +0100 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/you-are-you-because-you-have-no-free-will/ Why are you reading this? For some reason, in recent weeks I keep bumping into Robert Sapolsky’s ideas. He is certain that you had no choice but to read what you’re reading, because there is no such thing as free will. You may think you chose, but there was nothing doing any choosing. Biologically, you can’t argue either – because of the evidence, not because your actions are predetermined. Whatever you do is caused by neurons firing, which are physical, and work by physical causes, combinations of sensory input, connection between them, environment and history. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/truth-is-not-important/ Fri, 27 Sep 2024 10:47:43 +0100 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/truth-is-not-important/ Sometimes I annoy people by saying that truth is not important. “Truth” is always either provisional, dependent on formal assumptions, or a matter of faith. It can’t be absolute, and therefore we shouldn’t treat it as an end in itself. As sentient beings, we interact not directly with reality, but with representations and models of reality. More and more, in science, through sophisticated equipment, but at any time through our senses and brain processes. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/seeking-novelty-and-getting-progress/ Thu, 29 Aug 2024 13:16:19 +0800 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/seeking-novelty-and-getting-progress/ After I wrote a little essay about life being better without planning, one of those fortunate coincidences occurred, and I found a book called “Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned”. I recommend the book. It may not convince you, but it presents a perspective that even sceptics could usefully consider. It makes the case, from a technical and practical base, that no ground-breaking achievement can ever be achieved by deciding on the steps to get there and working through them. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/many-fools-are-better-than-one-wise-person/ Thu, 18 Jul 2024 13:45:11 +0100 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/many-fools-are-better-than-one-wise-person/ I regularly mention, when talking about other things, that I am a great believer in “the wisdom of crowds” and democracy in the absolute. And people are regularly baffled. What, I see all the idiots around, and what they vote for, and how all around people say stupid things and are mean and terrible, and wrong … and I think that’s a good thing? I do think it’s a good thing. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/disagreeable-people-for-fun-and-profit/ Fri, 05 Jul 2024 17:57:13 +0100 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/disagreeable-people-for-fun-and-profit/ Everybody knows you shouldn’t only eat what you like. Whatever it is that you like best, a varied diet is better for you than just that thing, however healthy it may be. Some of the necessary things seem pointless or borderline harmful. Roughage, for example, goes right through you and you get nothing from it. There is strong evidence that some things that are mildly toxic prime your body in useful ways, not to mention that some elements that would be poisonous in large doses are vital in trace quantities. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/a-great-life-without-planning/ Wed, 03 Jul 2024 10:43:10 +0100 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/a-great-life-without-planning/ Here’s my immediate goal: to write an easy-to-read article about the downsides of planning. The correct thing to do is to gather my facts and the points I want to make, organise them. Come to that, given that this is my personal blog, I should fit the whole thing into my priorities for this week. Instead, here I am, just writing it. Which is how I do more things than we’re told is good. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/a-better-paper-plane/ Mon, 01 Jul 2024 09:35:08 +0100 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/a-better-paper-plane/ As a child, for some reason I really really wanted to make the best paper plane possible. I tried a lot of fancy designs, most of which were worse than the classic pointy “dart”. Nothing was better than one of the early ones I found, which in the classic form I learnt is made like like this. Fold a sheet of A4 paper lengthways, then unfold it again. With the valley side of the folded paper up, fold the corners of one end to the centre line created by the fold, so that they create triangles at 45 degrees. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/some-nuance-about-remote-working/ Fri, 28 Jun 2024 16:17:16 +0100 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/some-nuance-about-remote-working/ We’re all tired of takes on working from home, back to the office, and remote working, aren’t we? So now seems a good time to bore everybody even more with my thoughts after four years of exclusively remote working. Remote working works Here I am. I’ve worked from home for four years, and business has been good. Satisfaction levels have been high all round, mine and the clients’. I’ve also worked for long stretches from different time zones far afield. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/living-cheaply-by-choice/ Sat, 08 Jun 2024 21:10:34 +0100 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/living-cheaply-by-choice/ We live cheaply. By choice. I don’t talk about it, usually, because it’s difficult to say anything and walk the tightrope between people’s pity if they get the impression we have to, and them thinking we’re holier-than-thou if they don’t. But sometimes I wish I could explain, so I’m going to give it a try. When we got married, I was used to spending whatever I felt I needed and not looking too far ahead. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/city-pop-a-new-nostaglia/ Mon, 06 May 2024 19:49:04 +0100 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/city-pop-a-new-nostaglia/ Looking back at my music purchases of 2022, there’s some current, but a whole lot from the 70s and early 80s. One of which, weirdly, is “Plastic Love”, by Mariya Takeuchi. I can’t remember, now, why I heard it and bought it. Now, though, I know that it was suddenly everywhere in the world starting a few years before I noticed it. I know this because my wife went on a Japaneses Disco deep dive one night, because somebody has made a new video for a song of the same era called “Sparkle”, by Tatsuro Yamashita. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/what-about-this-site/ Fri, 03 May 2024 15:37:48 +0100 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/what-about-this-site/ So what is this site all about, then? Well, it’s not really FOR anything. And sometimes that’s the point. I have thoughts and like writing. Just my thing. I’m also tired of the modern internet, where only social media, “Big Tech” and unicorn platforms seem to count. Back a few years I blogged on Blogger, which became Blogspot, which then needed a Google log-in … and Google is one of the things I’m tired of. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/from-airbrush-to-ai/ Fri, 26 Apr 2024 06:44:51 +0100 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/from-airbrush-to-ai/ When I was at school, I was oddly serious about school projects. I had a mild obsession with making them look like professional books or brochures. We didn’t have a computer, but I steered my parents into getting a proportional-spacing typewriter and used that (which dates this), and a photocopier to change sizing of chunks of text. I also scraped together enough cash to get a DeVilbiss Super 63A airbrush, an old second-hand compressor, and rigged a system that let me use the compressed air at my homemade homework desk. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/join-the-tory-party-now/ Wed, 24 Apr 2024 17:18:05 +0100 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/join-the-tory-party-now/ Right now feels like an excellent time for any British citizen who cares about the direction of the UK to join the Conservative Party. Wait, don’t go, I know how that sounds, considering “right now” is April 2024, and everybody in the UK hates Tories and wishes they’d go away. And yes, it feels very important to spell out that this is April 2024, because this take will date very fast and won’t apply in a year’s time at most. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/everything-is-a-religion/ Sat, 23 Mar 2024 09:00:00 +0000 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/everything-is-a-religion/ We are shaped by our experiences more than most of us like to think. And I grew up religious. For all of my formative years, and quite a way into adulthood, religion was the dominant force in my life. So a very big part of how I look at the world has been formed by that. I see religion everywhere. It’s all religion. Especially the parts full of people who would look at me strangely for insisting on this, because religion is alien to them and they don’t understand it at all. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/the-tree-that-grew/ Thu, 07 Mar 2024 18:17:54 +0000 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/the-tree-that-grew/ When Jack woke up, it was too quiet. Obviously it was dark, because it was the middle of the night. And naturally the house was quiet. But usually there was at least a bit of noise from the main road, and instead it was weirdly still. And dark, of course. A very strange time to wake up for no reason, in fact. From the bunk bed, Jack only had to raise his head to see out of the gap between the curtains, and it didn’t look as though anything was moving outside, either. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/bullies-rule-the-world-because-we-let-them/ Wed, 06 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/bullies-rule-the-world-because-we-let-them/ We get the leaders we deserve. Partly because we accept as unstated fact that we need leaders. The people who think it’s important that someone is in charge, are, oddly enough, the ones in charge. The rest of us aren’t so bothered, so we aren’t. And consequently we don’t get to push the point that maybe it’s OK to have less leadership, because we aren’t responsible for the conversation. For some years now, I’ve been quite visible online. https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/on-the-leaving-of-things/ Tue, 21 Aug 2007 06:21:00 +0000 https://www.dhewi.co.uk/posts/on-the-leaving-of-things/ I try to take things with me where I can, Devices that seem normal, not too new, Objects that my hand knows how to grasp As well as thoughts that take no energy to think. There is a spice to newness, but it’s rich, And savoured best when sprinkled on the bland. Too many pieces of a former life Stay back among the pieces of their own, And they are gaps for me, as I for them.