Running milestone! I ran (cumulatively) over 50km for the first time since June 2025! The ankle I sprained in March is well and truly healed and the proximal hamstring tendinopathy I've been battling since, well, June last year is... nearly behind me. I have to sit on a foam cushion with cut outs for my sit bones but feeling like an old person is fine by me if I can run.
I got connected to history. Becoming an archaeologist would satisfy my eldest boy's current twin loves of dinosaurs and cleaning so we took the kids to the Isle of Wight on Sunday. Toria found a chap to tell us how to find fossils down on Compton Bay and, boy-oh-boy, it was fun. The first 15 minutes was pure excitement over every black rock we found. Excitement that was quickly and gently dispelled by Joe our fossil hunting guide. But seeing the look on your seven-year-old's face when they find a fossil is a life affirming moment. We found a piece of iguanadon vertebrae, a 130 million year old bit of turtle shell, and a ton of fossilised wood. I found it one of those odd experiences where holding the things in your hands turbocharges your imagination. It brought to life everything we'd seen and read at the museum earlier in the day in a way that looking at metre long, fossilised brachiosaur femurs somehow didn't manage to. Not that these notes have to relate to work, but it was a good reminder of the power of tactility in building empathy.
I had loads of fun working with AI. Hot on the heels of my post about how I'll never let LLMs write for me, I have had a blast this week using Claude Code to help me build digital things. I think some of this comfort flirting with this hypocrisy is that I see writing as a more permanent reflection of who I am, whereas I see digital artefacts as throwaway toys. Claude was great at exploring some generative typography ideas I had for this website. I don't want to have to find an image every time I write something, but I like having a more visual website (and, let's face it, we need an image to pander to the LinkedIn algorithm). This was using Fable and it was awesome. Then I needed to build some prototypes to provoke conversations in the business. I used Claude Code running Fable to help me create these in Figma using their Claude Skills. This worked so well. All the little, standard-but-fiddly things I could just leave to Claude and I could focus on the crucial details. The promise of AI workflows really cashed in here.
The end of project crunch feels different when you work remotely. It just does. There's less camaraderie, less atmosphere of everyone pulling to get something great across the line. There's more formality in scheduled reviews. It's harder to see where you should jump in to lend a hand and where you should leave stuff alone. All stuff that can be solved with good team communication, but also all stuff that is just harder when you're not in a physically shared space. However, working late is much more comfortable in your own home.
Ted Lasso is Bluey for grownups. That's the note, courtesy of my wife. I would counter that Bluey is Bluey for grownups.