Low tide on the Adur.

Oh, Wix websites are a pain. They have a “blog” section, they even publish RSS feeds - but they don’t set up auto-detect properly, so you have to know where the feed lives before you can subscribe. (It’s at /blog-feed.xml)

Scenes from homeschool:

👧 “What does ‘dour’ mean?” 👱🏻‍♂️ “If only there was some sort of book that listed words alphabetically alongside their meanings.”

Plenty of people enjoying the waves down at the Beach today.

Evening on the beach.

On the shore.

Trump, QAnon and the limits of the “viral” metaphor to describe online communities — some thoughts on the challenges that lie ahead.

I’m not sure this is going to work.

Hard to argue with this message.

Bit wet out today.

Dusk on the boardwalk.

Brighton by night.

Shot on Shoreham Beach, at dusk

Socially-distanced beach walk.

A cold and frosty morning on the Beach, and it’s not lifting.

I sometimes think that winter beach is the best beach.

Workin’.

Less than 12 hours to finish a book and meet my reading challenge goal…

How I’m embracing a life in Tier 4 lockdown.

Beach life in Tier 4: where better to take your permitted exercise?

Evening on the beach.

Storm Bella has passed, but it’s still very blowy down on the beach.

Lovely weather for a Christmas Eve beach walk.

Oh, elf. How I hate you.

Oh, do you remember when we used to go to “coffee shops” and other people would make coffee for us?

Kids today wouldn’t believe that.

Oh, my. A year before the Brexit vote and the Trump election, I linked to reporting about how Russian misinformation was sowing discord in US communities.

If only people had taken that a lot more seriously.

I suppose that I should be working systematically through One Man & His Blog’s archives, upgrading them and correcting problems left over from various platform moves.

But it’s more fun just to chose a random tag — like seashore.

Managed to resurrect all but one of the broken links on this 14 year old post. (The reason why is a subject for another post).

Looking back on the 2006 web - pre-social media as we know it today - I can’t help feeling that many aspects of it were better and healthier than what we have now.

We really need to talk about trust in journalism.

Breakfast of champions.

There’s a good reason we should temper the current Substack enthusiasm in journalism circles with a little caution. It wouldn’t take much for the newsletter platform to reinvent itself as an attention gatekeeper.

And there’s VCs lurking the background, wanting their payday…

A restaurant in Île de Ré, from back when I used to travel overseas.

And go to restaurants.

Frost on the roofs this morning. The girls were very excited. The adults, less so.

Didn’t take them long to find the refilled feeders.

I used my new MacBook Pro for an hour this morning to monitor a livestream I was running, dived into a quick Zoom call, have done some emails, edited some photos and worked on a blog post.

And I have 95% battery left. 🤯

Spending far too long looking at video of myself has been one of the major downsides of the pandemic.

Blogging is a discipline: it’s a practice of expressing your thoughts in writing, routinely, and with focus. Writing a post every day for Microblogvember has helped reinforce that.

And…done. 🍾

It was a gorgeously foggy morning this morning:

Lovely day for a beach walk.

I’m saying “goodbye” to an old friend this morning. For the last 23 years, whenever I’ve been working at my desk, across three different properties, this old, battered lamp has lit my work. Last week — in the middle of a lecture — it finally, catastrophically fell apart.

I didn’t even choose it. It came into my life because my girlfriend of the time was working at Terry Farrell & Partners, a firm of architects. They were having an office refurb (or was it a move? I can’t recall at this distance) and she grabbed some things that were being thrown out.

She left it behind when she exited my life and, amusingly, my relationship with the lamp has lasted well over ten times longer than my relationship with her… But I’m proud that I’ve used this thing that came my way for so long. This lamp has had over two decades of extra use after it was first consigned to the bin, and in an era when we’re ever more aware of the climatic cost of a throw-away culture, this small choice has proven to be surprisingly satisfying.

Revamped online lecturing and training setup working well. 👍🏻

New, chez Tinworth.

Facing the sea.

The fact that the entire British political establishment is waiting anxiously for a blog post makes my deep loyalty to the medium feel completely validated. 😏

Media artisans and their tools…

Quite proud of this:

Hello, Big Sur.

(That sounds like something from a really bad prison movie: “Jim, if you want to survive in here, you need to keep Big Sur happy…”)

Should I?

Today’s experiment: my Canon M-series camera as webcam…

Shell.

Met this chap on our beach walk today. Seemed nice enough, but not very talkative.

It’s not exactly puzzling why we chose to live here, is it?

There’s something utterly magical to me about beaches in the off season, when it’s just us die hards out there…

Birthday beach walk with my daughters.

Have to say - I wasn’t expecting to be spending time in A&E on the first day of lockdown.

So, lockdown it is, from tonight. I’m very lucky to be living very near to these places. It’s going to be much easier for us than so many others.

Sometimes you have to get something out of your head before you can concentrate on the other things you need to do.

It’s out of my head, so it’s time to get editing training videos.

Autumn roof, from below.

Misty, dreich morning in Sussex.

Lovely walk with the girls, despite the dreich weather.

Should you turn on your video camera during online training?

Another day in front of the ring light…

Ah, the BBC’s Autumnwatch. Balm for the soul.

Half term adventures.

Wellies was the right decision.

I walked up into Old Shoreham yesterday, to pick up some things. It’s interesting seeing the traces of the old village concealed within more modern housing.

Well now. Substack is adding custom domains for everyone (which is good), but is changing $50 to do it (which is not). A way of heading off or offsetting the inevitable support pain as people struggle with DNS settings?

I just started looking for some data for a lecture, and the third result was one of my own blogposts, which had exactly the information I needed.

Thank you, past me. I must remember to be as kind to future me.

Shoreham Beach, 8.55am

Lo! There comes a Toast Cat!

Beach silhouettes.

Shoreham Beach, UK / 2020-10-14 / 8.49am

Walking home around the quay after dropping my children at school. I’ve lived here for 10 years, but I’ve never stopped feeling like I’m on holiday the whole time because I’m by the sea. I hope that never changes.

A Day In The Life

On the sofa for the Apple announcements, and my daughters have joined me…

Shaping up to be a nice Autumn day down by the river.

Morning beach walk.

I just betrayed my principles and did a rant as a Twitter thread not a blog post.

I shall say 3 “Hail Sir Tim”s, and recommit to the open web.

I love our beach.

Incredible light streaming into the house this evening.

Current status:

That’s quite a sunset.

Fear my mighty traybake powers.

Mackerel skies.

Twitter, death threats and civility: rethinking journalism on social media

(Or why your spicy hot takes are making everything worse.)

Schadenfreude as a personal indulgence, not a public performance

This person has no idea what they are talking about:

The reason no one talks about “blogging” anymore is that, for what blogs were good at — sending your personal views on the news (or some other topic) to a dedicated audience — other tools offered simpler, more effective tools for doing just that, most notably social networks. Why go through the trouble of setting up your own blog and slogging through a cumbersome back-end CMS when you can just create an account on Twitter and start sharing hot takes in a couple of minutes?

Well, here’s an hack who clearly has it paid any attention to what’s happening in blogging right now.

Plenty of people talk about blogs and blogging. Just not in politics and news journalism. Go and have a look at fashion, and it’s a different story.

It makes it hard for me to take the rest of the story seriously, though.

Spending my evening editing the videos of yesterday’s lectures.

I know how to live.

Cygnet.

Lecturing kit, COVID-19 style.

A promise of new life.

Fantastic day out walking with the girls. So tired, but so happy.

And finally, we have the app.

Oh, sweet joy. iOS14 has brought emoji search to the iPhone. 🙌🏼

That URL looks completely legit and I shall be claiming straight away. 🙄

Weekend cooking. 👌🏻

A nice early autumn surprise in the garden.

Everything wrong with both Facebook and internet fandom in one screencap.

Just a reminder to folks (especially journalists) who rely on their iOS devices for work. You REALLY shouldn’t update to iOS14 this evening.

Your apps have a really good chance of not being ready.

Duck!

And… breathe.

Finally.

Looking for a new magazine? I wrote about three favourites of mine. 🤓

Melissa Harrison:

Moreover, I’ve learned not to join in with Twitter pile-ons, or insult or mock people I disagree with. This is partly because I have no wish to add to the febrile atmosphere that permeates social media at the moment, and which I think is poisoning so much of our public debate. It’s also because the moment that you insult or belittle someone, the opportunity for progress in the discussion is lost because they’re not going to be open to anything else you say. Why should they?

Written four years ago. Still insightful. Still true.

Look at this cute fellah.

A buzzard, drifting lazily over the Woods Mill car park.

Into the woods.

Evening sea swim.

I’m doing my best to keep the bird feeders topped up today. The sudden cold snap means they’ll be looking for food more urgently - and some of them will be preparing to migrate.

Rainbow over Shoreham Beach yesterday.

My July in one second every day.

Sitting by the sea while my daughter has a socially distanced outdoors Rainbows meeting.

Some interesting thoughts on the future of newsletters.

I certainly think many newsletters resemble blogs - but many are nothing like them, too.

Beach cleaning after (Storm) Ellen.

Managed a little time on the beach before the rain hit.

I couldn’t figure out why my mouse wasn’t working this morning, until I turned it over.

Well played, daughters of mine.

The faceless mob of Twitter accelerants.

Sea swim with my tiny limpet. 🌊

Beach life.

I’m currently reading The Daring Of Della Dupree by Natasha Lowe 📚 to my daughters. They are absolutely loving it. Just enough peril to keep them hooked, but some genuine history in there for them to learn from. 👌🏻

The “aircraft engine housing and car wash brushes” look for garden gates is in, in, in, this summer.

After a week of glorious sunshine and sweltering sunshine, it’s a relief to see clouds overhead again. Oh, it’s still warm, but it’s the lack of sunshine that’s the point. It’s freeing. We’ve been to the beach, and over the river to town. My eldest and I cycled, without becoming sweaty messes. It’s been a lovely day.

I know this is heretical in a sun-worshipping age, but you can do so much more outside on days like this than in the relentless heat of a sunny day. You can stay out longer, you don’t need to avoid the middle of the day and, most of all, we’re not inundated by half-dressed visitors.

Oh, I know this is very much a first world problem, but our beach gets absolutely bombed when the sun comes out. It’s been far worse this year, as people who are — quite understandably — choosing not to go abroad this year head to the local beach instead. We don’t go to the beach much on sunny days. We’re happy to cede that to others, because we get to use it for the rest of the year. We can swim when there aren’t people messing around in powerboats and jet skis where they shouldn’t be, and can enjoy an autumn or springtime picnic on the beach.

The sun’s gone in. The vistors have stayed at home. And the beach and the river are ours again.

Bliss.

As soon as the sun goes in, we get the beach back to ourselves. This was absolutely heaving a few days ago.

There are worse places to catch up on a few emails.

Tempting.

Upgrade for our Zoom future.

Right here. Right now.

Evening in the Quay.

Currently reading: Ring The Hill by Tom Cox 📚

Stunning skies yesterday evening.

This was a very long time ago in the Cairngorms.

Pandemic pleasures: being at home enough to keep your Hotbin composter at a steady temperature of nearly 60C. 🌱

I’m currently reading and enjoying The Mystery Of Three Quarters: The New Hercule Poirot Mystery by Sophie Hannah 📚. While I was sceptical about the idea of Poirot novels not authored by Agatha Christie, they work because they aren’t Christie pastiche.

They’re books featuring a completely recognisable Poirot, and set in the same sort of era, but are very much told in the author’s own voice.

Good, escapist, murderous fun.

A rather busy key worker at Nymans yesterday.

Schools, Covid-19 and the risk of unintentional misunderstandings.

Sometimes they way we write something can do more harm than good.

Lots of people using the slipway behind our house today.

This sunflower has self-seeded from below our bird feeder. What a lovely surprise.

The current wave of newsletters are often compared to the early blogs - but most of them miss one critical element.

Sign on the equipment in the local playpark. One day, it’ll be an historical oddity blithely ignored by children for whom it’s an irrelevance.

Roll on that day.

Beach detail.

The Isles of Scilly, a decade ago.

An additional mask, now they’re compulsory in shops.

We get some surprisingly big ships on this stretch of the river.

Buoyant bird.

Beach life.

My eldest daughter loves performing. She never voluntarily passes up the opportunity to be in the limelight.

I suspect she gets it from her paternal grandmother. Here is my Mum performing in an amateur dramatics production sometime in the early 1960s.

Darling buds of July.

Girls in the wood.

Window in the canopy.

A momento of my old life as a hotel and restaurant journalist.

It turns out that 1970s and 80s Lego is still exciting to today’s children…

I’m loving the way micro.blog plugins solve a few pain points I have with the platform - but which might not bother most people.

Just paid for another year of micro.blog. You’re stuck with me, folks.

Evening swim selfie.

Exploring the idea of the blogletter. What differentiates it from a more traditional newsletter?

Current status:

Evening on the beach.

Evening in the garden.

Early evening beach walk.

Hand sanitiser gels contain microplastics.

🤦🏼‍♂️

A wee visitor to our garden at night…

Homeschooling break in the garden.

Here’s one way to look at Facebook in a culture war context: the conflict is already there, Facebook is just an arms dealer.

Maltese boats.

Vivid memories from a holiday to Malta very nearly 20 years ago.

The view from our back garden in Dollar, Scotland, 30 years ago.

Photo by my late mother.

Looking back at locked-down May in 1 second every day.

Down by the Adur.

It is just possible that 1989 Adam was trying a bit too hard.

Malta in early autumn 2000. While the clothes certainly date it, the complete absence of phones is quite remarkable. Just a film camera and a chunky video camera.

I am middle-aged enough that I really am very excited about my new compost bin. 🌱

Today’s Social & Digital lunchbreak digs deep on narcissism, toxic communities — and Nazi My Little Pony fans.

Really.

Phew. My MacBook Pro just scrapes into the Big Sur compatibility list.

This time next year I suspect I’ll be choosing between an Apple silicon replacement - or going all in on iPad Pro for mobile computing.

Niches, networks and the secrets of TikTok revealed.

What’s collective noun for a group of SUPpers?

When the Rampion Wind Farm was announced, I was worried about its impact on the feel of the beach.

A few years on, I’ve grown rather fond of it.

Kitesurfers on Shoreham Beach

Has the meaning of the word “blog” changed?

Sadly, I think the answer is “yes”.

Blimey. Plurk. The microblogging service where I was marginally more popular than @ianbetteridge.

This one was a big hit for me back in the day. I can still recall the frustration and anger I was feeling as I wrote it: Why media gets community wrong.

This is remarkable. A 12 year old blog post - and both the links in it are still live:

How To Be a Community Editor (in 2 posts or less)

Beach fun.

Beach.

Today’s Social & Digital Lunchbreak is out.

Let’s not talk about what happened to it last week. 😱 I was deep in the combined trenches of video and homeschooling…

Hit a million views on Unsplash.

An old schoolfriend of mine, Nichol Wheatley, has become an accomplished and talented artist. And yet, he remains a lovely bloke. ;)

With art shows on hiatus for obvious Covid-y reasons, he’s having a studio sale - and there’s some stunning stuff in there. Do check it out.

Still COVID-free.

Current status:

Quite a sky this evening.

Better broadband please. kthxbai

Evening on the beach.

After some thought, I put today’s social & digital lunchbreak outside the reg wall, because the lead story is important for everyone in online publishing.

onemanandhisblog.com/2020/06/s…

(People who get it via email do get exclusive content, though…)

Fish.

Nice evening for a swim…

30 seconds of Shoreham Beach for you:

Shoreham Beach is a rare vegetated shingle habitat. And it’s just coming into bloom now.

Stunning.

John Naughton:

I’ve been reading Cummings’s blog since long before anyone had ever heard of him. Here’s what I’ve concluded from it… 1. He’s a compulsive autodidact. Nothing wrong with that, but…

As you might imagine, the picture does not get prettier from there onwards. One of the fascinating things about Cummings is that his history and his thinking is there for anyone to read - even if it is rather mutable…

First sea swim of the year. 🏊‍♀️

Kite surfers off Shoreham Beach.

Beach life.

Your waves for today.

BLDGBLOG, mourning WIRED ending Bruce Sterling’s blog:

[…] the pull of regular blogging—the urgency of it, the personal routine and daily discipline of writing online, the sense of audience, the faith that other people out there share these interests—has changed dramatically with the new internet, today’s cramped and disappointing version of online life that is now nothing but reaction GIFs and Donald Trump.

My wife is making two cups of tea - for herself.

This is going to be an interesting day…

Beach school this morning.

The time finally arrived. The lockdown haircut had to happen.

A little beach calm for you.

Actually made it to the beach for the first time this week.

I have won the viral apocalypse.

Please send tribute.

Lockdown bank holiday camping.

Yes, that’s our back garden. ⛺️

Caterpillar.

Fly past.

A stunning late afternoon down on Shoreham Beach.

After three mildly stressful days, the results of the PCR jury are in: and I’m clean.

(I was asked to take a test as part of a research study, not because I was symptomatic.)

So. That was April. It lasted just over 13 years, I only drove the car three times, and those were the only times I left Shoreham Beach.

This was - and is - an historic period but for most of us - the lucky ones - our lives have been incredibly mundane despite that. Even with the anxiety and the homeschooling and the work and financial stress, the time with my wife and children has been a blessing.

That’s about as socially distanced as it gets.

Lockdown skies.

Moody sunset last night.

This fella dropped by while I was lounging in the garden.

Current view.

Our family lockdown exercise. I love these three so very much.

Bluebells in the garden.

I’ve got the perfect background for the next few Zoom meetings.

Very professional, I think.

Evidence, I think, that my daughters are handling this lockdown more productively than me.

The worst of it?

I can’t even eat them. I’m milk intolerant.

Ballet class via Facebook Live.

My weekend project was taking a moribund blog, exporting it, migrating it to a new platform and getting it up to speed.

It worked.

Now, let’s see if I can make that time worthwhile with some content…

Spectacular caterpillar nest in a tree.

Prepping a video for the local church. Not how I expected to be using this kit…

Here’s the big question on my mind: how does journalism survive the Covid-19 crisis?

And I mean “journalism” not “news” - because there’s a whole lot of value we’ve under-estimated in under-threat B2B and consumer titles, too…

Lovely 13th Doctor short story from ex-Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat: The Terror of the Umpty Ums.

He nails her voice perfectly.

Testing video setups is much harder when you actually have to share your home with the rest of the family while you’re doing so…

Socially distanced martial arts classes begin…

The co-founder of Instagram Kevin Systrom has re-emerged with a blog and It is all about coronavirus and maths.

Uh-oh.

Daily exercise.

Mum, Christmas day, 1983.

Time-lapsing again.

I’m gonna be really good at these motionlapses by the end of 🔒⬇️

Life blossoming in the espalier trees.

Nearly 14 years ago, then-French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy talked to the attendees at LeWeb 3, a digital conference.

It seems like yesterday, but the amount that has changed in the last 13 years is astonishing.

I’m really enjoying the process of pulling together my daily distractions newsletter. Finding three things to link is great fun. Today’s issue features @hollyhoneychurch, too…

And so it goes. Another morning in lockdown.

Somebody is being far too generous about my linguistic competence.

Shooting random time lapses, because why not?

April is here. Off I go on trying to post on One Man & His Blog at least once a day: Viruses, Lies and Spammers

Seven’s a good age for learning to code in Swift, right?

We need more than great coronavirus reporting right now. We also need distraction — and journalists could make that easier to find.

One for the Blake’s 7 fans…

Here I am in the Stockport Advertiser in July 8th 1976:

Oh my, oh my.

Oh, my.

Blossom in the garden. Nature’s beauty continues, oblivious to our anxiety. And it is a balm for it, too.

Clapping for the NHS in Shoreham-by-Sea.

Yesterday was a good day. After a bleak start to the morning, I managed to find my mojo and buckle down to work. And there was good work news - one client was happy to switch to an online version of the workshop I’d been planning for them, and I had constructive discussions with a small team of fellow trainers who may be delivering a project collectively.

I still hope that the government do something for the self-employed - but I’m beginning to hope that I might not need to take advantage of it.

Home-schooling is going pretty well. The girls are excited and having fun, so we’re riding on the crest of that wave for as long as we can - hopefully it will carry us through to the Easter holidays. We are lucky enough to have a small garden, so they can run around outside in their breaks - and the weather has been conducive to that. Goodness knows what this is all going to feel like in 5 weeks on a rainy Wednesday, but for now Team Tinworth is enjoying itself.

I had an extended session with the girls teaching them some of the features of their iPads beyond playing games. That went well - but I was slightly disappointed to discover that my eldest didn’t know what a programmer or programming was. Something to work on.

The quasi-lockdown announcement last night wasn’t a surprise - and we’d already been living like that since the schools closed. We can still do our daily beach walk, thankfully, as long as we maintain social distancing. That’s reassuring.

Day four in the house — and it’s going well so far.

A quick history of technology lesson - now the girls understand why the return key is called the return key.

Computing lessons with Mr Tinworth. The pupils are learning that there’s more to iPads than games.

Well played, Beach Deli. Well played.

Highly socially distanced beach walk. Hoping the idiots who are carrying on as normal don’t take that from us as well.

That’s one way of social distancing.

Doing Brownies at home.

Not one of my better timed recent purchases…

Looks like the whiteboard has arrived - ready to start delivering courses remotely.

Look, I know the world doesn’t need more “how to work from home” pieces. But I wrote mine anyway, because, unlike most people who have been writing them, I’ve actually being doing it for eight years…

And I mean it about the clothes and plants.

All respect to the Debenhams marketing team for giving it everything they’ve got in this moment…

Why Coronavirus social distancing is negatively impacting social media content moderation.

Facebook’s moderation problems last night - what you need to know.

Twitter’s role in a time of global pandemic,

I’m struggling tonight, as I read about the people who are looking at this period of social distancing and self-isolation as a special, cocooning time. I know that they are seeing it as a rare chance to invest time in themselves and their family as an antidote to the fear and uncertainty around us all. I do get that. But I’m jealous.

Those of us who earn our living in face-to-face situations — training in my case — just don’t have the luxury of doing that. For me, it looks like it will be the period where half my income disappears - possibly for over a year. I have good friends whose income is dependent on the events industry in the same boat.

I don’t have the luxury of viewing this as special cocooning time. This will be have to be the period where I have to make memberships work on One Man & His Blog, or manage to sell my training as online courses instead, or get more consultancy work, or something…

In a matter of weeks I’ve gone from a financially comfortable situation to a perilous one. That’s not a time for cocooning. I love my family. And I need to keep them clothed and fed.

Video from my wife of Victoria Station this morning at around 10am. She estimates it was 80% quieter than normal…

Social distancing at my local coffee shop.

Good day on the hagstone front.

Rustic.

My January in one second everyday. (I always seem to be playing catch-up with these.)

Pleased with this one. The print is long gone - it was in display in a photo cube and was bleached out years ago. The negative was loose in my parents’ junk drawer for decades, and was badly scratched up.

One scan, an hour’s work on retouching, and this is the result:

So. After supper Iris gets down, grumbling a bit. And then sits in the corner assiduously writing.

This is what she hands to me.

“I have just eetn (eaten) the yoyos and I am still hungree”.

4 years old and issuing her first letter of complaint.

I am so proud.

Reporting on COVID-19.

Trying to amplify signal, not noise.

A London hairdresser marketing its way through Coronavirus.

Cleaning up negative scans in Photoshop on my iPad is quite soothing.

Well, the course I was running today may have been cancelled (yes, Coronavirus-related), but the view early this morning on the way to the station was lovely…

Well, the panic buying is clearly still happening. This is Waitrose in Worthing a few hours ago - toilet paper and paracetamol sold out.

Post-Nature Tots babychino from the Woods Mill café.

Morning in the woods.

It’s fun looking back on my old “blogiversary” posts - like this one from 11 years ago, when my blog was 6.

Well, now. One Man & His Blog is 17 years old today.

That’s astonishing. It’s probably the most time I’ve committed to a single thing, bar the relationship with my wife (who was not yet my wife when the blog began…)

After school beach club.

Beach mental health break.

Spectacular sunset as storm clouds approached this evening.

This made me chuckle:

Sea still lively in the wake of the storm.

I was doing some site analysis for a client, when it occurred to me that I’d never registered my micro.blog account for search console, or anything like that. So I did. And then I ran it through Page Speed Insights.

Well played, @manton. Well played indeed.

A day of exploring with my girls. Making progress on a long walk.

Polarisation wears an unexpected face in today’s Engaged Reading Digest.

Iris is having an artistic moment.

Looks like Storm Dennis has abated enough that the kite surfers are heading out again.

The girls appear unimpressed by my efforts to get them to go for a walk in the face of Storm Dennis

Martin Belam, on the joys of travelling to see his team play an away game:

I also think there’s something useful socially about travelling around the country more. To get out of your normal locale. To see people and places you don’t normally see. To experience a miserable afternoon in Aldershot and feel the way it has been neglected, or the way Northampton’s town centre has been hollowed out in favour of an out of town retail park you couldn’t possibly entertain going to without a car, to see that Cheltenham looks lovely and there’s more to it than horses. To mind boggle about the drugs that council town planners must have been on at some points in the seventies.

20 years ago I had a wonderful job. I got to spend one or two days a week travelling to a different part of the country, and profile the property markets there. Like Martin, I always took the time to enjoy a little of the town itself, to explore the residential areas, and the town centre. It was even more interesting when I could stay overnight.

I regret that it was in the pre-digital camera, pre-blogging (for me, at least) era, because I have very little record of those experiences. Martin’s post made me achingly nostalgic for those trips - and makes me wonder if I can’t find a way of bringing them back into my life.

Spotify is trying to become podcasting’s gatekeeper. We musn’t let them.

Riders on the shore.

Watching the boats on the Adur rise as high tide approaches.

Nick Cohen on why Boris Johnson is so suspicious of the media:

I suspect there is a strong element of projection at play. It is because Johnson was a partisan columnist that he is an enemy of press freedom. He assumes all journalists are like him, and that they will twist, distort and censor accordingly.

Good insight that makes a lot of sense.

Plain old driftwood.

The information ecosystem is badly polluted — and journalism is playing its part. We need to clean up our act, and depollute the information ecosystem.

Beach sign

Actually getting out of the house to work – it’s far too rare at the moment.

This was the garden at 8am this morning, after the worst of Storm Ciara had passed:

Not too bad, although things aren’t looking great for the potted Christmas tree.

I was planning to sort this out around lunchtime, as a work break. But I ended up legging it to my daughter’s school in a hurry, to take her her water bottle before she went into class. And, as I had my coat and boots on anyway,…

Tidying in the storm's wake

20 minutes of quick tidying (and refilling the bird feeders) later:

We got off lightly, despite being in a coastal AND river location. We’re pretty luck about how sheltered we are from weather coming off the sea. (Gales blowing down off the Downs and along the Audr are a different matter entirely). In fact, much of the Quay is looking surprisingly tidy, and many of out neighhbours have been out sweeping and tidying. All very minor.

Others have not been so lucky.

Gotta say, it’s a bit breezy out today…

Laterns above the Adur

Beach plant.

One of the nice things about Shoreham Beach is that, as a protected and rare habitat, we get a good range of plant life, even in winter.

Gnome Hide

A new report on UK news consumption during the general election shows that many of the things we think about the media and politics are false - and that people’s news consumption is less than 3 minutes a day.

Worrying stuff.

Spot the children’s beginning reading book.

Volunteers needed.

TikTok is the social media hype cycle on speed - and the challenges ahead are beginning to emerge.

Reflect.

Sight.

Open.

I’ve never come across any device that’s better for writing on than an iPad. There might be a big ass Mac behind it, but the wee iPad is perfect for squeezing words out of my brain.

Took a riverside walk today. It’s a good reminder that Shoreham-by-Sea is still very much a working port.

Sunset silhouettes.

Shell game.

Lovely hagstone find on the beach just now.

Hagstones - the sea’s beautiful gift for the mindful.

💕

Flickr’s goals for 2020.

Brighton, from Shoreham Beach.

Quite a day, down on the beach…

Guess how this ended…

The house in the woods.

I’m pleased with this for 49p.

Yes, please: A return to blogs (finally? sort of?)

I’m trying something new - triggered because I couldn’t get this stuff in my usual links digest if it was going to work in an email. But I think actually capturing and curating investing stuff from social media is worthwhile:

The Social Diary: reads from the feeds

There’s a slug on the kitchen window this morning. Our kitchen is in the first floor. I can’t decide if this slug is ambitious or has had a lucky escape from a bird…

Dry January? I’ll drink to that… 🥃

This week has given us a rather ominous look into the future of political #journalism: Dominic Cummings’ blogpost, direct dialogue and its threat to mainstream political journalism

Good morning waves.

Seth Godin:

Part of the scam is that the pyramid scheme of attention will somehow pay off for a lot of people. It won’t. It can’t. The math doesn’t hold up. Someone is going to win a lottery, but it probably won’t be us. And a bigger part is that the things you need to do to be popular (the only metric the platforms share) aren’t the things you’d be doing if you were trying to be effective, or grounded, or proud of the work you’re doing.

It is quite remarkable that one of the biggest things to happen in UK politics so far this year… is a blog post.

Still, beats US politics and one man’s Twitter account, I suppose.

I’ve reached my daily reading goal on Apple Books. I’m using it to try to push myself to spend more time reading long-form, and not just articles on the web.

Currently reading: Why Willows Weep: Contemporary Tales from the Woods. Enjoyable short fables about trees. 📚

Found on the beach this morning. Someone’s feeling patriotic, clearly.

Bridge.

Sunset on the Adur.

I included this photo in my latest Engaged Reading Digest because I like it so much. It’s very calming.

Wow. The memory cheats sometimes. I tend to think of my early years in editorial development as largely positive, but back in 2008 I was clearly exhausted from fighting the fight for engaged journalism.

That fight is still on-going.

My December in one second every day.

Starting the year as I mean to go on: The first Engaged Reading Digest of 2020

Happy New Year, you.

Yes, you.

The year is done — so it’s time from my annual round-up of *One Man & His Blog*’s top 10 posts of 2019. And there are some genuine surprises in there.

I have reached the point in coffee fussiness where, after being disappointed with a coffee when brewed with Aeropress, I switched to a different brew method - and really enjoyed that coffee.

There’s no hope for me now.

Quite a sunset yesterday.

Interesting thoughts on flow in blogging apps (the same applies to all CMSes, I think):

Scripting News: Flow in WordPress for writers

Somebody’s turned down the contrast on Sussex.

Plenty of drama in the sky off Shoreham Beach today.

Perfect weather for trying out my Christmas coat…

Merry Christmas from one man (and his blog).

A very Victorian Christmas at Tyntsfield.

I think this bauble crop is nearly ready for harvesting.

Today’s Engaged Reading Digest: killing comments, surviving after redundancy, getting better at instagram - and the power of visual journalism. All this for the low, low price of a click…

I found my parents’ old tree angel, so she’s back in service after a decade off.

This is a useful read: What does the future hold for progressive politics after the Conservative victory?

Three questions about the UK’s journalism and social media landscape after the General Election result.

I think this is an interesting read. To hold the seats they took this election, the Tories will have to operate in a very different way: Boris Johnson’s spectacular win heralds a new form of Toryism

A round-up of some of the big misinformation stories surrounding the general election.

Lovely morning down by the Adur.

Winter beach.

Paint the whole world with a 🌈

Beach walk.

My November in one second everyday.

Today’s Engaged Reading Digest is all about the memes - but not in a fun way.

(Bonus Baby Yoda content, tho’)

A pretty brutal examination of cancel culture, the psychological motivators, and its inherently polarising nature. And it’s from Psychology Today.

After school beach trips - not just for the summer!

Yesterday, the Reuters Institute published some research into podcasting and journalism. Here’s my thoughts on it: News podcasts: profitable and engaging — but have we got the format right?

Frost hit last night. I think autumn is done and winter is here. ❄️

Festive holly.

My Podcast playlist for Sundays has the best episode names.

Finally, the coveted micro.blog 30 day pin is mine.

There’s nothing better than a nice, fussy way of making your coffee…

Shoreham’s looking festive tonight.

Spam of the Beast

Canary Wharf was starting to look festive earlier.

The mere existence of deepfakes is eroding our sense of shared reality - even if we’ve never encountered one in the wild.

(Country) walking to grow your subscriptions, radicalised on Reddit, and more good reads from the audience engagement mines.

Autumn mist.

Lovely Autumn day in Shoreham-by-Sea - between the rain, at least.

Toy justice is swift and brutal in these parts.

Wow.

Flashback five years to when Hazel and I appeared in a software advert.

I am happy to say I appear to have lost weight since then…

(This was all @tibz’s doing…)

This week I learnt that the Opera browser is now owned by a Chinese investor, that Opera News is huge - and might well be part of a Chinese propaganda campaign.

Yikes.

It’s probably a sign that I’m over-tired and need some sack time, but I’m bloody convinced that this is the most important post on my blog in ages - and that nearly nobody will read it…

This may be the most perfect Star Wars image ever.

Fingers crossed that I am on the final stage of a difficult evening, and will be home for a whisky and bed within the hour. Literally my entire evening wasted on queuing and travelling.

I was initially excited when I found this site for Sussex bloggers, because it felt very like the sort of thing we did in the early 2000s. And then I saw this:

“Join our directory of bloggers based in Sussex, through which we’ll connect bloggers with brands.”

Oh, dear. 🙄

Computational photography raises some serious questions about the nature of reality, and how we represent it.

Some links that are worth your time - from the psychology of social media outrage, to a celebration of RSS…

My top artists on Apple Music in 2019.

I’m not a raging brony. It’s my daughters.

Honest.

For those of you on devices that support it, and are in the right time zone, One Man & His Blog now supports dark mode…

Yo dawg we heard you like Moodle so we put some Moodle in your Moodle so you can Moodle while you Moodle.

How to fix your Twitter timeline using this one clever trick…

I’ve been fiddling around with my Ghost templates, and now fixed it so that comments only show on members-only and subscribers-only posts once you are logged in. For example this post.

I love the idea of having conversations that are at least partially protected.

Beautiful Remembrance service at Church of the Good Shepherd this morning. The two minutes’ silence with the waves crashing on the beach is always moving.

Naked trees.

Funghi at Woods Mill.

Today at Woods Mill. The dirty secret? This was four adults…

Before and after.

If you love coffee, this is an essential read on coffee prices - and the threat to producers it poses: Coffee Transaction Guide ☕️

Nice piece from the BBC breaking down how a fact became misinformation through omitted context, and how it then spread: How a misleading story about Jo Swinson went viral.

Yes, I know that this was yesterday’s prompt, but I didn’t get to it (even though I posted other things) and I did have something I wanted to say:

One thing I try not to be on the internet these days is mean. But it is an effort. I’m good at the snark. I can bring the snark. Some people encourage me to let the snark run free.

Sometime the snark is deserved. I retain the right to be snarky about Zuckerberg and the FaceBorg.

But I don’t think it’s good for me, or the state of discourse on the internet. I don’t think it makes me feel good about myself. It brings me attention, but it’s not attention I value.

10 years ago, I had a long drive to Sutton every morning for work. The one way I could guarantee I’d arrive in a good mood was to go out of my way to be courteous to other road users.

I feel the same way about the internet. Let’s not turn social media into a secondary school environment where the meanest win. Be helpful. Be useful. Don’t associate with those who aren’t.

Be better.

Well, hello Photoshop on iPad.

“Media style” 🤔

Such a beautiful crisp, autumn morning, with a lovely “after the storm” feel.

Beautifully peaceful with plenty of birdsong at the station this morning.

Spending the day liveblogging Open Data Camp 7 in London.

Stickered up for the day.

Early start to London. Not what you’d call busy at the station.

Pretty much her idea of heaven.

Happy Halloween!

Breakfast of champions

Lovely sight to start the morning.

Still a few traces of summer in an autumnal morning.

Through the library window.

Gotta say, my old school friend the artist is pretty fancy these days…

Nice to have company for my daughters’ martial arts class.

Ghost 3.0 has just launched - and it’s got built in tools for building a membership site for news.

This makes subscription businesses way more accessible to set up and run.

I apologise to the affront to your ears, but I’m on a podcast: Micro Monday - 70: Adam Tinworth aka @adders

Thanks @macgenie!

Well, now, what say you people of micro.blog? Scott asked:

Although, does anyone use feed readers anymore?!?!

Crikey. I wrote this 11 years ago - and it’s still as relevant now: “Interesting” is the basis of blogging

Not only is 8chan struggling to get back online — its co-founder is actively working to keep it that way.

Fascinating.

Either this gentleman doesn’t understand One Man & His Blog’s audience - or I don’t…

Distinctly misty and autumnal at Lancing College this morning.

I think it’s fair to say that today’s weather has been changeable…

Take some time to listen to Birdsong Radio today - and consider how much poorer we’ll all be if we lose it. #LetNatureSing

Yahoo Groups is shutting down.

Wow. The history of a lot of great early online communities is about to be erased from the web.

New GoPro day…

This was a fantastic session by Eliza Filby from NEXT conference last month, looking at the characteristics of the generations, and how we should raise Generation Alpha.

Not something I’d considered before - but accurate: The Delicate Nature of Comparing Smartphone Cameras and a Dash of False Equivalence

Now, that’s a sunset.

Why blogging still matters, even after 25 years::

“The furore over social media and its impact on democracy has obscured the fact that the blogosphere not only continues to exist, but also to fulfil many of the functions of a functioning public sphere. And it’s massive.”

O RLY?

Finally caught up: August in one second everyday.

Do you think she’ll give me a lift home?

Woods Mill this morning. Although autumn was clearly in the air, you wouldn’t know it from this photo.

Oh, my…

Ah, the 70s.

Today, I am digitising my childhood records while I work.

Giving this a try - I still rely on Instapaper a lot for work:

Michael Tsai: Instapaper Safari App Extension

Last month in one second per day.

Not often I look back on conference food with affection - but the NEXT conference lunch bowls were epic:

Seriously high tides here yesterday. How much higher will they go today?

A tense moment at fairy hospital: will Vidia fly again?

Super high tide again today.

I think this is my favourite of the new watch faces in WatchOS 6.

Portrait mode on the iPhone X: still a winner.

Happy news for me and the other blog platform I routinely use: iPadOS and Ghost

Deep breath…

Normal for Next. :-)

Okay.

Current status: 🍷 🛋 🇩🇪

Today’s workspace at #next19

This end of Reeperbahn is a bit whiffy at 8am.

Current status:

The first 20 minutes of #NEXT19 in 20 seconds

What’s outside our universe? A thought-provoking talk to kick off #NEXT19

Lovely sunny day today - but Wednesday was a different story.

Such a fungi to spend the morning with. 🍄

Fabulous day for Nature Tots.

Fascinating. I didn’t realise Pinterest did monthly updates on trends across the platform.

What you need to know about yesterday’s Google algorithm news (if you’re a journalist).

This is quite a big point too many journalists miss: Media Literacy will not create trust in journalism

It just tends to reinforce those who already mistrust journalists.

Here’s one great reason to love the DJi Osmo Mobile 3 if you’re involved in social video production:

Scrummy blue skies today.

Living by the sea really bring it home to you how polluted our waters have become with waste.

Treating myself to a nice aeropress coffee after my wet and windy walk. ☕️

Oops.

Jane Manchum Wong

”It appears to me that Medium wants to double as a Reader app in an experiment. This unreleased feature is called “Save to Medium”, similar to how Instapaper works.”

Nope. Uh-uh. Not using that.

Having the sort of day where I write what I thought were two thoughtful and useful posts, and the world just shrugs its shoulders at me.

It’s the blogging equivalent of a null result in science.

But it’s that or clickbait…

Politicians love presenting us with apparently simple solutions to complex problems. It’s where the votes are.

But journalists need to stop aiding and abetting them in this.

Does journalism have an understanding problem?

(tl;dr - yes!)

Since the end of my days as RBI’s head of blogging, I don’t really get much change to spend time fiddling around with the technical stuff at the back end of blogs. Just done some of it today - and it’s quite fun! I missed it.

Now, off to fiddle with some DNS records…

Some stunning flowers at Nymans today.

I made this!

Messy drinker.

Moving from Feedly to @NetNewsWire via Feedbin has been largely a positive experience. The one oddity, though, has been the sudden reanimation of a whole bunch of dead feeds. I’ve probably been subscribing to RSS feeds for 15 years, so the effective “reset” of my feed read status means that, unexpectedly, blogs which last published nearly a decade ago are showing up again.

And reading through it is a melancholy experience. The worst, of course, are the blogs of people who have died, often with final entries which give no clue as to what is coming. There’s a lot of blogs of student journalists, some of whom have gone on to big things, many of whom have left journalism entirely. There’s sites that moved - but the old site still survives while the new site is gone from the web.

There are people whom I got to know through blogging, and who became face-to-face friends for a while — and then who disappeared from the web for reasons of their own, unknown to me and never advertised. Some of them I’d love to catch up with, but have no way of contacting them now.

There are online services that have come and gone, including the last post on the Google Reader blog. Posts from optimistic startups that flamed out, and many, many promises to “restart the blog” that never came true.

We are, I hope, in the early stages of a blogging renaissance. But ploughing through this graveyard made me experience a little touch of how the very old must feel, still living their life long after all their friends are dead, and wondering if there’s anyone left who cares.

Wow. Fell behind on these. Here’s July - over a months ago - in 1 Second Everyday.

Look at this. A blog post with actual comments. That takes me back…

Today’s Engaged Reading Digest - chat apps in protests, how the internet is changing our language and influencer reverse psychology.

This is why I carry on blogging.

My lunch meeting has arrived.

It’s been a long time since these two shared a spot in my dock together.

Don’t look now folks, but I think autumn might be here…

A nice reminder that blogging was always a complicated and often unpleasant community. Shakesville’s unravelling and the not-so-golden age of blogging - The Outline.

On the other hand, it wasn’t a vast multinational company harnessing all the value, either…

Prorogue — or prorogation?

I’m taking a new approach to link posts on One Man & His Blog. What do you think?

Feedback gratefully received.

A wee update on life, work and blog.

Nothing alarming, just trying to figure out how to avoid burning out again.

Shades weather, innit.

A day when I find a new pretentious coffee shop is always a good day.

So, the reason for my silence here over the last couple of weeks was that I was holidaying in a nearly bandwidth-free place.

And it was lovely. Just taking a first pass through the photos now.

A fruitful garden

Possibly the most manly thing I’ve done all year…

Garden harvest.

A Circle of Words: emails to blogs to newsletters

It’s just been that kind of a day.

Pub sign angles are a surprisingly good guide as to how windy the day is…

The garden was in fine form today, in the few moments I could steal away from work.

Bit blowy today.

I hit my daily Move goal for the 1,000th time. Result.

Revised and expanded this to try and clarify some point: Zombie Tumblr and the twilight of the social web.

The latest Black Hat SEO technique: find articles from defunct sites linked to by major news operations, and grab the URLs.

This could impact the ranking of sites exploited by the technique.

Reasons I love blogging #3478: I spend several minutes Googling “Ted Danson flossing” for a blog post this morning.

Tumblr as we know it is dead, as a pile of corporate obfuscation makes clear. What’s left is a zombie-like shell - and a gap for places where young people can experiment with their identity.

This one still works.

Found some ancient history…

Sea kitty.

Beautiful sunny day in Shoreham by Sea.

Today’s status:

Fading into twilight

One thing I’ve learnt about myself in recent years is that things like Apple Watch straps and GoPro sleeves (like this one) make me disproportionately happy compared to their cost - as long as the material and colour are right.

Very happy with this one.

I think this photo pretty much sums up my life.

Practicing the art of productive procrastination, by tidying up my Ulysses app.

In other news, today I met a ferret.

Today has been rather posher than normal…

We be rollin’, they be hatin’

My eldest on holiday last year.

I think my authorised app connections to Flickr need some updating… (iPhoto 2??)

ln defence of selfies - an interesting take on the social context of photography and sharing.

More catching up - February in 1 second everyday

Catching up - this is January in 1 Second Everyday.

Microsoft opening a new store right on Oxford Circus in London today. Nice clean lines - but it feels terribly generic.

I do love the feel of the new “grove” style Apple Stores.

Listening to Andy’s 20 year journey at the Flock event in Shoreham-by-Sea.

My June in 1 second everyday.

So, when everybody’s in-boxes are cluttered with newsletters in about 18 months’ time - will we see the grand blog and RSS revival, as history cycles through technologies again?

Oh, DJI. I’m not sure encouraging non-consensual voyerism is the right way to sell your products…

Breaking: social media verification processes still suck.

How The Correspondent plans to handle audience engagement.

Teaching 4 year olds to use saws. 👌🏻

Yesterday’s view…

Pride-ful.

Many PostIts died to bring us this strategy…

It’s all glamour in the consultancy business, I can tell you…

Looking lovely in the evening sun… 🌻

Getting a bit dry round here…

Tide’s out…

This really was not the plan for this afternoon.

The street where I grew up.

Hello, Edinburgh.

I have a suspicion that a child may have used this seat before me…

Finished drafting tomorrow’s newsletter for my paying subscribers. Feeling good about it (although slightly guilty that this is not going on the open web. But then, this is a topic I’ll return to on my blog, I’m sure).

Morning office:

Warning for highly polarising politics…

I poked into why #notjewish was trending on Twitter, and why an account I had no awareness of had blocked me - and found some really simple answers - with complex consequences

Online community dynamics change as the membership grows. In particular, most networks require increasing attention-seeking behaviour in order to get any attention at all.

Busted the macro lens out, too…

Teeny, tiny frog.

Tree-mendous Fathers’ Day.

Crafting time chez Tinworth.

New toy…

Lovely morning down by the Adur as I walked home this morning.

Here’s one from the archives - that’s me on the left, taking a photo of the chief scout, during the 75th anniversary of scouting celebrations in 1982.

Seeing this magazine on sale in my local newsagent is odd. I associate it so strongly with my Mum and my childhood, it seems almost incomprehensible that it’s still going so long after she died. A silly reaction, I know.

Boats on the Adur

Bit more perhaps?

Here’s a soothing 20 seconds of beach life for you…

Got up at stupid o’clock this morning to catch a train and attend the launch of the Reuters Institute Digital News Report this morning. It was worth it.

Here are my liveblogged notes from the event.

Great Micro Monday @hollyhoneychurch and @macgenie (catching up on a commute). Thanks. Thinking a lot about the time period challenges.

Just preparing my notes from this morning’s Digital News Report 2019 launch event for publication - how refreshing to have an all-female panel at a journalism event:

I find upgrading firmware on devices a surprisingly satisfying process.

Weather could be better, though.

Nice to be heading up London late enough to drop a bag off at the charity shop and get a coffee from Tom Foolery.

Of all the things to find, a shopping list from my Mum, who has been gone over a decade:

Go on. Guess which option I picked.

It’s 2019, and, yes, you still need to own your content.

MailOnline’s traffic absolutely brutalised by Google algorithm update.

Let the jokes commence.

So, um, the answer to “Fake News” might have been available the whole time… in Finland?

Further evidence that I’m turning into a grumpy old man of the interwebs: Writing about the internet is no excuse for not doing your research

Working on a Friday, unusually, due to a day swap with my wife. Throughly dreich out there today, so working seems better…

What’s bringing you joy this morning, people of micro.blog?

Here’s what excited me about the WWDC keynote today. The iPad Pro lifestyle just got more feasible.

Thank you, micro.blog folks. I enjoyed sharing the keynote with you!

Those elongated ovals from the new version of the TV app seem to be a major design trend in iOS13.

Screen break beach walk.

This starts off as road crash viewing of a middle-aged meme warrior - but actually goes somewhere interesting.

My dad, the Facebook addict

Ugh. @danielpunkass can’t get his patch into WordPress. Open Source in theory rather than practice?

River life

The Trouble with AMP

Right. This is a good as my liveblogged notes from Hacks/Hackers London this evening at Twitter UK are getting. I’ll give them a good sub in the morning.

This Vox profile of Heather Armstrong — Dooce — is a deeply melancholy read:

In the time that Armstrong had been absent from her site, bloggers had been almost wholly replaced with social media stars who relied on Instagram to gain a following. The word “influencer” had taken over, and quickly. Bloggers had risen to fame thanks to deeply personal posts; Instagram personalities operated in a much more visual medium, relying on photos of cute kids and beautiful homes for likes.

It’s both affecting in its coverage of her mental health issues, but also in how clear it makes it that we lost something profound in the shift from blogger to influencer.

Lots to think on.

Nice view as I crossed the bridge this evening.

Current view.

Today, I have made all the fritters.

This is a sobering read by James Kirkup: The truth about David Cameron and the ‘mad, swivel-eyed loons’

“Under Cameron and the person who called at our table, Conservative membership numbers more than halved, handing ever more power to a smaller group of people whose interests and priorities are extremely hard to reconcile with those of the country as a whole.”

Shoreham Beach, two years ago.

Politics warning: right-wing comics activists are abusing Twitter’s policies on transphobia to silence their critics.

This behaviour pattern will spread quickly, as it exploits the automated nature of much social media blocking.

Today’s beach life:

Extinction Rebellion die in at the Shoreham by Sea farmers market.

Finally got around to adding another of my key services to my site: Live Event Capture - where I create rapid posts from event content, working in conjunction with the skilled editorial cartoonists at Drawnalism.

My notes from the RSA event Schools Without Walls might be of interest to the education-minded amongst you.

The rain, it raineth every day ☔️

Iris amongst the irises.

It seems impossible to me to be, now, passionate about nature and not be also both political and ethical about nature. We no longer have the luxury of ‘pure’ pleasure in place, enticing though that is.

Robert Macfarlane in the March issue of Country Walking magazine.

It was windy yesterday at Woods Mill, but the sound is just lovey.

I love this photo of Iris in the woods from yesterday.

Nesting…

Here’s something I don’t often do: a review. It’s of Freewell’s All Day Filters for the Osmo Pocket.

Shaping up to be a lovely day.

Today’s workplace.

Never bet against the phone…

Working on old negative scans does make me miss the grain and texture of film photography - but I really don’t have the time to indulge in it any more.

Sunday adulting. 🌷

Fascinating how much cars date photos, even after “just” 15 years.

Big fan of the Extinction Rebellion art style.

The guest WiFi at Twitter UK’s pretty good…

Thanks to my daughters, my iPad Smart Keyboard is looking particularly fabulous today…

Easter egg hunt 🐣

And here’s the final image of Adam, a sculpture at the Eden Project, shot back in Spring 2004.

Enjoying working in Pixelmator Photo to clean up some old negative scans:

There was a lot of construction work still happened at the Eden Project back in 2004. I loved these art plants that part screened the construction. Nice hard hat fruit.

Eden Project, 14th April 2004

Talented investigative journalist Lyra McKee was shot dead in Derry last night. I knew her, and was always in awe of her work. RIP, Lyra. And thank you.

Whatever you think about Assange and Wikileaks, his arrest this morning will do nothing to stop the repercussions his actions have had on journalism, politics and internet culture.

We’ve only scratched the surface of the impact so far.

I really need to stop letting my blogging slip as soon as my life gets busy. It’s such an intellectually rewarding exercise for me that my life is poorer when I don’t do it.

And no, social media does not scratch the same itch at all.

Making a (small) splash on Unsplash.

I’m really passionate about this: the journalism business should be unlocking the incredible value to be found in its archives.

There are so many benefits to this, for the costs involved.

Time to test micro.blog’s video hosting…

Ah, my weekend reading is here.

Woe betide any pony that fails to perform to the expectations of Iris.

Weird flex for a CMS company, but OK:

”Today Automattic is announcing Happy Tools, a suite of products for the future of work. Each product in Happy Tools has been used internally at Automattic to grow our company.”

Revenue play, at the expense of focus? Hmm.

May not have thought relative mug and scanner positioning through properly…

It looks like I last wrote about Google+ nearly five years ago — and only to declare it not dead.

Never a good sign.

So, here’s a video from a defunct satire site, about a defunct social network, found via a defunct VC-backed news site, which concludes with the fact that social networks lead inevitably to nazis.

This must be the most 2019 thing ever.

Wow. Early 2010s-era One Man & His Blog. In many ways, the “classic” era of the site…

Wow - Google+ integration in search. I had completely forgotten about that.

Something my daughters will never do…

Wow.

The current batch of negatives I’m scanning right now really capture a moment in time. They must be from 1999, one of the more significant years in my life - and 20 years ago, almost exactly.

The first few photographs are of the woman who was soon to be my ex-girlfriend in the flat we shared (and, honestly, the coming storm was written all over her face in those images), while the next batch were of a party at the flat of the woman who is now my wife.

Those really were a few months that changed my life forever, and in ways that were only good.

However, the deep sadness is that one person in those images is no longer with us, passing too, too young.

Plenty of pain in those images and the memories they evoke - but also joy. I wouldn’t surrender either.

Spring appears to have arrived in our garden.

10 Mothers’ Day without you, Mum. Still missing you.

Thought for the day:

Just spent 8 hours in this room with a great bunch of journalists and communication pros, talking editorial analytics. I really enjoyed it. I hope they did, too.

Hello.

Quick first thoughts on Apple News+. How do you feel about it?

Beachscape with fisherman and detectorist

Apple’s Final Cut Pro X upgraded to version 10.4.6 - and this is interesting:

“Detects media files that may be incompatible with future versions of macOS after Mojave and converts them to a compatible format”

My daughters have very carefully, precisely and secretively placed 10p coins under their chairs. I love them, but sometimes they are very sinister.

Oh, dear. When did I enter that demographic?

Thanks, Facebook.

The “Revoke Article 50” petition is closing in on ¾ of a million, and gaining about 3k signatures per minute.

Joining the rest of my family in marking World Down Syndrome day:

Yay. My micro.blog Kickstarter stickers are here!

This makes me very nostalgic for an earlier era of Apple.

The spread of footage from the Christchurch terrorists attack is clearly unacceptable. To curtail this we need three responses: technological, social and political. The problem is bigger than just the tech platforms.

I’ve come across a number of blogs in recent weeks that have “moved to Instagram”. One thing is for sure: they will eventually regret that decisions. Maybe not soon, but eventually.

This is my new pride and joy.

A year or so a switch flipped in my head. The more I watched vegetable trimmings, teabags and coffee grounds go into our bin, the more bothered I became about it. Those were good resources, resources a damaged planet badly needs, and we were locking them away for centuries or more in capped landfill sites.

I hated it.

Our council doesn’t offer kitchen waste recycling, so the only option open to me was home composting. My wife took some persuading, but a few months ago, with agreement, I ordered myself a beehive composter, and for the last two weeks it’s been sitting in the back garden, happily accepting anything I throw its way.

Compost n00b

I’m a novice - I know I am. I’ve only had a composter once before, back when I lived in Lewisham. But the garden there was not what you’d call accessible. It was down two flights of stairs, once you were out of the front door - and then up another flight of stairs. And to get to those you had to escape the back door, which was heavily bolted. I always assumed it was that way due to break-ins before i moved in, but I never found out. But those bots sure as hell slowed me down.

Now, my new composter is just outside the back door, and there’s so much more fun to be had. (Yes, fun. Don’t @ me.)

There’s so much more to compost than there used to be. For example, Waitrose have just started sending their organic bananas out in compostable bags. Magazines are arriving in similar bags. Even my local coffee shop is providing compostable coffee cups and lids. In they all go.

Yes, this is fun. I’m looking forward to turning over the compost in a month or so. I’m looking forwards to watching how effective all these compostable materials are. I spend so much of my life in front of glowing screens, something like this is just such a refreshing change. And, let’s face it, with the state of the planet, every single change like this we make helps, just a little.

Deconstructed.

I had awesome wallpaper as a child. (That’s not me - it’s a school friend).

Mum & I, outside Stirling Castle, in the early 80s.

You can catch up on all my posts from last week’s useful news:rewired conference here.

Lots to think about there.

Storm sisters

Fun down on the beach today…

New shoes!

Love the cover of the latest @standartmag by @grigorybabich. Stunning work.

Coffee with Eevee!

Journalism clearly needs new business models. Yesterday’s panel discussion at news:rewired had some interesting ideas.

The Adventures of Rapunzel and Mildred Hubble. #worldbookday #worldbookday2019

Utterly self-indulgent blog post of the day: What the heck is GoPro doing producing a limited edition colour of its flagship camera?

We really didn’t spend long on our customary Sunday beach walk today. Storm Freya is battering the UK and, while we’re on the edge of it, my three year old was still in danger of being blown away…

Bit of a token clean today as the girls were in danger of being blown off the beach by storm Freya. #2minutebeachclean

Iris made a nest at #naturetots #sussexwildlifetrust

My goodness, but these are appealing to me.

Today’s Iris obsession: liferings

Reporting on the Momo Challenge has not been journalism’s finest hour. It’s a failure of basic fact-checking.

I preserve the secrets of @nextconf by making my notes basically illegible to anyone but me.

Stunning evening down by the Adur.

Once again, Facebook is trying to avoid the costs of its scale - but the human cost of its content moderation is appalling.

Shoreham by Sea’s sign game is 💯 this morning:

Drinking today: Edgecumbe’s AA Kisii Peaberry ☕️

Some Ghostly resources for independent publishers.

Nice combination of a newsletter and a site full of resource links.

The fam at @nymansnt

Beware the beach #illuminati

Totemic discovery on today’s #2minutebeachclean

Sunday beach walk

Own up. Who left the window open last night?

Either it’s foggy - or I need new glasses.

Word of the day, courtesy of an @ernestjournal back issue… slubberdegullion is official part of my word hoard now.

Fog is making the Adur impressionistic today.

I have a Brydge keyboard for my trusty old 9.7 inch iPad Pro and I suddenly have my perfect on-the-go device.

Some useful thoughts on the appeal of newsletters — and the appropriate tone for writing them.

Why blogs still matter even in the resurgent newsletter age.

(h/t @cdevroe for the original link)

Lessons from 1000 editions of a links newsletter.

It’s all about the basics.

The rest of the “information wants to be free” quote (because I’m annoyed at how often people quote it in a way that makes it clear that they don’t know there’s more to it…)

I call this piece “the entitlement of SEO spammers”. 🖼

Winchester does ruins magnificently.

Edgcumbes Coffee Roasters & Tea Blenders.

A coffee break in a great wee coffee place on the outskirts of Arundel. There’s some great coffee in Sussex.

This is not at all disconcerting.

Beautiful sky over Winchester this evening.

For the last couple of months, my daughters and I have been doing a #2minutebeachclean pretty much every Sunday - concentrating on the same small patch of the beach.

While it’s been delightful spending the time by the sea, playing with the girls, and watching them become more aware of their environment, the sheer volume of plastics we’re pulling out of that small patch of the beach is depressing.

It’s been a case of not really realising the depth of a problem until you stare it in the face — and it’s making me think about all the purchasing decisions I make, but also what else we can do as a family to help turn this around.

What have we done?

I know all the hip joints!

Still can’t quite believe that I turned down the chance to work on this beauty - but it was the right decision at that time of my life.

An article designed for @ismh… The joy of collecting old tech

The Zuckerberg Obfuscation

Dangerous shop.

Wow, Blogger really is being neglected isn’t it? The last substantive update I can find is from nearly a year ago - and it’s mainly about removing features. Even Movable Type has had a major new version since then.

Productivity in the home office this morning: could be better.

First signs of spring. (Which means it’ll be snowing within the month…)

Fin.

Late night London.

Scenes from a beach walk.

And here’s your depressing reminder that Brits using .eu domain names will probably lose them.

For UK Residents Facing Brexit: Alternatives to the .EU Domain Name

A translation of Zuckerberg’s “15 years of #facebook” post from Zuck to English.

(Now with corrected link - thanks @smokey)

A translation of elements of Mark Zuckerberg’s 15th Facebook anniversary post from Zuck to English.

Never say I don’t try to be helpful. 😇

It’s stuff like this that makes me realise that I’ve been writing about digital media and audience development for 15 years now. I’m in danger of earning the tag “veteran commentator”…

Are we really going to do the news bundle conversation again?

OK. Let’s talk about that bloody egg — and why it does matter.

Yes, it’s come to that.

Now, that’s my kind of article.

Despite the cold, it’s a really lovely day here on the coast.

Even a little snow makes a three year old joyful.

The mighty thaw is well underway on the Sussex Coast.

That’s looking more like snow.

Apple kills Google’s internal apps as well.

Facebook has officially passed beyond parody.

I like the ceiling in here.

If you squint, you can see the snow. Just.

Apple News has more users than you might expect.

Crikey - my blog had more mobile and tablet viewers than desktop ones for the first time ever. I know I’m on the trailing edge of the switch, but interesting that it’s coming even to journalism-related sites.

I love the neologism “memeocracy” to describe the impact of influencer culture in the attention economy. I love the impact of it significantly less.

Apple’s mobile journalism porn - I love the way Apple keeps making the #mojo case for us.

A calmer moment in a stormy day by the sea:

Shoreham may be blessed with one of the best library views out there.

Just when you think Facebook can’t go lower — it manages it…

Well, that’s one way of stopping regulators from breaking up your company, I suppose.

Zuckerberg speeds up assimilation of Instagram and WhatsApp into Facebook

Daddy/daughter baking day.

The latest issue of @anxymag is here - all about masculinity. Time for a coffee and a read.

One that required a bit of focus, but not too much. Bring on next month’s #AppleWatch challenge.

No wonder my chair was uncomfortable - I’ve been sitting on this for the last hour:

Ars Technica:

Such is the nature of the erosion of our once-beloved digital spaces: there’s none of the collapsed majesty of a physical space like an abandoned castle, ivy threading its way through the crumbling latticework. Instead, LiveJournal moves forward as an aging pile of code, one day potentially rendered obsolete by something newer and better and remembered by those who lost countless hours to rigging it up in the first place.

It’s where I started blogging over 17 years ago - but I haven’t thought about it in years. It’s now just a Russian zombie of its former self.

January 2018 in photos - looking back at a year ago.

Why political posts on Facebook will always be polarising.

A cold and frosty morning on my way to London.

Gorgeous day on Shoreham Beach. The sun is counteracting the cold nicely.

Suffolk coast, January 2001

I wrote a very long thing about Facebook, WordPress, CMSes and local journalism. I cater to a very niche market…

It’s been a stressful week, but the view from my office window is incredibly calming today.

My hard working film scanner doing its thing.

I can also see a meaningful boat out of the window. There may be a meaningful oat on the floor, after my daughter dropped her porridge this morning.

Fresh out of the film scanner: my late father and I in the mid-90s. Still miss him.

Making your social media more sane - this is actually a great idea.

On the off chance you missed it - here’s my thoughts on the key findings of the Reuters Institute’s 2019 journalism trends and predictions report.

Guide’s badges in the 21st century: vlogging

Here’s my takeaways from the Journalism, Media and Technology Trends and Predictions 2019 report that launched this morning.

Media Trends 2019: an earthquake in audience engagement, and openness to new business models

This is my regular reminder to myself that actually posting to One Man & His Blog does wonders for my traffic…

Facebook is trying to achieve global scale without paying the local price - and that’s hindering its attempts to combat misinformation.

China is making podcasts pay - big time. And it’s not based on advertising.

Nice morning down by the river.

I have tidied up and modernised every post on my blog tagged Doctor Who in a burst of pointless busy work. :-)

The culture wars in one tweet.

Bedrock rock beds.

Moody day in the beach. (Can you spot the Iris?)

I have a nasty feeling Iris is pretending to be me…

Grabbed the opportunity for a quick beach walk this afternoon. The beach is very much in winter mode, biding its time before it bursts into spring colour in a few months.

Facebook wants us to know that it’s the real victim here.

Warrior robots in a coffee shop.

Grrrr.

Happy about this - I have at least one new Ghost-hosted project in the works, and I may well start with one of these. All New Free Ghost Themes

Watching.

Lovely day at Nymans.

😂

A pre-New Year party for the little ones with some wonderful neighbours. Perfect way to end the year.

Well, this year was all about the Shoreham-by-Sea landscapes… #topnine2018 #topnine #bestnine2018

Issue #25 of my curated reads newsletter goes out in about five minutes. Sign up while you can!

Here we go: the top 10 posts on the NEXT Conference blog in 2018. One of them was the very first post I wrote, back in 2012(!).

Digging through the top posts on the Next Conference blog, I found this 2017 piece from Martin Recke - What is Digital Humanism?. This feels like a discussion we should have had more deeply.

Shoreham Fort

More #beachlife

Vlogging?

Beach Life.

Beach life.

Facebook apologists are real – they really are.

Crime in progress, but the lookout is on watch…

On the Care and Feeding of Your Favorite Blogger

Here’s the thing - support comes in all shapes and sizes and doesn’t necessarily mean $$$$.

This is a good post, reminding us that blogging is an ecosystem, one that you can support in various ways.

Lady who lunches.

Beautiful moomin show. Iris loved it.

Current status:

Moomin magic is about to begin.

Moomin magic (and mischief) about to occur…

Iris at the Box Office.

Look, someone 😇 has made our local heros more festive.

Beach walk, ‘cos it’s Boxing Day innit?

Down by the Adur.

(Boxing Day walk)

The children are less enthused by this stage of the meal preparation…

Prepping Christmas Dinner while watching the Countryfile Christmas Special. Because, yes, I am middle aged and middle class.

Time to get the turkey in.

Today has challenged my understanding of the word “elf”.

Well, this is a great Christmas gift:

Apple Books has published six exclusive audiobooks this week, showcasing six great first listen titles read by celebrity narrators. The books themselves are all public domain works from Pride and Prejudice to Winnie the Pooh, recorded by Apple and released in the Book Store for free.

If you have an iDevice of some sort, these are well worth grabbing. The narrators include Karen Gillen (Doctor Who, Guardians of the Galaxy) and Kate Beckinsale. (Underworld series, etc).

Hello. @manton delivers Christmas three days early!

Honestly, what the hell is happening at Medium? Its latest moves seem to suggest it is becoming 2008-era Huffington Post - with a soft paywall.

Strong and stable. Spoiled for stabilised filming right now - working in some tests for my blog.

Five influencers influencing…

Oh, the irony.

I have a gimbal in my pocket. The miniaturisation of video continues, and the results are impressive.

Early Christmas present to myself. Uh, I mean to my work. Uh, yes, my work. That’s it. cough.

I am ridiculously happy to finally have the time to get a post up on One Man & His Blog - even if it’s only month notes for Nov/Dec. Back on the blogging wagon…

⚠️ Warning - photobomb in progress…

New green belt

Barbados, November 2011

My sister-in-law has a PacMan coat. 👌🏻

Morning coffee feels very festive today.

New coffee shop, new part of London. Oh, the consultancy life.

Five years ago today:

10 years ago today.

Not what you want to see outside your favourite coffee shop in the morning…

Open.

Peak hipster.

Time to choose a Christmas Tree 🎄

The angel of cheekiness descends…

This morning I am catching the OMGEarly train to London.

The new @blogosphere_magazine is here, so I’ve done a tasteful #influencer style shot to celebrate. 😇 #blogospheremagazine #bloggers

Walking Iris to nursery was a genuine pleasure this morning - it’s just an incredible day. Cold, but clear and bright, with a wonderful quality of light.

Morning view.

Ready to Webinar…

One of the interesting aspects of consultancy life is getting small spells in a whole range of offices. You assume that all offices are basically the same, but that really isn’t the case. And it’s fascinating.

My downtime on ghost(pro) last month… …didn’t exist. For the third month running.

Nice work, @tryghost team.

Night time.

This is how credit card details were harvested from BA. I bet you use one of the sites on the list. Oh, and The Guardian is one of them. Major sites running unauthenticated JavaScript on their payment pages

Looking good on the way back, too.

Different view for my “commute” this morning.

Beach life.

Hello.

Dr Pancakes is IN.

So, I’ve done the photos thing. Thanks @cleverdevil - looks good!

Success - new belt! #soobahkdo

Testing times for Iris… #soobahkdo

I feel this e-mail subject line is unlikely to be bettered today:

Iris wants you to know that she has pizza 🍕

While I do still love a good paper book, there are times that digital books are just so much more useful, especially in non-fiction.

One of the things that I’m most angry with the social networks about is the way they deprived me of so many interesting voices. How many bloggers whose in-depth thoughts I valued, enjoyed and was challenged by have been sucked into the easy dopamine hit of social networks? How many exchanged depth, value and complexity for soundbite posts and memery?

One of the things I’ve valued over the last couple of years of micro.blog has been finding new voices and thinkers, who have been prepared to put the time and effort into writing things of worth, and to linking to those of others. It’s a new tool to surface an neglected way of thinking and working, and I value it.

Thanks everyone. You are genuinely enriching my life.

Time to kill off follower counts on social networks:

As we increase the time we spend online, we also expose ourselves to the danger of measuring ourselves by the number of likes and follows we get. That sort of behavior is problematic in itself, but it gets worse when you consider the fact that you have little to no real control over those numbers.

Where micro.blog and @manton led the way…

There’s no place like gnome

5 degrees, rainy and grey. British autumn is here at last.

I’m slightly concerned that I appear to have grown up in the last few years. Despite the exciting and shiny new iPad Pros released last week, I’m still more than happy with my 2 plus year old iPad Pro 9.7. It does everything I need it to. And my MacBook Pro is around five years old, and I’m not planning on replacing that either. What has happened to me? I used to be a “twitchy after two years” guy.

Build that web

I had my first proper (but quick) play with Adobe Premier Rush - and I’m tentatively impressed.

So, I wrote about the unintended consequences of partisan satire (based on the excellent WaPo story from yesterday) - and upset the partisan satirist. Surprise!

MediaGazer is really good at inflating my ego in a really unearned way, by putting me in some amazing company:

Here’s a horrible insight into how digital tools and age-old psychology can turn satire into conspiracy theories. This is why the “fake news” of misinformation and disinformation is going to be so very hard to combat.

Touching. I feel very special…

Coffee date.

Stunning autumn morning in #shorehambysea

I need to have words with my teenage self about keeping negatives clean.

Only seven months between episodes…

Here’s my incredibly sophisticated micro casting set-up, using Wavelength on my phone…

Some (rambling) thoughts based on yesterday’s NYT piece on Facebook’s senior management and the appalling reaction to the revelations about the site.

There’s some new research out on smart speakers and news - and it’s a mixed bag. Use is growing fast, but people are unenthused by the current news offerings. Is there an opportunity here?

Be vewy, vewy quiet. I’m hunting typos…

Really nice, measured take on the state of the iPad Pro from Charles Arthur.

Despite my previous post, I do enjoy binging on @Monday I find immersing myself in the community for a hour to be fun.

Over a decade since my first download from the App Store. Not much use now.

A caravan of bots and other updates from the misinformation wars.

Y’know. I just realised - reading blogs used to - and often still does - make me happy, curious and energised. Reading social media rarely does any of those three. You lose something when you erode complexity and replace it with low impact interaction.

11/11/18 - we shall remember them

Thou shalt not pass

Aberdeen, I am in you. #odcamp

Turns out friction might be good in social sharing.

Wikipedia has a paid editing problem — and it might be getting worse. I was approached by a paid editor a few weeks ago, offering to get me in…

Flickr makes some smart changes to its account structure while throwing some serious shade on Yahoo’s stewardship of the site.

Some good updates to Flickr.

Now there’s a phrase I didn’t expect to be writing.

Me during the first half of the Apple event:

Me during the second half of the Apple event:

Noting in recent times has made me as old as realising that The Guardian pioneered live-blogging 19 years ago.

Getting spooky around here.

Vogue says “bonjour” to Hong Kong and “au revoir” to Snapchat.

Y’know, if Twitter really does pull Likes from its platform, it really validates one of the design decisions @manton made for micro.blog.

Twitter to UnLike Likes?

It seems clear that Zuckerberg has a more total control over Facebook than, say, Jobs ever did over Apple: Facebook’s Flawed DNA Makes It Unable to Fight Misinformation

Now, this is an old pen. #sixapart #movabletype

Our back garden tree is handling the daily countdown to winter admirably.

Case in point: my two most used blog platforms - ghost and micro.blog - are both new(ish) and have very different ideas of what publishing could look like. Innovation in publishing tech should be interesting to those interested in publishing.

The “blogging is dead” meme that seems to have settled into the consciousness of swathes of media is both patently wrong - glance at fashion or travel for a moment - but also rather dangerous for them. Just because the technology is no longer the newest thing, doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant. Much like printing presses, really.