What's happening now

Updated 18th May 2025, from my home in the UK.

Work and projects

Currently contracting at TinyPilot.

liftingstones.org and I have a complicated relationship at the moment. I’m not itching to research and write articles right now. But I have been doing some site development. And I’m putting together an info product that I think people will love.

Delivery Ravens has been live for a couple of months now, and it’s waiting on me to finish my digital product so I can dogfood it. It’s been a few weeks since I did anything to it, and I don’t really miss working on it, so make of that what you will. The time away has given me more ideas for it though.

I’ve been writing a weekly development log for my projects for a few months. They’re nothing special. And they’re mostly for me. I sit down for about an hour on a Sunday and write. Sometimes, there’s just not much to say. Regardless, writing is thinking.

As for other projects, I have too many ideas. Two of them persist from last year. But I need to be careful - I need to make sure it’s a business idea, with a clear revenue model, not a project.

‘Infinite runway’ from contracting/consulting is nice, but it makes building momentum on anything else so hard because the amount of time I have to work on projects is so little. The few Stripe notifications I get each month are amazing, but I need to grow them to multiple per day. Marketing is my biggest hurdle.

Personal

I attempted, and failed, to lift the Dinnie Stones last July. My next attempt is booked in for July 1st, almost exactly a year on. Training has been going ok, but it could be better. I have a few minor injuries including muscle pulls and tendonitis. So long as I don’t get so injured I cannot train on the Dinnie training pins, I’m pretty confident I’ll get the lift this time.

I’ve been thinking about buying a car for over a year. I don’t need one. But it would be nice. One of the major things that’s stopped me is ongoing running costs. When I do the maths on how much I’d use a car, I’d be better off getting an Uber everywhere. You can’t roadtrip in an Uber though…

Wondering where to travel to next. I’m getting the itch to return to Japan.

Reading

Currently

  • Unreasonable Hospitality - Will Guidara
  • The Vagabond’s Way - Rolf Potts

This year

(Most recent first)

  • The War of Art - Steven Pressfield
  • Hidden Japan - Alex Kerr
  • Status Game - Will Storr
  • Source Code - Bill Gates
  • The Making of Price of Persia - Jordan Mechner
  • On Looking - Alexandra Horowitz
  • Blue Latitudes - Tony Horwitz
  • Longitude - Dava Sobel
  • Poor Charlie’s Almanack - Charles Munger, Peter D. Kaufman