exo : blah

Yes, I know, it is 2026 and no one needs another AI take but this all popped into my head on a bike ride and I must expel it.

In short, generative AI is not for me. This is not based on extensive, or really any, use, it is more about how I want to do things.

I know you can do good things with it, I have seen good things done with it, things that otherwise would likely not have happened.

I just don’t want to.

For the most part I enjoy my job. It is interesting and challenging in the right ways. Yes, there can sometimes be tedious bits to it but even those are enjoyable in a meditative way and I don’t think ridding myself of them would make me a better developer. I expect for some measures AI might make me more productive but it’s hard to say without putting in the effort to get good with the tools. What I am fairly sure of is it would not make me a happier developer. In the past I’ve managed people and it did not agree with me. I do not think that managing a machine is likely to be an improvement. On top of all this I am very much a figure things out by writing code so having a machine do this for me seems more likely to result in oversight and error.

The same goes for any other aspect that I might employ generative AI for. For me the act of making a thing is partly about noticing. If you are taking a photo it is because something has caught your attention, and in order for that to happen you have to be paying attention. Writing is the same. You have to interrogate your thoughts and in the process understand the reasoning or feelings behind them. To do this requires, for me at least, spending time with things and that is one of the things generative AI is designed to reduce.

There’s some reference to the bicycle for the mind metaphor with regard to these tools and, to me, it fundamentally misunderstands the what a bike is. Yes, it is an efficient means of getting from a to b but it is under your own power; let us ignore e-bikes here. More than that though, it is a machine for moving through the world. You cannot ride a bike without being aware of and understanding your surroundings. There is no setting a direction of travel and leaving the rest to the machine, it is a stream of decisions, some of which may become unconscious with time, but no part of the ride can happen without input. For me it’s this that makes bicycles great. You see so much from a bicycle but at a pace you can appreciate it.

I learn so much about my area from riding. I see the shops that close, or open, when the fields are dry, where the flooding happens, which towns are busy, where the paths go and when they are good to ride. I don’t want to skim over all that to get to my destination because it’s in those details that the joy is found.

I want the journey and generative AI does not.

Previously.

cycling

A mixed year. I had an enforced few month off in the middle of the year for boring reasons which was a shame. However it did mean I came back to it while the weather was good which made it easy. A lot fewer big rides though because for most of the time I would do them I was either off the bike or not really in the sort of condition that makes them fun. Good to learn that I miss them though.

As before mostly a year of road and gravel riding and this is fine. It’s a delight to get out on the mountain bike from time to time but I just enjoy the others more.

Not sure I really had any stand out rides. Plenty that were enjoyable and I definitely got better at just going out for a bit and not having to plan huge things which is good. I probably did a better job running in to winter of keeping at it, partly because of the time off.

Moved to Rouvy for the fake riding and I think I prefer it. Nice to look at actual places rather than computer generated ones. Will see how it goes over the rest of the winter.

Once again, running was very off and on again and I am fine with it.

pictures

Bought a new camera (blimey, they went up in price). So far it’s been great. Takes good photos, easy to cart about but enough of a proper camera that it makes me think differently than a phone.

I’d not have taken quite this one with the phone for example because it’s just more faff to get it to expose like this. I’m still only shooting jpegs with it because it’s nice not to deal with processing things. At some point I should see what it can do using RAWs.

Up till then I probably took fewer photos with a proper camera than previous years, mostly because of a bit of a failing to be inspired locally so lugging a big camera around is a chore. Did a decent job on holiday with it though and definitely got some nice ones. As ever, when it clicks it clicks and I love the experience but ugh, it does take up a lot of space.

For a change my fav pick was people. One of those just lucky with the light ones you get every now and again.

work

Even more variety this year. As well as the climate stuff, more TheyWorkForYou, a bit of WriteToThem and a dash of FixMyStreet at the end.

On the climate side a second go at the council climate scorecards and was definitely smoother because we managed to learn lessons. Still more to improve as ever.

For WriteToThem there was a relatively small bit of work which has enabled us to do data gathering that has helpedconfirm some huncheswe already had. It’s nice to see such a quick, relatively, turn around from work to results. There was also the start of making it possible to have a Welsh language version which in some ways is pretty straightforward with a lot of “just wrap strings in calls to gettext” but also pretty fiddly in a twenty plus year old code base across multiple programming languages which gave no thought to being multi lingual.

And then to finish the year I dipped my toe back into FixMyStreet waters. It’s three plus years since I did any work on the site and while I can remember enough that it’s not starting from cold there’s still a lot of asking colleagues and reading code. It does mean I am working on a team again versus a lot of the past year plus as sole dev on projects. There are actual clients and formal processes too.

books

As ever there is a list of books read for the plain facts.

The big thing this year was starting to go to the local bookshop’s reading group. It’s SciFi/Fantasy by woman authors and while some of it was rereads or things that were on my TBR pile there was stuff I would not have read without going. It’s been great. The people are lovely and I look forward to it every month.

This year’s recommendations are The Ministry of Time, The Formidable Miss Cassidy, Blood Over Bright Haven and right at the end of the year The Spear Cuts Through Water which is possibly my favourite of them. Just lovey writing, a slightly novel framing and some cute touches.

Metal from Heaven was also great but it feels like a book some people are going to flat out hate. It’s quite languagey, takes a wild turn at the end, and has some very hand wavy magic but the world is good, the characters have dimensions and it’s the sort of languagey I enjoy. Visceral and elegiac.

I read my first Tchaikovsky I didn’t enjoy — Cage of Souls, just read Heart of Darkness instead — and a couple of literary cross over scifi/fantasy books that just didn’t work for me: Ascension which just felt a bit hollow and The Leviathan which was a decent historical novel wrapped in a bad magical realism one.

There were, I think, quite few more if not cozy then at least lighter books this year mostly because, you know, all this. When done well they’re great and I think I’ve worked out how to mostly avoid the overly cloying ones.

I stalled out on a few books, mostly tombs where I could not face another few hundred pages with the most annoying characters in the world.