London, UK -  I work in cyber security but write about the broader technology landscape, looking past the hype to discover what works, what doesn't, and whether any of it truly improves our lives.

Recent blog posts

When you travel, the real journey isn't photographed
 -  Last week, I played tour guide for some visitors from overseas - first in London, and then in my hometown. It was exhausting, but it came with an unexpected side effect: it made me see those places differently. It’s hard to take your city for granted when you walk familiar...
Staying productive when everything feels urgent
 -  We’ve all been there. One day you’re in control, the next you’re racing from meeting to meeting, unable to focus long enough to move anything forward in any meaningful way - unless, that is, you start protecting your time. When everything feels urgent and your calendar is under siege, the...
Humanising AI encourages intellectual lethargy
 -  I recently stumbled upon a Hacker News thread around a series of X posts about ChatGPT’s o3 model. Researchers noted that it “frequently fabricates actions it never took, and then elaborately justifies those actions when confronted”, in one case claiming to have received an incorrect result by running code on...
Finding comfort in the green hills outside my window
 -  As I mentioned in a recent post, I moved to a new home a few months ago. My new place sits atop a hill, and the window to the right of my desk happens to look away from the city, over the tops of the houses opposite and off into...
Fixing weak WiFi and slow speeds on my home network
 -  I moved to a new home late last year, and immediately faced a whole range of connectivity issues. For a techie like myself, reliant on a functional network both for work and for fun, that was a big problem. So I implemented a few different solutions to find a fix...
Endpoint detection and response (EDR) - setting the record straight
 -  When I went to bed on the evening of Friday 19th July, I couldn’t sleep. It was a stuffy summer’s night in London, and the adrenaline was still pumping through my veins after one of the more notable days in recent memory for cyber security. Still, laying awake gave me...
Centralisation, repeatability, and automation in a modular SOC
 -  The dictionary definition of “modular” leaves a little to be desired: “Employing or involving a module or modules as the basis of design or construction.” What is implied, but that I would make explicit, is that parts of the whole can be swapped out easily while maintaining the functionality of...
Cyber security sometimes means learning things backwards
 -  Stick around cyber security Twitter or LinkedIn for long enough and you’ll likely see somebody raise a question about how to get into the industry. You’ll also likely see a reply that describes a kind of rite of passage from sysadmin, to SOC analyst, to just about any other security...
Using winget to automate software deployment to a new laptop
 -  I got my first new laptop in six years this week! The new hardware is definitely exciting, but reviews aren’t really my thing, so while I’ll inevitably tweet about how the Microsoft Surface Laptop fares, that’s not the purpose of this post. This is more about the mundane job of...
2023: Thoughts on new challenges and sharing experiences
 -  A belated happy new year! If you’re reading this, I hope you have a terrific 2023. I recently went back and read some old posts that have long since been deleted from this blog - writings from my journalism days that reminded me of my perspectives on certain news events...

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Thinking about

Digital journalism
Coincidentally, in the space of a week I encountered both Zach Seward's article about Quartz and Craig Mod's excellent podcasts with Tim Ferriss. Both evoked fond memories of my time in journalism and the buzz surrounding digital journalism and media in the 2010s

Interests

  • Cyber security
  • Tech
  • Python
  • PowerShell
  • JavaScript
  • F1
  • Reading
  • Writing
  • Psychology
  • Philosophy
  • Exercise
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  • Guitar