Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Five for silver

    There's a family band of magpies that keep me noisy company at my desk in the morning. As I'm back and forth from my desk as I deal with other responsibilities, they are there out of the window, calling to each other and letting me know at the same time where they are.

    I like magpies; I like all corvids in fact, fiercely intelligent birds with complex social structures and interactions, which I personally had the experience of seeing at first hand one day as a group of magpies meted out a "punishment beating" to one of their own, some pinning a bird down and others pecking. I've often wondered what transgression was being punished.

  • “Doomsday Clock” houserules for the Focus boardgame

    Okay, with this variant you win when the opponent can’t make a move on the board and is out of reserve pieces, just like the original 1960s game, but you only have six moves to win!

    Take six pieces each of an unused player color (if your version doesn't have extra color pieces you can use dice or beads) and place them beside you and everytime you make a move, you lose one, and when you’re all out, you lose the game!

  • Five decades of buying music

    This year is the 50th anniversary of my first record purchase. Up to that point I'd often received albums for Christmas - Top of The Pops 1973 for example, or one of the Wombles albums for kids, released in 1974 - but this was my first and possibly last 7 inch single and I bought it myself after hearing it on the radio and liking it a lot. I can remember going up to the counter in a record shop in Plymouth to get it.

  • Answering song title questions 1

    In which I mine my music collection for inspiration, and decide to have fun answering questions posed by song titles.

  • B Road Junction

    Will hopefully bump into Richard out there on the back roads at some point for some tea and godcake.

    Can't believe I forgot to mention tea in a piece in which I had a cup of nettle and honey tea next to me the whole time. I'm just so blinded by the road right now it seems!

• Politics and World Events

  • Reclaiming our humanity

    One of the great privileges of my life has been the opportunities I've had to visit Rwanda and get to know some of its people. It's a remarkable country in many ways, often staggeringly beautiful and full of all sorts of surprises. Each of my five visits has given me fresh energy and a wider perspective on the world.

    Of course, the defining event in the recent history of Rwanda is the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, in which hundreds of thousands of people were killed. More than thirty years on, Rwanda is by no means a perfect place. But that a functioning society could be rebuilt after such horror is extraordinary in itself.

    There is a word in Kinyarwanda, the language of Rwanda, which has been on my mind a great deal lately.

    Ubumuntu. Say it roughly as oo-boo-mun-oo. (Honestly. That t is silent)

• Programming

  • Wednesday is Token Day

    I was given a claude subscription through work. I have the "premium" team plan subscription. From what I understand, it's equivalent to the $100 personal subscription or something like that. I get access to fable, but only 50% of my limit can be used towards it. I'm happy that I work for a startup and we don't have to pay per-token, hence my usage is not monitored by anyone.

    I use claude code all the time at work, but I could never max out my weekly allocation on pure work-related tasks. I rarely if ever hit the 5-hour limit. Even using fable every day at extra-high effort. I just don't have that much pure technical stuff to work on. A large enough chunk of my time is spent in meetings, coordinating, reviewing and other non-coding stuff. If I tried really hard I'm sure I could come up with something to burn tokens on - large tech debt refactorings, pitching more new ideas, etc. But I just don't feel like doing that right now. I'm working at a good pace and I'm happy with it. With work, I use my subscription somewhere in the 30%-40% range most weeks.