This is the first proper mix with the Drift DJ Zero while on holiday in Athens recently. It was done over two parts because of a crash with the beta firmware. Most of it in a lovely place in Athens (Morgan All Jeans) then second part on my flight to Barcelona, which attracted the eye of one of the captains of the plane!

I have been interested in the different ways to capture thoughts I have but with the wave of AI nonsense I have seen stuff which seriously is quite scary. With my focus on local AI control, I found the Pebble index 01 an interesting proposition. So I bought the Pebble index 01, as an external trigger for local recording. I thought it would be useful, as I like the idea and found speech to text very useful generally when trying to spell words or sharing my thoughts.

We live in incredible times with such possibilities that is clear. Although its easily dismissed reading Zuckerburg's deranged superintelligent AI future post, hearing about pagers leveraged for data breach and what could ever go wrong? To quote Buckminster Fuller "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

I recently posted this on linkedin. It came from an email conversation with Alex DS and my experiences with applying for jobs recently.I'll say it again, Alex is extremely smart and been a fantastic person to talk with about so many things, especially the rights and wrongs of the tech industry. A month ago, I remembered something fundamental: my network matters far more than applications sent into the void of public job boards.

Following on from the post where I decide to change my DJ name to cubicgarden. Here is the whole mix live from EMFCamp 2026. I am just transcoding it for Peertube but uploaded the full 8.6gig  cut to Youtube (very surprised its not been flagged...yet?) Enjoy the incredible lasers and even fire balls! Heck the firestarter is back?

The last few weeks, I have been beta testing the Drift DJ and its getting a lot more stable. The hardest part I have found is my tunes are from all over, going from Rave stuff from the late 90's to more recent stuff with decent metadata. Some of it is recorded at as low as 192k to 320k but some at a sampling rate of 32, 44 and 48khz.

The whole video (17.5 mins) is available on Peertube and now legacy media (Youtube). Small enough for a TED talk even... I was reading through the Quantified Self newsletter and had a shock when I saw my talk about machine readable wishes from #EMFCamp featured. I shared it on Linkedin quickly but not on my blog. Ian Forrester, founder of QS-Manchester back in the day, gave a fascinating talk a couple of weeks ago at EMF Camp on…

We live in incredible times with such possibilities that is clear. Although its easily dismissed hearing how Meta's Instagram approving illegal adverts, Claude AI chats appearing in public searches along many others and how did we all let one company break the internet? To quote Buckminster Fuller "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

For a long time, I have been known as DJ Digital Italic. However people have gotten very confused and so today I’m changing my DJ name to just Cubicgarden. Digital italic, came about when I was starting my move from vinyl to MP3’s (yes I switched CDJs because I didn’t like the format for its…

Recently I had the pleasure of talking at EMF Camp about machine readable wishes. The slides are linked here. The proposal originally was a workshop but converted to a 20min talk in the main stage of EMF Camp at 10am. Death is inevitable, yet our digital infrastructure remains woefully unprepared for it. While traditional "Letters of Wishes" provide a static roadmap for executors, they lack the agency to interact with our complex, data-driven lives.

I almost fell for the recruitment agency scam... I was unsure but just had a some useful interaction with a recruitment agency. Back on 7th July I revived an email on my gmail address, not the one I mainly use for linkedin and lots of sites. Regardless I thought maybe they got it another way. Here's the email... Hello, I hope you’re doing well.

In the face of soaring wealth inequality, Ingrid Robeyns' Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth calls for restrictions on individual fortunes.

YouTube video by Garys Economics

YouTube video by Channel 4 News

Recently on a conference trip to Amsterdam for the excellent PublicSpaces conference, I took the Eurostar and it was a interesting experience with the whole outbound ride taking 11hours (its a long story but glad I over spent on food at London as it things get real when the food runs out in the eurostar's onboard shops. Don't get me wrong a journey which should have taken 6 hours maximum gets tiresome once you get to 11hours!

We live in incredible times with such possibilities that is clear. Although its easily dismissed reading the rule of the super rich on hearing about gig working nurses and is W social European and open or not?? To quote Buckminster Fuller "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

For the longest time I have avoided using Meta's Whatsapp. Recently its become more difficult with more and more services using Whatsapp as there default way to communicate. Luckily my partner has become a bit of a human bridge to some Whatsapp groups. To be really clear this is not good! I'm very aware of the mental load women shoulder in society and relationships.

Finally the Pebble time 2 came... As most of you know I was a big Pebble fan, for many reasons but battery life is a massive plus. The Ticwatch 5 pro was doing my head in, because although it will last a day no problem. Once you add sleep tracking its a very different story. It's taken a little while (just under a year I think) to get back into the pebble way of doing things but after 2-3 days I have forgotten most of the affordances of Android Wear OS.

We live in incredible times with such possibilities that is clear. Although its easily dismissed seeing the problems with single sign on, Google chrome forcefully downloading 4gig of a LLM and why on earth is meta smart glasses selling so well, despite privacy worries? To quote Buckminster Fuller "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

I spent a good amount of time in Berlin, Germany recently for the fantastic Republica conference. This was recorded on a Ryanair flight (I luckily booked my flights over 3 months ago) using a number of even newer tunes. I had to do quite a bit of editing from the different times when my arm was knocked but it turned out pretty well.

For AI agents, seeing is expensive

We live in incredible times with such possibilities that is clear. Although its easily dismissed hearing how Tesla robotaxis being remotely driven, seeing Linkedin spying and fingerprinting job hunters and the absolute madding thoughts of Palantir CEO Alex Karp, translated for us lay people? To quote Buckminster Fuller "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

I finally found sometime after working with the Drift Zero team, to install the latest alpha build. Things have been hectic for a while but one night I got some time to play. It was great, although I didn't really know all the buttons, so I was just working it out by pressing and playing. Its only today I seen…

1 year ago I officially left the BBC after just short of 21 years. Looking back at the post I wrote about how I had been since August 2024, when I first learned my position was at risk and the one I wrote in March 2025. A heck of a lot has happened in the last year. I now have my own business doing a number of different things, but all still focused on the public space.

We live in incredible times with such possibilities that is clear. Although its easily dismissed seeing Gran-parents doom-scrolling, seeing Attie launching during the ATmosphere conference and the study showing people prefer sycophantic AI bots. To quote Buckminster Fuller "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

I have a follow up to the post about cloning of my scooter licence/number plate. Its been pretty hellish, with everything falling back to the analogue hole aka writing letters by hand to prove who I am with the DVLA. The MET police called me and after verifying they who they said they were, we had a long conversation.

Platforms like X, Facebook and Instagram harvest our personal data so that they can target us with ads. Their platforms are designed to keep us online, pushing out content that will keep us engaged.…

For a long while I have been posting stills from my diabolo sessions on pixelfed. It makes a lot of sense as I was recording at 90 frames/sec making good still images. However I decided its time to just go with video and as I'm quite a fan of peertube for my mixes on my own selfhosted site and…

Today I received a ULEZ fine from Transport for London? Somehow I had broken the rules of the ultra low emission zone. On the day when I was flying over the alps in Europe on a holiday. My scooter hasn't been stolen as I have used it since, plus I have a ton of thick chains and trackers on it (although…

Late last year me and Sam's talk for FOSDEM 2026 was accepted. We shared the slides here but now you can watch the whole video. Death is inevitable, yet most of us are woefully unprepared. Fear and lack of time often prevent us from putting our affairs in any order, leaving our loved ones to pick up the pieces of a difficult period compounded by uncertainty.

We live in incredible times with such possibilities that is clear. Although its easily dismissed hearing the insanity of prediction markets, potential governmental influence on app stores and Open AI confidence is dispensing. To quote Buckminster Fuller "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

Its been a while since I created a mix on the Pacemaker device, but a recent trip to Budapest gave me some time to try out a few new tunes in a mix. This mix is a real banger, with a lot of really great tunes alongside some classic ones to anchor the mix. Weirdly enough, the mp3 recorder ran out of battery just near the end and I had to recreate the last 3 tunes.

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Techgrumps 3.37 - AI Discussions sandboxed for your securityThe AI Skills Hub is a bit lightweight.https://aiskillshub.org.uk/Anthropic has invested 1.5M in the Python Software Foundationhttps://simon...

Listen to Making the familiar strange on RedCircle

By Linda DV We live in incredible times with such possibilities that is clear. Although its easily dismissed hearing about the whisperpair flaw, Windows Bitlocker keys available to the FBI and owning nothing is freeing of your money. To quote Buckminster Fuller "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

Listen to Making the familiar strange on RedCircle

Recently I was looking around at the space of digital legacy after a conversation with a friend and ahead of a presentation myself and Sam are giving at FOSdem 2026 titled Fedi legacy; next weekend in Brussels. I was quite shocked at some of the products and services including  expensive glorified spreadsheets templates (I won't link to it). Then I came across…

Techgrumps 3.36Mozilla, Firefox and AIhttps://techcrunch.com/2025/12/17/mozillas-new-ceo-says-ai-is-coming-to-firefox-but-will-remain-a-choice/The return of smart glasses and wearableshttps://www.thev...