iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ok, so the responsive mobile view is less than ideal, and I need to refactor to use my own tokens etc. But still, one step at a time.

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It’s been fun. This is all with a view of actually building my own bespoke, useful dashboard. So many cycling apps throw the kitchen sink at you. I just want a few specific things I’m tracking from a good data source. Always be tinkering.

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It’s a mix of indoor training and outdoor rides. Still work to do around making them easily navigable and performant. The svg maps and HR/Power data plots was a bit of a challenge. All of this is being built with Eleventy, the Strava API, the Intervals.icu API together with open street map.

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Mark Boulton @markboulton.co.uk · 09/09/2025

Made a thing on my website. markboulton.co.uk/rides/ For a while I’ve been wanting to continue to own my own data and I do a fair bit of riding with a lot of data. So putting them up on my site and tinkering felt like a nice thing to do.

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I have opinions about notebooks. The Midori MD A5 gridded notebook is almost perfect. From its lay-flat design and the weight of the paper. But its cover is rubbish. Light weight and gets destroyed by travel. And the separate covers aren’t that great. I’m not going to make my own but I’m tempted.

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Mark Boulton @markboulton.co.uk · 02/09/2025

That is a very good idea. Ours are continually chipping. How are you attaching them? And would your fabricator do antique nickel?

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Mark Boulton @markboulton.co.uk · 28/08/2025

It’s been 25 years since I’ve seen G Love & Special Sauce and tonight they treated us to the entire first album and a few extras. Just a wonderful experience.

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Mark Boulton @markboulton.co.uk · 26/08/2025

During the first lockdown, I blogged about making a bit of an aggregated feed reader (I guess I was doing a lot of doomscrolling). markboulton.co.uk/journal/my-o... I hadn't looked at it ages, but it feels like a scary, depressing, triggering time capsule. broadsheet.markboulton.co.uk

Mark Boulton @markboulton.co.uk · 17/08/2025

I hope Alien Earth gets better. I think what it hasn’t nailed is that, like the shark in Jaws, the xenomorph’s horror lies in its absence. It was so quiet, so fast, so stealthy, that you have no chance of witnessing it take someone.

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Mark Boulton @markboulton.co.uk · 15/08/2025

And followed that up with a few words about cake. markboulton.co.uk/journal/cake/

markboulton.co.uk

Cake - Mark Boulton

Mark Boulton @markboulton.co.uk · 15/08/2025

I wrote about crit today as I revive my Handbook series of posts. markboulton.co.uk/journal/crit/

markboulton.co.uk

Crit - Mark Boulton

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Mark Boulton @markboulton.co.uk · 14/08/2025

Oh no! I have high hopes!

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Just digging around a four year old Eleventy build of my blog going ‘huh?’. I reckon I may have to zero the desk if I’m going to rebuild this thing (Zeroing the desk: markboulton.co.uk/journal/zero...)

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In my ‘shake up my blog and get back to reading and writing’ renewed energy I’ve now tweaked my reading workflow. RSS, for things I like, save to Instapaper, IFTTT to raindrop with a specific collection, Eleventy builds from the raindrop API. Enjoying some tinkering.

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I went to the Maldives. I read, ate, snorkelled. That was literally it. For 10 days.

Mark Boulton @markboulton.co.uk · 10/08/2025

I second Andy’s recommendation. I did this last week (and last year) and realised I hadn’t really had a relaxing holiday since 2004.

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In my ‘I’m going to redesign my blog’ frame of mind I’ve been going back through some blog posts of mine. Weeknotes, in particular. I’m going to start writing them again. Nice to look back, but also a really good habit if I make it stick again.

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Mark Boulton @markboulton.co.uk · 08/08/2025

Well, it's only taken me about two years to get back on the RSS horse. Blank slate. Who are your go-to reads?

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Mark Boulton @markboulton.co.uk · 05/08/2025

After all these years I’ve finally bought a little rice cooker. Game changer. Why? Perfectly cooked rice every time. Dead easy setup. Rice is healthy and good for your gut (even white rice, but, yes, less than brown).

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Reposted by Mark Boulton

Mark Hurrell @markhurrell.bsky.social · 29/07/2025

microsoft paper essentially says that AI is best used for management and sales tasks not creative or specialist ones arxiv.org/pdf/2507.07935

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All the feels about Ozzy. The world owes him a great debt. His band launched the careers of thousands and inspired probably hundreds of thousands to pick up their first instrument, me included. Rest up.

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Le Tour on tv whilst I’m finishing up work ahead of holidays. Today they climb up Mont Ventoux. I climbed it a few times in 2018. Hard but not the hardest climb I did. Galibier was harder for me. Valley of Tears in the canaries was the worst. Long, hot, fiercely steep, remote, no shade.

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It really is. What’s interesting as well is just the convergence of book cover design. Every book looks like a colourful death metal album.

No, I didn’t! Excellent. Thank you for the recommendation!

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Mark Boulton @markboulton.co.uk · 21/07/2025

Browsing Goodreads for a fairly recent excellent fantasy novel/series and 95% are Romantasy. I get that they are commercially successful, but has there been any really good fantasy published in the last 12 months that doesn’t look like some Twilight/50 Shades/GOT hybrid?

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I don’t know what part of my stupid lizard brain thinks it’s acceptable to get anxious about a connecting flight two days out. Brains, eh?

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I think they are building atop mud or shifting sands or something

When it comes to design, sometimes, the hardest thing to do is stop trying to reinvent. To stop scrapping things. To stop making the next V2 vision. Restraint and gentle refinement is sorely missing in tech.

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In fact, no it’s not. Go back ten years and Sonos app and hardware were superb imo. Simple. They worked. Progress was on refinement of the experience. Not breaking it. What is happening now is the result of: 1. A lack of leadership continuity. New leaders come in and change things. And…

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