iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Getting older sucks. The only benefit is that it beats the alternative

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

I’m so happy that my primary games console is an @evercade.co.uk VS. Physical game media for the win!

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Thanks Cuff! Nice to know I have at least one reader :) Still Walking Randomly will probably have too many articles about cats, getting old and the good old days for readers of the old site.

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

I didn't realize it was national writing day! Earlier today I started a new personal writing project stillwalkingrandomly.com/posts/hello-... where the aim is to 'Just Write' so this is very serendipitous. I've ordered the book. Thanks for the discount code.

stillwalkingrandomly.com

Hello, World

The Road Made by Walking Almost 20 years ago, I started a blog called WalkingRandomly following a pub conversation with Matt Haworth. Matt was leaving The University of Manchester, where we both worke...

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Them: OMG Mike! You look terrible. So tired. Are you OK? Me: I'm fine! I just got a 4K webcam

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Did you try in a newer version of MATLAB? Is it working now

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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 03/06/2026

This one hurts. I've really enjoyed Tim's work in the past But let's just be totally bloody clear here: every single person using a text fabrication engine to replace their work, research and writing skills: THIS MOMENT IS COMING FOR YOU TOO It is truly just a matter of time. It's inevitable ⏱️

I recently wrote a piece critical of Matt Chun's essay about the shootings at Bondi
Beach. In it, I attributed a quote to him that were not his words. This was an egregious
mistake and I apologise unreservedly. At his request, I have removed the piece, but I
wanted to make sure everyone here was aware of the error.
I really have no excuse other than my own carelessness and a degree of hubris. I used
AI to search for other examples Of how people had responded to Chun's piece, asking
for links and key quotes. It brought up mainly mainstream pieces from Australia but
some Reddit links, and links from overseas sources. I also asked it to summarise the
piece, not in lieu of reading it but in addition. (I had first read it after reading Guy
Rundle's comments about it.) I clicked through on some of the links. I noted down the
quote, wrote a drop in paragraph using it, and added it to the draft at some point. That
I didn't double-check it or recognise it as not part of the original essay is entirely on
me.
So, yes, this is a case Of AI generating a false quote, but the issue is that I should've
been far more careful in checking it and I am deeply sorry, and embarrassed, that I
didn't do it to the extent necessary. Obviously, we are all aware of this issue of false

So, yes, this is a case of AI generating a false quote, but the issue is that I should've
been far more careful in checking it and I am deeply sorry, and embarrassed, that I
didn't do it to the extent necessary. Obviously, we are all aware of this issue of false
quotes and attributions with AI, but I had enough hubris to think such a thing would
never get past me. It did.
When Matt Chun first contacted me, I initially responded by saying "It came from a
email discussion with people I know and generally trust and I should've been much
more careful." I was pretty sure I knew what the issue was, but this was a fob to give
me time to think about it. Obviously, I should've just said, let me look into it, but I
actually thought that sounded worse, more like a fob than the false reason I gave.
That's not an excuse, just the thought process in the moment. I also apologise for this.
I will leave further discussion of the the problems with using AI in this way for later.
For now, I really want to make clear the error and to apologise publicly to Matt Chun
for the false quote and the initially misleading response. As I say, I have no excuse
beyond my own carelessness and hubris.
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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

I'm starting to think about SC26. Any of you guys going and want to meet up for coffee/beer? Maybe do a thing together at a BoF? Joint Demo? Hang out?

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Sung Kim @sungkim.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

MATLAB Agentic Toolkit MathWorks have released the MATLAB Agentic Toolkit which will significantly improve the life of anyone who is using MATLAB and Simulink with agentic AI systems such as Claude Code or OpenAI Codex. Blog: blogs.mathworks.com/matlab/2026/... Repo: github.com/matlab/matla...

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

With the squats: you’re strong and have broken code Without squats: you’re weak and have broken code

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

MATLAB 2026a has been released. There's a tour of some of the highlights over at The MATLAB Blog blogs.mathworks.com/matlab/2026/...

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Which podcasts? Sounds interesting

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

It’s about $9 a gallon in the UK.

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

We are so far away from each other Steve!

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

Zooming right in, you can see that I am part of a cluster called 'HPC and Supercomputing professionals'. Zooming out, it's fun to see what communities are clustered near us such as 'Ceramic artists and potters'

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

Happy Valentines from MATLAB to you. blogs.mathworks.com/matlab/2026/...

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

I just bench pressed 120kg for the first time in my life. I’m 48. I’m happy!

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

Interesting article on AI Coding Assistants where the author suggests that they are getting worse and that maybe its partially the fault of all the newbies using them leading to bad training data. spectrum.ieee.org/ai-coding-de... What's your experience?

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Ars Technica @arstechnica.com · 29/01/2026

The free AI-powered workspace for scientists has drawn immediate skepticism from researchers who fear the tool will accelerate the already overwhelming flood of low-quality papers into scientific journals.

arstechnica.com

New OpenAI tool renews fears that “AI slop” will overwhelm scientific research

New "Prism" workspace launches just as studies show AI-assisted papers are flooding journals with diminished quality.

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

I live in the UK but was in Boston last week. Man alive that place is cold!

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

My desktop PC is 5 years old and showing its age. What do you suggest I look at for a new machine for scientific computing? The current specs are - Intel i7-11700 with 32GB RAM - NVIDIA RTX 3070 GPU - 1TB SSD + 1TB HDD disk space

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

We will give it more chances then! Currently just assuming that we are clueless noobs at using it

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

I caved in and bought an air fryer. So far I am deeply unimpressed. Deeply! Hoping that its because I haven’t figured out how to use it properly yet and not because it was an overrated piece of tat.

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 13/12/2025

I have done absolutely nothing today! It was glorious and I highly recommend it.

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 07/12/2025

This article from The Guardian discusses many of my own concerns about AI right now: Artificial intelligence research has a slop problem, academics say: ‘It’s a mess’ www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

theguardian.com

Artificial intelligence research has a slop problem, academics say: ‘It’s a mess’

AI research in question as author claims to have written over 100 papers on AI that one expert calls a ‘disaster’

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 06/12/2025

My current use for ChatGPT is translating the gen Z slang that my step daughter uses when she texts me

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

I asked a few people that question at SC25….the ones standing underneath banners saying ‘AI factory blah blah’ I still don’t know!

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

Needed to do a computer thing so opened my notes file HowToDoThing.md it contained one line: TODO: Write detailed notes about thing. Sometimes I hate lazy, past Mike!

media.tenor.com

homer simpson from the simpsons is driving a car and says d' oh

ALT: homer simpson from the simpsons is driving a car and says d' oh

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Andrew Jones (hpcnotes) @hpcnotes.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

In what is now a solid tradition, the most important post-SC event ... publication of Glenn's SC notes! #HPC #SC25 #supercomputing #HPCignites

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Len @lendot.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

OK, this turned out to be a totally unexpected and really cool restoration technique. Physicists! MATLAB! Transfer film! Laser cutter! www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1vm...

youtube.com

Retouching Made Easy. No, Really!

YouTube video by Baumgartner Restoration

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

#SC25 was the best one I’ve ever attended….and not just because I got to meet Thor.

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Anne Koelewijn @drannek.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

Our toolbox got published in the @joss-openjournals.bsky.social!

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

If you’re in St Louis for #SC25 I highly recommend going up the arch. Here’s one of the views from the top where you can also see its shadow

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 15/11/2025

Have spent most of the day travelling to #SC25 and am just about to start the final leg. Taking off from Atlanta on my way to St Louis

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

Are you going to be at #SC25? Want to connect with a large subset of the #HPC community with one click? The #HPC starter pack is what you need! bsky.app/starter-pack...

bsky.app

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

I'm from MathWorks. Yes, this is normal and expected. When I teach my High Performance Computing in MATLAB courses, its one of the things I mention : don't co 'clear all' It is because of JIT compilation, function caching and so on. I'll see if I can find a reference. If not, I'll write one.

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

MathWorks release MATLAB MCP Core server In the video below you are watching Claude read a file on my local machine and use my local install of MATLAB to analyze it. Claude writes the MATLAB code,puts it on my machine and runs it using my copy of MATLAB Article: blogs.mathworks.com/matlab/2025/...

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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 29/10/2025

"We were raised to believe over the decades that machines will outgrow us[, but] automatons are not consuming the globe brilliantly. They are not outsmarting us—they are overfitting on us." Snehamol Joseph & Jeena Joseph (2025) Digital decay: when AI eats its own homework doi.org/10.1007/s001...

Unless AI is kept in check, it will not only eat its own homework but it will also eat its legibility. We will lose the skill to distinguish a composition of a type of work, a deliberate work, against a hybrid work, a piece of work, an argument, fabricated out of past fragments. Audiences will be conditioned to believe that good enough is good enough, until even mediocrity will seem like plenty. Culture will be turned into monocropped and deprived of nutrients. The creative commons will be exhausted. And as is soil when it is overfarmed, once lost, it will not be easily recovered.

Let us not flatter ourselves. It is not that AI will soon surpass us in thinking, it is more likely that it will surpass us in boring. When we leave machines to eat their own homework we are not training a generation of geniuses but beige. The cry is straight: do not confuse abundance with richness, fluency with thought, content with creation. Surprise still matters. Originality is not luxury but lifeline. Unless we defend it, we will drown in competence without creation.

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

We also support and ship solvers from SUNDIALS blogs.mathworks.com/matlab/2024/... Which of those 50 solvers are useful to you and why?

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

Noting that they are using MATLAB 2019a there. I'm not sure how it would affect those benchmark results but there has been a lot of work done on what MATLAB can do with ODEs since then.

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Steve Eddins @steveeddins.com · 16/10/2025

New blog post: Improved Registration Algorithm for IMREGCORR Substantial improvements for function IMREGCORR, which registers image pairs using similarity, rigid, and translation transformations. #matlab www.steveeddins.com/blog/matlab/...

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Juliette Wade @juliettewade.com · 15/10/2025

Zoom in on that Venn diagram.

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

-batch already doesn't load the whole house but we could still make it load less. Doing this is on the list

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Mike Croucher @walkingrandomly.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

Don't do this.... matlab -nodisplay -nosplash -nodesktop -r "myscript;exit" Do this matlab -nodisplay -batch myscript Here's why blogs.mathworks.com/matlab/2025/... #MATLAB #HPC

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