Hello 2024

I feel like the first new post of the year is supposed to be full of my plans and ambitions for the next twelve months. But I haven’t really had a chance to sit and think about any of that yet — due to visitors and things, we’re still in holiday mode to a large extent. But eventually things will settle down. Hopefully.

We don’t have a huge amount on the horizon; only the trip back home to the UK in March, although that’s going to be a big event. Oh, and San Francisco later in the year.

Anyway, for the rest of the year, you can probably expect meandering but still short posts most weekends, the odd technical post here and there, and all the other bits I’ve been moaning on about for the past twenty-one years.

And maybe, come August…something special to celebrate the 20th anniversary of this. YEAH! YEAH!

Christmas Roundup

  • Having not been violently sick for fifteen years, twice in six months seems a little harsh. I don’t really remember much of the Thursday before Christmas except sitting on a couch with a baby in my arms for most of it…
  • I’m never going to consider myself a proper pastry person, but I did manage to come up with and execute a completely different dessert (gingerbread namelaka trees!) in under a day and using only the current content of the pantry. Which wasn’t bad.
  • Maeryn needs to calm down and enjoy being able to crawl before trying to walk. Just give us a few weeks, girl!!
  • (also, a baby grabbing hold of a walker for the first time is terrifying)
  • This may be the first Christmas where I did not watch any TV. Not even The Snowman.
  • Was not expecting the remake of the Relax video in Body Double.
  • Ricky Gervais getting a kicking for his latest tired scribbles is a long-overdue reckoning. Insert obligatory James Acaster link
  • We did not get to see the lights before Cincinnati’s Coney Island closes tonight, so that’s one local attraction (the largest recirculating pool in the world!) that we’ll never see.
  • Buying a load of hardback books makes you less popular when other people have to bring them across the Atlantic.
  • But there’s always more room in the suitcases!

It’s been a very different year. New job, new life. A lot has changed, and will continue to do so as the years roll on. I’m looking forward to it, even as I wince every time Maeryn slips over. I won’t always be there to catch her, but I’ll do my best to make sure she’s got all the tools for getting herself back up.

Happy New Year, everybody…

Books of 2023

Finishing out the year — my round-up of books I read in 2023. Only 68 to last year’s 82, but I think it’s not a bad showing considering that there was a lot going on in 2023. Although the list is bulked out a little by my re-reading of the Red Riding Quartet in November.

Feels like a lot less non-fiction this year as well; not intentional, and the odd bit surfaced here and there throughout the year (see the history of Factory Records that I talked about a couple of months ago), but apparently I’ve had my mind on fiction more than not.

You might notice at the end of December, I go off on a Games Workshop tear. A long time ago, when I was still working as a consultant, I started reading the Horus Heresy books, as they were very easy to read on planes. Of course, this being Games Workshop, the series ballooned into a hilarious 50+ title set explaining in big capital letters to its fanbase “the Emperor was a fool, and the Imperium of Man are not something to admire, you useless idiots”. But I idly went to the Black Library site the other day and saw that the Siege of Terra series was coming to an end. Although I didn’t realise that there’s still a Volume III of the final book to come out next year. So, for those for aren’t keeping count at home, that’s 54 books or so of the main Horus series, which then leads into an eight book series of just the final siege, of which the final book is spread across three separate volumes. They’re masters of dragging this thing out. Anyway, reading the dying embers of a fading dream as the forces of chaos pound on the gates feels like an appropriate way of ushering in 2024…

Free The Mouse

It feels a little unbelievable, but in two weeks and one day, Mickey Mouse will enter the public domain (at least in his Steamboat Willie incarnation). For those of us that joined the internet in the late 1900s[^1], the idea that Disney wouldn’t push to extend the extension granted to copyrights in 1998 is unthinkable. Yet here we are, and both Mickey and Tigger will be able to crossover with Sherlock Holmes and Jay Gatsby in fifteen days.

The family arrives this week on their first direct flight from Heathrow to Cincinnati. It’ll be nice to have a direct link again like we did in Durham - it’s so much easier to just get on one plane at an airport that’s about twenty minutes away compared to having to fly from CVG to a major hub airport (and dealing with that on the way back, too). We shall hopefully be doing the same trip in reverse next March!

I do need to get my head in the festive game, though. It hasn’t quite hit yet this year…

[1]: Gen X/Late Millennial cohort takes 2D6 psychic damage from “the late 1990s”…

Noddy Needs His PRS Cheque

As we come to the fiftieth anniversary of the greatest Christmas song ever created, Tom FreakyTrigger has written up an investigation into the changing of the Guard, as the GlamChristmas era starts to fall out of the Christmas canon, leaving a distinctly American tinge over things. And that’s a little sad. Tom cautions against nostalgia in his piece, and I totally agree, but there is something wonderful about a bunch of Brummies just having a great time on the Top of The Pops set:

I miss the era of Britain which was basically: “We’re crap, but in a funky skillo way”1

Of course, I’m a fine one to talk, given that I left the country and live in the country that has, perhaps due to the information superhighway, retconned the pasts of the Western world across television, music, books, film, video games, and more besides. But Maeryn will at least grow up groaning as I pull out Wizzard for one more go-around every December.

We survived our trip to New York, which sounds a little over the top, but we did get caught in a scary crowd crush on Fifth Avenue, which would be scary enough in normal times, but when you factor in a small baby who’s just woken up in her buggy as around twenty people press into her, it is a little frightening. But we got out of the crush, saw the tree at 30 Rock, and went back off to Brooklyn, and soon somebody was bounding all over the hotel bed like nothing happened. She will get sick of us telling the story when she’s about ten. Although that won’t stop us…


  1. Copyright, oooh, probably Jonathan Nash from Your Sinclair. ↩︎

A Simple Thanksgiving with 30 Components

At the end of every year’s Thanksgiving, Tammy and I resolve to make things more simple next year. And twelve months later, we always forget that and make things difficult for ourselves. Three different types of meat! Tiny pinecone entremets! More people than ever before! A small baby crawling in her play pen1! And yes, as in every year, some things don’t quite work out as planned, but when everybody sits down to the table, there’s enough food for a week and desserts as far as the eye can see. But next year, we’re going to cut back a bit. Honest.

Anyway, a good time was had by all, Maeryn ate some turkey, and now it’s almost time to break out the advent calendars! And really not long before my family comes over the Atlantic to join us for the festive fun…

…but first, New York? We will have a very well-travelled baby by the time she’s one!


  1. I’m trying to make “The Box” happen and set up a backstory of her being in a gang with her cuddly toys, but it’s not sticking just yet… ↩︎

Clean-up on Line 2

This week I unlocked a new achievement of living in America — changing a very full baby’s nappy whilst also on the phone to an insurance company trying to sort out a medication refill (actually, it was the ‘specialist pharmacy’, but the root of the issue was insurance rejection and whatnot). Hurrah for private healthcare and jumping through all the hoops.

My whistlestop trip to Chicago seemed to go well, meeting the rest of the Bookend.AI team and working out our immediate plans for next year and getting read for what we’re going to create in 2024. Which is crazily just around the corner…

(this song in my head the entire trip)

The Thanksgiving insanity has begun in earnest too; 15 savoury dishes, 15 desserts, or: “Ian tries to use as many molds as he bought this year - an impossible task, but he’ll try his best.” Every pot, every pan, every oven, all will be pressed into service as we try to feed nine people until they explode. And then we’ll do it all again next month!

You Worked Earlier!!

A week in research adventures:

  • Spend a fortnight prior with a paper stuck in your head. There has to be a better way to do good thing
  • Take a weekend and fail. But you know it’s in there somewhere
  • Carve out time during the week and on a Thursday afternoon, eureka! you get an example working and finally understand the mysteries of the vLLM KV Cache
  • Thursday evening: plan out the paper in your head. Oh, this is going to be great!
  • Friday: construct a quick eval
  • Friday mid-morning. Yeah, well it worked for that example, didn’t it, sucker boy?
  • Friday afternoon: deep sigh

I still think I can work on the problem and get something marginally useful, but it’s a bit of a rollercoaster. And reminds me why my good friend Sava spends so much time on his evaluations first. I had tried a few variations of the initial sample, sure, but not sending 5000 different ones through the model and I paid a high price for my hubris.

(I still haven’t given up, mind you. Because it would be quite nice if I can find a way of making it work)

How did the year just…run out? I’m in Chicago this week for an all-hands meeting at New Company (which currently is a lot easier to organize than at Old Company), and the the next week is Thanksgiving, and then it’s December! I don’t even have enough time to put together a proper dessert menu, let alone make it…though that won’t stop me trying, obviously.

Living In America: Passport Photo Edition

One thing that is quite different over here opposed to the UK (& Ireland, which is somewhat pertinent to my situation) is that you don’t really find a lot of photobooths here. Back in Britain, most largish supermarkets will have one somewhere in the shop. Hence adverts like this:

In the last decade, the photobooths have changed a little in that you can now get a download code to go with the pictures. And this download code can be used when obtaining/renewing a passport digitally.

Over here, things seem to be a little different, which I’m guessing is due to the US passport system dragging their feet on things a little. Which is to say that I been around UPS, FedEx, and Staples shops and not one of them will give me a digital copy. So today we’re going to go rogue and basically beg them to allow us to take a picture in front of their white balance screen. And then we’re going to paint all the flat walls in the house white so we never have to do this again.

Hallowe’en ended up being…snowed out? We just had some flurries for about forty minutes, but it was enough to reduce my visitors down from the hordes of last year to two groups. I felt bad for the first group who arrived very early and therefore didn’t get a lot of sweets versus the group that came around 8pm. I still have so many sweets left. But you always have to prepare for the potential of high traffic! Turning children away makes you a monster!

Finally, RC Cola went odd.

The Turning

The leaves are red, gold, brown, and falling all other the place. It’s going to freeze in the next few days. I have started working on my plans for 25 desserts at Christmas. Winter is definitely coming. And that means I don’t have a lot of time left for ordering the season’s mold and chocolate requirements! BakeDeco should have a VIP section, that’s all I’m saying.

We are also booked for travelling to Britain next year! We’ll be coming over in March to celebrate Maeryn’s first birthday. She’s getting in a lot of travel considering she’s not even a year old yet…