Jan 18, 2026 Weeknote

#52 - From Dublin

I don't know what this is - but found on my commute this week...

Updates

A full year of weeknotes! It's been an interesting experiment, and a great way to try and focus the main writing in my newsletter. Writing these words each week feels more akin to writing an old fashioned blog, and I've enjoyed it.

This week has been busy at work, it's annual review time and the load for a manager is quite heavy for a couple of weeks. I'm grateful for the team that surrounds me for the support as we power through.

I spent a fair bit of my spare time working on startwriting.now, my new site to encourage people to start journaling. It's live and ready, and fully working the way I want, although I have a list of feature requests to work on.

I also devoted some time to restructure the homepage of this site, and cleaning up some of the pages to make it a bit clearer.

Finally. I wrote and posted a review of the Nick Clegg book which i recently enjoyed, How to Save the Internet.

Reading. Every One Still Here by Liadan Ní Chuinn - an excellent book of Short Stories from an Irish Author.

Recommended Music

There are people that say that politics doesn;t belong in music, and there is another camp that says everything IS politics. I suspect that Jason Williamson and Andrew Fearn are in the latter camp if their latest is anything to go by.

Thirteen new tracks find lyrics at their most cutting, telling the story of slow-burn decline towards armageddon.

The instrumentation and production sounds a little more polished this time, and there are some excellent collaborations - first with an unhinged Gwendoline Christie, and then Sue Tompkins, Aldous Harding and rapper Snowy.

It's brutal in places, and by no means a relaxing listen - but it demands your time.

Highly Recommended