Born Sleepy

Sipping From The Fire Hose

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In the last few years I’ve been switching away from the more corporate social networks, and trying to move to more open, less commercial ones that have less intrusive algorithms behind them.

Westminster

Sat, 25 Aug 2018 13:25:00 +0000

I see pro-independence¹ rhetoric all the time at the moment in social media posts, which refers to “Westminster” as if it’s some sort of sinister cabal. Usually implied, if not explicit, is that Westminster is populated by “the English”, who are an army of clones that speak with one voice.

These posts often carry a good underlying message - that you should question the motives that lie behind what you read and view, and that there is ignorance and bias at work, even that there is a small elite who do not have the interests of the majority at heart - which is why good people tend to repost them.

However, I worry deeply about this sort of simplification.

That’s Scottish independence, for my non-Scottish friends :) ↩

Culture

Thu, 02 Aug 2018 13:38:00 +0000

I believe that everything worth celebrating about humanity is universal.

It’s not tied to a particular place, a particular language, or a particular set of people.

Technical Blog

Tue, 03 Jul 2018 17:50:00 +0000

I’ve been pretty bad at blogging any personal / political stuff recently.

There are various reasons for this, but the fact that I’ve generally been taking a break from most of my (previously quite enthusiatic) social media interaction may have something to do with it.

I have however been doing some sporadic technical blogging.

These days, those posts live over at Elegant Chaos.

Here’s the latest blog post, with an update on what I’ve been tinkering with (in between watching World Cup games… and playing Witcher 3… and various other distractions…).

Status Update

Fri, 20 Apr 2018 13:38:34 +0000

When I stopped work on Sketch, one of my resolutions was to blog a bit more.

I’m not doing very well on that front!

Stepping Back

Tue, 27 Feb 2018 23:31:01 +0000

Self-knowledge is an elusive beast.

By nature I’m an introvert. I don’t want to be the centre of attention, and I don’t like conflict.

Unfortunately, I’m also someone who tends to analyse stuff. I take things apart, try to figure out how they work, and to solve problems. Whether or not I really ought to doesn’t seem to matter - it just happens. Look, here I go, doing it again.

Moving Things Around

Thu, 01 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

When I originally created the Elegant Chaos site, it had a “news” section, which over time mutated into a blog.

At a later date I realised that personal things and work things were getting a bit muddled up, so I split off the personal stuff to this blog instead.

In doing so, I envisaged the Elegant Chaos blog going back to essentially just being a “news” service, and indeed most of the posts there were just announcements about software releases.

At the moment there aren’t really any software releases, however. In addition, this, which was supposed to be my personal blog, still ended up carrying a lot of technical posts, as well as completely non-technical ones.

So I’ve decided to re-organise things once again. It’ll keep you all on your toes, if nothing else.

As a result I’ve moved back most of the technical posts to the Elegant Chaos blog, and henceforth decree it as the place I’ll write about the technical things I’m doing. Born Sleepy will very much remain active, but will be restricted to non-technical things.

I expect I’ll end up changing it all again in a while, but let’s see how long this plan remains in force!

Facebook

Thu, 01 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A friend pointed out to me the other day that the Facebook link (at the bottom of this page, and every other page on the site), was wrong.

It wasn’t broken, more’s the pity, but it was pointing at the wrong person. Awkward!

It’s fixed now.

For the avoidance of doubt: this is not me. On the other hand, this is me.

Glad we got that cleared up…

Bohemian

Thu, 14 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve decided that it’s time for a change, and to move on from my work with Bohemian, so from the end of this year I’ll be footloose and fancy-free.

I intend to have a break, take a bit of time to recharge my creative batteries, and then look for new challenges.

It was 2012 when I started contracting (part-time at first) on Sketch, and a lot has happened since. We’ve gone from having just the two original founders, to a staff of 20+ great people.

It’s been intense, rewarding, challenging and fun, and I’ll always be grateful to Pieter and Emanuel for giving me the opportunity to work on such a great product, and to help to build such a great team. I wish them continued success and all the best for the future.

For me personally though - I’m really excited at the prospect of starting a new chapter in 2018. Watch this space!

Democracy

Thu, 23 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

In these crazy times, people have some seriously messed up ideas about democracy.

Here are some things that are not democracy:

winning a vote by lying about what your opponents have done in the past ¹ ² ³
winning a vote by making wild, unsubstantiated claims about what your opponents intend to do ¹ ²
winning a vote by lying about what you have done in the past ¹
winning a vote by making wild, unsubstantiated promises, and then failing to fulfil any (or many) of them ² ⁴ ⁵
winning a vote by framing the question in a way that doesn’t allow people to choose reasonable alternatives ³ ⁴ ⁵
winning a vote by framing the question in such a vague way that nobody can say what the result actually means ⁴
using the result of a vote won using one of these methods to justify never holding a similar vote again ³ ⁴ ⁵

If democracy means anything at all, then it requires informed choice.

Informed choice requires two things: being given an actual meaningful choice, and being given the relevant facts.

When any form of lying, obfuscation or outright fraud is involved in the win, then the winner (and their supporters) do not get to claim the moral high ground.

When any form of incompetent framing is involved, the winner (and their supporters) do not get to claim some sort of finality.

see US presidential election ↩ ↩² ↩³
see UK general election ↩ ↩² ↩³
see UK referendum on proportional representation ↩ ↩² ↩³
see UK referendum on Brexit ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
see Scottish referendum on independence ↩ ↩² ↩³