Blog on Francis Irving
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Latest posts
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Half of the West Highland Way in photos
Day 1. Fire-sitters and Carbeth Hutters Day 2. Conic Hill and beach camping Day 3. Difficult terrain up the east of Loch Lomond Day 4. Too much forestry and roads, so just a coo
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36 talks about radical land policy
Henry and I have been running Land Talks since the start of last year. It’s a beautiful event - upstairs in a cosy wood panelled room of the Sekforde Pub in Farringdon, London. Food in the break, tightly timed with auto-advancing slides . Ends on time. A lovely community, of a…
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Why I've changed my view on AI in the last 3 months
Just under three months ago I wrote a post in which I explain that I agree with most points of view on AI, and that the one that is most right depends on what happens. Since then, a couple of things have changed my view as to what will most likely happen and when. 1. AIs are…
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Ursula Le Guin is the only person who understands what is going on
A man with a five year old in a push chair interrupted me. It was a few weeks ago, in a coffee shop, I was finishing a volume of Ursula Le Guin short stories . “How old do you think my kids need to be before I get them to start reading Le Guin?” We agreed she could be quite…
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Vibe coding personal apps in mid-2026
There are a few mobile apps that I’ve wanted for a while, and that are relatively speaking just for me. Toucan Music showing artwork Places - When people recommend restaurants or cafes to me, I’ve for a long time put them in a Google Maps list. It’s annoying in various ways, for…
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On the frustration of agreeing with everyone about AI
Conversations about AI are febrile and have been for a while now. Everyone has different views. It’s frustrating for me because not only do I empathise with all of you, in some ways I have every major position in my mind. I find myself impossible, messed up. Niller-nally,…
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Instalamb, my browser plugin to control Instagram
Lots of dancers, civic society organisations, artists, musicians, clowns are only on Instagram. Unfortunately, my mind finds the platform distracting and overwhelming - for my own accessibilty I need to tame it. I prototyped a web browser plugin for this in my week making…
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My mind sampling results
One of the projects in my week long hackathon was to make a system to sample my own mind with a random alarm. This was crudely based on Hurlburt’s Descriptive Experience Sampling - there are lots of papers about that method, for an introduction see this overview BBC article or…
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Announcing "Mindful Media Club"
I’m starting a meetup / online commnunity to share tips on skillful use of social media. Things like browser plugins that let you customise YouTube, tips on settings, social practices like how to form a healthy active WhatsApp group for a particular purpose. And so on. Sign up…
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A week making something each day
As a challenge, last week I made five things, one each day. Each had to be finished in some sense, and preferably published. This is what I made and what I learnt! Monday - Godot game My goal was to learn Godot enough to write some kind of video game and publish it, all in one…
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Netatmo smart thermostat! How much gas I saved last winter, and how to automate it to turn off when out (not using IFTTT)
This post has two sections, one about gas prices and energy savings, the other about Android automation and the Netatmo API. 1. What a smart thermostat is like and how much money I saved Last year, with gas prices going up, I decided to get smart radiator valves. I’d thought the…
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The little differences between Android and iOS in 2023
These days I alternate mobile operating system. Partly because as an app-making professional I strongly feel I need to understand both, and partly because it slightly irritates people who are die-hard fans of one or the other. I don’t particularly love either - a plague on both…
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What is high-quality about the data that trained generative AI?
Our brains have 100 trillion connections. Large language models have up to half a trillion, a trillion at most. Yet GPT-4 knows hundreds of times more than any one person does. Geoffrey Hinton , deep learning pioneer The recent surge in interest in generative AI was sparked by…
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This kind of rosy yellow glow in my head
A book review of “Describing Inner Experience? Proponent Meets Skeptic” by Russell T. Hurlburt and Eric Schwitzgebel (2007) A couple of years ago I realised I didn’t have a visual imagination . This was ultimately quite inspiring - it’s led me to ask maybe a hundred people about…
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Art I enjoyed in 2022 - top eight
To my surprise this list is television heavy - I didn’t find any incredible new board games, and I was disappointed in most video games. It’s somewhat in order - my favourite is roughly last. Thanks everyone who recommended these to me - you know who you are! I’m not going to…
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On intuition's relationship to rationality via language
A three year old draft blog post I just found. Feels worth publishing - the improvements in AI since then if anything make it clearer, and all the “right now” caveats justified. It’s better to start by thinking of us as pattern matching devices first. Not simple ones - such as…
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Blind-sided
It was a rushing, a burning, an all-things-are-change, a compulsion. I was torn up for three days or was it two weeks, except the long moments when I just forgot. Intertially, suddenly remembering, half weeping, half positively reconstructing my own construction of who I am and…
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Pressure cooked split black urad dhal
This is a recipe from Phil the Dhal, a friend who has been experimenting with pressure cooking Indian food. I’m posting it here so it doesn’t get lost. Ask if you want this just to be the first of a series! First pressure cook of split urad dhal was a success. Needs some…
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Brainstorming a better YouTube recommendation algorithm
This year, the public narrative around Facebook has switched - the company feels on the defensive in lots of ways. I think it deserves to be - with billions of users, it is long past time for them to spend their energy on reducing harm, rather than on more growth. There’s a bit…
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A cycle home along the river
A tasty early morning breakfast with friends in town, and time to cycle home. A sunny day, so take the route along the river! Crossing the road by the docks. The sky impeccable. Delicious light of being away from the tropics, strong and clear, but not overly harsh. The dome of…