I justified buying an iPad Pro based partly on Procreate. I also write on the iPad and wanted to future-proof it by getting a good one, but I could have done all that with a cheaper model. (Games and reading comics might be a factor, but I will pretend they’re not.) I had an iPad…
I love productivity methods and Dr Huberman is one of the big names in the biz. I think I spend too much time searching for these things because I’m innately lazy, but feel bad about it. Searching for these clips feels kind of productive. I was browsing YouTube a couple of months ago and stumbled…
The Singularity is imminent and we are all potentially doomed. Or on the verge of a golden age. Some experts think this may even happen this year. Is this the general consensus and should we all panic? Answers – no, and up to you. Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, reckons AI might be smarter…
I’m always striving to be more productive so I can laze around and have more free time. My quest to be a gentleman of leisure involves quite a lot of technology. Most of the apps I use are related to writing and note-taking, but today, I am going to discuss what I ram down my…
I used to do a lot of ghostwriting, and it has its pros and cons. I should preface this piece by noting that, as I have written 100s of ghostwritten articles over the years, I am generally ok with it, but am now easing off a bit for multiple reasons I will go into. Some…
I have been binge-watching Silicon Valley on HBO Max, and it has made me want to code. I think I am having a mid-life crisis, which might be related, but at 52, I have decided to learn Python and HTML. I am such a novice that I don’t even know what type of coding I…
I have been paid per-word or per-hour for about five years now. In my previous bouts of freelance writing, dating back decades (I’m old), it was the same. For writers, the two options are the most obvious and easy way to work out how much your work is worth. I used to calculate my hourly…
HBO’s The Penguin is a brutal, stylish, and unflinchingly dark crime saga that delivers everything I hoped it would after watching The Batman. It is set just a week after the events of The Batman (2022), and while watching that isn’t essential, you might wonder about some flashbacks and motivations. It shouldn’t really matter, but, I mean, you should…
Or a pittance. Time will tell… The popularity of short stories has waxed and waned over the decades. They have always been around as myths and fables like the Arthurian tales or 1001 Arabian Nights. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales are essentially a collection of short stories. Short stories really rose in parallel with the modern novel…
And how to make an AI assistant I use AI to cure my colossal procrastination but don’t use it for any writing – you can probably tell. I was a journalist for 30 years, which has given me vague confidence in my ability to string a sentence together. The nature of the work also helped…
Plus, is the show any good? I just finished watching The White Lotus Season 3 and loved it. As I mentioned before, tons of friends hassled me into watching the show because it was set in Thailand, where I live. I’ve been here about 12 years and have been asked about how realistic it all…
As the latest series of The White Lotus is set in Thailand, where I currently live, friends have pestered me incessantly to watch the show. Even an old fellow I play backgammon against on the internet told me off for not watching it. To be fair, I had always wanted to watch The White Lotus…
Scheduled Tasks is a new function on ChatGPT, which I have been playing around with recently. It is still in Beta, but it works really well. It looks at first glance like it might be like a reminder or to-do app, but it is a lot more. Or at least, it is capable of more…
I listen to tunes when I write. This is often to drown out the noise of fellow humans, but I also really like it and it can induce flow state. And everyone loves a good flow state. It also goes without saying that nearly everyone loves music. I just checked and found that apparently 3%…
I have Dredge and Balatro on my iPad and frankly, they might be causing a productivity problem. I brought this on myself but am actually pretty happy about it. I have a pretty addictive personality and can go all in on something if I find I like it. I’m not talking about things like beer…
I don’t use ChatGPT for writing, as the output is a bit bland. You can probably tell by my garbled syntax. Writing is also my livelihood, and I am mildly resentful of letting an AI do it because then I would just be doing data input. Plus, it scrapes info from people who want to…
I’ve always been weirdly interested in the occult. I blame rock music. (Just kidding – rock rules and hail the darkness!) I recently realised that the last three books I read are all occult-based and think it is a sign. I don’t know what it is a sign of, but in case it’s the need…
Happy Christmas and New Year! If you don’t celebrate either of them, then I hope you have had a good January so far. The New Year always marks a time for renewal, setting goals, and changing aspects of yourself through resolutions. The New Year is rubbish Now that we are a week into 2025, we…
I recently decided to get better at chess. I was on the school team back in the day, but I was the lowest-ranked board, and our side was generally rubbish. I then didn’t play for a couple of decades. Recently, I started playing chess on my iPad and realised I was godawful at it. I…
I hit 100 subscribers on my Intriguing Times Substack yesterday and am pretty damned excited about it. ‘Astonishing’ is admittedly a bit hyperbolic, but it is apparently good for SEO. This is the world we live in now. As you can see from the page above, the publication’s front page now looks more impressive. It’s…