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A surprisingly detailed identification guide to the snakes of South (and Southern) Africa, including diagnostics, multiple photos, species ranges, and (usefully) relative danger to …

A fascinating Twitter thread detailing the 2020 US elections in the style that Western journalists report on African political stories. Really interesting to see how much the language used changes …

For my 29th birthday, my parents bought us a meal at a South African restaurant on the North Bank called High Timber. For several months we had tried, and failed, to secure a booking only to discover …

When I rewilding farming schemes I don't think of the Karoo. The Landmark Foundation are trying to get that to change. The idea is simple enough: the Karoo grassland has evolved to persist around …

I've been fascinated by the Quagga Project since I was a kid, back when they were (rumoured) to be keeping a small herd of the creatures at the University of Cape Town, visible on drives around the …

Ah, the good old "Gouty-Stem Tree" of Australia! Actually, I honestly had no idea that Baobab's had reached the Great Land of Oz; I have (mistakenly) always assumed they were endemic to Africa, but …

For about two years now I've become increasingly annoyed at my PC screen. The left-most edge has been "clipped", missing about 2mm across all programs. I'm not sure when the issue first occurred, I …

Month in media is an archived project, now with a permanent home in the Reviews section. Films, TV shows, books, video games, and other media watched, read, or played in January 2017.

It's that odd time of year, the bit between Christmas and New Year where time doesn't really flow like you expect it to. No one knows what day of the week it is and everything seems to be …

Having just got back from Sidmouth Folk Festival, I wanted to jot down some of my thoughts about the eleven artists we managed to see whilst the music was still firmly playing in my ears. From the traditional to the modern "nu-folk", we certainly had a great spread of styles, instruments and traditions. Some might even say it was folk'ing awesome!

An amalgamation of all the data you get fed at the end of a year. From Spotify Wrapped, to Google tracking, to my own beer journal, a look back over 2019 from a (mildly) data-centred viewpoint.

When we got back from Christmas we had the normal stack of letters sitting on the doormat. Most were either later Christmas cards (yay!) or pointless real-world spam (boo!), but one piece of …

Senongo Akpem’s Cross-Cultural Design has been on my radar a lot lately; I probably should pick it up. In the meantime, A List Apart have released a little subsection with some …

Notes from the fully remote React Summit 2020 (or at least the talks I tuned in for). Lots covered, from static-site generators and the Jamstack through to React state management and accessibility. What a fun day!

Notes from the 2020 Jamstack Conf. Some interesting dives in the Jamstack community and various applications of Jamstack technologies, with tweet threads as usual.

A series of articles addressing the argument that there are simply too many damned dinosaurs in some assemblages. Darren has put together 8 separate pieces dissecting each of the most …

Reading notes from Stephen Fry in …

We're almost at the midway point of 2020, so I thought it would be a good moment to take a look at my New Year's challenges list and see how things were going.

There's some really interesting/disturbing stuff here. Cuvier worked on academic papers outlining biological divisions within races – i.e. racist pseudoscience – whilst De la Beche (the first …

I've become more than a little besotted with the islands of Tristan da Cunha, an incredibly remote British Territory about halfway between South Africa and Argentina. Whilst the main island of …

We're still avoiding public transport (haven't been on a train or bus since early March at this point 🤯) so after getting an invite to see some friends we ended up walking to, around, and from Kew …

It's a long weekend, but we hadn't planned anything special. An early invite up to Scotland with my parents felt a little too risky, but a follow-up suggestion to head over to South London to catch …

... otherwise known as the Great Vulture Failure of 2020 …

What even is "whiteness". Is it skin colour? Not really. Genetics? Race precedes genetics or even evolution. A vague concept of "European" descent? What about Roma people, or (for a lot of history) …

As far as years go, 2021 held some pretty big surprises and featured some fairly grown-up decisions. Life will never be the same again...

Specifically, the 6th (and 7th) of August, 2023; the day we tied the proverbial knot.

2023 was another BIG year in terms of, well, everything. We travelled all over the world. We attended scores of major events. And we got married. It's taken a while to write up, as a result!

A look back over the twelve months that made up 2023, via the lens of the data captured about my life.

Looking back over 2024, through the lens of the data I captured (or had captured about me).