I recently watched The Great Hack on Netflix, a documentary exploring the impact on Digital Rights of the recent scandals affecting the social media titans. I enjoyed the film and found it quite eye-opening in some ways. It confirmed my ambition to be Facebook free. Yet I also thought it… Read More »On Digital Rights and Societal Change: The Great Hack
I recently applied to join an organisation which provides freelance writing services. Part of the application process was to produce a short essay answering a question about freedom. The question was this; Throughout history, men have been willing to fight and die for freedom. Why? It got me thinking. Really… Read More »Why Do People Fight for Freedom?
I am now thirty days into the fifty-day introductory daily meditation course on the Waking Up app and the results are fascinating. The app is the product of the neuroscientist, philosopher and public intellectual Sam Harris. Whilst I’m not really a fan of the ardent atheist line of his thinking,… Read More »An Ineffable Experience with the Waking Up Meditation App
Britain is Soon to Leave the EU Britain is set to come crashing out of the European Union (EU) in a matter of days or weeks. A friend asked me at the weekend what my opinion on Brexit was and I had to admit I didn’t have a clear answer.… Read More »On Brexit : Why Britain Leaving the EU is Bad
Learning to eat less Sugar the Hard Way I’ve always had a sweet tooth and now it’s come back to bite me. I am suffering for something that (despite my other half’s loving assurance to the contrary) is pretty much all my own fault – a deep filling in one… Read More »On the Evils of Sugar and Feeling Pain
Musical Messages on My Mind A short while ago I had a tune stuck in my head. It went something like whop-whop whop-ding, whop-whop whop-ding and had to be some kind of dance music, but I just couldn’t put a name to the tune or remember what the rest of… Read More »On Parenting : Changes, the Slow Day, and the Timer
My son was 100 days old on Friday. My Chinese in-laws dressed him up in gold bracelets and a red and gold chain necklace, for the first time in his short life he looked bling. It made me think of how we make not only all of the big decisions… Read More »Reflections on a more Responsible Life and using Trello
Last Sunday was the first day I got out of the house and went on a run since the birth of my son three months ago; a period of time, which, despite everyone telling me has gone really fast has felt like at least a year. I managed fifteen minutes… Read More »Establishing Goals and Creating a Life Plan
The importance of symbols cannot be underestimated. A good logo is part and parcel of any visual branding strategy. Well, I’m going to make something like a logo for a new project of mine, which involves sending my thoughts out into the world at a much slower pace than the… Read More »Generating a Symbol in the Age of The Internet : A Rare Call to Action
We all have an internal ranking system where we put the happenings in our lives into hierarchies of importance to us, which includes rating the profundity of certain events. Specific and circumstantial happenings come to determine how we structure the narratives we use to present ourselves to the world. They… Read More »Early Parenting and the Importance of Coincidences
An Extra Day This week just gone by, I felt like I needed an extra day to get everything done. I was toying with the idea and wondered what such a day would be called. I settled on the rather boring name ‘Newday’, and decided it would come after Friday, and could… Read More »Being where you are and Incremental Improvement
The Start of a Young Family Today marked one calendar month since the birth of my firstborn son. It’s been a ride so far, up and down, peaks and troughs, a blur of broken sleep and an overload of chores. The first two weeks were certainly the most challenging –… Read More »Entering Parenthood and a New Mindfulness