2025-11-15 12:50:00
One of my favourite writers, Craig Mod in his Ridgeline Newsletter:
The modern smartphone, laden with the corporate ecosystem pulsing underneath its screen, robs us of this feeling, conspires to keep us from “true” fullness. The swiping, the news cycles, the screaming, the idiocy — if anything destroys a muse, it’s this.
This is it. This is the thing I’ve been circling for years without quite nailing it down. The presence of a smartphone doesn’t just distract us. It actively works against any sense of being satisfied. That feeling of having enough, of being complete in a moment — the phone murders it.
I’ve written about needing barriersto protect myself from my worst habits. About babysitting myself like a child who can’t be trusted. After 40-plus years, I know exactly what I’m like. Give me unfettered access to my phone and I’ll disappear into it. Not doing anything meaningful. Just looking. Refreshing. Checking. The dopamine loop that goes nowhere.
There’s no room left for thoughts to develop, for ideas to form, for anything resembling grace. Just the constant churn of content. The next post. The next story. The next bit of outrage or cleverness or whatever keeps you scrolling.
I felt this most clearly when I spent that time getting uncomfortable on purpose. Taking breaks from the phone. Sitting with boredom. Turns out when you stop feeding the machine, you remember what it feels like to think properly. To have actual space between stimulus and response.
You can see it in how people talk to each other now. How quickly everything becomes a fight. How little patience anyone has for complexity or nuance. The phone trains us to react, not reflect. To consume, not create.
This is why I keep trying to say no to more things. To put distance between me and the constant feed. Not succeeding most of the time, but at least trying. At least recognising that the thing in my pocket wants me hollow and reactive and endlessly scrolling. For me to live a full life I need space in my brain and that happens with time away from the screen. But I always come back.
2025-11-13 23:52:30
My life is so busy at the moment I'm not really living. Merely existing. I'm so busy that I'm always doing something – caring, running, eating, working, designing – I'm always ‘verbing’ but never Gregging. There is no space in between all these things to be me.
My brain only has two states and it constantly rages at me that whatever I'm doing is either wrong or not done enough. Running? Should be working. Working? Should be with the kids. With the kids? Should be writing. Writing? Should be running. Even when I sit still for a moment, I'm thinking about what to do next. Planning. Preparing. Never just being.
It doesn't take more than a few minutes for the uncomfortable feeling to set in when I try to stop. Those tiny pin pricks that raise in intensity, prodding me towards doing something, anything. My attention hasn't wandered and I'm not bored, but my mind will not let me relax. Do something. Be productive. Keep moving.
I've written about this before, about working on my day off because there's nothing else to do. About the restlessness that won't let me switch off. But this feels different. I've crossed a line from being busy into being nothing but motion. There's no me left underneath the doing anymore.
When do I actually think? When do I sit with myself without immediately planning the next thing? I write these posts and tell myself that's my space to exist, but even that's become another task. Another thing on the list. Another verb with Greg attached to it.
I don't know how to exist without doing anymore. I've forgotten what it feels like to just be rather than constantly move to the next thing. The person underneath all the actions has disappeared and I'm not sure how to get him back.
2025-11-12 21:11:00
Patrick George writing for The Atlantic About GMs decision to drop CarPlay going forward:
Last month, General Motors CEO Mary Barra announced that new cars made by the auto giant won’t support CarPlay and its counterpart, Android Auto. Ditching smartphone mirroring may seem to make as much sense as removing cup holders: Recent preliminary data from AutoPacific, a research firm, suggest that CarPlay and Android Auto are considered must-have features among many new-car shoppers.
But according to GM, the company can create an even better experience for drivers by dropping Apple and making its own software. And like it or not, the move says a lot about where the auto industry is headed.
Every car I've owned for a very long time has had CarPlay. It's not the reason I buy a car, but it's something I always check before I do. For longer drives, I'll plug in my phone and use it hands-free without a second thought.
I've spent time with Teslas, and they're the only cars that have managed to get close to the same level of usability. I don't love having to tap a screen for every small thing, I still prefer physical controls, but the software side is excellent. Calendar integration, destinations, quick access to apps. It all makes sense.
The problem is, most car makers have had years to get this right and never have. My current Kuga has SYNC 3, which runs on BlackBerry's QNX. Which sounds terrible and it gets worse when you actually use it. So when I hear that GM thinks it can build something better now, I'm sceptical. I don't know what's changed, but I'd be surprised if this shift away from CarPlay makes anyone's life easier behind the wheel.
The pattern is familiar. Big company decides they can do something better themselves. Announces it with confidence. Then delivers something worse than what already existed. I've seen this enough times with tech companies to know how it usually ends.
GM's reasoning is that they can create a "better experience" by controlling the whole thing themselves. Maybe. But when was the last time an in-car system from a traditional manufacturer was genuinely good? The track record isn't encouraging. Not to mention they have a history of selling your data and making drivers experiences worse.
Apple and Google have spent years refining their systems based on how people actually use their phones in cars. GM is starting from scratch with different priorities—probably ones that involve collecting even more data or selling you subscriptions. That's not creating a better experience for drivers.
I'm not saying it's impossible for GM to pull this off. Just unlikely, and in the meantime, everyone buying a new GM car is the test subject. CarPlay isn't perfect, but at least it works. That's more than I can say for most of what car companies have built on their own.
2025-11-12 18:05:59
Reports this week suggest Apple is planning to use Google's Gemini to power the next version of Siri. I've been spending time with an Oppo Find X9 Pro recently, and the gap between what Gemini can do and what Siri manages is vast.
Gemini works the way Siri was supposed to work back in 2011. You ask something, it pulls information from your apps and the web, and gives you an answer that actually helps. There's no "here's what I found on the web" redirect. No awkward handoff. It just does the thing.
When I ask the same questions on my iPhone, Siri punts them to ChatGPT. It takes forever and usually comes back with something wrong. I'm not sure if that's a limitation of ChatGPT or Apple's integration, but either way it's miles behind what Google's doing.
The bigger problem is that even if Apple does partner with Gemini, I'm not convinced it'll make much difference. The current ChatGPT integration already suffers from too much processing, too many handovers, too much waiting. You can feel Siri trying to work out what to do before it even attempts to give you an answer.
Gemini works because it's built by Google and sits at the centre of everything Google does. It’s just search, and simplicity and level of integration makes it fast and reliable. If Apple bolts Gemini on the same way they've done with ChatGPT, it'll still be a slow and inconsistent mess. With Android you give up some level of privacy and in return receive a service that is much more helpful.
Apple keeps talking about privacy and on-device intelligence, which sounds great until you realise the result is an assistant that doesn't actually assist. Gemini feels like part of the phone. It's aware of your apps and data without being creepy about it. It's helpful in the way Siri should have been a decade ago.
If Apple really does end up leaning on Google to make Siri useful again, that feels more like admission of defeat than a solution. I'd love to see Apple build something of its own that works as well as Gemini does today. Right now, Siri is the weakest part of owning an iPhone and unfortunately I am starting to feel like Apple can’t fix this problem.
2025-11-10 15:46:32
Snapped a few pictures whilst walking my faithful friend this morning. It is the first time in a long time I have reached for my camera. Perhaps it was the autumn colours mixed with the misty conditions.
All taken on Fuji X100vi and edited in Lightroom.
2025-11-07 19:50:45
This website, and also gr36.com, has taken on many forms over the years. I often look back at the internet archive and marvel at how undecided I have been about it. It has been a business website, a personal blog, and at some points a place that I have tried to make an income from.
Sadly, my words are not where near to the standard that real writers are, but that has stopped me blogging for around 13 years so far, and I can’t imagine not doing it. Thankfully some of my posts have been wiped form existence, I’ve only saved some of them.
The inspiration for my posts comes in waves. I sometimes post lots, about my life, my family, and the technology I use. Sometime giving opinions on topics, and sometimes just letting everything pass me by and not publishing for weeks and months at a time. I’m comfortable knowing this won't change. The lack of real motivation has been here since the start, with a post way back in 2013 saying that I will blog more.
I did try to get it together a few years ago, winning a Dentie in 2021 for Blogger of the year! The one award I have received to date, and only marginally preceding my motivation falling off again. My never wavering commitment to moving around and not staying focused I think is due to the rest of my life being so structured and dedicated. When you live out of your calendar hour by hour for work and family life, everything else gets a bit more freedom to be a mess.
I have no doubt that I will still be publishing to my website in another 10 years. Should websites and blog still exist. Quite what an ancient guy will have to write about, I’m not sure. I don’t make promises to myself any more, so who knows what the future holds but I am pretty sure it will have a blog post about it.
