anthony galvin

Historic England have released a collection of aerial photos from 1938. This one of Deptford is fascinating - I spent about 15 years in and around Deptford, from the late 1990s until we moved out of London. So much of what is captured in this photos has gone or changed beyond all recognition.

But not everything.

The churches stand out, gleaming. The railway. The river. The royal naval college in the distance. Emma's old flat next to the snooker club. I can even make out a couple of pubs on Creek Road that we used to drink in as students.

Fantastic photos of the restored Rochdale Town Hall. A place that figuratively and literally loomed over my childhood. Whilst at the same time the government plans to sell off these kinds of buildings.

I'm not sure why this resonated with me so much. Maybe it's the down to earth way that 'Fred' describes what is clearly a job that is beyond the capability of most people. Or the fact that this happened in my lifetime, but in a way that seems from another time - with no health and safety considerations, beyond taking a cigarette break every now and then. There's a touch of Callum's Road about Fred's attitude that anything is possible if you just get on with it.

Fred, in 1979, brought down a chimney brick by brick.

This is an unbelievable watch.pic.twitter.com/0forMEoN34

— Ewen Cameron (@EwenDCameron) September 6, 2023

Jan Pieńkowski is one of those childrens illustrators or authors who provides a link between my childhood and my childrens childhood. "Haunted House" was one of my favourites, as well as of course Meg and Mog. Someone who had a huge impact on storytelling, illustration and bedtimes!

Government believes too many students are racking up debts studying “soft” 3-year university courses in arts and social sciences, and is looking to funnel more 18 year olds towards technical training that is cheaper and will pay a faster economic dividend.

It probably was “soft” compared to some degrees, but I learnt an awful lot of “soft” skills that have proved way more important than the technical skills that I learned on the job.

My local tech meet-up, nice breadth of topics and a good group of participants - hosted at the always excellent MK Gallery.

My friend Chris, from over the road, had a ZX Spectrum. It was an absolute marvel and embedded somewhere in my brain the idea that computers were something you could use to create things.

As always with agency hype around AI, the article reads better if you ignore the references to AI and just assume this is good old Machine Learning (and quite possible Linear Regression) - but if anyone can pull this off it's probably R/GA. Great to see what Rob and the team have been working on.

The idea that one person, your manager, is going to be the oracle on your career is a bit optimistic. Mentees all round!

If you're an engineering lead business and you make vendor and toolset choices that don't take account of the impact on the team it's not likely to go so well.