Nice choice of cafes at the end, too!

I’ve been meaning to do Thames Path #parkrun since event number one, but it took me until today (event 158) to make it for some reason. Nice river side route and a weird curly-whirly part in the middle.

It’s my #parkrun anniversary!

“If you were playing games on a home computer in the early 1980s, you knew about Chuckie Egg.”

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2026/apr/21/in-my-mind-it-was-just-tall-birds-wandering-around-on-platforms-the-making-of-chuckie-egg

It's another "perfect is the enemy of good" kind of thing. And I could be kidding myself. Maybe I couldn't do it better!

Could I have done it myself? Yes. Would my version have been better? Maybe, maybe not. But it's like my Roomba. I can do a better job of cleaning... but I have to actually do it. And I don't (honestly). I *could* have written this code, but would I ever have found the time? Probably not.

Possibly late to the game, but this week is the first time I've tried using LLM code gen stuff in anger and I've come away impressed. What I've been doing may be a perfect use case for it -- very well defined -- but it generated hundreds of lines of (seemingly) working code with little input. All while I was doing something else.

That was the subtext of my piece comparing the Neo to the ZX81. https://www.zx81.org.uk/posts/2026-03-13-zx81/

Second #parkrun in a row celebrating someone completing their 500th event. Last week at Lloyd, today at Battersea. Busy event despite the cold.

You know that thing where there’s a problem and you’ve figured it out. And then your subconscious goes, “But there’s one thing that you’ve forgotten!” And your conscious mind says, “I didn’t! It’s not a problem because [insert rational explanation here].” And…

Anyway, I didn’t sleep well last night.

I do sometimes question my sanity when I go for a run 🥶

And second, I was ready to steam in, explaining how they were holding it wrong and just before I clicked Send, I realised that *I’d* made a bad assumption.

Long story short, they’d got the hard stuff right but overlooked something obvious. Just as I had. Feeling less smug.

Reminder to comment all your hacks. Six months on and I can’t remember why I wrote this crazy code. I hope there’s a good reason and I’m not just really bad at this stuff.

Very English Severe Weather Warning (“Moderate Wind”).

Just a few seconds slower this week despite it being 10° warmer than last time. I’ll take that as a win. #parkrun

Random guy on the tube said I had a “class” shirt. Who am I to argue?

@vjack Sorry for your loss.

Time flies. #parkrun

You know when you get a call and all your devices start ringing at the same time? I know that’s a feature, but also, there must be a better way.

If I sign my emails “Stephen” is it unreasonable to expect that people don’t call me “Steve” in their reply? I wish this was a rhetorical question.