Journal on Bill Glover

2026 Week 32

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 13:50:10 +0100

Just a photo dump this week.

Week in Pictures

dry weather continues

off to his first summer camp

2026 Week 31

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 17:08:57 +0100

I returned to commuting last week. Oscar has been attending a science camp in town and this has meant jumping on the district line during rush hour. I do miss the commute. It was my chance to listen to podcasts, read a book, or just observe the world around me. The commute served as a welcome separation between activities at home, and life at work. For many, the commute is associated with rushing around, but for me it has always been a chance to slow down. This week though, it was a reminder of everything I disliked about the daily commute; the cancelled trains, the Tube line that is undergoing planned maintenance, and being crushed between bags and people in the stifling heat.

2026 Week 30

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 13:52:44 +0100

It took me most of the week to wash the camping gear. I’ve noticed that most people seem to clean their camping gear in-situ before backing up. I’ve even seen the odd portable vacuum cleaner being wheeled out. But I tend to favour unpacking everything when we get home, setting the tents up in the garden to clean them out, washing them and then setting them up again to dry. In amongst the cleaning of camping gear, my head has been spinning with ideas of things to do post-EMF. I’m feeling full of creative energy. On Friday I got to see Danlu performing in Transit at The Cockpit. We spent Saturday over with Mum and Dad.

2026 Week 29

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:29:55 +0100

This week is the first full week of summer holidays for Oscar. He hasn’t quite been able to ditch school with early morning swim training each day. This has been a good excuse for us to get up and get out of the house.

The weather has been baking hot during the day and has made concentrating on anything creative a little difficult. I’ve been prioritising work that is more mundane in nature. This is work that is no less important, but requires a different kind of focus.

2026 Week 28

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:29:29 +0100

A photo only update this week. Life events (and hot weather) took over and I’m behind on blogging. I’ll be back on track soon.

Week in Pictures

box of bricks - the boundless possibility that comes from opening a box of bricks

2026 Week 27

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 16:35:27 +0100

I’m reminded that dropping a tool or technology into an organisation without considering the implications on people is one of the reasons technology implementations fail to deliver their promised value. This is true of a software upgrade, it’s true of a new operational dashboard, and it is very true of newfangled tools built around non-deterministic models. These new tools have the tendency to go off and do their own thing. Where the needs of employees are considered, it is often as an afterthought. Tool first, tell people to use it second. We make so many assumptions about how people will react to changes in their tooling. We promise these changes will have a positive impact on the business, but rarely are these promises challenged. As organisations across the world are letting people go in the hope that they can be replaced by a for loop and a statistical model, I would caution them to closely examine the promised benefits. Once you destroy a team, you can’t just put it back together.

2026 Week 26

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 12:24:44 +0100

It was nice to have Alicia back this week. The combination of rising temperatures and adjusting to a new family routine meant we had our fair share of grumpy evenings at home. I think the short tempers and exhaustion were fairly evenly distributed across the family. The hot nights saw people sleeping all over the house in search of cooler temperatures or a breeze.

I made some progress on a new iteration and structure to my blog. I want to keep using Hugo but my current layout isn’t working for me in a couple of key areas; photography and taxonomy. One of my most popular posts is the guide on creating a photography gallery with Hugo created back in 2023. In the three years since I set this up, I’ve developed a feel for what works and what doesn’t. The biggest challenge is that photos that appear in blogposts don’t appear in the gallery. They have to be added separately. This means duplicate images and duplicate Markdown files for each photo. The approach I’m working on publishes one canonical photo and references that elsewhere as needed. This has the side effect of allowing me to create galleries of images, something I can’t do in my current layout. I’ll write more about this nearer the release but this week saw me make real progress.

2026 Week 25

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 16:31:06 +0100

Alicia was in China this week and it gave me a chance to spend a lot more time with the boys. The week was exhausting but it was a real delight to have so much time with them. From meals in the garden, to watching the late one evening, to finding ourselves asleep on the floor after a chaotic Saturday. We had fun.

Oscar spent time working on his narrative for a class ‘show and tell’ session. He took in the Pocket Operator KO and had grand plans for how he was going to make a rhythm using sounds recorded in the classroom. I was mighty impressed with how he structured the narrative but during his practice run I might have been a little bit too well behaved and compliant with recording sounds I knew he wanted. When he gave the talk in the classroom, people either wanted to make the same sounds as everyone else, or they refused to stay silent while others were recording. He got two experience two things that have become all to familiar for me; a talk that didn’t go to plan, and live demo falling apart when it worked perfectly during rehearsals.

2026 Week 24

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 15:57:02 +0100

Summary

This week has been dominated by one theme my determination to audit my own tax records and understand why I received a letter from HMRC. I’m hoping that by the end of this, I’ll have resolved any omissions in my tax returns but also I’ll have a greater understanding of my personal tax situation. I don’t think I fully understood how acquisitions can mask significant changes in tax liability. As a result, my spreadsheet skills have been getting a real workout. LibreOffice has been excellent.

2026 Week 23

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 15:54:53 +0100

We started this week with Alicia in Amsterdam, Ethan in particular was not too pleased. We haven’t quite decided what to do over the summer, but I suspect he’s gonna face at least a week without Alicia at home. I’m going to have to up my game if I’m going to inherit favourite parent status before then.

Oscar’s school art project gave us an opportunity to practice some more cyanotype. The theme was My Happy Place. His first attempt to draw a piano ended up in tears, and so he settled on drawing his bicycle. After tracing an image of his bike, we scanned it and he used the iPad to go over the lines in thicker black pen before printing on transparency. The weather has been terrible so we ended up printing images under an artificial UV lamp.

2026 Week 22

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 08:44:59 +0100

We couldn’t have asked for a better start to the half term week. We spent the weekend camping with friends just outside London. I’m a lightweight camper, and I’m incredibly stubborn in insisting that we have to be able to carry everything we bring, no car. Packing was fun. Oscar and I have been camping several times before but this was the first time we went as a family. It was really nice to see both Ethan and Alicia embrace the experience.

2026 Week 21

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Wed, 27 May 2026 17:51:45 +0100

I’ve been asked to talk about AI more often than I’d like. I usually like to speak from a place of personal experience. Being able to relate a challenge to my own experience in a similar context is one of the things that I feel I do really well. But AI is too new, the restrictions on use of AI in a work context are a barrier, and personal reactions to AI are often raw and often impassioned. I’m AI curious but not AI experienced. I don’t think this craze has been around long enough for the real consequences to be felt, let alone for lessons to have been learned. Being asked to speak about it has been a real personal challenge. My approach has been to look for threads of conversation, and see which resonate and then to try and build the conversation from there. My first attempt fell flat and quickly became a ‘Bill monologue’. I have work to do.

2026 Week 20

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Sun, 17 May 2026 21:49:35 +0100

I used to travel every week for work. It was never a struggle to pack, there was always a bag read; enough clothes, a laptop, a book, and a myriad of charging cables. Monday morning would arrive and I’d grab the bag and leave for the station. This week was the opposite. I was in Edinburgh for a couple of days and had no idea what to pack. I left home, only to realise I’d left my card behind.

2026 Week 19

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Sun, 17 May 2026 17:34:12 +0100

2026 W19

Most countries have the 1st May as a national holiday. For some reason we push the holiday to the first Monday of the month. We kicked off the short week by going to see Oscar perform at the Seeds of Change concert in County Hall in London. It was an absolute delight to watch him perform and we were really lucky to have the extended family join us for the event.

2026 Week 17

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Sat, 02 May 2026 20:32:45 +0100

I celebrated my birthday this week. My birthday itself was Zoom heavy but we did get to enjoy a meal together as a family. Overall the week has been gloriously sunny, not too hot and that’s made it really hard not to be generally positive. Now that we’ve started to spend more time in the garden it is painfully obvious that our lawn needs a lot of work. The ground is harsh, weeds are starting to dominate and bald patches are starting to emerge. Tips for lawn care (including improving the soil) would be appreciated.

2026 Week 18

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Sat, 02 May 2026 20:32:45 +0100

In a bit of a change this week, I ended up travelling into town three times. A combination of work and social events brought back memories of the daily commute, life in the city. If I’m honest, I do occasionally miss it. As I left Bank station on Thursday evening there was an audible din from the surrounding pubs as people flocked to the streets to enjoy the last few hours of sunshine.

2026 Week 16

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 18:46:28 +0100

I’m really glad I had the camera on me this week. It was a difficult week. Oscar was off school, Alicia was in Bologna for a few days. Difficult news at work meant that things all felt a bit much. Sleep suffered.

I’m glad I had the camera because, looking back over the week, it was filled with happy moments. Oscar and I have really enjoyed playing Monopoly Deal over coffee before starting the day. Ethan got to celebrate his birthday all over again, this time in the UK. We were all glad to have Alicia back.

2026 Week 15

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 19:07:58 +0100

Jet-lag is bad enough but jet-lag with children is a nightmare. Poor Ethan has been so confused over the last couple of days. He ignored a suggestion to sleep as it wasn’t dark outside, then we found him fast asleep on the sofa still in his shoes and jacket. I carried him up to bed and just left him to sleep. Around 4am this morning he got up and, realising he was dressed already, put his pyjamas on and tried to put himself to bed. As Alicia left for an early flight, he said she couldn’t go out because it was still dark. His confusion reflects how we all feel. We are back in the UK.

2026 Week 14

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 20:14:05 +0800

This week has been a delight. We arrived back in Beijing after a weeks travelling and enjoyed our first rest day. We took the boys to the local park, the universal appeal of swings and slides keeping them entertained for far longer than expected. Ethan took great pleasure in trying to use the outdoor exercise equipment.

Last Monday we took the train to Nanjing. Alicia was speaking at an event on Tuesday and we came along for the trip. This meant I had the boys to myself for Tuesday. I gave them a couple of options; a walk around the lake then find somewhere nice to eat, or head to the zoo with unknown food options. Secretly I was hoping for the walk around the lake. That was the easy option, no travel, known food places, and easy reach of the hotel if they got tired. Of course they picked the zoo. Surprisingly undeterred by the unknown food options, Oscar insisted that zoos always have places to eat. And so I ended up taking the two boys to the Red Mountain Forrest Zoo, 红山森林动物园 (hóng shān sēn lín dòng wù yuán), for the day. Our adult to child ratios may have been way off (1:2) when compared with most others (4:1 or 6:1) but we had a great time.

2026 Week 13

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 22:00:00 +0000

This has been a whirlwind of a week. Monday morning, I was frantically bouncing between Zoom calls, trying to figure out what I could get done in a few days. I had to work this week. By Sunday I was in Beijing with the family preparing for a trip to Nanjing and Yangzhou. Somewhere in the middle of that, we secured tickets to EMF Camp in July, Oscar sat his piano exam, and finished school for the Easter break. Oh, and I finished the Kew 10km race hours before heading to the airport.

2026 Week 12

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 21:18:00 +0000

Work has been motivationally challenging this week. With my ability to effect change largely dependent on my powers of persuasion or inspiration, I’m sometimes forced to accept that some weeks priorities do not align. To keep myself useful, and sane, I’ve been trying to help others where possible; demos, environments, debugging or just acting as a sounding board.

It was good to get in to the city and see colleagues in person on Wednesday. I’m not sure I needed to stay out until the early hours of Thursday morning. It was fun though.

2026 Week 11

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 14:57:50 +0000

I missed the opportunity to publish a weekly recap last week. It was Thursday by the time I sat down to write, and by that point it felt like I’d missed the window.

At work last week I continued the theme of meeting application developers who use our platform. The feedback we’ve been given is interesting. We’re forever being told what developers want, developers need and how developers need to be measured. It has been quite refreshing to hear from development teams directly what they see as the benefits of an application platform and where they see some of the challenges.

2026 Week 10

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 14:56:57 +0000

Red sky in the morning

The dragon

2026 Week 9

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 10:01:16 +0000

Burst of colour

This weekly wrap up is a little later than planned. I ended last week absolutely exhausted. A combination Zoom fatigue at work, coupled with more screen time than usual left me feeling drained. Come Sunday night I took stock; behind on admin, behind on prep for next week, behind on sleep.

2026 Week 8

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 06:03:12 +0000

This week was the first week of the Chinese New Year. The boys covered the house in decorations, many of them for previous years. Given the non-stop rain we’ve had here in the UK for 2026, the additional colour was more welcome than usual. It was also half term which meant Oscar wasn’t at school. Alicia and I are fortunate enough that work is flexible and we can work from whatever venue Oscar is at. This week that meant a bunch of work from the poolside.

2026 Week 7

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 16:35:49 +0000

I’ve spent some time this week experimenting with Claude Code. I’m not using the latest models from Anthropic, but rather keeping things local and trying out different models. I spent most time with gpt-oss:20b and qwen3-coder:30b. I’m routing all requests through Tailscale Aperture to keep an on how different models affect token usage. The results were surprising. Using the same tool, Claude Code, the two models result in significantly different token usage patterns. Model providers are in complete control over how many tokens we can expect to consume to achieve a given output.

2026 Week 6

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 20:19:29 +0000

2026 W06

This week the weather has been miserable. I’m all for cycling in the rain but this week has been tough going. The rain and the wind are one thing, but the killer was the timing of high tides. It’s not so much the flooding that’s a problem, we have a couple of alternative routes. As the water subsides, it leaves the road covered in waste. There’s the mud, the twigs, the occasional tree branch, and of course the plastic. Cycling along in the dark it’s not easy to avoid and we’ve ended up with our fair share of punctures.

2026 Week 5

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 20:57:20 +0000

I left this weekly note until Monday morning. Sunday was a hangover day after my brother and sister’s 40th on Saturday night. The last thing I wanted to do was reach for a keyboard.

The week has been exhausting, the usual routine punctuated with a brief trip to Edinburgh. I picked the worst day to fly with the UK being battered by a storm it took multiple attempts to land. The flight may have only be an hour but it ranks with one of my worst ever for travel sickness. By the time we eventually touched down the last thing in the world I wanted to do was spend an evening cooped up in a hotel.

2026 Week 4

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 19:03:23 +0000

I caught myself dancing in my chair this week. I was having great fun working on a demo for a workshop next Friday. This is one of the more complicated demos I’ve pulled together and it’s in an area I’ve not historically felt comfortable, Java and Spring. After a week of limited progress, things started to fall into place and I started to get a feel for how I want to use the demo to tell a story. I’m genuinely looking forward to continuing to work on this for the workshop on Friday. I’m hoping to be able to make the demo public.

2026 Week 3

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 20:40:37 +0000

I had the pleasure of having my colleague DaShaun Carter join me for Spring Office Hours this week. He covers the concept of Office Hours in his post on Off-Stage Advocacy. We revisited the challenge of keeping software patched and up to date, a topic that we’ve covered many times before. But this time something clicked for me. I realised why some teams were finding it difficult to implement the patterns. It wasn’t a technical challenge at all. They were struggling to relate what we were showing them and their daily responsibilities. This felt like something I could help with and spent some time pulling together my own flavour of the demo. It’s not quite there yet, but I’m surprisingly excited to be talking about software upgrades and patching.

2026 Week 2

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 19:57:41 +0000

This week marked the transition back into a routine. The Christmas decorations came down, Ethan started back at nursery and Oscar returned to school. I even had the house to myself for a couple of mornings.

Despite the return to routine, I managed to enjoy spending time with the boys individually this week. Ethan is now an expert at lighting the fire and I got to witness his sheer delight as he managed to trace the numbers 1-10. He has started to express himself a lot more recently, wrapping up the week by declaring he wants to go to school not nursery. With Oscar I’ve been enjoying playing Monopoly Deal (think Monopoly but as a card game). It’s surprisingly fun. We’ve also made progress on that 1000 piece Oscar Piastri jigsaw.

2026 Week 1

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 20:37:06 +0000

It’s hard to believe the first week of the year is already over. Oscar still has a couple of days off before heading back to school but Alicia and I are both back to work tomorrow.

We celebrated the new year by making 饺子 (jiǎo zǐ). This has become something of a tradition for us after making them with Alicia’s family on our first new year together in China.

The week has been remarkably social. We had my parents over on new years day, bumped into an old school friend and his family in the London Wetland Centre the next, went to a bubble show with friends and their family. Given we spend most of the year on autopilot, it has been really nice to spend time with others.

December Festivities

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 13:19:43 +0000

We’ve had one of the busiest Decembers in a long while. With both Alicia and I travelling for work. We didn’t manage to wind down before walking headlong in to Christmas festivities.

homemade - dried citrus fruit as festive decoration

Notes from November

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 10:03:11 +0000

November is always a turning point in the year. The days start to get shorter, the weather begins to feel more wintery and people start to realise that the year is almost over. Work is invariably busy, but with people making plans for the festive season ahead motivation can be a struggle.