One of those days that goes by in a flash. One minute I was climbing out of bed, legs sore from the weekend run, the next moment I’m putting the kettle on for a cup of tea before bed. Somewhere in between those two I drove to SFO to pick Aneesah up, and it feels good to have her home. It felt as though it was minutes and months that she was gone.

I’m going to cut this short to write morning pages (yes, at night) because I’ve missed a couple of days and I can tell that it’s the writing I need to do right now. You realize how powerful morning pages are when you go without them for a few days. The thoughts just rattle around in your mind, instead. If I only write one thing, it should be morning pages.

It might seem surprising that I still write morning pages when I’m writing this journal right here, but they’re two totally different things to me. I might write this sort of thing in morning pages, but there are things I’ll write there that probably won’t make it here. Things that I really do write just for me. You can’t give all of yourself away, after all.

A restorative day today. A busy one, but restorative. A bit of gardening, a few chores, a bit of writing while listening to records. The kind of day that Sunday feels made for. There’s something so calming about spending a day in the sun doing a whole lot of nothing. Pottering. This and that. Busy but not, could stop any time—and on that note, in fact, I will.

Woke up at 6am today because Cacio needed to drink water right that minute (I mean, water is great). Tried to sleep but couldn’t, so I just stared at the ceiling for a while. Decided to feel happy about it. Quiet. Relaxing. Got up at 7am so that I could meet a friend for a run at 8am.

We ran along the waterfront in Berkeley, and it was such a perfect day for it. The sun was out. Warm but not too hot yet. Clear enough to see that incredible panoramic across San Francisco and Marin, with the Golden Gate Bridge looking as glorious as ever. Great fucking bridge.

Friend’s studio is about 5km away, so we ran there and had a refreshing, fizzy drink. Just what I needed. His studio is so darn cool, and the vision for it is even better. A space for music, ceramics, art-making, wood-working, and more. A dream. Everyone’s dream maybe?

We ran the 5km back to where we started, then I swang by the house, grabbed Cacio, and we were right back out to hike for a few miles in the Berekeley hills. Lots of running around (her), climbing up hills (both of us), and taking in the view (me, she was busy eating grass).

After all of that, my body wanted a burger. Aneesah (who I do not deserve) also ordered me my favorite beers and got snacks delivered to the house for no other reason than love, and that she’s the most kind person on earth. She was doing all of that from England... at 2am.

Took a bath, read through 200 lines of pure Python that implements a working transformer from Karpathy (yes, I should still have read a novel), and now off to bed. A full day, and a full heart. Friends, exercise, nature, smiling dog, and the love of my wife (the love of my life).

I’m sat here listening to Sam Cooke on the record player whilst I do math exercises for... not fun exactly, but it’s completely optional. I must want to do them. The truth is that I want to understand a thing that is made of math, but I’m not super interested in understanding lots of math. I’m sure I’ll accidentally understand a lot of math by the time I’m done.

There are other things like that, surely? Things that we resent learning a little bit even though it’s what we want. I like learning, to be clear, but some learning is more fun than other learning. I’m fortunate now to have a reason. Over the years I’ve bought various massive math books with the idea that I’d just “get really good at math” for the sake of it, but I didn’t, because... what’s the point? There needn’t be one, I suppose.

In England people say maths, not math. I used to think that it sounded normal, but now it sounds funny to me, too. You don’t realize how your ear has changed after living somewhere new until it hits you in some random moment. Maths. The English accent even sounds a bit surprising to me now, and.. I mean... I have an English accent. I think? Certainly.

Now I’ve got Cacio trying her best to lie across the laptop keyboard and it would be so easy to move her but I almost never do. I twist around awkwardly to keep her comfortable because why shouldn’t she have this spot? I feel bad when I have a snack and don’t give here one. A strange thing, feelings. Many (most; all?) animals seem pretty sensitive to fairness or lack thereof. If there are two eggs, why shouldn’t she have one?

It’s been a long week, for no particular reason. Some weeks are just like that. Some weeks life is a bit heavier, isn’t it? The days seem shorter, or the heart feels heavier, or both and more. Not trying to get too dramatic here, just noticing. I’ve learned a lot this week. Maybe that’s part of it? It’s tiring, cramming lots of things into your brain. Usually worth it though. On that note, though, time to walk the dog and turn my brain off.

A strange week, actually. A week where words haven’t come easily to me. A day—this day—where words didn’t come easily to me. A day where I’m not going to force it, either. It’s still strange writing a public journal, but I like it. When I had to sit down and think of something novel to write each day, it started to feel a bit stressful, but not so with a journal. A day happens every day, and you can write about it. I lay in the bath and watched videos about linear algebra. Probably should have read a novel or something.

The year 2026 is a strange year. Whilst making dinner, I had Claude write me a language model using PyTorch in around 100 lines of code, and trained it on a few open datasets in about an hour. After dinner, I was running inference on the worst language model I’ve ever used (obviously) but having the most fun I’ve had with one (maybe).

My favorite thing about this technology, I think, is that it’s a simple (enough) thing to make—if you’ve got the data and the compute, at least—but it produces something so complex that we still don’t understand how it really works. To make even a toy model on your (very warm, fans at full speed) MacBook is an almost spiritual experience.

It’s around midnight, and I’m sat listening to the rain. I don’t really watch TV when Aneesah is out of town, and it feels especially quiet. I like the sound of rain. If you really listen, you start to hear all of the ways that it makes sound. The light drizzle against the window, stronger as a gust of wind hits it. The heavier drips that have accumulated on something, finally falling when they get heavy enough. The streams coming down a gutter, or going into a drain, an occasional gurgle as it picks up or slows.

Most of us like this sound, don’t we? People play it while they work, or read, or relax. It’s calming for some reason. I think that’s why I’m so fascinated with ambient recordings, and especially recording my own. When I listen to the sound of the ocean that I recorded, it sounds different to “the sound of the ocean,” you know? I think our ears remember a lot. That’s why I love binaural recordings. Make the ear part of it. That’s how I hear things. That’s how I want to hear things. Ear-shaped.

I think I could be quite happy traveling the world to record ambient sounds. A rainforest here, a lighthouse there, that sort of thing. I use an app that generates soundscapes to help me focus when I work. It’s great, but there’s nothing quite like the sound of the world. The problem is that it sort of disappears if you start doing anything else; anything other than listening. To listen demands that you’re present, I think. There’s no half-listening, there’s just listening and not listening... or something.

I’m watching the movie Her whilst doing some work on the couch. Watching it in 2026, when it feels more science-fact than science-fiction, I’m struck by Theodore’s occupation: writing deeply human letters for the Beautiful Handwritten Letters company. You could fall either side of this argument today, but I feel like that part is going to work out, too. I think we’re going to value human writing even more than we did.

It might not always feel that way today, but it’s hard to take a good look at something when your nose is pressed right up against it. I think that when we manage to take a collective step back, we’ll remember that human experience is wonderful, and that writing is still one of the best ways to capture that experience. One of the best ways to share it with others. I’m just not convinced that we’ll want to read hallucinated novels.

It’s probably obvious that I think this technology is wonderful in many ways. I refuse, however, to pick a side, because there aren’t sides to pick. Life is weird, and messy and fuzzy at the edges. We’ll find the things that this technology is best at, I think, and we’ll continue to be enamored with one another. With the things that others do. The lives that they have. The people they are. The beautiful handwritten letters they write.

A day of pottering. Coffee and breakfast. Chores. Spoke to my dad on the phone (somehow ended up speaking about machine learning at length, despite neither of us knowing very much about it). Spoke to Aneesah on the phone (because she’s in England—and we definitely didn’t speak about machine learning at length). Dinner. Dog walk. A bit of work whilst idly watching a movie (twice; the same movie). Tea. Time for bed.

Went for a run around the neighborhood this morning, then came back and made myself coffee and breakfast. English muffin topped with smashed avocado, scrambled egg and chili crisp. Aside from the muffin, it’s based on one of my favorite things from our local coffee shop back in Bed-Stuy (Milk & Pull). Good coffee, kind people, and this delicious snack.

Cacio needed a good run after a few days of rain meant that the muddy park was off-limits. She sprinted in circles over and over before flopping down, mouth agape, an expression of pure joy. It made me so happy to see her so happy. The Bay Area is flip-flopping between winter and summer right now, but today was summer, and it was excellent.

Drinks and comedy at the Curran in the evening. Alex Edelman. My first time seeing him and he was completely hilarious. As usual though, the best part was spending time with friends. I feel really lucky, because after a few thousand miles and a few years of moving, I’m building a community of folks who are kind, and creative, and so generous.

It’s so easy to take things for granted, but I feel like I’m having the complete opposite experience lately. I’m so acutely aware of how fortunate I am. For a loving relationship, wonderful friends, a dream job, good health and this beautiful place that we live. Oh, and this funny dog currently rolling around on the living room floor, of course.