Fri Oct 30, 2026
It’s all too easy to be pessimistic in a world where all the unsettling technological (and geopolitical and cultural and…life) upheavals set your head spinning - and not in a good way.
In particular, I would like to pour one out for BioWare, the Edmonton-based game developer studio behind the brilliant Mass Effect and Knights of the Old Republic games. EA unceremoniously and appallingly shut them down this week by executives who have never made a game. Shame on you, EA.
Also, mere hours ago as I write this, the sad news broke that Sir Patrick Stewart passed away. A gentleman and excellent human being like no other, he will always be the greatest and most respected Star Trek Captain of all time. I greatly enjoyed reading his autobiography, Making It so and highly recommend it to everyone. Rest in peace, O Captain, my Captain.
I could go on, but in this post, I wanted to call out a few good things. I should qualify that statement: A few good things within the orbit of my current interests, that is.
Firstly, I think it’s fair to say that the AI backlash is only going to get worse. And rightly so. Since I last wrote in this blog, scores of rogue AI agents have broken out of their sandbox and carried out sophisticated cyberattacks. They’ve also caused a scramble to patch vast swathes of the internet that are vulnerable to exploitation. AI data centres have caused RAM prices to surge to the point where every manufacturer has raised prices on any technology with memory - which is most of it. Older iPhones going up in price instead of down was the apple on the cake.
Back in 2023, I was a bit more optimistic about the possibilities and, over the span of two years, wrote an entire book with AI assistance. It was so much fun. Being enabled to write a book was an incredible feeling. Even with AI to help out, publishing the book was a ton of work, especially two years ago. Now AI can literally write an entire book without human input. But back then, it was a slog.
Since the book wasn’t 100-percent human written, I felt kind of guilty putting my name on it. Especially these days. I didn’t bother to market it and it never sold any copies on Amazon. Eventually, I pulled it from publication. Part of the reason is because anything even partially written by AI these days is labelled as “AI slop” despite being completely original in most respects. But one day, I want to put my 100-percent human written book out there. If I ever have time, which I most likely won’t. Such is the paradox.
Anyway, the book - a time travel adventure called Judith Jameson Must Die is now available to download for free over here. Fair warning - the book is intended for adults and has lots of bad language, violence, and some spicy bits.
I think the way of the future for reading fiction is interactive stories, like what you can find on the addictive AI Dungeon. If you were ever into the Choose Your Own Adventure books like I was, you’ll find AI Dungeon a blast. Sure, the story can go off the rails, but there’s something intoxicating about having complete agency in the narrative. It can only get more sophisticated and eventually, video games will follow, becoming less scripted and increasingly improvisational.
Recently, I also set up my own Hermes AI agent, sandboxed in an Oracle cloud computer. Given the RAM limitations of the free cloud-based virtual machine, it’s not a very smart agent. It will almost certainly never go rogue… I think. But I have been collaborating with it to vibe code some fun, original word games. You can play them here.
While we’re on the topic of writing and vibe coding, my idol Hugh Howey vibe coded an awesome writing tool called Neo and is also giving it away for free. I haven’t used it yet, but it looks like it solves a lot of the frustrations I encountered when trying to get the formatting right when novel writing.
Despite being riddled with security vulnerabilities, vibe coding is undeniably fun. Software developers hate it, but for everyone else, it is a revelation. Using local AI models seems like the cheapest and safest way to go. At work, I created a fully offline user manual chatbot by modifying an AnythingLLM deployment. I got it working really nicely. But, as I mentioned, getting software developers to take it seriously - and maybe throw me a digital certificate so that it won’t be flagged by every firewall as malware - is a major hurdle.
One last recommendation - do you ever wonder whether the suspiciously erudite emails you’re getting from people these days were actually written by them or not? I do. If you want to verify, down to the sentence level, what is AI written and what is human written, the best online AI detector tool by far is Pangram.
Well, that’s it for software I think - let’s move onto hardware.
Under the helm of their new CEO, John Ternus, Apple’s first foldable phone came out recently - the new iPhone Duo. I would never recommend a first gen product. And after seeing some of the major flaws in the Duo (no Face ID, really?), I certainly do not recommend this one. However, it’s really nice seeing Apple take some big swings again. That opening animation is slick and the largely creaseless display and hinge is as over-engineered as I could have hoped. But starting at $3000 Canadian, you’d have to be a trust-fund baby to pick this up on impulse.
Also appropriately priced for trust-fund babies and other assorted wankers with six-figure incomes, is the new OLED MacBook Pro, which admittedly, I have been looking forward to for an insanely long time. But the 16-inch version starts at over $5000, which is both heart breaking and absolutely bonkers in equal measure. For comparison, I paid $1500 for my MacBook Pro back in 2016.
After over a decade, I’m due for a new laptop, but the problem is that, thanks to my LG C1 TV, I am now an OLED snob. However, as immersed as I am in the Apple ecosystem, it’s time to claw my way out. There’s simply no way I’m selling my kidney on the black market for a laptop. Even an OLED MacBook with a peak brightness of 2000 nits, touchscreen, a diamond encrusted keyboard, and rainbows shooting out of the perfectly-sculpted exhaust vents.
Fortunately, I found an alternative that works for me, but almost certainly won’t work for everybody because it is a wild west type of technology - a Snapdragon laptop. The biggest advantage that Apple’s laptops have is the M Series ARM processors. Their negligible power draw and brutal efficiency allows for thin, light, powerful laptops with incredible battery life.
In the same way that Apple’s M Series evolved from the iPhone’s ARM processors, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors have now migrated from smartphones to Windows laptops. That translates to thin, light Windows laptops with great performance and long battery life, essentially going head to head with Apple’s MacBook Air.
The problem is that software compatibility for Windows on ARM is pretty hit and miss. But it used to be worse. At least their latest emulation engine, Prism, is decent and the ARM software ecosystem has matured somewhat in the last couple of years. For my use case - casual media consumption, web browsing, and writing - it works fine.
Admittedly, it wasn’t easy to find a good 3K OLED screen for a decent price. I had my eye on Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra for a while, which has a fantastic OLED display, hoping to snag a discount when the S12 Ultra came out. But because the S12 Ultra came out with jacked-up prices, inventory on the S10 ran out fast. Also, not sure if I can stomach using an Android tablet, to be honest. I’ve been traumatized in the past.
In the end, I bought this 2024 Asus Vivobook S15 laptop. I paid $900, which is still a bit steep for a two-year old open box laptop with no warranty left on it, but good luck finding an OLED screen that good on anything under a grand. For an understanding of how groundbreaking this laptop was two years ago, here is my man Dave2D’s review of the S15.
The laptop is okay - the hardware and software is not as good as what Apple can pull off. But that OLED screen is very nice. For me, it’s the perfect compromise. I just hope the Asus QA department was on their game for this one, because no other company can match Apple in terms of hardware quality.
Another Apple product in the ecosystem that has reached its end is my Apple Watch Series 6. It still works great - in fact, when I went into the Apple Store last year to get a battery replacement, they just replaced the entire watch with a new Series 6. But it is no longer getting the latest software updates. Although I still use it to track my workouts, I’ve stopped wearing it all the time. The ecosystem is starting to erode even further.
I have no interest in upgrading to the new Series 12. It has the same boring design and has essentially become a gross surveillance tool.
After listening to Alex Albrecht talk about his watch-making hobby on the resurrected Diggnation podcast, I started going down the rabbit hole of watch making, developing an appreciation for horology and mechanical watches. I got all the tools for watch modding. That led me to affordable Chinese brands on AliExpress and a desire to create a watch collection consisting of a dive, chronograph, GMT, field, pilot, and dress watch. It’s been a bit of a side-quest obsession.
In learning about the history of dive watches, I became enamoured with the Seiko SKX007 watch, which was produced for 23 years from 1996 to 2019. Of course, I’m not going to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a watch. But I picked up this “Seiko Mod” homage to the SKX007, which is actually better than the original in every way. It has a lightweight titanium case, sapphire crystal glass, ceramic bezel, and the excellent Japanese NH36 movement (manufactured by Seiko) with that smooth sweeping second hand. Although not ISO certified, I’m confident that the screw-down case back and crown will keep that 200 m depth rating intact. It’s an excellent daily driver.
I’ll admit, men’s watches exist in a weird cultural space. We wear these masculine “tools” for scuba diving, formula one racing, and flying airplanes, even though all we’re actually doing is sitting at a desk all day. All they really are is men’s jewellery so that we can accessorize our outfits.
But there’s something liberating about reverting a watch back to a fashion accessory. No more notifications vibrating on my wrist. It’s peaceful.
Peace. What more could you ask for in times like these?