Regular readers will be aware of this ‘series’ (series probably isn’t the right word) where I photograph my desk about once every six months and talk about what’s on it, current software/hardware choices and habits. This series is more for me than you. I want to be able to look back on it one day and go, ‘wow, look how my desk has changed!’ …

Day by day, week by week, the fatigue sets in. The feeling that you are doing somehow worse than everyone you know. You are less successful, have fewer savings, are too fat, not fit enough, not spiritual enough, not… screw it, I’m going to order that new lamp that I have had in the basket for a month.

This, sadly, is how most of us think. The …

Until a few weeks ago, I had not heard about Kagi. I think there is a chance that you haven’t heard about Kagi either.

Kagi.com ← click this if you want to see Kagi with your own eyes… and device.

Kagi, as illustrated by the link above, is a search engine. It’s a really, excellent search engine. The downside is that it costs money to use.

The …

I agree, strongly, that YouTube videos about anything Apple related are tiresome trash. And, I watch a lot of them because you have to wade through many, many, piles of rubbish to find the occasional useful app or website what you would otherwise miss. But, dear reader, I am going to stop, cold turkey when it comes to watching any video about …

I haven’t been updating this site as much as I did earlier last year. I still post many ‘microblog’ style short form thoughts, but there have been less Long-form posts over all. This is, mostly because I have been really, quite busy.

I did, however, think that maybe I should sum up a bunch of half toughs into one post. Things I like, and want to …

A friend recently gave me a stern but tongue in cheek talking to, regarding the way I use my phone. Apparently, I’m using it wrong. Which we had an interesting back and forth about.

My phone is a now older, iPhone 14, Pro Max. Which means there is no Apple Intelligence, Action button or other such symptoms of technological modernity. By iPhone …

Most of you will not find this interesting, I know. A few of you, however, are like me, overly interested in other people’s workflows. As such, here we are…

Desk setup & Hardware

My desk looks a bit mad in the above photo. This is because I turned on both iPads and the MSI Claw. Usually if a screen is on, then it is being used.

Working from …

I have a lot to say, and write about how fantastic FFXIV is, still. I’m currently drafting one of my signature rambling explorations, on the topic of MMOs. But, today, I’m here to drop information and little more.

I own a MacBook Air and wanted to go back to playing FFXIV. I expected this to be hard, however, it was not. In fact, it was shockingly …

The single scariest moment in my life thus far was last Friday, when I went to the little fridge in my home office to find that there was, in fact, no Pepsi Max (Cherry) in there. The sadness and disappointment, combined with the shock and fear, resulted in an emotional cacophony the likes of which I had never experienced before.

This recounting …

The delineating factor in the chapters of my life has often been tangentially linked to my beverages of choice.

On my first day of college—many, many years ago (1996, if you want to get personal)—I was a nerdy kid with very few skills, deeply self-conscious, and in deep denial about basically my entire personality. I had no idea what was cool, no …

Confidence carries people a long way in life, often before their skill is ever truly tested. It offers a unique kind of freedom from doubt and has a way of putting others at ease. Confidence is the tool of choice for many of the heroes we admire. When used appropriately, it’s a genuine virtue.

I’ve been thinking a lot about confidence as a resource …

Since the advent of the modern desktop paradigm in the mid-90s, not a great deal has changed in how we interact with desktop computing interfaces. Sure, the tiling desktop interface has gained popularity in the Linux world over the past decade — DWM, for instance, has been around for about 18 years now. But for the vast majority of computer users, …

Recent changes to products I use have left me suspicious of application pricing. This, coupled with the capitalistic obsession of locking users into services, has led me to overhaul almost all of the software I rely on for productivity. I’m mad as all heck about it, and I hope the following paragraphs serve as a warning to those who haven’t yet …

While Apple Intelligence turned out to be less intelligent than we all hoped, my Magic Keyboard turned out to be more magical than I expected, once I changed a single annoying setting.

If you don’t care about the narrative and just want to know how I made my Magic Keyboard better, I respect that.

Go to: Settings > Accessibility > Keyboard, …

I think I’ve said before that if asked, I wouldn’t describe myself as a creative person. Which is quite contrary to the truth when I look at the novels I’ve written, the badly drawn comic I work on almost weekly, and the years I spent making YouTube videos. I’ve never understood why I don’t feel like a creative type.

I think it’s because writing …

I recently stumbled across an interview with David Mitchell which opens with him declaring that the internet is as harmful to humans as nuclear weapons. Two things to note: first, this is a five-year-old video; second, he’s a comedian who often uses hyperbole to sharpen his point. But in this case, there was a sincerity to his tone that I found …

For many years, particularly during my teenage years, I secretly aspired to be like David Lightman. However, considering the pickle he found himself in, I can’t help but feel relieved that my efforts fell short. Besides, Cheyenne Mountain is quite far away. I suspect that WOPR has been replaced by a big ring now, which means I probably never …

After some consideration, tinkering, and general messing about, I’m pleased to confirm that Niceferatu.net is real! It’s just a place for my comic posts. It’s not a very good comic—but hey, at least I’m trying.

This project is mainly to help me improve my drawing skills, with the hope of one day creating something more longform (like The Denouement …

I remember watching a Batman movie and hearing Alfred say something that stuck with me. It wasn’t even a good Batman movie—if I recall correctly, it was the 1997 offering, Batman & Robin. The film itself doesn’t matter, but the words did. I remember them as: “A gentleman never discusses his health or finances.”

I’m almost certain this wasn’t an …

The ghost sat alone in his chair as it slowly spun in the ambient draft of the cold office. He was contemplating the wasted hours spent playing video games, making videos, and trying to build a community. The ghost was alone because the body he had once been attached to was currently out in the world. He didn’t care where—it could have been …

When I was a kid, chess appeared to be a game of magic. The mere concept of it captivated me. However, I must admit that this fascination was partly because of my limited exposure to the game, as I had primarily learned about chess through cartoon magicians, old fantasy movies, and this one artefact in my home.

The artefact in question was a small …

LumaFusion is a video editing application, and in my experience, it’s pretty good. But what really blows me away is that it’s an example of a truly platform-agnostic app—at least within the Apple ecosystem.

I purchased it on my iPad (a 13 inch M2 iPad Air) for around £30. My main use case is editing short animation clips and using a proper video …

Humans make things. Whether this creative urge is unique to us or a common trait among all species that reach our level of social and technological development remains a mystery. It is also worth noting that the creative urge does not exist in all members of our species. Many people are perfectly content watching Netflix and eating cereal out of a …

As I’m sure many of you have noticed, I have recently been on something of a cleanse. Ejecting things from my life which I feel are no longer relevant. Trying my best to live intentionally and considering what adds value to my life, and what are things which I use as crouches for someone I used to be. Towards the end of this year, I am hoping to be …

I have spent some time reading the Cal newport book ‘Digital Minimalism.’ I’m not that far in, but I picked it up because I was feeling a ‘thing,’ the book, so far, has made me double feel that ‘thing.’ I need to write a full post about the ‘thing.’

The ‘thing,’ if anyone is …

The end of the year is looming, and we approach the dark, melancholic week which sets its home between Christmas and the new year. Like a troll on a bridge, the week of limbo must be defeated to pass into the glorious bastion of twenty twenty-five.

Which, is an overly dramatic way of saying that it’s the time of year when I reflect on where I am …

Recently I tried the dark mode on my Kindle for the first time since I have had it. It’s strange that I ever tried it at all, give that in the decade or more I have been using Kindles, it has never before occurred to me that dark mode maybe a viable option.

My verdict after an hour was this: Dark mode is awful. It’s a horrible way to read. The …

I wrote a thing. For Christmas. It is not ‘Christmasy.’

When I say that I write it for Christmas, that’s not entirely true, it just happens that it’s basically finished, and it also happens to be mid-December.

‘Of Gods and Vampires’ is a short novel following the adventures of two characters from Denouement (the first one.) It’s a pop-SCIFI …

I wanted to take a moment to than explain something which I have only recently realised maybe confusing. Both Dandelion-Utilitarian.com and Dandelion-Utilitarian.net exist.

The dot com, is my main public facing WordPress site. It is where you will find my curated articles and my Niceferatu comic posts. And, of course, my more long-form writing …

We all move on from things, and it often feels like a good move, it feels liberating and enchiching. I have had a lot of that feeling of liberty recently has I have been doing a very utilitarian decluttering of my home. Moving on from an online persona, however,  feels like a death, more than a purge. I have been known socially as ‘Hex’ since …

The Outer Limits opening contains the now legendary words, “we will control the horizontal, we will control the vertical.” Like many kids, watching the scary black and white episodes through a half broken television, on a raining evening, the words were seared into my mind, along with pregnant tonal whistle which accompanied it.

This struck me as …

I’ve used a Kindle as my main book-window since the Kindle Voyage was launched in 2014 and since that time I’ve read many a controversy about the way Amazon manage the platform. Most of the reports are actually about copyright law, not Amazon, not directly. I thing which most anti-eBook/anti-Kindle crusaders point at is the time that everyone had …

No matter how productive I can become, and no matter how skilled I become, I still have twenty-four hours in a day. Much like nothing exceeds the speed of light, no productivity pipeline will break the time barrier. This has never been more evident to me than when I started drawing.

I have been in the habit of writing for a few hours every day for …

As I said in my last post, I have been using eBay recently for the first time in many years. I have even made a pretty reasonable amount of money in exchange for the things which were on my shelf gathering dust.

On paper, it’s gone quite well. Let’s have a look at a sample here:

I purchased a comic book collected volume about five years ago and …

The things.

It has recently come to my attention that a lot of the stuff in my office has dust on it. This isn’t because I fail to clean my house (I mean, in part it is. Who ‘dusts’?) but it is more that the things in my office are so infrequently used that dust builds up.

The last time I sat down and read a physical comic may have been almost two …