Monday, 9 February, 2026

Wednesday, 4 February, 2026

Tom Loosemore (LinkedIn warning) on how he vibe coded a useful app in no time at all:

It really was – and is – that easy. That said, under the bonnet Replit has written a horridly inaccessible, unsupportable, unextendable hairball of JavaScript. It’s more of a toy than a product.

Monday, 2 February, 2026

Dave Richardson at Newark and Sherwood District Council – Nine Councils. One Message. A playbook for Multi‑Council Digital Collaboration:

When all nine councils across Nottingham and Nottinghamshire were tasked with communicating the complexities of local government reorganisation (LGR), it was clear that traditional, council‑by‑council messaging wouldn’t be enough. Residents needed clarity. Communications teams needed speed. And every authority needed a neutral, trusted space to share information.

Mike Gallagher – In public : Notes on working in the open:

The phrase “make things open: it makes things better” gets tossed around a lot and sounds simple, but I think it encapsulates a profound set of ideas that define what is specific to working in the public sector. We need to continue to sing this song so that future generations know what we mean and why we mean it.

Friday, 30 January, 2026

📅 Weeknote w/e Friday 30 January 2026

Wallis the cat

January has felt like a looooong month, and I haven’t really enjoyed it. Doesn’t feel like I am remotely up to speed after the festive break, still! So tired. So very tired.

This week’s worky highlights:

  • Getting some of the info-gov stuff sorted for clients using Skillstats – DPIAs and that sort of thing. Slightly dull but really important.
  • We are ever closer to the launch of the LGR DDaT Playbook, so that is fun. Looking forward to finding out what people make of it, and what they think we ought to work on next.
  • Plenty of signups happening for LGRCamp, which is nice to see.
  • Had a lovely meetup of the LocaliseLive! crowd. Heard some great stories of how different councils are making use of technology in a quiet, efficient but innovative way.
  • Nice chat with Neilly and his colleagues at the BFI to see if they could use Skillstats to help them baseline their various digital capability building efforts.

Not really work stuff:

  • Managed to go a week with just posting on this blog and not tweaking anything on it, which is, I think, a result.
  • Chatted with some learning and development folk reminded me of the really good bit of Learning Pool when I worked there some 15 years ago: the catalogue of shared e-learning that councils had access to. LP is a very different beast now and not much interested in local gov, which is a shame. More of a shame is that there are now few councils sharing this kind of content and instead having to but it individually or create it themselves. Someone (huh) should bring the shared library back!
  • Nick reminded me of the existence of GovGroups, and I gave it a quick spring clean. Worth checking out if you need a simple online group for something.

Media consumption:

  • We had never watched CItizen Kane so have started that. Also halfway through Netflix Damon/Affleck number The Rip which I am liking more than anyone else.
  • Now that the new series of Traitors has finished, we have started watching it, because binging.
  • Have started Until I find You by John Irving. I think I have read it before, as bits feel familiar, but that could just be the usual Irving wrestling, unreliable memory, weird sex, odd family dynamics stuff. It’s good, but then I really like his stuff.

Mahad Kalam – The UK paid £4.1 million for a bookmarks site:

The UK Government recently unveiled its ‘AI Skills Hub’, which wants to provide 10 million workers with AI skills by 2030. The main site was delivered by PwC for the low, low price of.. £4.1 million (~$5,657,000).

It is not good. Like, at all – the UI is insanely bad and it’s clear that this was just a vibecoded site (to be fair, this is the AI Skills Hub, but c’mon, where is the pride in your work? I would be ashamed to even release this as a prototype!)

Also on this, Scotty Quilter – The UK Government’s AI Skills Hub: A Critical Analysis:

On 28 January 2026, the UK Government launched an expanded AI Skills Hub with the ambitious goal of upskilling 10 million workers by 2030. Backed by £27 million in public funding and partnerships with 25+ organisations, this initiative has been presented as Britain’s answer to the AI skills crisis. However, a closer examination reveals fundamental flaws in both design and execution that risk undermining the very goals the programme seeks to achieve.

Wednesday, 28 January, 2026

Am finding the WP Reset plugin useful, particularly at the start of a project where I might be trying lots of different stuff out. Quickly takes a site back to the bare bones, clearing out the database and so on, to give you a fresh start.

Carl Haggerty – Introducing the Chrysalis Work:

Working in a council right now can feel a lot like being inside a chrysalis. The old shape of things is still visible – job titles, structures, budgets, habits – but much of what we relied on no longer quite fits, and what’s emerging isn’t yet clear.

The language of “transformation” is everywhere. New operating models, corporate programmes, refreshed strategies, renamed projects – on paper it looks and sounds like big change. But when I tune into what it actually feels like inside, most of what has been labelled “transformation” has been far more modest: service‑by‑service tweaks, done at pace, layered onto old structures, old habits and the same silos that quietly shape everything.

Monday, 26 January, 2026

John Gruber reports on the new version of OmniOutliner (6) which includes a featured called Omni Links:

OmniOutliner has always been document-based, and version 6 continues to be. There are advantages and disadvantages to both models, but one of the advantages to library-based apps is that they more easily allow the developer to create custom URL schemes to link to items in the app’s library. Omni Links is an ambitious solution to bring that to document-based apps. Omni Links let you copy URLs that link not just to an OmniOutliner document, but to any specific row within an OmniOutliner document. And you can paste those URLs into any app you want (like, say, Apple Notes or Things, or events in your calendar app). From the perspective of other apps, they’re just URLs that start with omnioutliner://. They’re not based on anything as simplistic as a file’s pathname. They’re a robust way to link to a unique document, or a specific row within that document. Create an Omni Link on your Mac, and that link will work on your iPhone or iPad too — or vice versa. This is a very complex problem to solve, but Omni Links delivers on the age-old promise of “It just works”, abstracting all the complexity.

I’ve been using OmniOutliner for years, to help structure longer documents and put ideas into some kind of order. Am going to have to try this out, because I’m hoping it will let me link to external documents from within an outline – for example to where I am writing up the thing listed in the outline. I know what I mean anyway.

There’s another Mac app which might do something vaguely similar called Hookmark, which I have never gotten round to checking out properly.

📅 Weeknote w/e Friday 23 January 2026

Blogging has been a little light this week. Just not that much stuff to link to, and I’ve been in a headspace where I’ve not had too many share-worthy thoughts or ideas. I’ve been tired – maybe that’s the reason.

I also didn’t post this on Friday but left it til the following Monday! Silly David.

This week’s worky highlights:

  • Some more great chats with people about Skillstats, which fills me with hope that this might be a thing and eventually contribute to me being able to retire at some point in the next few decades (an increasing concern as the years pass…!)
  • A lovely chat with Marcus Rees-Harris. We definitely have met at some point, we are sure, but it was lovely to have a proper chat with someone I have been connected to online for some time. He is thriving in a new role, and it was great to see.
  • Been working with Nick on LGR Camp, which is now open for registration.

Not really work stuff:

  • Had a nice discussion over email with Giles Turnbull about finding files in MacOS (I suggested trying out HoudahSpot and Find any File)

Media consumption:

  • Finished the Pirates of the Caribbean series of films. Fourth was very poor, I thought, the fifth and final one slightly better.
  • Watched The War of the Worlds (the Tom Cruise one) again with the family and found it kind of ok but also weirdly low stakes.
  • Have found the Past, Present, Future podcast presented by David Runciman really interesting and it makes a break from all the football ones I otherwise listen to.