It's less hot today (yay!) due to the massive plume of wildfire smoke blocking the sun (whoops). The air purifiers I stocked up on during the winter are working well, though both me and my partner feel it when we step outside.

I am officially Very Pleased with how this new generation of terrain art has come out and so I'll hopefully have them up and available for purchase in the next few days or so!

Finally home after a sporty landing with lightning flashing in the distance and enjoying the company of these two once again!

Pilot: “it’s a little gusty on the ground in Denver” Reality: 60mph+ winds and scattered thunderstorms. We are currently flying away from Denver and towards Omaha, presumably to get in a long queue.

OK, phew, I have finally had a real shower and am now sitting in the airport awaiting my flight home. EMF this year was quite rough; while buildup was smooth, the main event was very operationally difficult and burnt through a lot of people both mentally and physically, including myself...

The handy thing about the camper van depot being in Thorpe Industrial Estate is that there’s apparently always a bunch of rideshares waiting exactly 4 minutes away (at Thorpe Park)

Was fully prepared for my first return to the real world after EMF to be the intense mediocrity of the average UK motorway service station but it turns out Gloucester's is run by the Tebay people and is actually rather nice.

Well it took a ton of work in a brutal English heatwave, but wow is it nice to just enjoy the environs of #emfcamp now we are fully underway.

It's in a trans friendly field camp listening to a jungle radio set DJed by Terry Wogan (impersonated) over a phone service that you call into, that really underlines how much most spaces are miserable because they've been engineered to be miserable on purpose by ppl worried what fun might lead to.

An auspicious start to my travels to EMF as a storm shuts down all but one runway and we are number 19 for departure…

I can only imagine the scenes in England tomorrow morning. Nobody is going to make it to work!

A few years on and some improvements in both the software and the fabrication process, and I'm finally quite happy with how these little terrain frames look. (Old on left, new on right)

Work is all done for the week which means I now begin three weeks of being full time on @emfcamp.bsky.social! There is a rather large amount of stuff we have to order to a field this weekend.

Well well well, it does appear we have successfully primaried the centrist Democrat in Colorado District 1 (Denver) with a more progressive candidate. Lovely.

Lovely day today - chatted with Dad in the morning, then did one of my favorite hikes (a pleasant 8 miles and 2,500 vertical feet), the people at the mountain coffee shop recognised me and gave me the locals' discount, and then we had a rescue just one town over that went very smoothly.

The NZ ETA is maybe the only travel authorisation/visa I've applied for where they have sent a follow up email with suggestions of how to apply for a job and work there instead. (Australia's was the standard EVEN BEING IN AUSTRALIA IS A PRIVILEGE, which, look, it's nice but calm down)

Even if you're not in an RV, I still find RVParky to be the best road-trip-planning tool. This South Island route is ambitious for 8 days, but I think doable.

Finally planned my return to the arguably-better hemisphere, so I'll be at PyCon AU this year, after a week of gallivanting around Aotearoa/NZ. Relatedly, I now hold a through ticket for DEN - IVC, which I imagine is quite a rare city pair to book...

Currently under a simultaneous fire weather warning, severe thunderstorm warning, and tornado watch. A thunderstorm with quite decent-size hail has indeed appeared, let's hope it stops there.

While I take great care when submitting to a CFP with an anonymised review process to use no personal details, to use US English spelling (if it's in the US), etc. - one of the talks I submitted is so obviously from me that I would not be shocked if one reviewer knows just from the title.

My current prediction of where "vibe" (LLM-assisted) coding goes from here: - Management says all PRs must be reviewed by senior engineers - It's a massive time waste, so new metrics are imposed on original authors/LLM users over %age of accepted PRs ...

Blobby is something that Americans deeply don't understand and also intrinsically fear, and so is vital to national security.

Charlie Stross@cstross.bsky.social · 2mo ago

BLOBBY IS BAAAAACK!!! https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/jun/04/bizarre-return-of-mr-blobby (Just noting that my current novel-in-progress features a mass crucifixion of burning Mr Blobbies at one point. It seemed … necessary.)

Wrote up a blog post version (with a few extra notes) of the first half of my constraining-LLMs video: aeracode.org/2026/06/01/c...

Switched away from VS Code to Zed a couple of weeks ago and I am really enjoying it. Similar UX for me, seems much faster/efficient, a toggle that just turns all "AI" features off if you want (though I personally keep a few on). Only minor nit... no touch support under Wayland for some reason?

I have found a butcher in the Denver area that has both Correct Bacon and Correct Sausages (and they're reasonably priced!) Dangerous stuff.

Had a few things I wanted to talk about regarding LLMs and no conf talk slot soon, so did the talk as a video. Here's 40 minutes on truth, trust, LLMs, and how you should handle and harness them if you're going to use them: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJA6...

Truth, Trust, LLMs, and Consequences

YouTube video by Andrew Godwin

youtube.com

Congrats to the last.fm crew on going independent - I still scrobble my music over there, and somehow now have over 20 years of history. Hoping they've got enough revenue flow to build new things.

Last.fm | Play music, find songs, and discover artists

The world's largest online music service. Listen online, find out more about your favourite artists, and get music recommendations, only at Last.fm

last.fm

Working on a new talk/video and I have harnessed the power of impossibly large neural networks to reliably always output one thing: cheese or onion?

Considering favouring my Lyft driver tonight purely based on his excellent taste in trance/dance music.

Took a little time away from LA and PyCon to go visit Joshua Tree (in my quest to see every national park) and it was a lovely time.