Matt Harwood

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 17:28:18 +0100

Just started touching a code base that was 100% Claude Code developed. I have no idea what anything does, there are a million random markdown files as “docs”, and I have no idea if the included skills/behaviours are doing the right thing. This is not how I want to use LLMs.

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 20:19:49 +0100

I’m very confused. Benidorm’s costume dept seems to have never won a BAFTA? Is this an admin error?

Surf Social

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 21:57:16 +0100

From the first Fast Company article I’ve read in years:

All I know for sure is that using Surf leaves me feeling better about the state of the internet. I am aware that the net is rapidly filling up with AI-generated slop, and that, furthermore, the technology’s impact on search and advertising threatens to disincentivize humans from bothering with the medium at all. But for now, there’s still lots of great stuff out there—and Surf is a refreshingly inventive way to find it.

I’ve been playing with Surf this week. I had the iOS beta months ago, but some kind of bug made me lose interest. Now, however, I’m having great fun making feeds and calmly reading through others. Love it.

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 20:24:14 +0100

I am trying a trial of Apple News. It just seems to be the shit magazines and rags? Is that really it?

The White House app does what you think it would do

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 00:30:00 +0100

From Thereallo:

The official White House Android app has a cookie/paywall bypass injector, tracks your GPS every 4.5 minutes, and loads JavaScript from some guy’s GitHub Pages.

Put me down as “unsurprised”.

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 00:09:14 +0100

Just upgraded my micro.blog account as a treat.

We Need to Talk About Green Party Spring Conference

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 19:35:46 +0100

I had other plans today, but illness confined me to the duvet and I decided to attend the Green Party Spring Conference I had tickets for. I’ve spent a couple of weeks absorbing the agenda, looking forward to hearing debate around issues that affect people’s lives and helping to shape our policy platform.

Unfortunately, that was not to be. The day started with the voting system crashing continuously. There has been suggestions that this was a DDoS attack from interested parties, but I’m personally yet to see evidence of that.

What came next was hours of in-fighting that to my mind is reserved for the Labour Party or a SWP free-for-all. It was not until 3.20pm (after starting at 10am) that the first motion - the Standing Order Committee Report - even came to a proper vote.

Now, I should start by saying I am new to this. I don’t know people’s history, associations or viewpoints. But what I saw was SOC members accusing each other of power grabs and taking votes away from a sovereign conference. One SOC member, Martin Hemingway, misgendered another in a particularly nasty moment. I can only assume they know each other as long-standing members of the same committee and thus this was intentional and spiteful.

Votes of no confidence were continuously raised against the Chair, which - to a neutral party - were doing all they could under trying circumstances. By the third, I almost voted no confidence just to give them a break.

Once the SOC Report was finally voted through, things started to move on. There were short discussions on each topic and voting worked. However, a growing grey cloud of time running out was creeping overhead.

Time neared 5.30pm - 15 mins until the end of the conference. From my agenda sheet, not very much of it had been covered. I realised that what seemed to be the most contentious motion - that Zionism is racism - was about to come up. An extension of 15 minutes to the day was requested, voted on and agreed.

Cue more spurious raising of votes of no confidence against the Chair in a transparent, anti-democratic act of wasting time from people who quite obviously did not want the motion to be up for debate or vote.

In response, someone raised a motion to basket the amendments (group them and vote on them in one go) to the motion in a desperate attempt to have the Zionism motion heard in time. We heard an impassioned, tear-filled plea to vote for the basketing from someone whose family have suffered greatly at the hands of the Israeli state.

Just as they finished speaking, time had run out. The Chair, exhausted and emotionally drained, said their goodbyes as fast as they could and the Zoom call ended. A blank screen stared back at me and I wondered what the hell I’d just seen.

I came to this conference with excitement, but it seems several groups of opposing views on many subjects were unable to resist trying to stamp each other out. This isn’t the Green Party I have seen elsewhere. North Herts Green Party are a beautiful group of people with differing views but are respectful, kind, and pulling together. This Zoom call bun fight was embarrassing to be a part of and we must do better.

I don’t have the insight to know what needs to change, but that was a farce. People had dedicated weeks - months - to researching and preparing motions. Attendees and organisers gave up their Saturdays and money to contribute to the future of their party and some people chose to ruin that by trying to silence the other side of whichever debate they are overly married to that is stopping them being adult, reasonable members of a political party.

Maybe this is a fruitless call in modern politics, but if there’s a chance to ensure respectful debate and democratic voting on policy it must be taken. There are important things at stake.

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 12:41:02 +0100

I’m starting to think this #GPEW Spring Conference is being sabotaged. Greens are not this… disruptive.

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 10:41:34 +0000

Today is the Green Party of England and Wales Spring Conference. I’m ill, so tucked up with ginger shots and watching the Zoom call. First surprise, free menstrual products policy hasn’t been waived through 🤨

RSS is messaging?

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 10:37:23 +0000

Beeper + RSS, please:

When I heard about Matt’s product Beeper I thought wow what if that were on the RSS network.

I think RSS should be here. Makes sense doesn’t it?

I agree with Dave. Blogs / RSS feeds to me feel like slow, considered group messaging.

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 10:53:20 +0000

Today’s ADHD kicker: have the idea to use the library to save money on books, continually forget to renew/return them, pay fines, defy the purpose 😄

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 23:51:41 +0000

I really love (and believe in) this comment from Ploum:

It might have been an email thread. Or a lobste.rs comment. It was a discussion about yet another attempt at a new decentralized social protocol. And we reached the conclusion that with blogs and email, we already had a decentralized social network. We only needed to use it.

I enjoy reading blogs, and sending emails to the authors. I do it frequently, and have done for a long time. It feels… right.

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 22:39:45 +0000

I spent some time this week getting to grips with deep linking (App Links and Universal Links on Android and iOS respectively) and I just wish we had standards for these things. There’s no need for 2x engineering effort (maybe more to include other OSes) to solve the same “simple” problem 😮‍💨

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 17:05:48 +0000

Today I’ve used an agent to build a simple tracker to make finding a new place to rent easier. “Book Viewing” adds the viewing to iCal and invites my partner. Took 1hr. It really is a new world.

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 20:35:04 +0000

Had a great time becoming acquainted with TLA+ today. I’ve only just dipped my toe in but I am confident more formal proving systems will only become more useful in the brave new world.

Inkwell from Micro.blog helps grow the blogging community

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 20:23:38 +0000

One of my favourite parts of the blogging community is replies. Not comments, but replies on one blog to a post on another. Well thought out responses to well thought out points.

The conversation evolves with patience and async joy - a stark contrast to the fast, short retorts of social media.

Manton Reece of Micro.blog (where I host this blog) has recently added Inkwell to the service’s line-up of useful tools. It’s a pretty RSS reader which has thoughtful integrations with Micro.blog proper.

For example, I can highlight parts of a post, and compose a reply post right from there. I can save this as a draft to add to later when I have more thoughts.

There’s a nifty feature called “Fading” which can summarise posts over a week old, reducing any fear that you might miss something interesting in your feeds.

I appreciate the intention of Inkwell - reading your feeds is not another task. It should be a cosy home base to catch up with other thinkers and tinkerers, and contribute to the conversation in a real way.

Though NetNewsWire is an amazing piece of software that has served me well, Inkwell might just prompt me to write more.

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 22:01:47 +0000

Spent the evening watching the local chamber orchestra play Haydn, Finzi and Mozart in our medieval church. T’was beautiful. Though the clapping conventions were baffling 😂

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 22:47:02 +0000

Has anyone heard a cohesive argument of what Meta would do with an LLM that actually works?

NYT: ‘Meta Delays Rollout of New AI Model After Performance Concerns’:

The difference between Meta and Apple might be that Meta is merely a few months away from rolling out its own best-of-breed AI model. But the difference could be that Meta has blown hundreds of billions of dollars pursuing their own frontier models, and Apple has not, and both just license Gemini from Google.

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 10:02:26 +0000

A charming little story for when you feel squished by the shell you’re in: unsquish.me

Funnily enough, with moving home at the moment, this is what I needed ☺️

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 17:22:19 +0000

A very interesting conversation on the feeling of instability in software engineering caused by the robots: www.youtube.com/watch

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 19:09:18 +0000

Finished reading: The Owl and the Nightingale by Simon Armitage 📚

Tue, 30 Dec 2025 22:17:52 +0000

Finished reading: Crudo by Olivia Laing 📚

Read in one sitting - easily done with such dreamy writing. The chaotic feeling of 2017 described perfectly, reminding us it only feels worse now.

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 12:53:02 +0000

Boxing Daying solo today, started off with a bit of cleaning and now, of course, football. Hoping for a good result for The Hatters #COYH ⚽️

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 21:59:08 +0000

Watched: Urchin 🍿

Because for some reason I want to remove hope from life at Christmas. Apart from that, quite a piercing watch, great lead.

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 12:05:57 +0000

I’m heading in to Cambridge with multiple agendas, one being to replenish my fiction pile for the Christmas period. Any burning recommendations?