After success with a pizza, I’ve decided to try cooking in my wood burning stove. Little steps. Today I tried melting some cheese over some gnocchi.

A good start. If I’m honest, this wasn’t anything more than melting some cheese. Next time I might actually cook something. And that’s pepper not ash in the last photo.

It’s that time of year again. This winter I am working for a company with offices in the middle of a country estate. To get home you have to walk through a copse and over a sheep field.

I enjoy walking in the dark immensely. I have always enjoyed it. I like to the extent that I find flashlights genuinely offensive in the dark (until you’ve dropped something). When I’m out in the dark and quiet I feel like the space that I inhabit expands a little. My own little personal bubble grows and weakens and I feel a bit more connected with everything. I am more aware of noises and movement around me in the half-light of the gloaming.

I’ve seen a number of special computer keyboards. These include, for example, five-finger units that require learning special ‘chords’. The idea of a one-handed keyboard is enticing but I don’t like the sound of having to learn specific combinations. What about re-using existing knowledge?

Anyone who touch-types knows that each letter belongs to a given finger. I wondered what would happen if you restricted the keyboard to just one row (i.e. one button for each finger) whether this would make a functioning concept.

There’s no hiding musicianship. Lock it up, put it in a box, or — crucially — ply it with significant quantities of drink … still it will shine through. There’s something immutable about musicianship that means that a bottle of Pimms and and half a bottle of whiskey later, it still keeps on playing.

It was in circumstances such as these that The Gribbin came together for the first — and last — time. In the heady days of 2006, The Pimms Sessions were recorded in a murky studio in scenic Oxford and (and subsequently presented to the unsuspecting, and arguably undeserving world).

Back in the day I used to do a lot of sound and lighting for student theatre. I did a lot in Oxford, and went up to Edinburgh a number of times to do the Edinburgh Fringe. I did not go to Oxford University, but I did hang around with a lot of people who did. Once or twice I contributed to a theatre column in a student paper. It’s a bit thespy because it’s okay to experiment with language when you’re young. Reprinted here because why not.

Back in the day I used to do a lot of sound and lighting for student theatre. I did a lot in Oxford, and went up to Edinburgh a number of times to do the Edinburgh Fringe. I did not go to Oxford University, but I did hang around with a lot of people who did. Once or twice I contributed to a theatre column in a student paper. It’s a bit thespy because it’s okay to experiment with language when you’re young. Reprinted here because why not.

Back in the day I used to do a lot of sound and lighting for student theatre. I did a lot in Oxford, and went up to Edinburgh a number of times to do the Edinburgh Fringe. I did not go to Oxford University, but I did hang around with a lot of people who did. Once or twice I contributed to a theatre column in a student paper. It’s a bit thespy because it’s okay to experiment with language when you’re young. Reprinted here because why not.

Haptic feedback is still an area where real books win over e-book readers such as Kindles. Being able to tell how far through a book you are by the feel of it, by the balance and thickness of the pages adds something instinctive to the reading process.

My idea is to have a little linear actuator with a small weight on it that spans the width of the ebook device. Just a very small motor (the type you get in phone vibrators) and a small worm-gear (like you get in floppy disk drives) would do, and wouldn’t take up much space. The weight would gradually move across from left to right as you moved through the book. This would allow you to assess your progress through whatever tome  you were currently reading just by feel.

Like most, I grew up in a house. These perform a number of functions. A safe place to sleep, eat and raise a family come fairly high in the list, as do entertaining guests and storing things. The house doesn’t undergo any substantial change in order to fulfil these different functions. It largely stays put. In effort to impress the guests you might re-arrange the furniture, clean the windows or hide the cat. The prime change is in the disposition of the house dweller, who changes their mental state in order to fulfill the task of getting through another day, feeding the children again or keeping the guests entertained until it’s time for them to go home.

Don’t ask me what this does.