The house hadn’t changed. Not really. The white paint had flaked in places, the gate leaned, the mailbox hung open like a broken jaw—but it was still the same two-bedroom home perched at the end of the gravel lane. Still the wind-chime, dulled brass now, still the hedges grown wild around the porch. It was her. She was the one that had changed.
Stop me if you think that you’ve heard this one before… It’s the next “app to end all apps”, the next finance system that will handle your project invoicing woes, the team sharing tool that will mean no-one misses those last-minute client requests, or the CRM giant that offers infinite customisations and integrations to cater for your every process. All for the very reasonable monthly fee of £ with an initial “mobilisation” phase of £££.
I always remember being confused that when a particular band got popular, the kids who were into them before anyone else would completely lose interest - in the music that they had spent the best part of a last term hyping up to everyone else.
No, this isn’t some adolescence-related rant, I’m talking about choosing to learn things that you can’t un-learn about making a decision that you may come to regret but not knowing that until it’s too late.
He left the tie draped over the back of the chair. The glasses stayed on the sink. He didn’t bother locking the door to the apartment. Let the landlord knock. Let Lois call. Let Perry White chase his next overdue article. Today, he wasn’t Clark. Today, he got to breathe.
So how do we start to feel comfortable? How do we start to “trust” AI and / or the AI systems that are out there? We have to try to understand how they work and how they can work for us, and ideally, we can do this in fairly short order and with a low budget.
Vibe coding is essentially asking an LLM to give you the code to build something by simply describing what it should do, rather than inputting any line of code. The ability to open up software development to literally anyone with an idea and the knowledge of how it might be built. Importantly, and as I mentioned before not all applications should be built, and not jut “anybody” should be building these things.
Following on from my blog last year about collaboration with ai to create music I wanted to share an update and the steps involved with setting up these services, not just for those looking to become the next overnight sensation, but also as a fun, educational and engaging activity kids of almost any age can enjoy.
I built my first “Agent” in 2006. of course, 19 years ago we weren’t calling them “Agents” and there wasn’t a sniff of “AI”, but there was one thing that remains universally valuable. The vision to automate a process and the tools with which to build something capable of automating that process.
The storms came first.
At first, they were dismissed as anomalies. An unusually strong typhoon season. Flash flooding in deserts that hadn’t seen rain in decades. Sudden freezes in tropical climates.
Unprecedented, but not impossible.
Then came the things that were impossible.
AI is everywhere. It’s in your emails, your spreadsheets, your favourite apps - even the fridge in that fancy smart home advert. Every tech company wants to tell you they have AI now, but let’s be honest: is it actually solving a problem, or is it just another shiny feature designed to get you to buy in?
Paul stood outside Fresh & Save. The frost-lined pavement shimmered faintly under the flickering streetlights. His breath clouded in front of him as he studied the store’s automatic doors. They remained closed, unresponsive, as if waiting for something.
The tundra stretched endlessly before them, a ghost of a world that had long been abandoned. The sky was slate-grey, the wind slicing through the skeletal remains of structures forgotten by time. A wasteland of the old world, buried beneath centuries of progress.
The store’s atmosphere was suffocating when Paul arrived. The air felt thick, almost gelatinous, as if moving through it took more effort. The lights overhead were dimmer than usual, but the shadows they cast were sharper, stretching unnaturally along the aisles.
Paul arrived at Fresh & Save earlier than usual. The shop’s cold glow greeted him, but today the light seemed… fractured. The aisles shimmered faintly, as though viewed through warped glass.
The technician slouched at their station, staring at the salvaged hard drive. It had come from a discontinued model of a companion bot—functional but far from cutting-edge. Most of the data was corrupted or irrelevant, but a file labeled Journal caught their attention.
The sharp chill of the morning air bit at Paul’s face as he stepped out of his flat. The street outside was as routine as always: the dog walker and his unnervingly obedient companion, the low hum of the streetlights, and the faint clatter of a newspaper being dropped onto a doorstep. Yet, today, it all felt distant, as though Paul were watching it happen through a pane of frosted glass.
Paul arrived at Fresh & Save early, the store bathed in a sterile glow. The hum of the lights greeted him like an old adversary, sharper and louder than usual. He paused at the entrance, staring at the faint reflections of the fluorescent bulbs on the glass doors. For a moment, he thought he saw movement - something flickering in the reflection that didn’t match his own.
The Stand Up Crawl was an unofficial circuit for every hack, hopeful, and half-starved vagrant with a dream of comedy. Mic nights in dive bars, community centres, even laundromats—anything with a mic, a light, and an audience. That’s where I found him: The Public Toilet Guy.
Paul woke to the sound of rain tapping against the window. The flat was darker than usual, the heavy clouds outside dulling the morning light. He glanced at his notebook on the table, yesterday’s last entry standing out in bold: Something isn’t right.
