The Curious Engineer

All blogs / Essays / personal

Francis Irving

flourish.org/blog

Recent content in Blog on Francis Irving

Essays / personalAI / MLGeneral

’05’10’15’20’25
Posts
237 from 23 Sep 2002 to 18 Oct 2026
Posting
monthly (6 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
Feed
https://www.flourish.org/posts/feed.xml

2026 6

  1. Half of the West Highland Way in photos
  2. 36 talks about radical land policy
  3. Why I've changed my view on AI in the last 3 months
  4. Ursula Le Guin is the only person who understands what is going on
  5. Vibe coding personal apps in mid-2026
  6. On the frustration of agreeing with everyone about AI

2024 4

  1. Instalamb, my browser plugin to control Instagram
  2. My mind sampling results
  3. Announcing "Mindful Media Club"
  4. A week making something each day

2023 4

  1. Netatmo smart thermostat! How much gas I saved last winter, and how to automate it to turn off when out (not using IFTTT)
  2. The little differences between Android and iOS in 2023
  3. What is high-quality about the data that trained generative AI?
  4. This kind of rosy yellow glow in my head

2022 2

  1. Art I enjoyed in 2022 - top eight
  2. On intuition's relationship to rationality via language

2021 1

  1. Blind-sided

2019 1

  1. Pressure cooked split black urad dhal

2018 2

  1. Brainstorming a better YouTube recommendation algorithm
  2. A cycle home along the river

2017 9

  1. On using a variety of information services
  2. A thousand times an ant colony of fifty times a cat
  3. A fugue on authoritarian high modernism
  4. The peace to know what you don't know
  5. Email review #1: FastMail
  6. Textures and colours, India
  7. A short walk around Vote Leave's software VICS
  8. Hindu holy mountain #2: Arunachala
  9. Rant on the failure of news media

2016 11

  1. Notes on a meditation
  2. Hindu holy mountain #1: Pavagadh
  3. First, do no harm
  4. In praise of temple elephants
  5. Scouring pad
  6. Houses like trees
  7. Changing money
  8. Communal pets
  9. Zero marginal cost
  10. Sea. Sunlight. Calm. Trees. Laughter.
  11. On finding political axes using maths

2015 11

  1. History of libraries
  2. Don't play the game, mutate the board
  3. Sync/Backup workshop at Redecentralize Conference
  4. Making our information society safe and fair
  5. Those brief moments when winning seems possible
  6. "I find politics inaccessible": User testing voter advice apps
  7. Why I'm collecting every MP candidate's CV
  8. The advert wars
  9. Which web development tools are commodities?
  10. Promising to make software safer
  11. Long, cold cyberwar

2014 5

  1. I blinked and missed 6 exciting things in the last 20 years of space
  2. An email to Nicholas
  3. Properly funding Democracy Club
  4. Irony of extensions that remove junk slowing Chrome down
  5. Skills you need to get product/market fit, all in a line

2013 5

  1. How we used email as a customer support system at mySociety
  2. How to use time-travelling anthropologist pollsters to tell good from evil marketing
  3. Tudor time travel - Episode 1 of Crazy theories.txt
  4. Awesome Foundation - Liverpool Chapter
  5. Four ways we'll help WhipCar if they tell us what went wrong

2012 8

  1. Why did we love the giants coming to town?
  2. Mapping the product/market space - an hallucination
  3. Heroku's early history: 4 home pages that made $212 million
  4. Products and markets are the same thing
  5. Do epic shit! On being the first friend of DoESLiverpool
  6. On the need for a new profession
  7. Part 2: Why I think PledgeBank failed, when GroupOn and Kickstarter flew
  8. Part 1: Why did PledgeBank fail when GroupOn and Kickstarter flew?

2011 7

  1. Newsflash: Geeks now good at usability, everyone else crap
  2. Astonishments, ten, in the history of version control
  3. Why I just joined the Green party
  4. What's a "startup" and why do I care?
  5. Seven facts about the Global Village Construction Kit
  6. We take extraordinary business models for granted
  7. Seven facts about Unhosted

2010 2

  1. Dinosaur media and the Internet both suck, a Booktrust story
  2. Monsters not loony enough

2009 2

  1. John Redwood is a climate change denier
  2. Your wildest predictions for 2010

2008 2

  1. Slightly dizzy after 2008
  2. Save our economy from Climate Change

2007 5

  1. 2008 to be quite a ride
  2. Sometimes there are victories
  3. Life
  4. Restricted shorts and newspaper hagiography
  5. Short films and long journeys

2006 29

  1. Quadruply offset
  2. Sand and clay
  3. In March the gypsies returned
  4. Great firewall
  5. Four more photos of old Shanghai
  6. Holy mountain
  7. Holy island
  8. Buried in the sky
  9. Tibetan language
  10. Building a new highway
  11. Tibet, horses, water prayers
  12. Chengdu
  13. Quick post
  14. Hope in the air
  15. Warriors or pigs?
  16. Penguins in Shanghai
  17. Shanghai, goodbye
  18. Child of the atom bomb
  19. Chinese family history
  20. 東南西北 (DongNanXiBei, EastSouthWestNorth)
  21. Rush hour, six minutes from my window
  22. Who is your birth Lord?
  23. Four unusual hobbies
  24. Think of a website
  25. Save what?
  26. Surrounded by miracles
  27. Thrown out of Freedom of Expression seminar
  28. Selling books and guns
  29. Checking up on your goals

2005 16

  1. Companies with unusual structures
  2. Moving house
  3. School without rules
  4. Usability errors in Google
  5. Working for your self
  6. Don't be evil
  7. Suriname with engineers
  8. Vote based on a quiz
  9. Yawn
  10. How your MP voted on important issues
  11. Say "Hello"
  12. Found this week in Bristol election leaflet
  13. Love letter to democracy
  14. Fifty springs are little room
  15. A High Indignity
  16. Bindery and Conservation

2004 18

  1. Google is Your Menu
  2. How many people will you influence this afternoon?
  3. Last Two Days at Burning Man
  4. mySociety Job
  5. Middle Two Days at Burning Man
  6. Your and my society
  7. First Two Days at Burning Man
  8. Californian Cities
  9. What is Burning Man?
  10. Land of the Free
  11. Moved House
  12. Organic Bodies
  13. Two Immodest Events
  14. They Work for You
  15. Tension Between Information and Action
  16. Stopping Me Make Toast
  17. Comment on the Prime Minister
  18. Independent Story

2003 58

  1. Public Whip Newsletter
  2. Fun Flea Game
  3. Sarajevo to London
  4. Albania to Montenegro
  5. Gjirokastra
  6. Meteora
  7. Big Fat Greek Wedding
  8. Burning Punts
  9. Current Projects
  10. Japanese Charities
  11. Back in Cambridge
  12. Island Nation off the Edge of Eurasia
  13. Future Technology
  14. One Day Using Only Vending Machines
  15. Hitchhiking to Christ's Grave
  16. Concrete Electricity Pole
  17. Inland Sea and Hiroshima
  18. Favourite Garden and Tree
  19. Japanese Gardens
  20. Pictures of Japan
  21. Nara, Buddhism, Suburbanity
  22. Japanese Entertainments
  23. Osaka, Japan
  24. Japan and SARS
  25. Outskirts of Kunming
  26. Kunming Local Tourists
  27. Chinese Language School
  28. Various SARS links
  29. 汉字 (Chinese Characters)
  30. Disinformation on SARS
  31. Expat Protest and WHO
  32. Kunming Life
  33. Some Photos
  34. This Blog is Censored
  35. Unhappy New War's Day
  36. Mandalay Monastry
  37. Arrival in Kunming
  38. Night with The Journalist
  39. Goodbye Playboy, Hello Journalist
  40. Welcome to China!
  41. Vietnam Impressions
  42. Expatriates, Prostitution and Gambling
  43. Water Engineering
  44. Quiet American Irony
  45. Across the Demilitarised Zone
  46. Post 41
  47. Proposition in the Imperial Palace
  48. Vietnam Coast by Train
  49. Pho 2000 vs Burger King
  50. Cacooned by Ho Chi Minh City
  51. January 6, 2003
  52. Cambodia Highlights
  53. Wrath of Conrad
  54. English, World Language
  55. Friendly Cambodia
  56. Bangkok Public Transport
  57. Myanmar Impressions
  58. Bus to Bangkok

2002 29

  1. December 7, 2002
  2. December 6, 2002
  3. December 6, 2002
  4. November 30, 2002
  5. November 27, 2002
  6. November 27, 2002
  7. November 25, 2002
  8. November 25, 2002
  9. November 21, 2002
  10. November 17, 2002
  11. November 15, 2002
  12. November 1, 2002
  13. October 30, 2002
  14. October 16, 2002
  15. October 9, 2002
  16. October 6, 2002
  17. October 4, 2002
  18. October 2, 2002
  19. October 2, 2002
  20. October 1, 2002
  21. September 27, 2002
  22. September 27, 2002
  23. September 26, 2002
  24. September 26, 2002
  25. September 24, 2002
  26. September 23, 2002
  27. September 23, 2002
  28. September 23, 2002
  29. September 23, 2002