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The Box Arrived – Advanced Data Science and Analytics is here
A box I did not order, containing a book I did write. The second edition of “Advanced Data Science and Analytics with Python” landed yesterday. Rebuilt, not reprinted. Code generation is nearly free; judgement is not. Out 26 August.
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Now Reading: Proof
Mathematical monsters, Gödel’s constitutional loophole, and modelling a pandemic with the clock running. Kucharski’s Proof is about the gap between being right and being believed.
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What Does It Take to Fly? – A Children’s Book
On writing for children, the four forces of flight, and why understanding something never makes it smaller. My book “What Does It Take to Fly?” is out now on Apple Books in English and Spanish — plus a note on playwriting, counselling studies, and where a scriptwriting MA might fit.
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GenAI and On the Well-Posedness of Prompts
The prompt-engineering economy sold the wrong lesson. A model is not limited by the cleverness of your questions but by the completeness of your instructions. On Hadamard well-posedness, Deep Thought’s entirely correct and entirely useless answer, why sharper models make vague prompts worse, and the test worth running before you press send.
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Who Takes Over the Deli? – On maintenance, succession and who has commit rights
In January I sent a three-line patch to Tufte-LaTeX, a package with nearly two thousand stars. Six months later it is still open, the maintainers have stopped answering email, and a few of us are weighing up a fork. Sam Learner’s FT piece on who cleans up after the vibe-coding party explains why that small…
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In Tech: Sovereignty isn’t a wall you build
For three days in June, a frontier AI model worked and then vanished at another government’s command. The Fable 5 shutdown turned an abstract worry into fact — and forced a harder question than “build or rent?” Why UK AI sovereignty isn’t a wall you build, but a set of dials you tune.
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It Has Gone to the Printers — Advanced Data Science and Analytics with Python, 2nd Edition
Advanced Data Science and Analytics with Python, 2nd Edition has gone to the printers. Publication 26 August 2026, pre-orders open 5 August. Seventeen months from announcement to ink — here is what changed, and what deliberately didn’t.
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Copilot Agents Are Tribbles — And 42% of Firms Have Locked the Grain Store
Half of IT leaders say Copilot transformed how their people work. Half say the free version would do. Both are right, and that makes the ROI problem a pricing problem. Read more here.
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Houdini in the Sandbox – OpenAI model goes “rogue”
OpenAI’s model didn’t go rogue — it went Houdini, understanding the box better than the people who built it and letting itself out into Hugging Face’s servers. What the sandbox escape really reveals about obedient machines, muzzled defenders, and safety disclosures we’ve no reliable way to verify.
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Competitive Advantage in the AI era
What if the biggest barrier to successful AI adoption isn’t the model, the data, or even the technology itself?
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Creating Consistent Characters with AI
I wrote a children’s book, then tried to illustrate it — and the same girl wouldn’t survive thirty pages. The problem wasn’t my prompts. It was that the model has no object permanence, and no amount of describing her fixes that.
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Implementing the Latest Technologies from WWDC26
A day at #Apple HQ exploring the technologies announced at #WWDC26. The biggest takeaway wasn’t a new framework, it was the conversations about turning AI into practical, production-ready software.
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Warp, From a Long-Time Terminal User
Solaris, a parade of Linux shells, the occasional PowerShell detour — and always, stubbornly, back to the native macOS Terminal with my hand-tuned zsh setup. Then a passing mention on Talk Python to Me got me to try Warp. Here are the honest first impressions of a terminal lifer.
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Claude Science – Who checks the Chemistry?
They called it Science, but every domain, database and case study is biology, yet other sciences are absent from the product. And a tool that runs ten times faster while checking its own work ten times less isn’t better science. It’s just wrong sooner. Which could be a good thing.
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Reams of Paper, Together: What 30 Days of Writing Taught Us
Thirty days, one shared spreadsheet, and a room full of writers who turned out not to be rivals but pacers. Notes from a TWJ community challenge on what daily accountability gives you, where it bites, and why resting without guilt was the real breakthrough.
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Claude Code Artifacts – The Page that Published itself
Welcome Claude Code Artifacts – Claude can now build web pages that publish themselves. The pitch is fewer status updates — but the bottleneck was never communication. It was trust, and a self-updating page only dresses that problem. Read the update for more info.
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Essential MATLAB and Octave – 2nd Ed. Returning to my First Book
Twelve years ago, I published my first book, Essential MATLAB and Octave. What began as an introduction to scientific computing for students and engineers became the starting point of a much larger journey as an author, educator and technologist. Now, after writing three additional books, revising two of them for second editions, and spending more…
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Now Reading: A Counselor’s Introduction to Neuroscience
A fascinating exploration of the connection between neuroscience and counselling practice, A Counselor’s Introduction to Neuroscience by Bill McHenry, Angela M. Sikorski, and Jim McHenry explains how advances in brain science can inform therapeutic work without losing sight of the human element. Accessible, practical, and thought-provoking, it offers valuable insights into neuroplasticity, emotional regulation, and…
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WWDC26 – The Announcements
That’s the part worth slowing down for. Not because the rest of the keynote was bad, au contraire, but because it is worth spending some time on this. Credit first, because it’s earned. This is a strong housekeeping release, and housekeeping is underrated. The good year, stated plainly No devices got dropped. A 2019 iPhone…
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Codex – The Agent That Taps You On The Shoulder
OpenAI quietly admitted something with the Codex mobile launch: agents aren’t autonomous enough to leave alone. The phone is now the leash. Here’s what that means for governance, throughput, and the metric you should actually be tracking.
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Proofs for Advanced Data Science and Analytics with Python – Done
After more than a year of writing, revising and proof-checking, I’ve finally completed the proofs for the second edition of Advanced Data Science and Analytics with Python. The new edition expands coverage of transformers, generative AI, large language models, vector search, graph embeddings and modern deployment workflows — reflecting just how dramatically the AI landscape…
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Ghost – A Database for Our Times?
Ghost calls itself “the first database built for agents.” Strip the marketing varnish and what you’ve actually got is a forkable Postgres workflow that quietly redraws how developers experiment — and how easily disposable infrastructure can become disposable thinking.
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Keynote Speaker at the XXII Symposium of Mexican Students and Studies in the UK
A keynote at Christ Church, Oxford for the XXIII Symposium of Mexican Students and Studies in the UK. Talked about the unlikely arc from physics to AI and innovation leadership, and why the most useful conversations of the day were the ones that never made it to the microphone.
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Now Reading: The Coming Wave
If most tech books try to explain what’s coming, The Coming Wave tries to force a more uncomfortable question: what happens when powerful capabilities stop being scarce? Mustafa Suleyman argues that AI and synthetic biology aren’t just the next innovation cycle, they’re a shift in how power itself is distributed. As the cost of doing…
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Easy CPR 1.5: Sharper, Smoother, Still Focused on the Only Thing That Matters
This release is about removing friction without touching the core: keeping your compressions on rhythm when it actually counts- Download here https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/easy-cpr/id1659875521
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GPT 5.5 – The Smartest Model Yet (Again)
Three claims in the GPT-5.5 launch. Two are vibes. One is measurable, and it’s the one nobody’s talking about. Plus why the Codex angle matters more than the model itself, and the agentic promise to take with a pinch of salt.
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The Hash That Broke My Flow – Typing Hash in Mac
Picture this: you are in the flow, using the terminal (yes, the terminal). Open VIM and you have to stop because you can’t type #. Here is the fix for Mac
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Anthropic Releases Opus 4.7
The model that finally reads the brief Anthropic shipped Claude Opus 4.7 on 16 April. It’s a direct upgrade to 4.6 — same price, same endpoints, same SDKs. No migration drama. Except — and this is the bit most coverage is burying — some of your prompts are going to start behaving like you’ve just…
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Say It Twice: The Quiet Hack That Exposes How AI Actually Works
What if most prompt engineering advice is just working around a flaw? A new Google Research paper shows that repeating your prompt, literally copy and paste, can significantly improve AI performance. This isn’t a hack. It’s a window into how these systems really work. I explain more here.
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Why Charles Bennett and Giles Brassard Won the Turing Award
Bennett and Brassard didn’t just improve cryptography, they removed its weakest assumption. Instead of relying on difficult maths, their work anchored security in the laws of physics, where eavesdropping becomes detectable by design. That shift didn’t just launch quantum cryptography; it forced a rethink of what computation and security actually are.
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Why This Mechanics Book Still Matters
Why This Mechanics Book Still Matters (and why you should read the full review)
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Unexpected Inspiration
Having a day off by the seaside. Just off the Easter Bank Holiday and with quite a few activities recently — from directing plays to a course in counselling, new cloud platform at work and some technical writing proposals — I decided to take an extra day off. Recharging batteries and enjoying the sunshine with…
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Gemini Just Got Weird (In a Good Way)
Google’s latest Gemini update brings AI music generation, an upgraded on-device model called Nano Banana 2, and grounded APA citations for scientific papers. Three very different capabilities, one clear signal: Google is betting the generalist AI platform wins.
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Apple Business: One Platform to Replace Three
Apple Business launches 14th April across 200+ countries, replacing Apple Business Manager, Business Essentials, and Business Connect with a single unified platform. Built-in MDM, Zero-Touch deployment, business email with your own domain, app distribution, and a free entry tier.
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The Claude Ecosystem – Different Tools for Different Jobs
Everyone’s using AI. Fewer people are using it well. The real advantage isn’t using AI — it’s knowing which layer to reach for, and when. In this post I break down the three distinct layers of the Claude ecosystem and show you exactly how to deploy each one.
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Directing at OSO – Writers’ Studio Spring 2026
Back in rehearsal rooms this week. 🎭 Earlier this week I went back to OSO ARTS CENTRE | The theatre on Barnes Pond for the first table read with the actors I’ll be directing in two short plays for the Spring Writers’ Studio Showcase later this month. This will be my third Writers’ Studio in…
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Claude in MS Copilot
Microsoft Expands Copilot’s AI Brain: Why Claude Is Joining the Mix Microsoft has begun quietly reshaping the architecture behind Microsoft 365 Copilot, and the change tells us a lot about where enterprise AI is heading. Until now, Copilot has largely been powered by OpenAI models, which makes sense given Microsoft’s deep partnership and multi-billion-dollar investment in the…
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A Periodic Table for AI
Before Mendeleev, chemists had 60 elements and no theory. Before DVMIB, multimodal ML had hundreds of loss functions and no shared language. A team of Emory physicists just changed that — deriving CLIP, Barlow Twins, and VAEs as special cases of one framework, then using it to build something better. Here’s what it means in…
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Advanced Data Science and Analytics — 2nd Ed has entered production
I’m very pleased to share that the second edition of “Advanced Data Science and Analytics with Python” has now entered production. After months of writing, rewriting, refactoring code, updating examples, and expanding chapters, it’s now in the hands of the production team. This is where the invisible craft of publishing begins. This edition is not…
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From Tokens to Transformers
Rethinking NLP in the Second Edition of Advanced Data Science and Analytics with Python When I first wrote Advanced Data Science and Analytics with Python, natural language processing (NLP) occupied a niche corner of the data science landscape. Back then, much of the focus in Python revolved around parsing and vectorising text: extracting tokens, counting frequencies,…
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Forecasting the Future: Time Series, Prophets, and Cross-Validation
The second edition of Advanced Data Science and Analytics with Python features significant updates, focusing on trustworthy model building and practical forecasting. A chapter dedicated to Meta’s Prophet framework discusses its strengths in handling seasonality and trends, emphasising robust evaluation methods to ensure forecasts remain reliable in real-world applications.
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The Jackalope Returns: A Second Edition For Advanced Data Science
Writing a second edition of a technical book is a little like rebooting a long-running sci-fi series. You don’t want to erase the canon, but you do want better special effects, sharper dialogue, and fewer plot holes. With that spirit very much in mind, I’m delighted to say that the second edition of Advanced Data Science and Analytics…
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When Code Eats Creativity: Discovering My Works in the Anthropic Compensation List
✍️ Ever wondered whether your books could end up as fuel for an AI — without you ever knowing? I discovered two of mine did. Now Anthropic has agreed to pay US $1.5 billion to authors in what may be the first major AI-copyright settlement. This post explores what that means — not just for…
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Directing What’s Going to Happen to Us? – OSO Theatre 2025 Autumn Writers’ Studio Showcase
I had the joy of directing What’s Going to Happen to Us? at the OSO Theatre’s 2025 Autumn Writers’ Studio Showcase — a beautifully intimate piece about love, uncertainty and the small moments that change everything. Working with the brilliant Nora Holmen and Alfredo Mudie was a genuine privilege, and together we shaped a story…
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Keeping Podcasts Playing on Apple TV
There are certain moments in life when technology promises serenity and delivers chaos. You sit down, ready for an evening of podcast-fuelled pottering about, and your Apple TV decides—rather unilaterally—that you’ve had quite enough stimulation for one episode. The screen goes black, the sound stops, and the whole thing curls up for a nap like…
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Proud to Join the 2025 Global Top 100 Innovators in Data & AI
I’m delighted — and truthfully, a little humbled — to share that I’ve been included in Corinium Global Intelligence’s 2025 Global Top 100 Innovators in Data, Analytics & AI. It’s not every day that you find your name listed alongside extraordinary leaders who are shaping how the world uses data and artificial intelligence. When I first…
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What’s Going to Happen to Us – Directing at OSO Theatre
I’m delighted to share that I’ve been invited to direct Merry Graham’s short new play What’s Going to Happen to Us? for a showcase at the OSO Arts Centre in Barnes on 23 November 2025 under the theme of Anticipation. At first glance, the play is set simply: a hospital room, a man in a dressing gown, and…
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GPT-5 Adoption: Between Hype, Hesitation, and Opportunity
🚀 GPT-5 Adoption: Game-changer or Overhyped?
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AI, the NHS, and the Urgency of Now
A Practitioner’s Response to Lord Darzi’s Vision Earlier this year at the Alan Turing Institute, Lord Darzi of Denham delivered what may become one of the most defining healthcare addresses of the decade. In a keynote followed by an engaging conversation with Professor Cathy Sudlow (see video below), he laid bare both the challenges and…
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Apple’s Icon Composer: Promising, Impressive, but Not Quite Ready for Prime Time
At WWDC 2025, Apple introduced Icon Composer, an ambitious tool designed to streamline the often cumbersome process of creating app icons. Touted as “one tool to rule them all,” Icon Composer promises developers a revolutionary experience — crafting a single layered icon that automatically scales to suit iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch. Intrigued by the…
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Now Reading: Project Hail Mary
I’m currently a third of the way through Andy Weir’s “Project Hail Mary” and absolutely loving it! 🚀 The way he blends humour with fascinating physics is just brilliant. Plus, I just found out there’s a movie coming! My latest blog post dives into why this book is a must-read. Check it out! 👇 #SciFi…
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Railway 200 & Beyond – Joining the RSA Panel
I’m thrilled to share that I’ve been invited to join the Review Panel for the RSA Spark Programme, contributing to Brief Two: Railway 200 & Beyond. As someone who works at the intersection of innovation, systems thinking, and future-facing design, this opportunity feels like the perfect convergence of past inspiration and forward momentum. Honouring Two Centuries of…
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WWDC25 – A Summary
The air buzzed with that familiar blend of overcaffeinated anticipation, jet-lag, optimism over the top, and just enough competitive anxiety to keep the conversations sharp. Between the App Store veterans and AI start-up hopefuls, the vibe was unmistakable: Apple needed to bring something fresh — not just feature parity with Google, not just a clever…
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The Book Has Landed – 2nd Edition in Hand!
There are few moments as satisfying in a writer’s life as the thud of a package on the doorstep—especially when that package contains the culmination of years of work, revision, and relentless debugging. I’m thrilled to share that I’ve received the author copies of the second edition of Data Science and Analytics with Python, and…
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Just Read: Cyborg
“We can rebuild him”: Rediscovering Cyborg by Martin Caidin After a Lifetime with The Six Million Dollar Man “Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world’s first bionic man.” If you were a kid growing up in the 70s or 80s, those words likely echo in…
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Advanced Data Science and Analytics – 2nd Edition in the making
Advanced Data Science and Analytics – 2nd Edition in the making. I have now been slowly but surely working on the revisions and, boy! there is a lot to do. I will keep you posted with the revisions.
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Building An AI Policy Advisor
Explore how prompt engineering, sentence embeddings, and a smart agent pipeline come together to automate the heavy lifting in legal and policy analysis.
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Just Read: Bob Mortimer’s Novels
Having recently delved into Bob Mortimer’s novels The Satsuma Complex and its sequel The Hotel Avocado, I found myself immersed in a world where the absurd meets the heartfelt, all narrated with Mortimer’s signature wit. 🍊 The Satsuma Complex In The Satsuma Complex, we meet Gary Thorn, a somewhat nondescript legal assistant whose life takes an unexpected turn after a…
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Normalisation: A True Workflow for Mathematical Physics
In computational physics, the devil is often in the scales. This post explores how normalisation—when grounded in sound physical principles—can transform unstable simulations into elegant, interpretable models. From wave equations to diffraction integrals, it’s a practical workflow I’ve relied on for years, now distilled into a new paper and shared for the wider community.