A cracking walk in glorious weather with some testing moments to spice it up.

“There was an inadvertent mistake in the factory that manufactured the ‘Human’ line of products, and unfortunately it’s not fixable. They will all have to be recalled and taken out of service.”

More here

There is a fashion these days amongst tech pundits to go on and on about how awful Siri is, but in my experience it’s not, it’s amazing. I use it all the time.

I use it mostly through my watch, where I have Raise to Speak turned on so I don’t even have to say the phrase “Hey Siri”, I just raise my wrist to my mouth and start speaking.

I use it for reminding myself to do things, checking how long it will take me to get to certain locations, setting timers, and triggering things around the house, like turning on lights or turning on the TV.

I also use it a lot for dictation. This has got slightly frustrating recently, but I suspect it is more because I’ve taken on my wife’s iPhone 12 and gave her my iPhone 15 so the phone has had less time to get used to my voice and also the processor is slower so it’s probably having to work harder. But even so, if I take my time and speak carefully, it is perfectly capable of allowing me to dictate text into messages or blog posts.

I even use it when I’m sitting at my desk using my iPad and have my phone on a stand which places it slightly out of reach. I’m able to control my phone remotely asking Siri to instigate phone calls or open particular apps and get those apps to do things without having to take my hands off the iPad keyboard.

The one thing I don’t tend to use Siri very much for is asking questions that require answers from the web. It’s not very good for that and I suspect this small aspect of Siri’s usage is what others get frustrated at.

“Can you really be ‘passionate’ about digital marketing?”

I am really enjoying the articles in Unherd and this one in particular resonated.

On my walk yesterday I saw a beautiful little roe deer standing maybe 30 yards away in long grass looking at me with its ears perked up. We just looked at each other for a while and then I moved on. But it was still there on my way back and I spent longer watching it grazing at the edge of a wood.

As I focused on it I found myself imagining that I was a hunter and that I was looking at it through the sights of my rifle.

Yet again I found it inconceivable that anyone in that situation can pull the trigger. What goes through their head as they look at this beautiful, innocent, calm, defenceless creature.

And then kill it.