Weeknote 14/2026
"The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings."
– Okakura Kakuzō
I'm reclining on our bed, laptop propped on a knee, listening to music I've recently added to my Plex server. Right now, it's a bit of Thievery Corporation while the rest Team Belshaw are either watching a film or gaming. I can hear my son shouting at his mates through the wall. If it was a few years ago, I'd be going in telling him not to use that kind of language, thank you very much.
Writing & Creating
Here, I published:
Doug Belshaw
Doug Belshaw
Doug Belshaw
I didn't publish anything over at Thought Shrapnel other than wishing everyone a happy Easter. This was partly because I was working on an app I'm calling nvAge, which is in the spirit of two of my favourite apps of all time: Notational Velocity (last updated: 2011) and nvAlt.
The promised “nvUltra” never materialised, so I've taken matters into my own hands. It's called nvAge because of the post-quantum encryption library it uses. It's looking great and working happily on my Mac Studio, and kind of working on my Linux laptop.
It's not a one-click install, and you probably already know if you want something like this. So I'll let you give it a try if it's your kind of thing.
Reading, Listening, and Watching
You'll be pleased to know that I finished The Castle by Franz Kafka and started reading White Out by Ragnar Jónasson. My wife, Hannah, greatly enjoyed reading it when we were in Iceland back in 2019, so I thought I'd give it a go.
I've nominally got Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb on the back burner, but I didn't read or make notes on any of it this week. I listened to a couple of episodes of No Such Thing as a Fish, and am half way through Adam Greenfield's conversation with Cassie Thornton on Lifepod about “The Hologram” and the viral practice of mutual care.
I watched a pretty cool video about the Osireion in Egypt:
Working
Tom and I met to plan the TechFreedom workshops in more details. We've now got a few people signed up to the pilot cohort, with the first session happening on Wednesday 22 April. Do have a look if it's something you or someone you know might be interested in!
While my consultancy website was admirably fast-loading, I decided it was too abstract and that I wanted it to be warmer and more welcoming. And nothing says that more than Doug hugging a large orange fox mascot – right?
It's now less than a month until WAO closes, so we had a half-day on Monday to figure things out around money, logistics, and sharing resources as we “compost” the co-op.
Laura and I are organising our time to get the INASP Discovery and Definition phases done for their Rising Scholars website project. I think we're pretty clear what we're recommending at this point, which is good as I'm off next week and then Laura's taking the week after that off.
With the other WAO project, the Amnesty International UK community platform pilot, we're about 70% done with the evaluation report. It's shaping up nicely. We never pull any punches with these things, but we do so nicely (if that makes sense).
I met with Nate who's getting everything set up for the Digital Badges Proof of Concept project through Dynamic Skillset. You can check out the kanban board to see what we're up to. I've scheduled the first testing workshop for the end of April.
I also had a chat with Karen about my Stacktopolis game, which got her thinking about what could be done in Canada around digital sovereignty.
Personal
I should have taken this last week off as, whether it was the clocks going forward, the start of spring, or the very changeable weather, I've been pretty tired. Thankfully, it was a four-day week.
Team Belshaw went over to my parents to see them, my sister, her partner, and my nephew. My niece is recently off to the south of France looking for work on super yachts, after recently gaining a qualification for that purpose. Meanwhile, my son, Ben, is talking about changing university course – which might mean he has to start again from the first year.
Other than taking my daughter, Grace, to referee some district matches, to go for a few walks nearby, and to go swimming and to the gym, I've been very much home-based this week. Today, Easter Sunday, I've eaten a lot of sugar. Hannah made an excellent Easter Day meal along with a magnificent simnel cake.
I am sleepy.
Next week
I'm off work this coming week, so I'm not planning to blog here, but I am planning to catch up with things over at Thought Shrapnel. Team Belshaw is off to Lindisfarne tomorrow as Storm Dave made it a bit windy to go today.
Hannah and I are thinking about going away for a night sometime this week, and we've booked some flights to Barcelona for the end of July / start of August for the four of us. Whether or not we stay in Barcelona is still TBD.