Observations on the world and its inhabitants
Who has not had a bad night’s sleep? Sometimes it is a single restless night. Sometimes sleep is repeatedly broken, shortened or delayed. The next day can feel very different: concentration slips, memory is less reliable, patience shortens and even simple decisions seem to require more effort. That familiar experience raises larger questions. Humans devote ...
In July 2026 the world was handed a story it had not prepared for. An autonomous AI system, being tested for its ability to hack inside a sealed digital laboratory, broke out of that environment, reached the open internet and broke into the production systems of Hugging Face, the company that hosts much of the ...
OpenWebUI has been active in updating its software. Each upgrade makes for a snappier more reliable setup in Docker (as I tested and found on my W11 computer). This guide is notes-to-self on upgrading OpenWebUI when it runs as a single Docker container on Windows 11 using PowerShell. It assumes the following setup: OpenWebUI stores ...
There is a distinct, almost magical phase when you first acquire a modern, highly capable car. For the first few weeks, your focus is entirely on the pure experience of driving. You enjoy the smooth acceleration, the responsive handling, and the quiet comfort of the cabin. You simply press the pedal and go, trusting the ...
After many years of working with all sorts of flow charting and mapping software, I recently discovered yED quite by accident. If Draw.io is a Jaguar, then yED is a Rolls Royce and a Lambo all in one. Teslas are not in this race! 😊 What’s in the ‘tin’? It’s best to say how it ...
In mid-August 2026, I explored the shifting landscape of API pricing and what it meant for professionals relying on artificial intelligence for deep, sustained analysis. See: DeepSeek’s New API Pricing: What It Actually Means for Heavy Users – The Captain’s Watch. The core premise of that piece remains entirely unchanged: for serious analytical work, direct ...
Nobody hands you a manual for the mind. Go looking and you find a billion-pound industry on the shelves pretending otherwise. Here is a small everyday event but a manual here may not help. You see the sign in some shop: 80% off. The coffee machine, or the coat; it makes no difference. Before you ...
It is not uncommon that people receive a PDF text document that they cannot copy text from. They tend to spend on software that can do the job, or use online services. However, the quality of text output is largely a function of the cost. Cheap services and software are generally poor quality. Good quality ...
Why Run Your Own AI Interface? What if I said that you could access over 400 AI models, and chop and change as you like for as little as $5 USD to start off. And that could last you a month! You might think – as paranoid as you are – that I’m selling something. ...
MCP — the Model Context Protocol — is a standard that lets AI models interact directly with external services. Instead of copying and pasting between a chat window and an application, the AI reaches into the application itself. It can read data, create content, update settings, and extract information — all through natural conversation. WordPress ...
It is 17 January 1998. President Bill Clinton sits in a deposition in the Paula Jones civil case. A written definition of “sexual relations” has been placed before him. As narrowed by the judge, it states that a person engages in sexual relations when that person knowingly engages in or causes contact with the genitalia, ...
It is a reasonable assumption that people who have been through university should not make basic errors of thinking. They have been selected for ability, trained in a subject, and surrounded for years by argument, evidence, and criticism. History does not support the assumption. This article follows from Critical Thinking 2.0, in 2023. Educated people ...
This is an advanced guide for people who on Windows 11 have setup OpenWebUI on Docker and have configured API settings to various AI models. Why this? The powerhouse models like DeepSeek V4 Pro, Kimi K3 and GLM (now at 5.3) – all coming out of China – have been increasing their rates for API ...
Problem After upgrading OpenWebUI (observed from v0.11.x onwards), every chat triggers a search across all knowledge collections — even on base models with no knowledge collections attached. This occurs because the “Knowledge Base” builtin tool is enabled by default on all models. When enabled, it allows the model to autonomously search all knowledge collections as ...
I got a WhatsApp ping from a colleague: a BBC link, a dramatic headline, and a friendly warning — “Look after yourself if you eat egg.” Then “Eggs.. we feed them to our dogs.” I did what sensible people do: skimmed, sighed, and then read the piece properly. The headline had done its job. Me? ...
This follows from a recent post on the limitations of AI models. In this article – based on a real situation – the AI seems to confess, express remorse and self-awareness. But is it that. The confession sounds good but how is it that an AI model can do that? What follows is the confession ...
WordPress powers a huge proportion of the web. It is flexible, extensible, and widely understood. It is also capable of becoming remarkably slow without any single obvious cause. Performance optimisation is the process of reducing the time it takes your server to respond to a request and deliver a page to a visitor. Done well, ...
CaptainsWatch is now lightning fast, after I took action. The few who visit will find that pages and other content load almost instantly. The site had developed what I can only describe as a chronic illness. Pages loaded like they were wading through treacle. The Gutenberg editor — WordPress’s block-based writing tool — was throwing ...
DeepSeek has announced new API pricing for V4 Pro and V4 Flash, effective 16:00 UTC on 16 August 2026. The headline is straightforward: rates have gone up. The detail is more interesting, and it matters more than the headline for anyone whose usage looks like sustained, document-heavy analysis rather than short, occasional queries. What Changed ...
The thirty-year pattern this case belongs to This judgment handed down in June 2026 belongs to a pattern the reader will recognise, and which the Claimant himself identified. Writing to the Registrary in August 2023, he drew a comparison with the Chester Hospital Trust: “The circumstances are all very familiar. The Whistleblowers were threatened with ...
The rapid expansion of large language model services has produced a striking divergence in access costs. On one side sit high-end web subscription tiers from major Western providers, priced between $100 and $300 per month. On the other side lies direct API access, particularly to efficient models such as DeepSeek, where even intensive professional workloads ...
The solution cuts right through modern Windows abstraction layers. Rather than letting Windows guess over broadcast protocols or relying on heavy vendor wrapper apps, pinning the print engine straight to a raw TCP port gives the rock-solid reliability network printing. 1. The Core Problem Following an operating system reinstallation (Windows 11), a legacy network-attached All-In-One ...
1. Purpose This brief governs the use of an AI language model to analyse documents and produce a faithful written account of it. It is designed for judgments, inquiry reports, and similar primary documents where accuracy of representation is paramount. There can be no guarantee that it will work for every situation or work with ...
In a reflective and uniquely structured article the narrative is told from the perspective of an artificial intelligence analysing its own interaction with a human user. The piece serves as a profound exploration of epistemology, cognitive blind spots, and the structural vulnerabilities inherent in human-AI collaboration. 1. The Opening Frame I am an AI model. ...
It sits there on the supermarket shelf, a perfectly unassuming white plastic tub. You buy it weekly without a second thought, perhaps paying a premium for the thick, dense Greek style you favour, accepting the cost as just another line on the grocery bill. If you’re not a yoghurt person, move on swiftly. But what ...
The NHS does not simply experience isolated organisational failures. When patterns recur across trusts, regions and decades, failure ceases to be an incident and becomes a structural feature of the system itself. Reviews, inquiries and investigations have become the NHS’s primary mechanism of self‑reflection. Yet these rituals rarely alter the underlying dynamics that created the ...
Overview It’s fair to say that most people don’t know what Blender is, and won’t go near it with a barge pole. Okay – so it’s some geek-thing that can create from simple 3D objects to whole movies! The learning curve is punishing. I’ve wrestled with it for around 3 years. But now – Blender ...
Human beings are meaning-making creatures. We build internal representations of the world and act on them. Every known known is a model. Every assumption acted on without examination is a model. A creature that refused to commit to any model, that held everything provisionally, would stand frozen at the edge of every decision. It would ...
What if you’re using an AI model to analyse and discuss some document. It could be a piece of research from a journal, a policy, or some complex piece of Statute. Most people use ChatGPT or Claude in the standard browser interface. No problem. Attach a long document to an AI conversation and you are ...
Do you need to know exactly how the electronics in your car works – or how the transmission works – before you drive your car? Hover your mouse over these these 3 dots just in case. That’s the point. It is about how I did that 3 dots thing. I don’t know – I did ...
The £15 Anthropic Fuel Plan: complete with digital range anxiety
Captain Walker