Tag Archives: substack

Has it been a pivotal year?

Because I forget to pause and celebrate, I usually do a round-up of the past year, as much for my own sake as anything else.

However, 2025 feels as if it was a seriously pivotal year; my approach to writing and other work, and possibly life itself, began to change.

So… I’m going to write a series of reflections, probably as a month-by-month set of posts, which will attempt to chart and understand this.

These will be posted on substack, where I say a little more about this and where you can subscribe to get alerts to new posts.

Is our convenience burning the planet?

I was fascinated by a talk last year about data storage given by Thomas Coughlin, president of the IEEE. What struck me most was finding out that magnetic tape storage is still used and not only is it cheaper than other mediums but its environmental impact is far less too.

So, this got me to thinking.

Why don’t we have a choice on how to store our emails and photos – those we don’t mind waiting 30 seconds to retrieve? Why can’t we choose to have them stored on magnetic tape?

Continue reading the post and the subsequent conversation on substack…