Ever since I started writing on the internet, I've had a tendency to want to constantly start from scratch, switch platforms, change domain name, etc. And this year hasn't been any different.

I've toyed with various ideas, and a few of them have actually seen the light of day. So I thought now was a good time to run through where I'm currently writing, and what to expect from each.

Code and Culture (codeandculture.uk)

This is the newest writing project of mine. It is essentially a place where I can put my more serious writing. In fact, in my plans for this blog, it should support three types of content:

• Observations: These are more immediate reaction pieces, and quick takes on topics.
• Thoughts: Pieces where I have started to explore an idea more deeply.
• Essays: Long-form pieces with substantial thinking and research.

I've written some short essays in the past, and there are definitely some posts where I've really gone deep into an idea. But I wanted a clear place for my more thought-out writing. And this is it.

I published my first observation post on this blog a week ago, which is about my thoughts on when you become an adult.

Journeys Through Glass (journeysthroughglass.net)

Another site which also follows the idea of separating a category of content away from my personal blog.

This time it started as a way to clearly separate a journey of using the iPad Pro more during the iPadOS 26 beta.

However, after the iPad experiment came to a bit of a dead end, it also served as the place where I wrote about my next journey, which was to start using Omarchy on a new Framework laptop.

As the name suggests, this blog is where I will post updates on the various journeys I take through the technology I use.

Chris Hannah (chrishannah.me)

The blog you're reading now. My personal blog that has content going back to 2013.

I have to admit, it's a bit of a mess right now, and there's a bunch of old rubbish I want to clear out eventually.

But another reason why I wanted to separate some writing onto other sites, is that this is my personal blog. So it's going to be messy sometimes. It's going to be a place where I share photos, links to videos, really quick thoughts, and opinions that probably won't hold up for very long.

When I think about what I want this site to be, it's a playground. Somewhere that isn't too serious. Where things may break, posts may be deleted, and the design will be radically altered without any notice.

I want to post here more often. But my decision to use 11ty has added a bit of friction that isn't always welcome. Nevertheless, that's a problem that I'll try to fix.

AI seems to have weaved its way into most software developers daily life, whether it's conversational advice, better autocomplete, or even just plain code generation. However, the use-case that I really enjoy is when it can speed-run boring tasks for me.

I don't use AI that much when programming. For me, I prefer it to complete little side quests for me than to get involved in my main work.

My recent use case was for this blog. I change up how I write and publish posts quite regularly, depending on the computer, and tools I want to use. So while I'm using Omarchy on my new Framework laptop, I'm more terminal-heavy than before. So ideally, I'd be able to run a quick shell script on my laptop, and then jump into writing a blog post.

So I gave Perplexity my idea, and then let it come up with a simple bash script to do that very job for me.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Exit if no title is provided
if [ -z "$1" ]; then
  echo "Usage: $0 \"Post Title\""
  exit 1
fi

# Get current date parts
YEAR=$(date +%Y)
MONTH=$(date +%m)
DATE=$(date +%Y-%m-%d)

# Input title
TITLE="$1"

# Create slug (snake_case for filename, kebab-case for permalink)
SLUG_SNAKE=$(echo "$TITLE" | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | sed -E 's/[^a-z0-9]+/_/g; s/^_|_$//g')
SLUG_KEBAB=$(echo "$TITLE" | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | sed -E 's/[^a-z0-9]+/-/g; s/^-|-$//g')

# Directory structure
DIR="posts/$YEAR/$MONTH"
mkdir -p "$DIR"

# Filename
FILE="$DIR/$SLUG_SNAKE.md"

# If file already exists, don’t overwrite
if [ -f "$FILE" ]; then
  echo "File already exists: $FILE"
  nvim "$FILE"
  exit 0
fi

# Write frontmatter to file
cat >"$FILE" <<EOF
---
title: $TITLE
date: $DATE
tags:
  - post
layout: layouts/post
permalink: $SLUG_KEBAB/
---
EOF

# Open in Neovim
nvim +"normal Go" "$FILE"

GitHub Gist

It does the following:

1. Takes in a single parameter, which is the blog post title.
2. Creates any required directories.
3. It uses that title in snake case for the filename, and creates a file.
4. It uses the title again, but in kebab case for the permalink.
5. Generates the rest of the frontmatter required for a standard post.
6. Opens the new file in Neovim.

Watch it in action:

I'm sure I could have written this script myself, but I didn't want to. This is the sort of task that I put off for weeks, and maybe never get around to doing it. So being able to get AI to do this for me, makes my life much easier.

---

I only just thought about this, but I should probably make use of my own Text Case CLI tool, and also format the title properly. That can be in the next version.

I didn't run this far to only run this far.
—The back of a guys t-shirt in Barcelona, Spain.

I didn't get this at first, but now I really like it.

I'm pleased to announce a new project of mine, Journeys Through Glass. It is a new blog by myself, where I will document my journey using the iPad as a primary device. From my introduction:

Around two weeks ago, we got to see the iPad get a hint at a new life, in the form of iPadOS 26. That made me wonder if this could spark a revival of my usage of my iPad. - "The Start of a Journey"

My first few posts:

• Initial Thoughts on iPadOS 26
• My Home Screen
• Using GitHub Codespaces on the iPad

I'll still be posting here, but anything related to my iPad journey will be posted on my new blog!

It's been a bit of a busy week at work. We're at the stage in our project where we're finalising our own functionality while also doing integration testing with a bunch of other teams and domains. A very tricky time.

---

Aside from work, I've been trying to get out in the garden a bit more. I've cut the lawn, overseeded where there were gaps, and tidied up some of the plants to make it look a bit more presentable. There's still more to do, but I think 30 minutes here and there will be enough.

Alongside me in the garden are some tadpoles...

My girlfriend got hold of them from someone elses pond recently, so we decided to put them in a little pond I made a while back. It's a half of a whiskey barrel, that I originally used as a plant pot, until I realised it was watertight as the plants were getting waterlogged constantly.

A few rocks, plants, solar-powered fountain later, we had a half-decent miniature pond.

I also bought five snails from eBay last year, and they've done fantastically this year. There must be hundreds of them in there now. I thought they would have started eating the plants, but the plants are still growing well and the water is always clear.

Right now, the snails are cohabiting well with the tadpoles, which have just recently started to grow legs!

I'm very much looking forward to my frog army this summer.

After a week in Lanzarote, I'm back in the UK.

It was definitely good to get away for a bit. Especially as it's a busy time at work at the moment, so a little break was needed.

But that does mean it's now straight back to the grind. Getting home at 04:30 this morning and starting work at 08:30 wasn't the greatest feeling ever.

---

While I was away I took two laptops (like most people do I assume), one ThinkPad X1 Carbon with a fresh Arch/Hyprland install, and my 14" M1 MacBook Pro. I mentioned this in the last weeknote, and it continued for a few days, but in the end I got tired of the barebones feel and went back to my Mac.

At least for now, I think I'm more suited to the Mac. Especially when I don't have much time between working and having a baby to look after.

---

There was one fun project I worked on every now and then while I was away. I was working on a website design, which had sort of an old retro technology feel with analogue buttons. It's not perfect, and it doesn't fit what I have in mind just yet. But I guess I may as well show a quick preview of the header design, which is a title, two different menu designs, and a random power LED.

---

As for entertainment, because of the flights to/from Lanzarote, I was afforded the time to watch some "TV" for a change. Which, unsurprisingly, means I just binged a load more Yellowstone. I watched four episodes on the flight back to London, and it puts me halfway through the fourth season. I reckon I could be done by the end of this week if I use my commute time wisely.

---

Speaking of a commute, that will be changing soon. After over eight years of working at my current job, travelling back and forward from my town into the exact same office, we're finally moving.

The commute time doesn't change much, but I'll now be working near the Tower of London, which is a nice area, and should be a very welcome change of scenery.

We'll start packing up over the next few weeks, and then at the end of May, we're out! Then, after around two weeks working from home, our new office will be ready, and I'll hopefully have a desk with a good view.

I'm writing this weeknote in a different location for a change. Right now, I'm on holiday in Lanzarote.

While I'm here, along with relaxing and spending some time with my family, I've also taken along my trusty ThinkPad^[1]. Naturally, this means I've been tinkering with a fresh Arch install, and configuring things like Hyprland, and waybar.

It's a fun experiment, but it will also help me determine if I can both make Arch look and work well for me, and the same time ensuring it is something I can use full-time.

---

Still on the topic of laptops, I got my new work machine last week. A 16" MacBook Pro with a M4 Pro chip, 500 GB storage, and 24 GB memory. I've been setting up as per my recent guide, and also discovering things I missed off. I can't comment on the performance as I think I've only barely scratched the surface so far. However, I do feel like the keyboard has been improved since the M1 model?

---

Anyway, I'll keep it short this week. I've got a sunburn to catch.

---

1. Lenovo X1 Carbon (5th gen.) ↩︎

Some more laptop updates this week:

Work

My new M4 Pro 16" MacBook Pro has been ordered, so once that has arrived, I will officially purchase my current work laptop. The current price is around £425, which isn't bad, but there's also a change it will decrease as time goes on.

Personal

My goal of finding a new personal machine is still all over the place. I was talking to my brother about pricing up my new Mac (he gets a discount through work), and then I got cold feet again. That was also helped by Pewdiepie's unexpected video about his Arch installation. That's now on hold for a bit while I make a decision. but for now I'll start using my ThinkPad again, as it's running Ubuntu, so I can get another feel for Linux, and decide if it's something I want to run long-term.

---

Speaking of my work laptop, I've created a new living document here on my blog, which I will use to detail my entire configuration of my work Mac. It's obviously for my own benefit, but I guess it doesn't hurt having it on my site.

Maybe I'll do the same for my personal laptop, whatever that will be.

---

As for a final thought, as I was looking at my 9-month old daughter recently, and it still amazed me that I (and my partner) created her. So I wondered whether that feeling ever goes away. I hope not.

Note: this entry covers the past 2 weeks.

Making Bread

I had the idea recently that I wanted to see if I could bake bread from scratch. Nothing too elaborate or requiring any special equipment or techniques. But my goal is to be able to quickly throw together the typical ingredients (flour, water, salt, yeast) in the right ratio, cook in my airfryer, and then have decent bread rolls.

I'm using no real recipes, apart from a quick ratio I found on my first google search. I've since tried 4 times, with varying cooking times, temperatures, and also liquids (Stella Artois has worked the best so far).

So far they've not been perfect. Edible, but not perfect. If I ever make a really good one, I'll share a photo.

PokeGuessr

I wanted to do some programming, and thought I could make a fun little game. So I made a guessing game in Node.JS where you can try and guess all 151 original Pokémon.

Find it on GitHub

Chocolate

Like most people, I've just taken part in the yearly exchange of overpriced chocolate. Which means I now have enough chocolate to last me for quite some time.

Laptops

My work laptop has reached it's ripe age of 3 years, which means I'm able to purchase my laptop at a discounted price of £427. Obviously I don't have to buy my laptop, but it's a good way to get a cheap laptop and to also force a replacement.

A good condition 16" MacBook Pro (M1 Pro) with 500GB storage and 16GB memory for £427 seems a good price to me, so I'll be starting the purchase process shortly. I expected I'll just resell with the same price to someone in my family.

---

I wrote a short post the other day about my ideal work laptop.

Needless to say, I want my next work machine to be very intentionally built and customised. I want to build the most efficient machine for my work.

---

As for my personal laptop, I still haven't ordered my new Mac. Which, like I said on Mastodon, increases the likeliness of me ending up with a Framework machine instead.

Minecraft

This may become a trend. Here's an updated view of my current humble base in Minecraft.

I have decided that in this world, I won't build any elaborate strucutres or designs that much, instead it will just be practical buildings that may also look nice.

I've been going through the process of replacing my laptop at work recently, and it made me think about what my ideal laptop would be. If there were no restrictions regarding company policy, support, etc.

For the record, I'm currently using a 16" MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro chip.

Forgetting the hardware aspect, when I really thought about the software I used at work on a day to day basis, it really came down to these primary applications:

• Mail
• Chrome
• IntelliJ - 99.9% of the code I write is Java, IntelliJ is the best IDE for this.
• DingTalk - Think of this as a Teams/Slack alternative. This is where we have our real-time communication, calendar, video calls, alerts, reports, task management, etc.
• Ghostty - My current terminal application.

In a dream world, I'd have a laptop setup so minimally, that each of these were always open, set to be used on their own workspace, and have nothing else installed. This sort of setup would be ideal for a Linux machine, where I could have a real control over how everything is configured, minimising distractions, etc. ^[1]

However, our main application, DingTalk is only available on Windows and macOS...

I have been tempted to switch to Windows, mainly because it would enable me to use Linux via WSL. But I just can't do it.

That leaves me with macOS...

I wouldn't say it's full of bloatware, but depending on what you want your machine to do, it can feel like it sometimes. Or at least it can feel like the system is fighting you whenever you want to use your machine in the "wrong" way.

One example is how workspaces (Spaces/Desktops in macOS) work. For example, you can't natively see what space you are in, moving between the spaces isn't instant, and if you make an application full-screen, it moves to a newly created space. So I have to use Spaceman to keep the space number in my menu bar, and make sure I don't use the native full-screen option. On Linux, all of this would be available and customisable.

However, as I've discussed above, macOS is my only option for work at the moment. So while I won't make any big changes to my current machine, when my new one comes, I'm going to be very intentional about my file structure, software I use, key bindings, etc.

I suspect some of this may overflow into my personal machine setup. But the benefit of my work machine is that it only serves a few purposes: communicating with my team, writing/reading documents, and writing Java code.

Hopefully that means building out my next machine should be relatively straightforward.

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1. This is the main reason why I'm still not 100% on what my next personal laptop should be. I'm 99% sure I will end up with an M4 MacBook Pro. But while I haven't ordered it, there is still a chance I'll fully try out a Linux machine, such as a Framework laptop. ↩︎