I started my sabbatical with the hope of writing some software that I could set up as a passive income. That didn’t quite happen.

I did write some software which I use every day: a Docker registry wrapper with e-commerce features (I’m not sure I highly recommend using it, as I won’t find time to maintain it), a video game which needs much more time spent on it, and continued work on my radio software for my art project, 24 Hours of Radio.

I started my sabbatical in June, and whilst I was away from work a massive AI-aided software development revolution took place. The registry wrapper that took me months could be done in hours when vibe coded. My return to work has been fun, but having to pick up this tech quite quickly has left me with a bit of shock. With senior leadership and Tech Leads remarking, “in a couple years no one will be writing code”. And weirdly, I believe them. I needed a weather widget for another project, and instead of it taking a weekend to put together, Cursor did it for me in two hours. I feel some guilt about that, but I don’t wash my clothes by hand anymore either.

This post isn’t about AI, by the way.

Journalism

Filling the silence on 24 Hours of Radio isn’t going at any particular rate. In fact, on some days it will be less than the day before because I’ve ended up doing a daily show that I replace each day.

The Morning Briefing started at the end of December as a Radio exclusive, where I spoke about the weather for cycling, an event in Nottingham, and some tech news. The tech news would later turn into Nottingham news, as I realised investigating Bitcoin and hacked social networks wasn’t all that interesting to me.

Since then, it felt a bit of a shame to not have that content so ethemeral, so I’ve been working on www.morningbriefing.org.

Over the past week or so, I’ve tried to merge the event and the news item so I end up with more traditional articles with one topic. Still an event but the “news” for the Briefing is trying to find an angle for the event that’s highly relevant to Nottingham. Even if you’re not going, you’ve still learnt something about your home.

I started that project at the end of my sabbatical, over Christmas. If I had started it in June, I imagine my life would be quite different right now.

Journalism - even the kind of event and civic news I’m doing - takes a lot of work. Take today’s Briefing as an example: a comedy event in Nottingham. Yesterday was an especially busy day which found me still writing that Briefing at midnight. (For context, I’m usually in bed by 11.) Due to that, I didn’t have enough time to find a strong enough hook. I did mention the Nottingham Comedy Festival, but it would have been nice to call them and ask more about them.

The investigation is very, very fun. There’s the same kind of problem solving that you find in software development. I’ve had to dig around masses of data to find part of the story I need, where the data isn’t code by a freedom of information request about bicycle thefts. Digging for a hook is quite fun - that’s very much “what does the end user need from this?”.

I’ve been able to speak to lots of people that I’d never have the opportunity to in a normal day-to-day routine. People who run charities, community clubs, business owners, and musicians. Turns out, given an excuse, people love talking about their thing. And it’s fun hearing it.

There are proper, civic, news stories around Nottingham that need covering. Nottinghamshire County Council recently signed off on a report deciding how the council should use AI, but skipped over all the “risks” the report mentioned. Nottingham Police recently told me that “they prefer education over action” when it comes to unlawful e-scooters on the roads (and pavements), despite there being three quite serious incidents involving them including a death recently. Nottingham City are making life very difficult for the people of Victoria Market, in an attempt to force them out of their lease. The War Memorial cemetery is literally falling apart, with subsided graves and toppled headstones. Just today, someone emailed me with concerns that the City Council is reluctant to give a statement on a particular matter - a story of genuine civic importance.

None of these stories are covered well enough by Reach PLC, the only mass market journalistic organisation around.

They all require time to investigate, on top of the daily Briefing. I can cram them in at weekends, but not enough to do them justice (literally, in some cases).

It’s just frustrating because I’m quite enjoying it, I genuinely think it’s a worthwhile project for Nottingham, but I have not enough time.

There are solutions I’m thinking on, but none which aren’t seismic in nature. At this point, I feel it would but stupid, rather than brave, to go all in on this. Maybe I’m wrong on that.