This is inspired by Derek Sivers now page site which he blogged about here
Last updated: 6th August 2025 late at night from our family farm in Devon, UK.
I've decided to structure this based on a work-life balance principle. I want to discuss a bit more about my ongoing work, relate it superficially to my private life and then discuss the reality. The reality is how is the balance between the two? Reading the now page of another advocate who expressed the burnout from having a new family, this seems like something people can get behind.
I still work as principal software engineer at the British Antarctic Survey. Almost 10 years now. I've many projects and this month is about progressing all of them from a technical standpoint, whilst most people are taking holidays. The results remain to be seen.
I am working on the WAVI ice sheet model which is written in Julia, looking at turning it into an MPI-distributed version. This is somewhat going well, though I am trying to keep the user interface consistent which makes life a bit harder than boldly refactoring like a madman!
I've been using my devops skills to support this project, mainly through ansible server builds that can provision both shoreside and shipside systems. I'm also supporting sea-ice forecasting work. My team are working far more intensively on this than I, so trying to stay out of the way! ;)
These are devices scattered across Antarctica that record the magnetospheric dynamics around our planet. I'm working on a store-and-forward installation to reduce visits to the installations with a view to cutting carbon expenditure. These are renewable powered, with low bandwidth, microcomputer controlled telecommunications. Hope to write more about this soon.
Working on the environmental forecasting tools that allow us to use IceNet for operational sea ice forecasting.
This project is getting going in earnest, so I hope to write more about it soon.
I am leading the Digital Innovation Team at BAS. As part of this I'm a line manager, with some digital strategy influence within the organisation from certain angles. There are numerous other projects I superficially have oversight of, as well as a need to seek funding.
My partner and I are happy to have a young son. We live and work from home together and try and juggle the craziness of dealing with endless teething nappies. We try to make sure we eat healthily, which is a pretty good start.
I've been brushing up on my maths. The work on ice sheet modelling has made me long for doing some actual mathematical work so I've been brushing up on tensor calculus and learning afresh some basic physics. It's really interesting to come back to (given that I probably last did this as an 18 year old).
I try and get out for a run at least twice a week. I can't seem to push past 7.5km, but time hasn't been my friend for really trying.
Tonight I'm having a beer and writing this. It's quite a nice way to relax.
Life is good. Work-life is always a hectic balance but I cannot complain. From 7am until 9pm we are doing things, then there is a chance to sit down and do maths, or chill out on the sofa. I have too many projects and responsibilities at work for sure, but I think I'm getting better at protecting family and life time, so that's something. Previously I was a complete workaholic, so the balance is ever-improving. What I can't figure out is if I should be more ambitious, but there's some ideas there that maybe, just maybe, will come out in another post.