In which I go to church and unexpectedly cry
Man Feelings 18 Apr 2025
Last week I went to church. My family brought me and my sisters up as Christians, attending church each Sunday morning and all of us coming to play parts in the various functions of the local parish: kids helping run Sunday School and singing in... keep reading
The old men and the sea
Man Feelings 11 Apr 2025
Killing time with a toddler is mind-bendingly dull. Sure, there are moments of intense beauty and wonder as you revel in your child’s awestruck delight at something as trivial as a cardboard box or the reflection from some coloured glass. You can put on a... keep reading
I'm in love with my friends
Man Feelings 04 Apr 2025
I’m reading a new book at the moment called John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs. It’s about the two famous songwriters and how the music of the Beatles defined their relationship. The popular conception is that John Lennon was the troubled genius whose... keep reading
I love user reviews of online products (and here are some of my faves)
Man Feelings 28 Mar 2025
I’m addicted to user reviews of things. It started many years ago when I was first starting to buy things off Amazon and needed reassurance that the electronic gadget I was planning to purchase would definitely improve my life. I clung to the opinions of... keep reading
On "Adolescence", and feeling angry about how we're failing our kids
Man Feelings 21 Mar 2025
Over the last week or so, I’ve been glued to Netflix and watching Adolescence. If you’ve missed the hype, here’s a quick summary: it’s a four part British drama about Jamie, a 13 year old boy who’s accused of murdering a schoolmate called Katie. As... keep reading
Explaining Pi to a child
Man Feelings 14 Mar 2025
Today is “Pi Day” – 14th March, or 3/14 if you follow the obviously-flawed American standard for expressing dates. As I hinted last week, my son’s school is celebrating today by asking kids to dress up again as “something maths-related”. Thank you, school! At 6.30am... keep reading
Notes on starting a new job
Man Feelings 07 Mar 2025
A new start is a daunting thing. Imagine you’ve just moved house: suddenly you realise you don’t know where the stopcock is and panic that your kids are going to flood the bathroom while you run around fruitlessly yelling “WHERE IS IT”. The first time... keep reading
Stacking pigs and boxes
Man Feelings 28 Feb 2025
My name is Matt and I’m addicted to stacking pigs on top of steel barrels. Let me explain. If you haven’t seen “Styscraper” before, prepare to be… confused. I’ve never been a big video game fan. When I was a kid growing up in rural... keep reading
Lessons learned in redundancy
blogpost 26 Feb 2025
Redundancy came for me at the end of 2024, which I guess means I should be proud: I can cross one of the clichés of working in the software industry off my list. Layoffs and cutbacks are common in these post-ZIRP times, and in some... keep reading
The trials of half-term with a bored kid
Man Feelings 21 Feb 2025
“Ted, come and look at the monkeys!”, I yell for the third time, unconvincingly. My five year old son remains unmoved, his attention transfixed by a Lego model of a snow leopard. “This one’s from Asia”, I half-heartedly add as he boggles at the plastic... keep reading
Writing about watching paint dry
Man Feelings 14 Feb 2025
It all starts out so promising and precise. Clean, straight lines of green frog tape demarcate the areas to shield from the paint. A bucket of sugar soap solution sits primed and ready to wash the walls clean. Neatly arranged dust sheets are in place... keep reading
Things I learned managing people in 2024
blogpost 11 Feb 2025
I’m fashionably late with this lookback at 2024, but I hope you’ll forgive me – my mind’s been occupied with other priorities until this week. As is now traditional, I’ve put together some thoughts on the things I learned managing software engineers over the past... keep reading
Don't crash the hire car
Man Feelings 07 Feb 2025
I’m sitting in an unfamiliar car with my foot glued to the brake pedal, dashboard beeping angrily at me as cars whiz past. I try—for the third time—to put the vehicle into reverse, moving the gearstick to the clearly-indicated “R” position. I gingerly take my... keep reading
LAN feelings
Man Feelings 31 Jan 2025
The room smells like microwaved hotdogs and sweat. Six computer tower units wobble precariously on someone’s mum’s dinner table, fans blasting hot air into the already-thick atmosphere. Cans of knockoff Red Bull litter the table and someone is crouched on their knees trying to find... keep reading
Stuck in limbo
Man Feelings 24 Jan 2025
I’ve spent a lot of time in limbo these past few weeks. I remember learning at university about the concept of “liminality”, which (Wikipedia helpfully tells us) is about: the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of... keep reading
The inevitable self-destruction of your heroes
Man Feelings 17 Jan 2025
There was a period a decade or so ago where I’d listen to Ryan Adams’ Gold double album on a weekly basis. It’s the perfect blend of Americana, singer-songwriter and rock’n’roll and when I discovered his music I greedily digested it all, constantly returning to... keep reading
Grandmothers are super-heroes
Man Feelings 10 Jan 2025
It’s June 2017 and I’m on a work trip to Belfast – it’s my first time in Northern Ireland and I’m feeling a little lost. The city was beautiful but bruised, and the impromptu history tour we got from a sharp-eyed colleague gave me an... keep reading
I am one hundred per cent Faithful
Man Feelings 03 Jan 2025
The Traitors is on TV again. If you’re a fan of the show and/or already understand the premise, then feel free to skip the next paragraph while I sum it up for everyone else: A few dozen random people go and live in a remote... keep reading
So this is Christmas
Man Feelings 27 Dec 2024
I’m typing this week’s email from a pub table, on my phone, with a roaring log fire while my partner relaxes opposite with a book. Our kids are miles away being entertained by their grandparents, and the only thing I have to worry about today... keep reading
On being made redundant
Man Feelings 20 Dec 2024
A few weeks ago at work, I got called into a short-notice meeting with my boss’s boss. When someone from HR joined the call, I knew something was afoot. Within minutes I was being told that I was “at risk of redundancy”. It’s a funny... keep reading
Eternal London haunts us still
Man Feelings 14 Dec 2024
I’ve been pottering around cyberspace this week as I moved some old websites from one server to another. Midway through my list was a blog I started in 2010 after moving to the capital, which I called “Lessons Learned in London”. It was mainly concerned... keep reading
AI isn't going to take your job – just your joy
Man Feelings 07 Dec 2024
I apologise for the lateness of this week’s issue, normally scheduled for Friday mornings. I wracked my brain to think of a good excuse but wasn’t able to come up with anything convincing, so I asked an AI bot to write some instead: “Sorry it’s... keep reading
The masks we wear
Man Feelings 29 Nov 2024
My new album is out this week – a collection of songs I spent the past year or so writing and recording, then editing and tweaking until I hated each song and never wanted to hear them again. But ignore me, and go listen to... keep reading
In the ancient times before mobile phones
Man Feelings 22 Nov 2024
It’s 2005 and a week before my nineteenth birthday. Mobile phones at the time were still primitive, but if you were creative and had enough time on your hands, you could edit your own ringtone on some Nokia devices, which I successfully used to program... keep reading
Vanity metrics
Man Feelings 15 Nov 2024
Everyone’s a little vain, really. If you’re on social media—and who isn’t—then you’re lying if you claim that you’ve never gleefully checked the Like count on a particularly good post you were proud of. We’ve all been trained, like the proverbial rat in a cage,... keep reading
I will not write about the US presidential election.
Man Feelings 08 Nov 2024
I sat down to write this week’s newsletter with the intention to discuss Trump’s victory. It’s the biggest news story all year and will materially affect the lives of most people reading this for years to come. But you don’t want to hear about this... keep reading
Taking the family on holiday and melting down
Man Feelings 02 Nov 2024
Sorry for the delayed arrival of this week’s Man Feelings. I’ve just got back from a week in Portugal with the family (it’s half term) and I was in no fit state to write an email when we got home on Friday afternoon. The theme... keep reading
Turning the tables on the teacher
Man Feelings 25 Oct 2024
Parenting a school-age kid is a weird experience of confusion, bureaucracy and misinformation. You’re left at the mercy of multiple, non-interoperable IT “platforms” to do things as basic as pay for your kid’s milk, and unable to persuade the child in question to give you... keep reading
Bricks and mortar
Man Feelings 18 Oct 2024
I’ve lived in ten different houses since leaving my family home back in 2005. This averages out at a move almost once a year for the first decade, as I rotated through student houseshares in Leeds and then the London rental shitshow with my partner.... keep reading
Being an influencer is risky business.
Man Feelings 11 Oct 2024
Yesterday evening, just before we started to round the kids up for bed, my five year old son Ted uncharacteristically curled up on the sofa in silence. He sat there hugging his knees while we tidied away the remains of dinner, and it soon became... keep reading
The art of getting lost
Man Feelings 04 Oct 2024
Do you remember the time before Google Maps? The geospatial dark ages, we might call them. If you wanted to travel somewhere in the late 1990s, you could put your faith in primitive online navigation sites like Multimap.com, printing out reams of step-by-step directions which... keep reading
Someone reversed into my car and yet I ended up feeling guilty?
Man Feelings 27 Sep 2024
Maybe I experienced a premonition, or maybe I’m just naturally nosy. Either way, I had a feeling that the van was going to hit my car. Seconds after disaster I think I was expecting a delivery when I noticed the large white van manoeuvring outside... keep reading
40 experiences that define and unite modern men
Man Feelings 21 Sep 2024
The Guardian published an article this week called “The rise of Britishcore: 100 experiences that define and unite modern Britons”. I groaned when I saw the title: as my friend Jon observed: “100 things is a terrible number of things to try to write about... keep reading
Did you ever try making your own magazine as a kid? Some of us never grow out of it, it turns out.
Man Feelings 13 Sep 2024
When I was about ten years old, someone got me and my sister a subscription to a comic each. I got the Beano, she got the Dandy. Each week, we’d trot along to the village newsagent to collect our publication and the ubiquitous “free gift”:... keep reading
A year of Man Feelings
Man Feelings 06 Sep 2024
Welcome to issue #52 of Man Feelings – that’s right, it’s been one whole year since I started writing this newsletter, and incredibly, I’ve not missed a single week. I’ve written and sent this thing while on a family holiday to the Canaries, from a... keep reading
What catching crabs taught me about British society
Man Feelings 30 Aug 2024
“It’s called a devil crab”, the old man told us, plunging his hand into the cloudy bucket. He neatly plucked the crab from its plastic lair and raised it to head height. “Red eyes”, he pointed out helpfully, as the tiny crustacean struggled in his... keep reading
How I tried to be a teenage edgelord
Man Feelings 23 Aug 2024
My five-year-old son has recently started doing things to grab people’s attention. I don’t mean showing off with daredevil feats of physical bravery, or wearing dress-up costumes to public places – he’s been doing that since he was a toddler. No, this is a more... keep reading
Help, I've accidentally taken two kids to a music festival
Man Feelings 16 Aug 2024
As you read this email, I’ll be experiencing the first day of Green Man festival in Bannau Brycheiniog (the region formerly known as the Brecon Beacons) with my partner and two kids. We’ve been three times before, but only once with a child – doing... keep reading
Riots and an argument with a white van man
Man Feelings 09 Aug 2024
I acquired a cargo bike recently for transporting my children. I don’t specifically think of them as baggage, to be clear, but it helps with managing expectations. I was riding on this—large, heavy—bike to collect the five-year-old from summer holiday club earlier this week. The... keep reading
Why I deleted 20,000 of my best (and worst) tweets
Man Feelings 02 Aug 2024
I was an early Twitter user, joining the site in March 2008 and using it as a platform to spout my half-baked opinions, weak attempts at humour and efforts at self-promotion. These days I do that stuff via newsletters. Twitter back then still had something... keep reading
A song for a little bird
Man Feelings 26 Jul 2024
Content warning: this post talks about child loss. Last weekend we celebrated the start of the summer holidays by taking the kids to Center Parcs. If you’re somehow unfamiliar, this is basically middle-class Butlins: overpriced forest cabins with swimming pools, chain restaurants and woodland activities... keep reading
School's out for summer
Man Feelings 19 Jul 2024
Yesterday was the last day of school for my five year old son. I dropped him off that morning along with a couple of his favourite toys, which he was excited to get to take with him for his final day in Reception. My excitement... keep reading
The universal bonding power of ... football?!
Man Feelings 12 Jul 2024
I have a complicated relationship with football. It’s the early 90s and I’m in junior school. We’ve just moved halfway across the country from Merseyside to rural Nottinghamshire and I’m something of a novelty with my Scouse-tinged accent and—crucially—lack of interest in football. The most... keep reading
The righteous vengeance of election defeat
Man Feelings 05 Jul 2024
As you read this email, you’ll know the official results of the UK general election 2024. I’m typing this on the day of voting, but let’s be clear: we already know who the winner is going to be. Or, perhaps: we know who the loser... keep reading
Playing the same video game for 16 years straight
Man Feelings 28 Jun 2024
I’m not much of a gamer. When I started university in 2005, I took with me my recently-acquired Nintendo Gamecube, which was four years old at that point. It replaced my, er, Sega Mega Drive, which was released in the late 1980s. I like games,... keep reading
Being scouted in the pub for movie stardom
Man Feelings 21 Jun 2024
There was a pub we used to drink at when I was on the cusp of 18 (and technically not allowed to be there) called the Old Angel, in the centre of Nottingham. Back then it was a rock/metal pub, though it looks to have... keep reading
What being shat on by a bird taught me about life, or something
Man Feelings 14 Jun 2024
The bird shit landed on my outstretched hand, describing a perfect semicircle of recently-airborne faeces around my fingers. At this late stage of the day I actually found myself laughing at, rather than cursing my unseen avian assailant. Shit happens. It was 6pm this Tuesday... keep reading
Being the youngest person at a gig
Man Feelings 07 Jun 2024
I pulled the ticket out of my pocket and showed it to the worried-looking official standing outside the auditorium doors. “The support act is on right now”, she told me. “You’ll have to wait by the side till the song finishes”. I’d forgotten that this... keep reading
Trying to make gender less of a drag
Man Feelings 31 May 2024
“Only girls like unicorns”, my five-year-old son Ted told me confidently as we walked to the park. He elaborated, explaining the gendered “rules” he had already become aware of in his nine months of full-time school. He’d presumably forgotten about the unicorn bell decorating his... keep reading
Losing the only election I've ever contested
Man Feelings 27 May 2024
I’ve only ever stood in one election in my life, and I didn’t win. It’s 2007 and I’ve just joined the student newspaper at university. A guy I vaguely know from lectures already works on the paper, and he’s standing for the position of Editor... keep reading
Aurora bore: trying to photograph the impossible
Man Feelings 17 May 2024
Every eleven years, the sun’s magnetic field reverses itself, in a process called the solar cycle. The north pole becomes the south pole as the star at the centre of our galaxy completes the biggest flip-reverse it since Blazin’ Squad. Don’t be confused: this isn’t... keep reading
Please stop ringing my doorbell
Man Feelings 11 May 2024
As I’m sure all my subscribers are keenly aware, this year’s Met Gala happened on Monday. All the world’s press and photographers turned out to breathlessly cover the great and good from the worlds of fashion, stage and screen. As I’ve written before, I’m not... keep reading
Testing times: eyes, maternity leave, and hearing your own failings
Man Feelings 05 May 2024
I’m writing this later than usual – apologies to those of you expecting their weekly hit of Man Feelings on Friday. It’s been a busy week! Changes: turn and face the strange Lots has changed in our household: my partner Maddy went back to work... keep reading
Trampolines, making dad friends and the allure of power tools
Man Feelings 26 Apr 2024
It was my son’s fifth birthday this week, which immediately gave me reason to suspect we live in some kind of time paradox: I’ve aged at least ten years in the same period. Kids’ birthday parties at this age are a social minefield: do you... keep reading
The fear of women
Man Feelings 19 Apr 2024
A few days ago I was playing with my ten month old daughter on the sofa. She’s in a very tactile phase and loves grabbing things—typically my glasses—and swinging them around. She reached over and grabbed the TV remote control and happily waved it around... keep reading
The rituals of manhood
Man Feelings 12 Apr 2024
As a man of a certain age, I’ve participated in a few of the rituals of manhood: the stag do, the boys’ weekend, the silent drinking of beer before a funeral (maybe this is a Merseyside thing?). Here’s my take on them. The stag do... keep reading
Naming things is hard – so I surrendered mine
Man Feelings 05 Apr 2024
There are two “hard things” in computer science: cache invalidation, and naming things. After years of experience in software engineering I can vouch for the former, but it’s the latter which is truly hard. In the software world, “naming things” can refer to the challenge... keep reading
What my teenage poetry taught me about being a modern-day man
Man Feelings 29 Mar 2024
Sometimes I find myself digging through my past to figure out who I am in the present. It feels faintly pointless: what can the 37-year-old me learn from my teenage past? I’m a father to two children, with a job, mortgage and partner. My concerns... keep reading
Getting out of my comfort zone in rooms full of beards (and mums)
Man Feelings 22 Mar 2024
On Tuesday this week, a friend I haven’t seen in half a decade was visiting town and got in touch to suggest we grab dinner. He also asked if I was aware of any “folk or trad music night worth checking out – I could... keep reading
Take your kid fishing, they said
Man Feelings 15 Mar 2024
When I was 11 years old, my dad decided to take me fishing. I remember it being a process accompanied by substantial paperwork: we had to go to the local Post Office to purchase my “fishing licence” which would prevent angry bailiffs from insisting we... keep reading
The unbearable lightness of beards
Man Feelings 08 Mar 2024
You can tell a lot about me by the state of my beard. I’ve worn facial hair since my mid-teens, ever since my maths teacher commented on my “bum fluff moustache” when I was 14 and struggling to establish myself as a cool, stylish young... keep reading
Pub banter, sexist movies and the joys of being a dad
Man Feelings 01 Mar 2024
I had half an hour to kill yesterday before a post-work event started, so I popped to a favourite quiet bar for a cheeky pint before it started. It’s a real ale specialist pub so it’s usually full of middle-aged men asking to sample half... keep reading
I think I'm addicted to videos of men living on narrowboats.
Man Feelings 23 Feb 2024
My name is Matt and I’m addicted to watching YouTube video series about men making new lives for themselves on canal boats. I don’t know exactly how or when this addiction started. I remember late one night, perhaps during a covid lockdown, browsing the Amazon... keep reading
In which your narrator gets a stomach bug
Man Feelings 17 Feb 2024
Hello. This man has been feeling, well, sorry for himself. This email is a day late, which isn’t so bad in the grand scheme of newsletters. But most of my week has been a write-off due to a particularly unpleasant stomach bug. It began ominously... keep reading
Welcome to the Hotel California
Man Feelings 09 Feb 2024
Twelve years ago today, I climbed out of a taxi in Menlo Park, California and was greeted by a large billboard featuring the ubiquitous blue thumb of the Facebook logo, whose head office we were there to visit. This was my first experience of visiting... keep reading
Why man caves are actually hugely important
Man Feelings 02 Feb 2024
A “man cave” is a bit embarrassing, isn’t it? There are various other euphemisms for these spaces where men go to escape their wives, hide from the kids, indulge in their nerdy hobbies, or just drink from a secret booze stash and watch questionable YouTube... keep reading
In pursuit of the perfect Tetris grid (and what it taught me about life)
Man Feelings 26 Jan 2024
I remember reading somewhere that playing Tetris could be used to avoid post-traumatic stress disorder. According to research, people who played a game of the famous block-wrangling classic were able to avoid forming painful memories of car accidents if they played within six hours of... keep reading
On sixteen years as a partner: how did I manage to swing this?
Man Feelings 19 Jan 2024
I celebrated sixteen years with my partner Madeleine this week, a number so mind-bogglingly large that we had to count on our fingers to ensure we’d definitely worked it out correctly (look, we’re tired parents). We got together at university when we were 21, and... keep reading
Do you need to know how to drive to be a man?
Man Feelings 12 Jan 2024
When I turned 18 years old, I received a razor in the post. It was a marketing campaign by Gillette to congratulate me on “becoming a man”, even though I’d been shaving for years by the time I opened it. I also seem to remember... keep reading
Why riding a bike with stabilisers is fine, and a Victorian ghost for Christmas
Man Feelings 05 Jan 2024
In the “festive perineum” between Christmas and New Year, there’s a lot of time to kill. Alas, I was in charge of a four year old, whose appetite for sitting down quietly with a book is famously limited. I was desperate, therefore, to encourage him... keep reading
Why that box of old cables you're keeping can go in the bin
Man Feelings 29 Dec 2023
Every man has a drawer or box full of old cables and electronics, right? I hate to stereotype, but I’m also reasonably confident that every man reading this (and let’s be fair, quite a few women too) will have a tangled mess of old USB... keep reading
Why the Bear reminded me that working in kitchens is chaotic yet fun
Man Feelings 22 Dec 2023
We tried watching The Bear at the start of this year after hearing good things, but my partner Maddy got fed up with the intensity of the kitchen scenes and didn’t enjoy it. Fast forward to this week, and the Guardian have named it TV... keep reading
Things I learned managing people in 2023
blogpost 20 Dec 2023
I wrote last year about things I learned as an engineering manager in 2022. It’s been another twelve months of ups, downs and sideways, so here’s a couple more things that I learned this year about leading people in tech. Let good people go A... keep reading
The Invincible Man
Man Feelings 15 Dec 2023
I was getting my hair cut this week and the barber was making small talk as he negotiated my sideburns. We were talking about children and their chaotic injuries, and I mentioned my son’s space hopper/slide injury (see a previous Man Feelings for the full... keep reading
How well dressed are you?
Man Feelings 08 Dec 2023
Before my son started school, he went to nursery on the campus of the University of Birmingham where my partner works. When collecting him I’d sometimes take the scenic walk through campus which was always filled with irritatingly young-looking students having fun with their carefree... keep reading
Jobs for the boys
Man Feelings 01 Dec 2023
A decade or so ago, I got myself into what I believe the youth call “Twitter beef” when I called out a tech conference happening in London with an all-male speaker lineup. I posted a ranty tweet and a blogpost, then went to bed. I... keep reading
Coming out of my cage and I've been doing NOT FINE
Man Feelings 24 Nov 2023
I’ve been flat this week. Struggling to kick a winter cold, which can always be an energy-sapper, and also going a little stir-crazy. I normally work from home for 3 or 4 days per week, and go to the office for the remainder. My company... keep reading
International Men's Day
Man Feelings 19 Nov 2023
It’s my tenth issue of Man Feelings, and I’m very proud of sustaining this thing for ten weeks in a row. Today is also International Men’s Day—yep, you thought it was just a meme, didn’t you?—which is definitely why this newsletter is a couple of... keep reading
Now and then
Man Feelings 10 Nov 2023
I’m a huge Beatles fan. I blame my dad: our family are from Merseyside where the Beatles are even more ubiquitous than everywhere else, and every car journey was accompanied by a blast through the #1s CD (it was quite a lot later in life... keep reading
The woes of being a travelling man
Man Feelings 06 Nov 2023
This is technically last week’s newsletter because I was on holiday in the sunny climes of Tenerife for all of last week. I toyed with trying to write that week’s edition on my phone and send it out on Friday, but found myself chasing a... keep reading
Boys don't cry... but perhaps men should?
Man Feelings 27 Oct 2023
Welcome to the seventh edition of this newsletter – thanks for taking the time to read it. I should take a moment to call out a great comment on a previous edition—Being a “fixer” of problems—by my close friend Tsering. He’s challenged some of my... keep reading
A tale of two teachers
Man Feelings 20 Oct 2023
When I was a teenager, PE lessons at school were the bane of my existence. Never the most sporty kid, I had to line up with the rest of my nerd friends and submit to the ritual humiliation of being sorted into teams to play... keep reading
There's something in the water this week
Man Feelings 13 Oct 2023
Just after I sent out last week’s newsletter, the “Dads ‘n’ Lads” WhatsApp group I’m in sparked into life. Unrelated to my newsletter, one of my close friends shared a Reddit AskMen post with the group to ask for our thoughts on the male loneliness... keep reading
Being a “hands-on” dad
Man Feelings 06 Oct 2023
Walking to the train station in Manchester city centre this morning, I saw a little boy of about four years old riding a tiny bike towards me, followed by a dad also on a bike. I smiled to see them, and felt a pang of... keep reading
The prerogative to have a little fun
Man Feelings 29 Sep 2023
So last night I went to see Shania Twain. It was my mum’s birthday and she booked the tickets months ago for her partner, my sisters and I to go to a concert together. She reads this newsletter so I’m obliged to say: hello mum!... keep reading
Being a "fixer" of problems
Man Feelings 22 Sep 2023
The difficult second newsletter – thanks to all the new subscribers who are interested in hearing about, well, man feelings. Turns out there are at least a few folks who think this is a good idea, which is equal parts encouraging and daunting. On with... keep reading
This is Man Feelings
Man Feelings 16 Sep 2023
I should begin by crediting my friend Annie for inspiring the creation of this newsletter. A few months ago, I was mouthing off on Twitter—quelle surprise—about the new Caitlin Moran book, What About Men?. I hadn’t actually read the book, but I was enjoying the... keep reading
Things I learned managing people in 2022
blogpost 04 Jan 2023
The past two years of my engineering management career have been both fulfilling and challenging, particularly in the first half of the period as I rebuilt my self-confidence after a difficult previous role, and sought to define what my role actually was in the absence... keep reading
International Women's Day 2018
blogpost 08 Mar 2018
I’m fortunate to have worked with, been inspired by and be aware of a whole bunch of incredible women. While I’m firmly in agreement with Rachel Coldicutt about how women “shouldn’t need a special day to get public visibility”, I’d also like to highlight (in... keep reading
On being #woke (or: privilege, minorities and ignorance)
blogpost 06 Feb 2018
I’ve experienced being a minority twice in my life. The first time was in 2014 (when I was 27) at a Guardian event featuring Sheryl Sandberg promoting her “Lean In” book. My girlfriend bought me a ticket and I attended in solidarity despite not being... keep reading
Buying a house
blogpost 24 Jan 2018
We left London in 2015 because getting on the housing ladder seemed impossible. Our landlord in our small 1-bedroom flat in zone 3 offered us “first refusal” on the place he was kicking us out of to sell – £370k. We refused. Birmingham was a... keep reading
Things I've learned organising events
blogpost 08 Aug 2017
I’ve been running a regular music meetup event for over two years now, across two cities (London and Birmingham). While it’s a small event and a bit specialist/niche, I’ve learned a thing or two while running it and thought I’d share some learnings here. Put... keep reading
#harkive 2017
blogpost 26 Jul 2017
Note: this blog entry is for the #harkive project, an annual popular music research project that asks people to tell the tale of How, Where and Why they listen to music on a single day each year. You can find more about that project on... keep reading
Five things I've learned being on an innovation team
blogpost 23 Mar 2017
For just under two years now I've been a "Digital Guerrilla", working as part of a team of six in Birmingham, created by the BBC to "pilot and prototype new storytelling ideas", and help the broadcaster to "engage with its audiences and to deliver unforgettable... keep reading
Debunking Private Eye's "gobsmacking" gender/race accusations
blogpost 09 Oct 2016
There's a photo doing the rounds on Twitter of an extract from the current edition of Private Eye magazine. The text concerns the recent Forward prize for poetry, and the chaps from the Eye have decided that the gender/racial demographics of the Forward prize panel... keep reading
A resolution on communication
blogpost 08 Mar 2016
Talking is hard. So's writing. Self-expression is sometimes crushingly futile when we try to reduce the mad, beautiful complexity of the human mind into the crude box we call language. Even with the best will in the world we can still mess up, "misspeak", communicate... keep reading
My Atom setup
blogpost 20 Dec 2015
I recently decided to switch my main text editor for coding from Sublime Text to Atom by Github (mostly because my old work license expired when I changed jobs, but also because I liked Atom's open-source nature). In the six months I've spent with it,... keep reading
Learnings so far after leaving my old job
blogpost 10 Sep 2015
It's been three months, give or take a few days, since I left the Guardian—and London—to move to the BBC (I know, how imaginative...) in Birmingham. It's flown by. Tomorrow I'm off for a visit to the capital where I'll be seeing some former colleagues... keep reading
Past, present and future
blogpost 05 Jun 2015
By the time I press “Publish” on this entry, my employment at the Guardian will be over after just shy of five years working as a developer there. I’m also days away from leaving London, the city I moved to in order to work at... keep reading
Guardian Hack Day February 2015
The Guardian 26 Feb 2015
It’s that time again – the Guardian’s Digital Development team is having its quarterly Hack Day. Follow along to see... keep reading
An apology
blogpost 18 Feb 2015
On Monday night I posted a ranty tweet which I followed up on Tuesday. In essence, I was registering my surprise that a digital journalist at an internal event admitted they didn't know what "CMS" stood for. There were a couple of reactions to the... keep reading
Humans and algorithms
blogpost 05 Feb 2015
Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter, has made headlines this week for his admission that "we suck at dealing with abuse and trolls" as part of an internal memo. While Twitter is unclear about how they currently moderate the platform, it seems that much of the... keep reading
MozFest 2014: creative chaos – in the best possible way
The Guardian 30 Oct 2014
I think the moment I first realised this tech event would be different was when I saw a pile of... keep reading
Book review: JavaScript & jQuery (by Jon Duckett)
blogpost 01 Oct 2014
I was excited to sit down and read the newly-published JavaScript & jQuery by Jon Duckett, produced by the team behind the hugely well-received HTML & CSS book. It's a large and beautifully-designed tome aimed at newbie developers with familiarity with HTML/CSS but no experience with programming... keep reading
#dareconf 2014 review: people skills for digital workers
The Guardian 29 Sep 2014
The tech scene is awash with conferences: it seems every other day there’s a new clique of enthusiastic men (and,... keep reading
London, I love you, but you're bringing me down
blogpost 12 Sep 2014
I turned 28 this week and have begun to find that my life and those of my peers seems to have come to a fork in the road. The ones who live in the general area I'm calling "not London" have taken one fork in the... keep reading
How animated gif selfies fixed our team's morale
blogpost 15 Aug 2014
Lately I've been thinking a lot about software team morale. I've switched teams a couple of times so far this year at work and have had a fairly different experience on each one. Some were large (10+ people), some small (3 people, one on a... keep reading
Guardian Hack Day July 2014
The Guardian 14 Jul 2014
The Guardian’s Digital Development teams are out of the office and spending two days trying new ideas, starting things, breaking... keep reading
In defence of reddit
blogpost 17 Jun 2014
I saw a tweet the other day from Jeremy Keith which piqued my interest: http://twitter.com/mattpointblank/statuses/476453724991537154 You can see my reply below, which went unanswered. Alexis Ohanian himself, though, co-founder of Reddit, did respond to point out the breadth of the site: https://twitter.com/alexisohanian/status/476561714910334976 This must've been... keep reading
How can Mozilla turn a blind eye to its CEO's support of Prop 8?
The Guardian 26 Mar 2014
Do you agree with everything your boss believes? Is this a requirement for working under them? The challenge issued this... keep reading
Why do we think developers are special?
blogpost 11 Mar 2014
I teach a Guardian Masterclass as part of their "Digital Journalism Bootcamp" course. Specifically, my part of the month-long class is a 90 minute workshop aimed at journalists, outlining how developers work, what they do, and how they use process to organise work (there's an... keep reading
Lessons learned self-publishing for Kindle and print simultaneously
blogpost 27 Jan 2014
It was one of those fateful moments where you catch yourself thinking "how difficult could it be?". It's been ten years (almost eleven now) since I started Scene Point Blank, the online music zine which came to define my late teens and the eventual career... keep reading
Guardian Hack Day January 2014
The Guardian 16 Jan 2014
The Guardian’s Digital Development teams are out of the office and spending two days trying new ideas, starting things, breaking... keep reading
Dennis Rodman is 'having fun' in North Korea at the expense of human rights
The Guardian 19 Dec 2013
In the history of unlikely friendships, few perhaps have had the freedom of a nation underpinning them. The apparently burgeoning... keep reading
Tech half-life: it's okay to be wrong
blogpost 08 Dec 2013
Note: this blog entry is taken from the first print issue of the experimental "algorithmic newspaper", The Long Good Read. You can find more about that project on the official site. A developer I work with has been at the company for a decade. His... keep reading
Young Rewired State 2013: mentoring the tech stars of tomorrow
The Guardian 14 Aug 2013
Young Rewired State (YRS) is a spin-off of the popular hack event group Rewired State, aimed at budding developers and... keep reading
The web: less engine, more gas
blogpost 16 Jul 2013
Twenty-four hours ago I posted a mildly ranty tweet (I know, I can't believe it either) about the current proliferation of techniques/tools for modern web development. Here's the tweet in question. This was a frustrated summary of something I've been feeling for quite a while... keep reading
Homebrew beer for busy people
blogpost 03 Jun 2013
After the example set by my friend Andy, a veritable homebrew beer connoisseur, I decided it was about time I took my liking for proper craft beer and real ale to a new level by attempting to make some of my own. Anything that was... keep reading
Google Glass – what is it good for? | Matt Andrews
The Guardian 30 Apr 2013
I was tucking into a greasy burger a few weeks ago in Covent Garden's trendy MEATmarket when a crowd of... keep reading
Why journalism is like pro cycling
blogpost 19 Mar 2013
I'm a cycling geek. I love it: the romance of the road; the century of history; the epic duels; the famous climbs. It's a sport not without its scandals but still markedly different from the world of primadonna footballers with fans shelling out hundreds of... keep reading
Imagine journalism in ten years' time: notes from my talk
blogpost 08 Mar 2013
A few months ago I was approached by John Mair of the University of Northampton who'd attended my class at the Guardian's Digital Journalism masterclass. He asked me if I'd be up for speaking at a mini-conference for journalism students titled "Imagine journalism in ten years'... keep reading
Parisian vignettes
blogpost 10 Feb 2013
Here are some things I saw in Paris on a recent trip. I really enjoyed the weekend and found it a beautiful and fascinating place, and these are some of the moments which stood out to me as different or unexpected. Positive or negative, they'll... keep reading
What will the future make of us?
blogpost 06 Jan 2013
In moments of downtime I think about that Paul Graham post about frighteningly ambitious startup ideas; specifically the part about generating ideas: One of my tricks for generating startup ideas is to imagine the ways in which we'll seem backward to future generations. And I'm pretty... keep reading
Diversity in tech: still an issue in 2013?
blogpost 03 Jan 2013
Note: My last blogpost was about my 2013 resolution: avoiding negativity, cynicism and spite. This entry might come across as negative criticism but my rationale here is to highlight what I think is an injustice, and look toward positive improvements that could fix this problem.... keep reading
A resolution: breaking a very British curse
blogpost 28 Dec 2012
I'm not usually the type for new year's resolutions: generally my attitude for self-improvement (when I can be bothered) is to just get on with it rather than wait around for arbitrary periods. At the end of 2011, though, I decided to make my first... keep reading
Responsive design at the Guardian: an introduction
The Guardian 17 Oct 2012
The rise of "responsive design", as the technique was coined by Ethan Marcotte in his now-classic A List Apart article... keep reading
A £2-a-month levy on broadband could be the worst idea for journalism ever
blogpost 24 Sep 2012
Yesterday evening the Guardian (full disclosure: my employer) published an article by the eminent investigative journalist David Leigh, titled "A £2-a-month levy on broadband could save our newspapers". Leigh, a veteran report who worked (amongst other things) on the Wikileaks data and the Jonathan Aitken... keep reading
Menshn v2: reviewed
blogpost 17 Sep 2012
The dust has now settled on Menshn's recent relaunch, so therefore I'm revisiting the site after my initial write-up about it, written back in July. The headline feature of this new design is a mobile version, so along with my original criticisms, I'll also cover... keep reading
The internet: the world's first true meritocracy
blogpost 20 Aug 2012
Sometimes it makes me sad that I'll never be the King of England. It's not that I harbour secret desires to dress in ermine, or really feel like my morning routine needs a butler awaiting me with a pre-foamed toothbrush. It's more simple: the fact that... keep reading
Discovery Week Diary: Day Two
The Guardian 17 Jul 2012
Today is the third full day of our Discovery Week project, so without further ado, here's a summary of the... keep reading
Discovery Week Diary: Day One
The Guardian 15 Jul 2012
As Monday mornings go, starting work today to the background of multiple sugary snacks, inspirational leadership speeches and gatherings of... keep reading
Talking on Topic: I try Menshn so you don't have to
blogpost 12 Jul 2012
Menshn is a bold idea. Aiming to replace Twitter is no small thing (I say "replace" because the site doesn't augment existing use of Twitter but offers a new service entirely) and it's a brave move to do. It perhaps goes without saying that the... keep reading
The internet isn't killing journalism - journalists are.
blogpost 24 Jun 2012
Earlier this week I read a good article in More Intelligent Life titled "Can the Guardian survive?". As a Guardian employee I'm fairly interested in its extended longevity and I read the piece with interest. A single paragraph stood out to me above all of others,... keep reading
Victims of our own design: digital consumption is killing creativity
blogpost 18 Jun 2012
Note: this blog entry is taken from the third issue of my print zine, "I'm a Pretender". If you'd like to see the original article in print, along with dozens of other pieces of my writing, you can order the zine for free online here, or... keep reading
Applying for a web developer role: CV dos and don'ts
blogpost 15 Jun 2012
(Editor's note: this piece represents my personal opinions and not those of my employer. Now let's begin) In my day job I frequently look over CVs and applications to join my team as a front-end web developer. Of the batch that we receive each time... keep reading
The medium is not the message
blogpost 30 May 2012
Note: this blog entry is taken from the third issue of my print zine, "I'm a Pretender". If you'd like to see the original article in print, along with dozens of other pieces of my writing, you can order the zine for free online here, or... keep reading
Policing love: Anti-gay marriage campaign nonsense
blogpost 06 May 2012
Note: this blog entry is taken from the third issue of my print zine, "I'm a Pretender". I'm publishing it here online because of the recent debate over the British Government's plans to introduce gay marriage. If you'd like to see the original article in... keep reading
Twitter's #ukopenhouse London - my notes
blogpost 25 Apr 2012
Last night I attended the first of Twitter UK's Open House sessions on their engineering work. It was a free event at LBi's London office and sold out very quickly. I managed to get tickets and went along, with little idea of what to expect,... keep reading
Web cookies & the E-Privacy Directive: alternatives and workarounds
blogpost 24 Apr 2012
It hardly sounds like the most stimulating of legal documents. As a title, Directive 2002/58 on Privacy and Electronic Communications lacks the punch of, say, SOPA or PIPA, although its potential impact on European society could be measurably similar. Having gained the dubious privilege of... keep reading
London Mayoral Candidates: their manifestos, critiqued
blogpost 23 Apr 2012
I've been taking quite an interest in next month's upcoming London Mayoral Elections. I threw together a webapp a couple of weekends ago to see how people in a specific London postcode area voted. Today I got home to find an election leaflet through my... keep reading
How I finally understood the value of "Social"
blogpost 21 Mar 2012
I'm something of a sceptic of social media at times, as this blog has previously documented. Having built much of the Guardian's Facebook app, I've experienced much of the social giant's promotional guff surrounding how making your products 'social' can impact their success hugely. While... keep reading
One click to achieve absolute apathy
blogpost 12 Mar 2012
Anyone following the news of late will be familiar with the UK governments' efforts to pass a bill reforming the NHS, apparently in order to save it, but in the minds of sceptics and apparently most health professionals, it's more likely to destroy it. David... keep reading
The love affair of the tech nerd with themselves
blogpost 23 Jan 2012
We in the technology world are a self-centred bunch of people. I recently attended a training course where we were asked to complete Myers-Briggs tests to figure out our personality types. I'd never previously completed one and was initially sceptical, but after receiving my result I... keep reading
Why Private Eye's scepticism of "new media" is as unreliable as Glenda Slagg
blogpost 04 Jan 2012
I've been an avid reader of Private Eye since I was a teenager and my dad brought a dog-eared copy home with him after a trip to London. From that point on it was my connection to a wider world outside of my hazy Midlands... keep reading
Music Hack Day London 2011: a developer's view
The Guardian 06 Dec 2011
While I wouldn't quite describe myself as a hack day veteran, I've certainly attended a few in my time, mostly... keep reading
My favourite film: The Goonies
The Guardian 04 Dec 2011
Picture, if you will, a Midlands household circa 1990. Cable TV was still a distant dream and cinema trips were... keep reading
Business:designed
The Guardian 14 Nov 2011
Bright and early on 4 of November, two members of the Guardian's Digital Development team headed up to Edinburgh to... keep reading
The class struggle, revolution and Alan Sugar
blogpost 03 Nov 2011
“Are you a glory hunter, Lewis?”, Karen Brady asks a teenage scouser. “Yeah”, he quickly assures her, straightfaced. They sit across from one another in Lord Alan Sugar's televised boardroom, as Lewis takes responsibility for his failure to adequately present their product to the buyers.... keep reading
When celebrities Tweet: a Ricky Gervais special
blogpost 16 Oct 2011
Ricky Gervais rejoined Twitter in the last few weeks, having sworn it off almost two years ago with the verbal shrug of "I don't see the point". Now he's back, gaining followers, and tweeting with the frequency of an out-of-work student. For me, it's a... keep reading
Facebook F8 2011: because everyone wants to know everything
blogpost 23 Sep 2011
Last night I attended Facebook's annual F8 conference – their yearly chance to show off new features that will, in the words of Mark Zuckerberg, “change the world”. I'd already had some exposure to the new features, having been a “partner developer” through my... keep reading
The only thing mindless about the riots is the response
blogpost 16 Aug 2011
I'd just walked out of the cinema in Clapham, South London, on Saturday 6th August at around 11pm, having sat through Spielberg's Super 8 and found it pleasant enough. Idly checking my Twitter feed as the lady did the customary bathroom trip, I spotted some... keep reading
The user experience of flathunting
blogpost 30 Jun 2011
As followers of my London blog will know, I've currently been in the process of moving flat. It's been a fairly lengthy effort and it's well-documented on the other blog. What this entry will cover is the mind-numbing frustration the websites of estate agents caused... keep reading
On student journalism and "digital first"
blogpost 19 Jun 2011
Since graduating from Leeds University I've followed the path of the student newspaper, Leeds Student, with keen interest - I spent almost two years of my time at Leeds working on the newspaper and owe my current career to the experience gained writing and designing... keep reading
How not to make me download your mobile app
blogpost 06 Jun 2011
Earlier today I was checking out app recommendations over at reddit's Android community. Someone suggested an app called Glympse, which allows users to share their location, Google Latitude-style, but falling back to SMS when the recipient doesn't use Glympse. Cool, I thought. I checked out... keep reading
Portal 2: Missed opportunities?
blogpost 16 May 2011
I'm a fairly big Valve nerd, having played even the slightly less good outings in their Black Mesa universe with vigour and enjoyment. It was essentially a foregone conclusion, then, that I'd be checking out the recently-released Portal 2 within a few weeks of its... keep reading
On deleting Facebook and being human again
blogpost 01 May 2011
The topic of deleting a Facebook account has been written about in depth in various other places, so it's with hesitation that I begin this entry about my own experiences with it. However, in a post-Social Network world, the site may have beefed up its... keep reading
The arrogance of Google and their quest to store everything
blogpost 11 Apr 2011
At the morning conference in the Guardian's offices last Wednesday we were visited by the Head of Google Europe, Philipp Schindler. He gave an interesting talk about Google's future plans and current achievements, and was asked some tricky questions from the assembled journalists including issues... keep reading
SXSW 2011: Music and hack days - where the girls aren't
The Guardian 14 Mar 2011
A couple of notes to preface this entry: Firstly: I'm indebted to Jessica Hopper of Punk Planet, whose famous column... keep reading
SXSW 2011: How we made our interactive band tracker
The Guardian 10 Mar 2011
Last year I attended my second Music Hack Day, a spirited event encouraging geeks who love beats to get together... keep reading
Why Microsoft will never regain developers' trust
blogpost 06 Mar 2011
In honour of the 10 year anniversary of Internet Explorer 6, Microsoft is promoting a new site they've called IE6 Countdown which lets them highlight the largest culprits still using the crippled software (step forward, China and South Korea) and suggest reasons for upgrading. As... keep reading
Reality TV: escapism from the flaws of, er, reality
blogpost 02 Feb 2011
In the past few days, British TV has graced our television sets with several distinctly working class-focused reality TV shows: celebrity chef Michel Roux's Service on BBC2, Channel 4's My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, and BBC4's Snog Marry Avoid?. Each one of these programmes featured... keep reading
Apple TV: ...and all that could have been
blogpost 23 Jan 2011
Towards the end of December last year I won a £500 Amazon voucher and decided to splash out on some TV/audio equipment. Part of that splurge included the newest model of the Apple TV. It's a little box of Apple's curved-edge magic, weighing barely as... keep reading
Broadcast media: dumbing down or catering for demand?
blogpost 19 Jan 2011
Recently, Britain's Radio 1 performed a kind of broadcasting experiment that got me thinking. They called it the 'daytime takeover' - essentially, their DJs with shows normally relegated to the graveyard shift were given the chance to take over on the primetime slots - breakfast... keep reading
Switching to Google-hosted jQuery
The Guardian 15 Dec 2010
Like thousands of other sites, the Guardian uses the excellent jQuery framework to power our javascript. Previously, our jQuery build... keep reading
The (new) internet: the death of culture?
blogpost 28 Jul 2009
Could the digital revolution have exiled individual thought? MICHELLE IS BORED. Andy wants to go out tonight. Jessica is looking forward to seeing "a certain sum1, lol". This is your brain on Facebook. Or Twitter. "RT @Tehran123: Change your location to Iran NOW to confuse... keep reading