Palaeontologist: Dinosaur Footprints – Biomechanics – Simulation
I was previously using Bluefin fairly extensively. And I was mostly happy — aside from a few niggles, I was able to mostly stay in Linux and only boot into Windows occasionally. Some of the niggles were just Microsoft clashing with Linux — Outlook required for work, etc. Other niggles — sleep not working, high... Continue Reading →
I've had Gigabyte's version of Nvidia's DGX Spark, the AI TOP ATOM, on my desk since July, and the two numbers that actually matter about it are 128 and 50: 128GB of unified memory, and roughly fifty watts at the wall while it processes. The box itself It's a lovely little box. Dark grey, 150mm... Continue Reading →
Ugh. It pains me to say it, but this is probably the best laptop in the world. And it's not even close. Shame about macOS, though. I've been lucky enough to be generously provided with a MacBook Air (thanks Beth!) primarily so XMALab gets compiled and built properly for macOS. It's the base model —... Continue Reading →
I've been using Windows Hello face unlock on my desktop for years, and it's one of those things you don't realise how much you rely on until it's gone. You sit down at the machine, look at the camera, and you're in. No faffing about with passwords, no keyboard mashing while half-asleep. It just works.... Continue Reading →
Epic have just released RealityScan 2.2, and the headline feature is one that's been on people's wishlists for a long time: full AMD GPU support on Windows. For years, photogrammetry has been effectively CUDA-only. Most serious reconstruction software -- Metashape, Colmap with GPU acceleration, the lot -- all lean heavily on NVIDIA's CUDA ecosystem. That... Continue Reading →
Three papers in the last few months, which feels like a decent enough excuse to do a quick roundup. Micro-CT scanning tracks (Tash Prescott et al.) First up is Tash Prescott with a paper just out in Fossil Studies: How do you visualise what's happening beneath the surface when a foot presses into sediment, without destroying... Continue Reading →
I've been running Hermes Agent — an open-source AI agent framework by Nous Research — for a few weeks now, and I'm genuinely impressed with it. If you haven't seen what it's been doing for me, I wrote about that recently. What I haven't mentioned is that I've got it running on four machines simultaneously,... Continue Reading →
Oh dear. Found this option in wordpress experimental features. Gave it a try. Is this useful to anyone? It weirds me out a bit. Anyway, transcript below: Pip: Prof. Peter Falkingham has been doing what academics do best: turning a simple question into a multi-week infrastructure project, then writing about it thoughtfully enough that you're... Continue Reading →
I've written about the Asus ProArt P16 before. Back in 2024, I reviewed the original AMD CoPilot+ version with the RTX 4070 -- a beautiful and powerful laptop that I genuinely loved. Then in 2025, I upgraded to the revised model with the RTX 5090 Mobile, tripling my VRAM from 8GB to 24GB and doubling... Continue Reading →
I've been writing posts here about getting set up with local AI, agents, harnesses, and what I've done with them. It's fun, and it stretches my computer legs in a way they haven't been stretched recently. But I can't shake this nagging feeling that it's all a colossal waste of time, because everything's moving so... Continue Reading →
