Ewan’s Blog

I ramble, enjoy.

The Ouroboros of AI Detection: When Logic Becomes a Liability

I’m three weeks out from brain surgery and it took me ninety minutes to write this, yet a "fancy autocorrect" detector thinks my logic is too consistent to be human.

May 06, 2026

Taking Cryptocurrencies

alternative payment for my commissions, since some people might prefer it.

May 05, 2026

Taking a break

“Have you ever talked to a corpse? It’s boring.”

May 05, 2026

Something’s Off With Spelling Online, and It’s Getting Worse

By the gods I hope we as a species survive longer than twenty more years.

May 04, 2026

After Cook

the hardware guy takes the wheel

April 27, 2026

Disconnection in Reaction to Trauma

Early morning thoughts on my surprisingly numb reaction.

April 25, 2026

The Liminal Man

A retrospective on my Forest Wolfkind Barbarian Cailean Uen.

April 23, 2026

Bismuth: On Refraction and Conversion

I've been publishing to the AT Protocol for a while now. Blog posts, project documentation, the odd creative thing — all of it lives as site.standard.document records on my PDS, which means all of it lives as block trees. Richtext blocks, facets with byte-slice annotations, nested lists, images as blob references. Great for a federated document store. Opaque to everything else.

April 23, 2026

So I Had Brain Surgery

Right, so. I had brain surgery. Last Friday, the 17th. It’s fine, I’m fine, everything is fine — I’m writing this from home and I’m recovering well and there’s really no need to make a fuss.

April 21, 2026

The Grass Is Greener (But I'm Not Moving)

If I'm being honest with myself, the Apple ecosystem has me in a reasonably comfortable headlock — and it's not without some genuine resentment on my end.

April 15, 2026

Dear Manager

Point and laugh.

April 11, 2026

Four Days with Letta Code

I started using Letta Code on 8 April 2026. It's authored 80 commits across 15 repositories since then.

April 11, 2026

Self-Hosted Analytics with Umami

I can see you, anon.

April 11, 2026

Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream and Why I Absolutely Love It

I'm pre-ordering on the 11th!

April 08, 2026

The Timer Problem

A common thread I've seen with LLMs.

April 05, 2026

Criminal by Birth

why would I have been a criminal for being me?

March 30, 2026

Dipping a Toe into the Fediverse (Again)

On standing up a GoToSocial instance, migrating to Sharkey when the lack of quote posts became too annoying, and why the fediverse is more fun than I remember.

March 21, 2026

Life Update: Controlled Chaos and March

There's a particular type of tiredness that isn't about sleep. You can get eight hours (I don't, but theoretically) and still feel like you've been carrying something heavy for weeks. That's roughly where I've been lately. Not miserable, not burned out in any dramatic sense – just a bit worn around the edges. Which, honestly, is probably the most accurate description of early 2026 I can give.

March 15, 2026

There Is Nuance, Nae a Binary

You can see the post above. Not a manifesto, not a hot take designed to perform – just a fact I'd been sitting on and finally decided to say out loud, with a quote attached that felt relevant.

March 06, 2026

Silver Fire – Commissions Are Open (and Half Off)

I've been meaning to open commissions for a while now. Today I'm finally doing it, and to mark the occasion I'm running a sale: everything is 50% off for the next two weeks, until 19th March, under the name Silver Fire.

March 05, 2026

The Stranger in the Mirror

Last year I wrote a poem called Slipping Away. It ended like this:

March 03, 2026

We Were Promised a Future. We Got a Spreadsheet.

i have a mouth and all i can do is scream.

March 01, 2026

I Made a Ko-fi (And I'm a Bit Embarrassed About It)

i have an income now???

February 23, 2026

The Machine That Runs Whether I Remember Setting It Up or Not

I deployed my PDS while drunk.

February 22, 2026

The Soundtrack of My College Years: A Timeline (Ages 16–20)

Data analysis is fun.

February 19, 2026

~/.config/nix-config Rewritten: What I Actually Changed (And Why)

With thanks to Isabel.

February 19, 2026

~/.config/nix-config: Three Machines, One Config (Sort Of)

why am i doing this to myself? fascination.

February 13, 2026

Back to NixOS (and completely winging it)

I'm back on NixOS. Still don't really know what I'm doing. Still enjoying it anyway.

February 10, 2026

Malachite: How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Import My Scrobbles

I will do shite out of spite, here's another case study!

January 23, 2026

Hit By A Silver Bullet: The Timing of Being Early with W

Damn it.

January 22, 2026

W. What's it Worth?

What a waste of a name.

January 21, 2026

Why Don't More People Use Signal?

There's this thing that keeps happening where I'm trying to organise something with friends – a meetup, a quick chat, whatever – and I'll suggest Signal. And I'll get that look. You know the one. The "why are you making this complicated?" look. The "can't we just use WhatsApp like normal people?" look.

January 11, 2026

Standard.site and Why Coordination Matters More Than You Think

Interoperability! …and more?

January 05, 2026

2 2

The AI Hype Train Has Derailed the PC Market, and We're Paying for the Wreckage

I'm going to be honest, looking at the state of the technology industry right now makes me want to scream into a pillow. Or better yet, scream at a cloud server farm until it overheats.

January 03, 2026

I Hope 2026 Will Be Better

My reflection on 2025.

January 01, 2026

Musical Identity and Confusion

I Am Not a Metalhead... I Think?

December 30, 2025

Joining Jollywhoppers: On Collaboration, Minecraft Mods, and Finding Your People

I've officially become a member of Jollywhoppers. Which sounds either very exciting or completely meaningless depending on whether you know what Jollywhoppers is, so let me back up a bit.

December 28, 2025

Privacy is Important

Don't just tell me to go offline. This is not how that works.

December 21, 2025

Welcome to Macintosh: Documenting a Hidden Easter Egg

"Hidden", more like. It's an open secret.

December 17, 2025

An American Werewolf in London: A Preventable Tragedy

All of these plot holes, it's like Britain's roads!

December 14, 2025

How Belief Shapes You When You're Not Looking

How the last week turned belief from concept into practice

December 07, 2025

Giving Up on Rust: A Post-Mortem

I should not be sorry.

December 07, 2025

The Yew Has Wilted, and I Can't Water It

Anxiety is killing me.

December 01, 2025

An Autistic Silver Bullet

No, I’m not AI. I just write like that.

November 27, 2025

Building a Decentralised Link Shortener with AT Protocol

Because... well, just because.

November 24, 2025

On Scottish Gaelic, Heritage, and the Right to Care

I just want Scottish Gaelic to survive.

November 22, 2025

You Can Just Do Things

An unexpected motto of the Atmosphere

November 21, 2025

Let’s Talk Steam Machine

Valve finally counted to Three.

November 17, 2025

I Accidentally Did a DoS Attack On My PDS

How not to make a first impression.

November 14, 2025

croft.click and the Paralysis of Possibility

...I guess I could ask my dad if he wants a redirect link to his business?

November 10, 2025

Writing in Public: Why My Blog Has No Theme

something that I didn't need to justify, but here's my reasons.

November 09, 2025

An American Werewolf in London: The Streaming Shuffle Nobody Asked For

Ah yes, tempting a werewolf with raw meat into one cage and to the next, surely that won't go wrong!

November 01, 2025

Why Romance Language Word Order Sometimes Makes More Sense Than English

This is one of those spontaneous thoughts that just popped into my head, the kind that refuses to leave until I've written it out properly. So here we are.

October 30, 2025

Theory: How Long Did It Take?

In 'An American Werewolf in London', How Long Did Jack Walk?

October 28, 2025

Samhain in the Shadow of Snow

Honour, endings and the quiet rites Christmas swallowed

October 26, 2025

The Clock's Going Back!

a twice-yearly ritual I still don't understand

October 25, 2025

Completing My Leaflet Migration (And Feeling a Bit Dejected About Link Rot)

I've finally done it. The Leaflet migration is complete.

October 25, 2025

Leaflet Migration

Well I guess this is a thing now. Doing this out of spite of myself, like usual.

October 24, 2025

A Number on a Spreadsheet: When Everything Becomes Data

I've been thinking about this for a few weeks now, and honestly? It's making me feel like a proper misanthrope. Everything—and I mean everything—has been reduced to statistics. Numbers on spreadsheets. Data points in databases. Metrics to be optimised.

October 20, 2025

When You Hit RESET (and Actually Mean It) – ewancroft.uk v10

Redesign... Redesign... Redesign...

October 19, 2025

Bonfire Night: Fireworks without the Fire

As mid-October starts to drift into the chillier half of the month, the air already smells faintly of damp leaves and frost-tipped grass. Bonfire Night is just a few weeks away, and Britain will soon be preparing to commemorate a failed act of terrorism by setting off explosives in our gardens. Bonfire Night, Guy Fawkes Night, whatever you want to call it – it’s the one night of the year when pyrotechnics aren’t just allowed, they’re expected.

October 11, 2025

Building Tangled Sync: A Few Hours of Work That Doesn't Quite Work Yet (And Why That's Bloody Frustrating)

So I built something over the course of a few hours. It's called Tangled Sync, and whilst it doesn't seem to function properly yet, I'm trying my best. This is one of those posts where I'm documenting both what I've made and where I'm stuck, because sometimes writing about a problem helps clarify it—and sometimes you just need to rant into the void about why simple things are never actually simple.

October 11, 2025

The Frustrating Erasure of English (English English) in American Tech: a Rant

There's this moment–and I suspect you've had it too–where you're setting up some shiny new piece of software, and you get to the language selection screen. You're hopeful. You're optimistic. Surely this time they'll have remembered that England exists.

October 07, 2025

When the Clock Lies: On Time, Perception, and Why Nothing's Really Happening in Order

The thing about time is that we're all absolutely convinced it's real. Proper, linear, ticking forward like a metronome. You wake up, have breakfast, go through your day, and then sleep. Tomorrow follows today follows yesterday, neat as you like. Except... what if that's bollocks?

October 04, 2025

I Don't Really Care If Bluesky Dies (As Long As AT Protocol Survives)

There's a thought that's been rattling around my head for a while now, one that feels almost heretical to admit in certain circles: I don't actually care if Bluesky as a company survives. Not really. What I care about – what I'm genuinely invested in – is whether the AT Protocol itself makes it.

October 03, 2025

Why I've Grown to Hate Spotify: A Tale of Ads and Lost Control

There's a particular flavour of frustration that comes from watching something you once enjoyed slowly transform into something you actively resent. For me, that's Spotify. And honestly? It's been building for a while now.

September 30, 2025

Hashtags Walked So Custom Feeds Could Run: Why Discovery on Bluesky Feels Different

I’ve been on Bluesky for a year and a half now, watching the platform evolve from its early invite-only days into something genuinely different from the social media landscape we’ve grown accustomed to. And in that time, I’ve witnessed something I didn’t expect: the slow, quiet death of the hashtag.

September 28, 2025

How Greek and Celtic Myth (and a Kids’ Show) Shaped My Voice

I’m sitting here trying to write this blog post while feeling like I’ve got the worst hangover imaginable, even though I haven’t had a drop of alcohol. Sick as a dog with a cold, energy sapped, nose red, and body aching, I’m still trying to channel coherent thoughts into words. Maybe that slightly foggy, strained state is appropriate; this post traces the threads that have shaped how I see the world, the way I write, and how I feel about difference.

September 27, 2025

A Few Hours of Hyperfocus: My Latest Website Updates

So, what happens when you give a hyperfixating developer a few free hours and a website that’s been nagging at them? You get three significant updates that completely transform the user experience, apparently.

September 26, 2025

How Streaming Tried to Kill Digital Piracy, and Why Piracy Won

I’m 20, which means I grew up watching the entire streaming revolution unfold in real time. I was seven when Netflix launched their UK streaming service in 2012, old enough to remember the "golden age" promise but young enough to watch it crumble before I'd even properly entered adulthood.

September 20, 2025

A Love Letter to Mac: Why I Choose Apple's Ecosystem

I’ll be honest: I didn’t start as a Mac enthusiast. I grew up on Windows, and for years, it did the job. But around Windows 10, something shifted. The system I’d called home for so long began to feel cluttered—bloatware, ads, and an interface that seemed more invested in Microsoft’s agenda than mine.

September 15, 2025

Link Rot and Eight Iterations of ewancroft.uk

I’ve somehow managed to create my own little link rot ecosystem. Eight versions of ewancroft.uk, each leaving a trail of dead URLs like breadcrumbs that have gone stale.

September 14, 2025

A Gentle Look at Lucky Maths: When Good Intentions Meet Web Design Reality

So, one of my maths teachers runs Lucky Maths, and I thought I'd take a gentle poke at how it could be improved. Not in a mean-spirited way – Albert seems like a genuinely good teacher who's doing important work making maths accessible to students who struggle with it. But as someone who's spent entirely too much time thinking about websites and user experience, I couldn't help but notice a few... opportunities.

September 13, 2025

Wolf King vs. Wereworld: My Completely Unqualified Take on Netflix's Adaptation

This is my personal blog, so obviously this is just one person's opinion. Your mileage may vary.

September 11, 2025

Techno-Illiteracy and the Death of Critical Thinking (A Mildly Unhinged Rant)

So I saw this post from Hailey earlier about how "some people will say literally anything on the internet, and other people will believe literally anything on the internet," and honestly? It's given me proper thoughts about the sheer techno-illiteracy I've been witnessing lately.

September 06, 2025

Howling at the Digital Moon: A Theoretical Wolf-Themed Bluesky Client

You know what the AT Protocol ecosystem is missing? More lycanthropic energy.

September 01, 2025

Howling Through Time and Space: Doctor Who’s Post-2005 Lycanthropic Legacy

Since Doctor Who’s triumphant return in 2005, the show has maintained its tradition of weaving lycanthropic themes into the fabric of time and space. From alien werewolves terrorising Victorian Scotland to the recurring motif of the “Bad Wolf,” the series has shown a particular fondness for lupine mythology that goes well beyond your standard monster-of-the-week formula.

August 31, 2025

Rustlings Session 5: Quick Stretches and Type Systems

After a 26-day break from Rustlings (during which I turned 20, launched a conversion tool, bought myself a 2TB Crucial X9 SSD, and am preparing to upgrade my Mac mini M2 to the M4 next week), I decided to stretch my legs with a quick session.

August 30, 2025

Building a WhiteWind to Leaflet Converter Out of Pure Spite

Sometimes the best motivation comes from frustration. And honestly? I was getting frustrated that nobody had built a proper tool to migrate blog content between AT Protocol publishing platforms.

August 28, 2025

Stepping Back: A Temporary Digital Detox

Well, here we are. After an hour and a half walk around town last night—with a friend on Discord, no less, which feels rather ironic given what I'm about to say—I've come to a decision that probably shouldn't surprise anyone who knows me well enough to recognise the patterns.

August 13, 2025

Creating a did:web ATProto Identity: A Proof of Concept

Last week, I found myself going down yet another technical rabbit hole—this time exploring the did:web method for ATProto identities. What started as casual curiosity about decentralised identity standards ended up with me creating @web.ewancroft.uk, a functional proof of concept that demonstrates how web-based DIDs can work within the ATProto ecosystem.

August 10, 2025

Picking Sides in the Protocol Wars

Having spent the better part of two years bouncing between various social protocols, I thought I’d share my thoughts on the big three contenders for the future of social media: AT Protocol, ActivityPub, and Nostr. Spoiler alert: I have opinions, and they’re probably not what the crypto evangelists want to hear.

August 10, 2025

The Inevitable Upgrade: From M2 to M4 Mac Mini

I've been eyeing the M4 Mac mini for a while now, and I think it's finally time to take the plunge. My M2 Mac mini has served me well since I got it—my first proper Mac, actually—but the magpie brain is doing what it does best: spotting something shiny and new and convincing me I absolutely need it.

August 08, 2025

Why I Stick with SvelteKit: A Personal Reflection on My Web Development Stack

I’ve been reflecting lately on why I continue to use SvelteKit with TailwindCSS and TypeScript for my website and templates, particularly when it seems like the entire web development world has moved to React. It’s a question that pops up occasionally—usually when I’m scrolling through job listings or reading yet another “React vs Everything Else” debate—but the answer has become increasingly clear to me.

August 05, 2025

iOS and macOS 26 Public Beta: Why I'm Tempted, and Why I'm Absolutely Not Installing It

Ah yes, it's that time of year again. The WWDC fog has cleared, Apple's chucked the latest public betas out into the wild, and everyone's either rushing to install them or warning you not to touch them unless you're feeling particularly masochistic. iOS 26. macOS 26, aka “Tahoe.” Supposedly smoother, shinier, and smarter than ever. The hype machine's in full swing, and as usual, I'm sat here trying to talk myself both into and out of pressing the damn “Install” button.

August 05, 2025

Rustlings Session 4: Error Handling and Existential Crisis

Well, here we are again. Session 4 of my Rustlings journey, and honestly? What a mess.

August 03, 2025

Rustlings Session 3: When Your Sleep Schedule is More Nocturnal Than Your Code

So, Session 3 is done. Sections 10-12 knocked out in about 45 minutes around 18:00 today. Not terrible, considering I'm running on the sort of energy levels you'd expect from someone who went to sleep at 08:30 and didn't surface until 15:00. Cheers, autism, for making my circadian rhythm decide that lycanthropy is the way forward—even when the moon's only waxing gibbous.

August 02, 2025

Rustlings Session 2: Structs, Enums, and Why I'm an Idiot (Sections 7-9)

Six hours after finishing Session 1, I was back at it with Rustlings. This time tackling sections 7-9: structs, enums, and strings. What should have been a smooth continuation turned into me fighting with basic enum syntax for far longer than any reasonable person should.

August 01, 2025

Rustlings Session 1: First Steps into Rust (Sections 0-6)

Well, I’ve finally done it. Before this, I knew next to nothing about Rust—like, I’d heard the name tossed around and maybe caught a snippet or two, but no real clue what it was about. After months of hearing about Rust from seemingly every corner of the programming world, I decided to dive in properly with Rustlings—the hands-on learning tool that throws you into the deep end with compiler errors and expects you to swim.

August 01, 2025

Why I Have a Website

A friend recently asked me, "Why do you even have a website?"

July 31, 2025

Dynamic OG Images: A Journey Through Development Hell

There's something oddly satisfying about making your website generate its own social media preview images on the fly. What started as a simple desire to have dynamic Open Graph images turned into a proper development ordeal involving fonts that wouldn't load, endpoints that mysteriously worked in dev but not production, and enough mild swearing to power a small village.

July 30, 2025

The Linguistic Archaeology of English: How Latin and Greek Built Our Modern Vocabulary

English, my native language, has always struck me as a bit of a magpie. It's got this uncanny knack for picking up vocabulary from just about every language it brushes up against—a sort of linguistic collector, pocketing curious words like shiny trinkets. Yet, amidst this eclectic jumble, no influences have left quite so deep a mark as Latin and Greek.

July 29, 2025

Introducing Linkat Directory: A 'Link-in-Bio' Frontend

Right, so I've gone and built Linkat Directory, which is essentially a SvelteKit application for curating and displaying Bluesky profiles and their Linkat boards. Not that I needed to do this, mind you—I already have my links displayed perfectly well through Linkat on my website. But here we are anyway.

July 28, 2025

The iMac Server

I've had this iMac (late 2008) sitting on my bedroom floor for about two and a half years now. It's been quite the journey with this machine, and not always a productive one. Looking at it now, gathering dust beside my desk, I can't help but feel a mixture of guilt and possibility whenever I catch sight of its aluminium frame.

July 28, 2025

The Profile Layout Refresh

Right, so I've gone and completely redesigned how my profile component looks. Again. I know, I know—another day, another tweak to the website. But this time it actually makes sense, I promise.

July 27, 2025

A Wii Nostalgia Trip

I will always feel like the Wii was the best Nintendo console, though I'm probably just saying that because it's the one that raised me. It sold 101.63 million units across its lifetime, and I was one of many raised in that era of Nintendo. I was born about a year before the Wii dropped in 2006, and the first video game I ever touched was Mario Kart Wii. The console has always had a soft spot in my heart, particularly with its whole vibe and music—though that might just be the rose-tinted glasses of childhood talking. It felt properly liminal to me, but that could be because I was tiny during its lifetime and everything feels more magical when you're a kid.

July 24, 2025

On Fantasy Names, Therianthropy, and My Slightly Obsessive Brain

I’ve just started reading Curtis Jobling’s Wereworld series, and I’m already having one of those moments where my brain latches onto something completely trivial and won’t let go. Classic me, really.

July 19, 2025

"What Mark will I Leave on Earth?"

I know that question is futile to ask. You can't interrogate death—it's an unobservable social concept—yet it feels right to ask.

July 16, 2025

Building a Moon Phase Bot for Bluesky: Because Every Platform Needs More Werewolf Energy

I've been tinkering around Bluesky for a while now, and one thing kept nagging at me: where are all the moon bots? Twitter had them. Mastodon had them. But Bluesky? Crickets. Just endless discourse about algorithm timelines and not nearly enough lunar content for my liking.

June 17, 2025

The Case for Multiple Methods

As one may know, most Atmosphere accounts use the Public Ledger of Credentials (née Placeholder) Decentralised Identifier (did:plc) method. This is all well and good for basic usage, but the problem here is that you can't change what method your account is tied to. In effect, this means that, if Bluesky goes and dies or "becomes evil," your account is potentially unrecoverable in event of catastrophic failure, such as a PDS dying without any backups.

June 13, 2025

Hosting My Own Minecraft Server: Replacing Aternos with a Mac Mini

After several months of dealing with Aternos with the queues, the sluggishness, the general sense of unreliability, I decided to host my own Minecraft server. I already had an M2 Mac mini being my main computer and a background in breaking things until they work. This seemed like a reasonable use of time.

June 10, 2025

Saying Hello to Mastodon Again

Mastodon is one of those other Twitter/X alternative social media platforms, my beloved Bluesky being amongst them in that case. I've used it before, back when I was still searching for my post-Twitter home. I used it before Bluesky even existed, actually, but it initially felt... pointy? The community had this edge to it that seemed to sharpen exponentially as time went on. There was an underlying tension, a sort of gatekeeping energy that made interactions feel more like navigating a minefield than having casual conversations. So I took flight in the Atmosphere and have thoroughly enjoyed it! That is, however, with small caveats.

June 02, 2025

Testing Leaflet

Well, with WhiteWind seemingly becoming one that software development stagnation has caught onto, I have decided to look elsewhere. Many others think the same way too, so I'm not alone here.

May 23, 2025

Why I Chose My Own Domain: A Personal Reflection

One of the primary reasons I purchased ewancroft.uk as my domain was rather straightforward—I simply couldn't think of any suitable alternatives that weren't tied to an online persona I'd created eight years ago. Sometimes the simplest solutions are the most sensible.

April 26, 2025

My Journey to NixOS: A macOS User's Perspective

I've been contemplating a switch to NixOS for my secondary machine for a few days now. As someone who's dabbled in various Linux distributions since around 2019—Arch, Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Raspbian, and most recently Bazzite—I was intrigued by the promises of NixOS's declarative approach to system configuration.

April 19, 2025

Mental Reset

Of course, this wasn't long in coming.

April 18, 2025

Patterns and My Neurodivergency

Pattern recognition is a normal thing in humans. It's what allowed us as a species to survive and evolve. In the modern day, it can be quite interesting.

April 07, 2025

My Reflection on (nearly) a year on Bluesky (and the ATmosphere at large)

Wow. Has it really been that long?

April 05, 2025

Reverse Engineering an Apple Shortcut and Making It Mine

Bluesky has opened up some fascinating possibilities in the realm of automation. A while back, I was inspired by a brilliant blog post by dame.is about creating a dynamic avatar using an Apple Shortcut. I thought, “Why not make it mine?” So, I rolled up my sleeves, hyperfocused, and dived into Python, and now I have two projects that work in tandem (or independently) to keep my profile fresh every hour.

February 23, 2025

Struggles Adapting to the AT Protocol

This new protocol is neat but... I find it difficult.

January 31, 2025

5 Years and 153 Poems

This is something insane for me to admit, but it has been five years since I started my anthology. It currently stands at 153 poems, and has more or less documented my growth as a person. I was 14 when I started writing poetry on the 9th of February 2020, and as you know, there has been a lot of stuff happening in the meantime.

January 12, 2025