What's been going on
April was a month of two halves. The first chunk was anchored around Rob Paton's wedding, I was best man, gave a speech, lived to tell the tale. The middle was a stretch of campaign work, AI tinkering and a brutal flu that knocked me out for the better part of a week. Ended the month on the forum stage talking about Wrapped, which was a nice full-circle moment.
Work & Industry
- Vibe coding internal tools, Spent a chunk of the month using Claude to scaffold a forecasting tool. The pace at which you can stand up a working internal tool now is genuinely different to even six months ago, the bottleneck is no longer the code, it's knowing what's worth building.
- Wrapped recap on the agency forum, Stood up to talk about last year's Wrapped campaign. Headline themes: more digital spend, centralised strategy and activation, and a real push on creative firsts, branded buzz, "Nolike" animations, branded search takeovers, and Netflix pause ads as a new format.
- Snapchat in 2026, A platform session in mid-April. Their pitch this year felt sharper than it has in a while, particularly around younger audiences. Worth a fresh look if you've written them off.
- AI workstreams maturing, Several sessions on AI-led automation in agency workflows. The interesting shift is moving from "can we use AI here?" to "what do we stop doing once AI does it?"
Tech & Gadgets
- Obsidian skills, Kept building out custom skills in my vault, automated inbox cleanup, daily task roll-ups, newsletter drafting (yes, this one). Once you start, it's hard to stop.
- Granola, Still my default meeting note tool. The "just keeps recording in the background" model is finally what I always wanted from a notes app.
What I've been into
Watching: Project Hail Mary (2026) with Chris Cox and Sabina Barbu, Knowing (2009), The Apprentice UK (2005–), 8MM (1999), One Life (2023), Last Breath (2025), and started Beef (2023–) (an A24 Production).
Playing: Dune Awakening (2025) basically all month. Also dipped into Crimson Desert (2026), Star Citizen (with the new Hull B - Ship), and started co-op sessions of Windrose with Alex and Michael Hewlett.
Listening to: A lot of Spotify Wrapped-adjacent UK artist playlists, comes with the territory.
Places & Things
- GAIL's Bakery, Sunday coffee and pastry with Sabi. Reliable.
- Tooting Common → Balham walk, Decent Sunday loop when the weather plays ball.
- Rob Paton's wedding, The standout day of the month. Speech delivered, dance floor used, all friends accounted for.
Link of the month
Project Hail Mary (IMDB), Go in knowing as little as possible. Worth the ride.