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Week 05, 2026

The highlight of the week was seeing The Necks play at the Recital Centre. It amazes me to see so many hundreds of people there and so eager to see something so avant-garde - but I love it. As per usual, they played two one hour long sets, all completely improvised. It was mesmerising and transportive.

I presented at a Low Code/ No Code SIG (Special Interest Group) for one of my clients on Clawdbot Moltbot OpenClaw. It was a nice chance to collect some thoughts and to put forward what were the five big insights of the moment for me:

  1. This is Open Source Software - A solo developer in Austria vibe-coded this thing; it went from nothing in November to 79,000 GitHub stars in weeks.

  2. We are beholden to the AI giants for access - The “Claudited” phenomenon showed accounts shut down with no recourse; verification issues can lock you out of tools you rely on for work.

  3. A taste of the real cost of frontier models - Through subscriptions we get subsidised access, but using API keys directly reveals the true cost (~$16 USD for 10-20 exchanges).

  4. Self-healing systems are here - as an example - n8n hooked up to Claude Code: when n8n errors, it sends the error to Claude Code, which resolves it and pushes the fix without human involvement.

  5. A long imagined future is almost here - Apple’s Knowledge Navigator video from the 80s imagined exactly this: a personal assistant that can make calls, do research, and take action. It’s finally happening.

After wrestling with the decision for at least six months, I finally purchased and took delivery of a very serious ramp. When we renovated the house, we ended up with stairs coming down from the deck whereas previously the path sloped down from the back of the house. I’m not as young as I used to be, and lugging a 40kg double bass case up and down stairs at 1am is becoming a bit of a struggle. I hope to be doing more live performance, and more interesting stuff with my PA, so hopefully this investment pays off, and saves my back. The ramp is Australian made and very nicely done.

I was in Ballarat on the weekend and dropped off a couple of records to Kank Wolverang Records. One of the owners is Hap from a band called Dead Salesmen who were part of the Fitzroy scene at the same time as us back in the 1990s. It is such a great store, with a really good vibe and an art gallery out the back. Such a necessary antidote to all of the superficial shops and stuff that is increasingly in our face every day.