Bill Thompson

@billt.bsky.social

10771 Followers 1130 Following

Hack and pundit. BBC Research & Development. Formerly Digital Planet.

The departure board at Cambridge
The cover of the book Weimar: Life on the edge of catastrophe by Katja Hoyer
Cambridgeshire Mobile Library on Jesus Green for Pride
a grey plastic rectangle encloses an eink screen showing the first poem on Bill's Poem/1 - "in cosmic halls time flies free / it's now two twenty-three" Bill is very happy behind the camera, and full of admiration for the device's creator Matt
Two cats on a cushion by a window
Cambridge station, viewed from Platform 7
Reflected sunlight in the piazza as we loon over to Dock House
Moon rising behind clouds over a darkened ridge. A tractor and hay bales in the foreground.
A traditional pub. A wooden table. A full Pint of Ghost Ship (empty by now) and a laptop whose screen shows a photo of a table in Les Deux Magots from 2008 with coffee, Brie baguette and a Patti Smith photo. Layers upon layers of
A night sky two over a silhouetted barn and road. Two bright dots. One is the ISS, drifting right to left. Bill’s cloudy breath cannot be seen.
A terraced street with light snow. Three covered cars and tire tracks. It is nearing dawn.
A close up of the face of a male Bengal cat, with distorted perspective to make you smile.
A table with an espresso, a lemon cake, a laptop and a phone in a Teams call
A fire door
Coffee in an orange le creuset espresso cup
image is taken from the saloon bar side of The Geldart pub in Cambridge and shows the bottles and optics, and the corridor through to the other bar. Above is a prominent sign saying "Whiskey Bar". Bill's pint not visible.
Wittgenstein
An English valley, with a tractor and bales of hay.
A white espresso cup sits on a wooden table next to an open notebook with a pen on a blank page. Beyond are a counter with cakes, and a serious coffee machine. Behind is a caffeinated Bill wondering if anything will be worth writing ever again.
Bill is being followed on Bluesky by Tanzpunk the Heretic
Bill’s phone
Bill’s phone Home Screen.
A parody of the Nobel prize announcement repeating the text of the post, with a generated image of a humanoid LLM
A curious ferret stands on a MacBook keyboard.
A sleepy ferret looks suspiciously at Bill who has turned up too early
An excessive number of phones kindles etc are charging via a collection of cables on an airport coffee shop counter.
Tim Berners Lee and Vint Cerf standing in front of a portrait, at the Royal Society in London event to celebrate 50 years since the publication of the TCP/IP standard. A large square sponge cake is in front of them, with some slices missing. It has a decal for '50 years of the internet' Vint holds a knife, Tim has a plate of cake and a smile as if he has already eaten some. There will be a packet error.
Image shows an egg in an eggcup, top cut off, chilli on top with an almost empty jar Laoganma Crispy Chilli in Oil behind it. And a coffee cup. Bill anticipates culinary joy.
a small green le creuset espresso cup sits on a leaf-patterned tablecloth in front of a retro-styled DAB radio tuned in anticipation to Radio 3. An analogue alarm clock shows 0630. A moment of tranquility as Kashperova plays.
An orange Le Creuset cup, with some espresso remaining, sits on a coaster on a desk. The coaster says 'The Pink Palace'. Next to it are two SelfCare Backpack cards: 'It's okay to take time' and 'Find joy where you can'. A brown notebook with a pencil on top sits to the right, on top of a copy of Siddhartha. It is Christmas morning. More coffee is sought.
Our tree, made of driftwood from Folkestone beach arranged to conjure the dream of a tree,using a bent coat hanger, around 20cm high, with small baubles, a string of white LEDs, an embroidered stocking with a K, topped with a yellow felt angel (if you don’t look too carefully . Lego Bunsen and Beaker at the base, controlling the lights. It stands on a raffia mat on a wooden table.
A gnarled tree on a slope in West Stonesdale, with three Swaledale sheep standing behind a post and wire fence looking sceptically at the camera, probably because no food is on offer. Behind, East Stonesdale is cut by a dry stone wall, under a grey sky
Blue sky framed by scaffolding of Amsterdam Centraal station
A quiet canal side street in Utrecht
A white espresso coffee cup with red Caffé del Doge logo sits, full, on a glass desk. A mac and a windows PC, out of focus, and a larger external monitor, can be partially seen.
Bill looks askance at the camera, hair tousled. Behind him the window of a fine book-filled cafe. Steep Street is written on the window. Coffee off camera.
A screenshot of an email message promoting an article ‘how I eliminated procrastination from my life’
Tweet from Wm Gibson, photo of NY skyline, a riff about nano-assemblers building the towers in real time