Last September I purchased a Macbook Air M3, to replace my incredibly old 2013 Intel i5 MacBook Pro. It had been a trusted companion, but it was time to put it out to pasture. On top of that, I’d started to feel the desire to code and make fun silly projects (ED. which eventually lead to building thoughtstream.me & geo.harrywinser.com ). So, after some prompting from my partner, I decided to pull the lever and buy a second hand one.

I should also disclose that I work on a MacBook Pro 2019 (it sucks), and have worked with MacOS for years. MacOS is something I’ve very familiar with. If you’re looking for “Should i jump from Windows”, you won’t get that opinion in this piece.

What did i buy?

So, I bought my laptop from CEX (which is a second hand online platform here in the UK). It’s the 2024 M3 Air, with 16GB of RAM and 500Gb disk. All of this is a big step up from my old i3 Macbook which had 8GB, i3, and 120Gb disk.

What I like

Lets dive into what I liked; the hardware. Pretty well known with Apple; they make good stuff. This is no exception. The keyboard is lovely with the right amount of travel. The form factor and weight is just prefect; feels sturdy without feeling heavy. If i could design the perfect form factor for a laptop, I think this would be it (or damn well close enough to).

It’s more squared design compared to the old wedge shape of old, which does make it feel bigger. It’s probably closer to the MacBook Pro 2019 in size. But it’s much lighter, and I’ve carried it around all day in a bag on my shoulder without noticing.

This new Air doesn’t have any fans. This sounds like a cool brag, but I have my worries. I made my purchase in September, which traditionally isn’t the hottest month, so I’ve yet to test how well the lack of fans will pan out. I can say however that my work provided 2019 MacBook Pro does become horridly hot during the summer (or a warm office), and the keyboard becomes near unusable. I previously had no knowledge of “sweaty wrists”, of which I’m now very familiar. So until I’ve used the Air during the heat of summer, I can’t give the fanless aspect a free pass. Nor do I know how it’ll hold up in 3 years time when standard software is more demanding.

One final item; they’ve gotten rid of the touch bar. What a piece of junk that was, and I’m glad it’s gone.

There’s nothing like a good blaster esc key by your side.

What I don’t like

From a hardware perspective, the black feet that sit on the underside just look a bit naff. They’re sturdy, and I don’t expect them to fall off anytime soon. But compared to how pretty everything else is, they don’t really fit in.

As for the notch at the top of the screen; eh. I would prefer it without, but i does “disappear” from your sight pretty soon.

MacOS

MacOS, sits within the “Don’t Like” category. I’ve used MacOS for years. In fact, it supplanted Windows for me in around 2018. However, it’s got some weird design decisions. Here’s a short list of what I dislike:

• Window management is confusing and broken - it still doesn’t really work
• The “Settings” are a confusing mess. For example:
  • Setting your account image, needing to both set your local and iCloud account separately
  • There’s now a long bar of options down the side, that is far too overwhelming. Why is Desktop separate from Wallpaper?
• Some UI/UX aspects feel around 15 years old
  • looking at the info for a file looks archaic These are just a few gripes I have, and it forever fustrates me as to how little they add to MacOS, and instead just add random junk.

Round up

Lets get to the point; if you’re on the fence - it’s a hard yes from me. This is an excellent machine, and one I’ve gotten constant joy out of from the last few months.

As for if you should get the 13’ or the 15’ - that I can’t answer. I can say that the 13’ to me is the right form factor to power ratio that just works for me. I can huck it into a bag, and know that I’ve got all the processing power, screen space, and battery I need.

To sum up; I’m incredibly glad of my purchase so far. I’ll probably write another post in a few years outline how well it’s aged, but I’m hoping it’ll be good.

I currently own and ride a Moto Guzzi V7 Stone - the 2021 model in burnt orange. And it brings me so much joy. I love the way it looks, feels, and corners. It’s a great all round bike; solid for highways, sneaking through traffic, carving switch backs, and having a burst of power on tap. It’s a fantastic first Big Bike, and one I plan to keep for a very long time.

A bit about my history as a rider; I got into motorcycling towards the end of the first UK lockdown - so late 2020. I took my CBT*, and got myself a Lexmoto Tempest GT which looked and sounded the part but was utterly terrible. Honestly I’m surprised I didn’t hurt myself on that; the tires alone were essentially slick and useless in the rain.

It was around this time I saw that Moto Guzzi were releasing their next iteration of the v7 Stone, with a 850cc engine (they call it a V7 for historical reasons), and came in burnt orange. Instantly, I knew it was the one. It was like that scene from Waynes World - “Oh yes, it will be mine”..

So, I started saving and I learning.

Late 2021, I put my money down. I hadn’t passed my test yet, but I knew I didn’t want to wait. I booked my test, in the blind hope I’d pass first time. As fate would have it, I did. And within a few days I was riding the V7.

And I’ve not looked back. I’ve traveled to London a few times, around Devon and Cornwall, as well as to France. This year (2025), I plan to ride to Lake Como, to where it was originally built (more on this in a future post I reckon).

Thanks for indulging me in this little post about my V7. It brings me much joy, and I look forward to the many adventures to be had with it over the coming years.

*for those unfamiliar it’s a days riding course which allows you to ride up to 125cc, roughly 10HP

I love programming.

I still do, 10 years in.

Those who follow me on Mastodon know I love to complain about code and tech, but they should also know that I only complain because of my love for it.

I love throwing myself at a problem over and over. I love the feel of typing on a keyboard. I love finding the random post on StackOverflow that is the exact issue I have, and discovering I’m not alone. I love attending meet-ups and finding so many people as passionate as I am.

There are so many aspects to love about programming.

With that in mind, this post as a sort of love letter to Java. Java was and still is the language I’ve made a career out of. Java has enabled me to travel, talk at conferences and meetups, rent flats, eat out, buy gifts, buy a house, and generally enjoy living.

This blog is also for those who wonder why people still love Java in 2025. Why it’s still one of the most used languages, and why it’s probably not going to go anywhere for a fair while.

1. Consistency & Stability

Java is a stunningly consistent language and ecosystem. The developers of it care deeply about not making breaking changes, and ensuring that folks can easily upgrade between versions. It’s “slow” to make big changes.

Let look at the build systems, which have been around for a long while now. The two main build systems are old. Maven is almost 21 years old and Gradle is 16 years old. With age comes consistency and stability. Oh and libraries are pretty most always hosted on Maven Central, and have been for years.

With this level of stability and consistency tutorials can remain relevant for years. You can read a tutorial from 2015, and it’ll probably still work today.

Libraries and Frameworks have also been around for a while too, which means there are loads of documentation. And because they’ve all been widely used, it’s likely others will have run into issues before you get to them and will have been fixed.

That’s not to say Java doesn’t change. A lesser known fact is that a new version of Java is released every six months. Every March and September. Any feature that’s ready to be shipped gets shipped. Gone are the days of massive releases like Java 8, which added a load of very useful stuff but a fair bit of stress when updating from Java 7.

When writing a complex system that needs to be maintained for years to come, you can’t go wrong with Java. Stability and consistency matter, and shouldn’t be overlooked because of a “new hotness”.

2. Speed & Compatibility

Java got a lot of flack in the late 90’s and 00’s for being slow. And it certainly deserved it. But since then, it has done a lot to be fast.

Like, really fast.

The JVM, which it runs on (as do other languages), powers a fair number of search engines. Elasticsearch is written in Java. So is Hadoop, which can deal with petabytes worth of data. Then there’s also the companies like Uber, Netflix, and Amazon, that run Java for their major systems. Amazon even releases their own JDK, which it tweaks for internal use.

Java can also be customised for its environment, specifying how much memory it uses and CPU. Standard stuff, but you can decide on what sort of Garbage Collection you’d like to use, as well as how the memory is partitioned between different heaps. This means you can tailor (or really screw up) how it runs depending on your needs.

It also runs everywhere. Set top boxes, personal computers, phones, serverless, Raspberry PI’s, ARM computers. Wherever it’s needed, Java is there. So many JVM and Java ports exist, it’s awesome. Do all of these work well? No. But if you want to run Java, you pretty much can.

Quick side note; you totally can run AWS Java Lambdas. But should you? That’s up to you, as it is slower to boot, and it is a more verbose language to write very small functions. That’ll be down to your needs and is out of scope of this post.

3. Libraires & Specifications

I know I’ve touched on Libraries in point 1. however I feel it’s worth it’s own section. There are a tonne of libraries for Java, and a lot of them battle tested.

Spring & Spring Boot deserve a mention, for powering a lot of web servers the world over. And these are free! And because they’re so widely used, there are lots of people improving them, teaching them, and writing about them. There are also loads of libraries built on top of these frameworks, enabling access to AWS services or introducing new paradigms like async/await (Reactive Programming).

Java also comes with a load of specifications, which library builders can use to interface with other tech. Accessing databases for example is specified via the JDBC API. Meanwhile, working with web applications can be done via the Serverlet specification. Just for clarity, I don’t recommend working directly with either of these specifications. They’re for low level interactions, and instead I recommend using libraries built on top, like Tomcat. Which loops back to an earlier point - tried and true libraries exist for the all the standard stuff, enabling you to build.

With Java, these specifications enable libraries to talk to each other, and build on each other. A shared understanding of whats available. This is awesome, in a world where a lot of folks don’t like talking or working together. Though it’s not always perfect (I’ve spent a fair few hours debugging when they don’t line up), it’s great when it does work and means you can focus on your Job instead of writing code to access a database (unless that is your job).

In summary, I love Java. It’s gotten me through some difficult problems, and has been a stalwart companion. I do think Kotlin is a solid alternative if you want something a little less verbose and is null safe. When picking Java for a new project you can rest easy knowing that the community is strong, the libraries are numerous and well cared for, and it’ll still be there for you tomorrow.

Lets talk about 2025, seeing as it’s the 1st January!

Below you’ll find an outline of what I hope to achieve next year and also my top three technical and political predictions. Hopefully we’ll all still be here next year to find out just how wrong I was!

Personal

From a personal stand point, 2024 has been about solidifying what I have. I’ve climbed further out of the “burn out” hole, my little house feels lived in and cosy, and I even got back into writing little side projects like thoughtstream.me (plug plug nudge nudge go check it out!). I even attended a meet up for the first time in roughly 5 years.

So I’d like 2025 to be about moving forward. Using the amazing foundation I have with my partner, my home, and my friends, I want 2025 to be about taking “The next step”.

Goals and resolutions

Yes yes I know folks don’t tend to keep resolutions, but I always set them every year. Some stick, some fall by the wayside very quickly. These two I feel are pretty achievable:

1. Write a blog post once a week
2. Learn one new song on guitar a month

I’ve really enjoyed bringing harrywinser.com back to life, and would love to flesh it out with more technical musings, silly little project ideas, and maybe sharing my photography and music. Hugo is an excellent static site generator, and I look forward to exploring more about it as I post.

As for learning more music; in 2023 I got very into playing in local bars in and around Plymouth. However 2024 has been a bit of a hiatus for me and I’d love to get back into it. So I want to use this as a way to push myself into practising and getting back out there to perform. The itch is certainly there and I know my mental health will appreciate getting back into music.

2025 predictions

Lets break this down into two; technical and political.

Technical

2024 was a bit of a weird year. A.I. became all the rage, crypto might be leaving it’s “winter”, Google might have to sell Chrome, a toaster is probably now an Xbox, and the Games Industry layoffs seem to be continuing.

With that in mind, here are my three tech predictions:

1. A.I. will fizzle out - A.I is everywhere, but it’s not proven actually useful. They lie hallucinate making trust a real issue. The text prediction/writing is proving useful, but I think we’re in for a major rebalancing of expectations this year as to what users expected, and what A.I can actually do.
2. There will be a Trump crypto bounce - pretty obvious one, and I’m not the only one making this prediction, but I expect to see an all time high for Bitcoin by the end of January, as Trump is sworn in. Post that, I think it’ll be rocky, depending on what Trump actually does. (Please do not mistake this prediction as an endorsement of Crypto).
3. Apple won’t release anything exciting - 2024 had the Apple Vision Pro, Mac Mini, and a bunch of other releases. I don’t think we’ll be seeing anything like a foldable. I reckon incremental upgrades, and potentially Apple Intelligence will be downplayed (as per prediction 1.)

Political

2024 was a big year for politics watchers. Obviously Trump being elected was a biggie, but closer to home here in the U.K. we finally threw off the 14 years of bad Tory management. And replaced it with, arguably, Tory Light ™️ (there’s certainly more to say on this topic, so look for a blog post on this soon).

With those in mind, lets do my three political predictions:

1. Starmer will still be in number 10 - the UK has had a lot of Prime Minsters in the last 14 years. Bar any major disaster, I think Starmer will still be in charge by 2026.
2. Reform will consume the Conservatives (whatever that means) - when Kemi Badenoch became the head of the Conservative party, there was a sense of “Oh no, what have they done?” and since then, she’s done nothing to dissuade those feelings. Reform has moved the Right much more Right, while Labour has pulled the Left to the Centre. This leaves the Conservatives as not being Right leaning enough for the fanatics, and not Centre enough for those looking for traditional conservative values. The question being; what do they bring to the table?
3. Trump and Musk will fall out - we can already see this happening. But two people with massive egos don’t work well together. It’ll be interesting (in a painful way) to see what will win out. Infinite wealth, or the most powerful seat. Either way, I don’t think they’ll be best friends by the start of 2026.

I wish you luck and fair weather for 2025

And with that I shall leave you to ponder what 2025 might bring your way. Whatever it does bring, I wish you health, wealth, and happiness.

Here are the questions and answers to the Quiz of the Year 2024

News from 2024

1. In January, what scandal caught the publics attention after an ITV drama?
   1. Post office Scandal
2. In February, a Willy Wonka experience opened in Glasgow. It was a disaster but has since been recreated in LA, as well as spawning a musical. How much was a ticket? (£35)
   1. £35
3. In March this year, which country became the first to make Abortion a Constitutional right?
   1. France
4. In April, what birthday did BBC 2 celebrate?
   1. 60th
5. On 22nd of May, Rishi Sunak announced that a general election will be held. What was happening, as he stood outside of number 10?
   1. Raining, music playing - I’d accept a few answers here
6. On the 4th of June, a woman was arrested for throwing what at Nigel Farage?
   1. A Milk Shake
7. Who became British Prime Minister ?
   1. Sir Kier Starmer
8. The Olympics were held in Paris, France. How many Medals did Britain get?
   1. I’d accept +-10 for this answer, which was 65
9. In September what well known restaurant chain, which mostly concerned itself with Fridays and religion, went into administration?
   1. TGI Fridays
10. Name the two super hero movies released in October; both were sequels, and one was from DC and the other from Sony/Marvel.
    1. Joker: Folie à Deux, Venom: The Last Dance
11. In November who became the leader of the Conservative Party?
    1. Kemi Badenoch
12. In December, what time of day does this person (from the previous answer) think sandwiches should be eaten?
    1. Breakfast

Nerd + Tech round

1. Name at least one of the top selling games in the UK this year
   1. 1.EA Sports FC 25 2.Hogwarts Legacy 3.Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 4.EA Sports FC 24 5.Mario Kart 8 Deluxe 6.Super Mario Bros. Wonder 7.Minecraft 8.Nintendo Switch Sports 9.The Legend Of Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom 10.Super Mario Party Jamboree. Allow for some rough guesses / answers. For example, just Zelda would do.
2. What numerical version of the iPhone was released this year?
   1. 16
3. Please write down what’s wrong with this statement: According to the rules of Quidditch, throwing the Quaffle though an opponent’s hoop earns 10 points, hitting an opponent with a bludger earns 0 points, and catching the golden snitch earns 50 points and ends the game.
   1. It’s actually 150
4. How Many sides does a d20 have?
   1. 20
5. Fireball can be cast using what minimum level spell slot?
   1. 3rd level
6. What is the full name of the Grifindor ghost?
   1. Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington.
7. Please write down what’s wrong with this statement: In Star Wars, in order to free young Anakin Skywalker from slavery, Qui-Gon Jinn first uses a Jedi Mind Trick to convince his master Watto, a Toydarian junk merchant, to allow him to pod race.
   1. Mind tricks don’t work on Toydarians
8. What year was Windows 11 released?
9. 2021
10. Dumbledore has a scar above his left knee. What does it resemble?
    1. A map of the London Underground.
11. Who invented the World Wide Web?
    1. Tim Berners-Lee

Chaos round

1. Spell “Ore” - in a sentence: “you could use an oar or a shovel, to get at that ore”
2. Spell “There” - in a sentence: “Their yours, and they’re all the way over there”
3. How tall does insert friend here think the Eiffel tower is in meters?
   1. Actual answer is 330 m, but whatever they wrote is the answer
4. What does A.B.C stand for? (A.B.C was shown on A.B.C and on A.B.C) - Airway Breathing Circulation, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, American Broadcasting Company.
   1. I’d accept Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but most inventive answer wins.
5. What well known song has the chord progression C, G, A minor, F (Loads use this progression, and so pick your favourite - for example, “Let It Be” by The Beatles. You might also decide that the most interesting song wins).