That Was The Week That Was — 1st March 2026

"What is the elementary particle of sudden understanding? It is the clariton. Any scientist will recognise the “Aha!” moment when this particle is created. But there are snags: all too frequently, today’s clariton is annihilated by tomorrow’s anticlariton. So many of our scribblings disappear beneath a rubble of anticlaritons. It is not always easy to detect my particle: the observation might at best be a quasiclariton. And how sad that a clariton is sometimes less than astonishing – well known to those who know well, a mere claritino."
— Sir Michael Berry

I loved this idea of a particle for that Eureka moment from theoretical physicist Sir Michael Berry as I listened to this interview from 2023 BBC Radio 4. He also talked about how we likes to work in what he calls the borderlands – that space were classical physics and Quantum mechanics meet. I myself like to talk about the event horizon situated between the things I know and the things I don't know — which is a large, ever increasing area. I've always felt that's the best place to put yourself, on the borderlands between these two domains.

Over the last few years I've never had any kind of analytics on this site. I originally had Google Analytics but had privacy concerns, so I simply removed it and never replaced it. That meant I had no idea if anyone was coming to my site, what they were looking at — if anything. That all changed this week when I put in place Fathom analytics, a privacy first system that just uses one line of code. It turns out people do actually visit this site — from my projects to pages of my blog, with often very geeky, niche posts seemingly popular. So if you're reading this, thank you!