Robuta

Every 18 months or so I find myself feeling that my personal information workflow is working against me. Sometimes I end up diving into an inevitably fruitless...

Nov 18, 2025 - Eibhlín Doran, a creative director working with Givenchy, Hermès and Saint Laurent, on the Irish design scene and Irish Design Week

Nov 25, 2025 - Enniscorthy Credit Union has paid tribute to one of its longest-serving employees as Madeleine Doran retires after an exceptional 47-year career with the

The first week of work for 2025 was a strange one. In many ways I hit the ground running, getting on with some important items that I need to complete early on...

I finally got around to reading the Stephen Wolfram essay on What Is ChatGPT Doing … and Why Does It Work? Despite being written in relatively simple terms,...

I love it when a book makes me think about something in a new way. I love it even more when it challenges something so fundamental that I didn’t realise...

Mariah Doran has been with Florentine Films since 2011 and is currently part of the team producing a six-part series on the American Revolution. She was a...

Sep 29, 2025 - Inspired by a trip to the National Gallery of Art this weekend, I made this Stag Beetle diorama.

Nov 20, 2025 - Jim Doran is an artist, diorama maker, animator and musician living in Baltimore, MD.

It took some weeks for me to finish this very large book. I was given this as a very thoughtful Christmas gift, but ended up buying and reading an ebook...

Oct 5, 2025 - We went to DC to the National Museum of Art, the National Portrait Gallery, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. I wanted to see...

I’ve finished reading More than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech by Meredith Broussard. The book is a polemic that explores...

Also no deep-sea diving allowed. After our family dinner last Saturday night, my wife said that she thought she had something in her eye that she couldn’t...

There was something about Monday. You could just feel it. I got to the office, checked my diary, and for the first time in months I saw a meeting-free...

Finished reading How Civil Wars Start by Barbara F. Walter. I picked this up from Heather Burns’ 2023 ‘get ready for the coming US election’ reading...

Recently I wrote up my thoughts on returning to the office. Underpinning this was an assumption, which seems to be widely shared, of the need to get people...

Sunrise over the Mediterranean as seen on my morning run. Most of this week was spent in Barcelona at the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo. It’s the third time...

A pretty regular week, with another couple of days in the office. On Wednesday I had another reminder of the ‘before times’ when the train turned up at the...

I spent this week in France, the first half in Bordeaux followed by a couple of days in Paris. Every year, the division of the company that I work for gives a...

Jun 5, 2025 - The blog section of this website documents art making going back to 2007. I’ve made hundreds of dioramas, and there are thousands of photos on this site....

Imagine opening a new office in New York City A double-helping of weeknotes. I spent the last two weeks in New York City, working with our team to open our new...

Jim Doran is an artist, diorama maker, animator and musician living in Baltimore, Maryland.

On Friday we headed town to Bournemouth to say goodbye to my nan. It was a beautiful and moving service, reminding us of what a lovely woman she was. My uncle...

My life is filled with so much music at the moment. In some ways it’s like being a teenager again. I seem to spend most of my spare cash on vinyl, CDs,...

Nov 8, 2025 - Terms of Service is screening. Come see it with friends!

Strava seem to have removed their activity map styles of ‘Black Lives Matter’, ‘Pride’ and ‘Support Ukraine’. Presumably this is part of getting...

A week of two halves, or more accurately one fifth and four-fifths. Monday was Human Rights Day in South Africa (reflecting the date of the Sharpeville...

📚 Finished reading Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. A friend suggested I pick this up; I’m glad I did, as it contains snippets of wisdom that I...

Muslim couple ki free xxx HD video enjoy kare. Arab couple shower le raha he. Shower ke doran dono ek dosre ke sath maza karne lage. Aur baat chudai tak chali...

After starving myself for over twenty-four hours last week ahead of a colonoscopy, this week I once again found myself going without food for a whole day....

May 5, 2025 - I began making dioramas in 2010. I love cutting paper, shadow boxes, and exploring depth of field in image making. My dioramas are little theatrical scenes....

A regular week, back in the office after last week’s trip to Barcelona. Things have suddenly turned very cold here in the UK. It’s feeling dark and wintry....

Javelina Stadium at Texas A&M University–Kingsville. Photo: Katie Doran The family emotional rollercoaster continued through this week. Everything seemed...

The busiest, most stressful week I’ve had in a long time. On Sunday evening I flew to Barcelona to attend the annual Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo. I’d booked...

📚 Finished reading The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Resistance Shaped Popular Culture (1955–1979). An epic book in five parts, covering the mid-1950s, the...

Oct 7, 2025 - I think it was around 2017 or so when I discovered the Pedals and Effects YouTube channel, where Juan Alderete and Nick Reinhart discuss (mostly) guitar...

On Tuesday my company had a party to celebrate both our 10th anniversary and the upcoming retirement of our CEO. Drinks and canapés were followed by a formal...

On my first day of trying to use Lime e-bikes, I bagged two that didn’t have a crank and pedal on one side. It was a comedy moment after I unlocked the first...

Aug 13, 2024 - I’m trying out some new scan/filament combinations for some puppets.

A view of Canary Wharf, over the river from Greenwich, on a cold Tuesday morning in March Four days in London followed by Friday at home. The main event of the...

This is a wonderful companion to the East of Eden novel. I am so glad I read it straight after, as I could still recall exactly the chapters and characters...

I recently finished reading Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment by Mary Anne Franks. There’s a lot in this book. The central thesis is...

LeanKit is my favourite productivity tool. Our team has been using it for the past couple years to manage our work across a series of Kanban boards. It is...

A pensioner brother and sister in Co Derry, whose four dogs barked 4,416 times over an eight-day period, have been fined in court.

Anne Doran has written for publications including Artforum, Art in America, ARTnews, Mousse, Collector Daily, and Time Out New York. The Dream Colony: A Life...

Nov 5, 2025 - Sweaty Eyeballs Animation Festival Group Show, Performance & Animation Festival Baltimore, MD September/October 2024 As part of the 2024 Sweaty Eyeballs...

To me there is something beautiful about a brotherhood of big, tough men who only pretend to hurt one another for a living instead of actually doing it. I came...

A productive, balanced and enjoyable week. This was a week in which I: Spent time reading through our business strategy documentation and trying to learn about...

Looks like we picked the wrong week to fly to a popper-fuelled party at Everest Base Camp. Two and a half years after it happened the first time, my wife...

I’ve finished reading Mapping The Roads: Building modern Britain by Mike Parker. A beautiful little book that had been on my shelf for years. It’s filled...

Jan 18, 2021

For some reason my rate of reading has been very slow this year. This may explain the feeling I had when I finished New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the...

“Ah, music. A magic beyond all we do here!” ~ Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore

About a year ago, I asked ChatGPT “Based on what you know about me, draw a picture what my current life is.” It came up with this: Aside from the fact that...

Ever since I bought a bike back in 2013, I’ve been fascinated by long rides. It didn’t take long before I was venturing further than I could cope with. I...

641 Posts, 368 Following, 86 Followers · He/him. Husband, dad of two teenage boys, Technology person working in Financial Services, over-enthusiastic, geek....

Jan 26, 2024 - Jim Doran is an artist, diorama maker, animator and musician living in Baltimore, Maryland.

🎶 It’s Album Club #176.

I picked up Mark Schwartz’s A Seat at the Table as I have recently been thinking about how we can move away from the perception of our IT team as the people...

Without beating around the bush, the major event of this week was a colonoscopy. This year I decided to follow up with a couple of minor medical issues that...

Stepmother ko back pain issue he. Stepson ko oil se massage ka bola he. Lekin wo pura mother chod nikla he. Pahle backbone par oil se massage start kiya. Phir...

I recently finished reading Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer, a wonderful exploration of the question of ‘what do we do with great art by bad...

Early on Sunday morning we had an incredible thunderstorm, with a lightning strike that fried the routers for a swathe of people in our street. It also killed...

Sep 16, 2024 - Jim Doran's online shop for art and music. Commissions welcome.

I’ve been tracking my reading since 2010 or so, occasionally jotting a few notes down in a blog post, on Readmill when it was alive, or on Goodreads....

Most of my week was spent at the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo in Barcelona. This is a gigantic gathering of 6,500 Chief Information Officers and other IT...

A small software change that delights: holding down a key on my iPad keyboard now brings up a menu of accented variations of that letter. This is a massive...

Sep 22, 2025 - I’ve worked up a prototype, using some 3D prints I made last year. It’s just a sketch, really. But I like him.

My diary was back-to-back this week, with very little discretionary time to get anything done. I’m going to have to do something about it to stop it from...

I’m a big believer in the philosophy of ‘Post (on) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere’, or POSSE, as it has come to be known. My website is the canonical...

A friend of mine recently handed me a hard copy of this free book from Leesman, the workplace consultancy firm. The writing is very considered and insightful,...

Jim Doran. Baltimore, Maryland.