This is an earlier version of my Now page. Read on if you want to see what I was up to on Friday, 9 May 2025. If you want to see what I’m up to now, check out the current version.

The Now Page was invented by Derek Sivers in 2021. It’s a page on your website that tells people what you’re doing right now — what you’re working on, what you’re working towards, what you’re looking forward to, and what you’re enjoying.

If you want to know more about who I am and what I do generally, take a look at my About page.

Now

Last updated on Friday, 9 May 2025.

I turned fifty-six a couple of weeks ago, and at some point in the distantly visible future, I’ll be retiring from work. Between now and then, though, there’s a few things I need to do.

Life

I’m on long service leave during Term III. I finish work on 27 June (in seven weeks’ time), and nearly two months later I’m going away, flying out on 25 August and getting back on 8 October. I’m spending four weeks in Greece, mostly travelling around the Cyclades; after that, I’ll spend two weeks in the UK visiting friends. Calvin has booked the flights, and I’ve already started to make some vague plans, but as usual I’ll be planning the holiday as I go.

School

In the meantime, there’s Half-Yearly Examinations this term, then reports, then a few weeks later some assessment tasks for Forms V and VI. Term II is a busy term.

But I’m really enjoying teaching Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata to Year 10 Latin. They’re nearing the end of Book I now, and they nearly know all the grammar and vocabulary they need to know to undertake the HSC course. They have a vocabulary and a feel for the language I’ve never seen in a Year 10 Latin class before. The next step will be to get them reading the authentic Latin texts that are the goal of our Latin course. I’m excited to find out what that’s like and to see what those students can accomplish.

Podcasting

Well, to be honest, podcasting is crazy right now. Recording and releasing three episodes a week. At least.

There’s a new series of Doctor Who on, which means recording, editing and releasing a new episode of The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire every Monday.

Untitled Star Trek Project continues unabated, which means watching one episode of Star Trek every week (or sometimes two), writing some notes, rewatching the episode with Joe and recording our conversation, spending a couple of hours editing our podcast episode, and then unleashing it on an unsuspecting public.

And we’re recording and releasing an 11-episode season of 500 Year Diary, a podcast that gives us the chance to go back and revisit Doctor Who stories that we’ve talked about before, but with new people and a new focus. This season, we’re going through the history of Doctor Who to talk about the second time recurring monsters or villains appear on the show. How do you turn a brilliant one-off creation into something that can turn up to menace the Doctor and his friends on a regular basis?

It’s a lot of work. But I get to hang out with my friends and produce something that brings just a little bit of fun and happiness into the world. It’s brilliant.

Websites

My Eleventy podcast plugin has hit version 1.4.1. I kind of feel like I’ve run out of new ideas for it. It’s currently used to create all eight of the podcast websites I maintain, but although it’s been downloaded hundreds of times, I’m not aware of any sites apart from mine that use it. I’ll work on it a bit more later this year, and I have vague ideas about version 2, which I will release in January 2025.

What I’m enjoying

I watched the first three episodes of Andor season 2 a couple of days after they dropped. They were amazing. But I’ve fallen behind over the last few weeks because of all the podcasting.

And I’m loving Doctor Who Season 2 right now. Not at all what I expected, but brilliant in so many different ways. Four more episodes to go.