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 be notified every few weeks when this page updates, you can subscribe to an RSS feed here. 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 Wednesday 20 August 2025.

I’ve been off school since 28 June — first school holidays and then long service leave. Next Monday, I’m leaving for a six-week overseas holiday — roughly four weeks in Greece and two weeks in the UK.

Life and School

I spent some time during the three-week school holiday tying up loose ends and trying to make sure not to leave a mess for the colleagues who will be taking up the slack in my absence. After that, I checked out more or less completely, only occasionally glancing at my Outlook inbox and finding that everything seemed to be running very well without me. Which is basically what I expected.

Since then, I’ve been doing some more exercise, as well as lying on the couch playing Donkey Kong: Bananza. I’m also doing a little bit of podcasting, tinkering with podcast websites and working towards a version 2.0 release of my Eleventy Podcaster plugin.

Podcasting

There’s no Doctor Who podcasting right now, but there’s still the monthly releases of Startling Barbara Bain and the more-or-less weekly releases of Untitled Star Trek Project. Both of these will have a bit of a break while I’m away, but I’m looking forward to recording a couple of episodes of USTP in person with Joe when I stay with him and Mark in September.

When I get back, we’re planning to record and release a short season of 500 Year Diary called The Colour of Monsters, where we look at the decades-long contribution to Doctor Who of writer and script editor Terrance Dicks.

Websites

Over the last term or so, I’ve accumulated a list of little things I need to do to improve my podcast websites, as well as this site, my personal site. And I’ve been happily working through this list. I think everything is more or less ready for me to publish occasional blog posts while I’m away.

I’ve also added some new features to my Eleventy Podcaster plugin and improved some others — generally tidying things up, making everything more consistent, and trying to ensure that it’s easier to explain how to use the plugin to create a podcast website. I’ll release Version 2.0 at the end of the year; in the meantime, I need to spend time streamlining and updating its documentation.

What I’m enjoying

I finally watched all of Andor Series 2 once I got all my holiday work done. It’s brilliant: the best TV series I’ve seen for a long time. I find myself agreeing with Justin Searls’s recently recommended plan for watching Star Wars media: The Gilroy Order.

I’ve also spent some time downloading media to my iPad, audiobooks to my phone, and normal books to my new Kindle, so that I have everything I need to keep myself occupied while I’m away.

Just a few days to go now. I’m pretty excited.