Hello everyone,
About a year ago I last posted to this substack and frankly I’ve not really updated it since I left treeschool as a student. Some of you know my backstory in that I was a tech person who became disenfranchised with the world, or had a midlife crisis and quit my job to retrain in arboriculture and woodland management. The last thing I wanted to do at that time was design and build another blog engine and so Substack was my platform of choice.
Life has a funny way of deciding where you go though and at the start of 2025 I reentered the world of tech on my terms. Working for myself. After all, why chase twenty £200 jobs in treeworld when you can get a single job in for £4000 in techworld? Well, for one, tech world makes you fat. You sit there and get fat and weak. As I was lean and strong and now I’m not lean and not strong. A bit podgy you’d say. I’m working on that though. All things considered though, it’s been a great time.
And of course, there’s AI. Speaking as as software developer with nearly 25 years under his belt I can tell you now that writing code by hand is dead and mostly pointless. AI does it much faster. Hell, five minutes ago I had an idea that would have taken me a week at least and AI knocked it out in about four minutes.
Having said that, you still need to know your onions. To use a metaphor, just becasue you’ve got a dovetailing machine and a mortise machine, doesn’t mean you don’t need to know about grain direction, timber selection, preparation, finishing, transport etc. Anyhow, I’m getting technical and this is a treeworld blog. But this will be the last post I make.
A.I. has amazingly, allowed me to turn all of things that used to be trouble for me (being a generalist for one) and turn them into superpowers. It’s a great machine if you know how to use it and not churn out slop. I like the common analogy of it being able to amplify what’s already there. Some shit equals more shit. Some talent equals more talent.
I have been writing though, and a lot. But I’ve been doing it over on my new personal website. It’s much easier to rebuild an audience up based on the crazy general generalist nature of my life over there. Here I’m Jamie and I do trees. Over there I’m in treeworld, makerworld, techworld, foodworld, privacyword and anything else that tickles my fancy.
Right now comments are limited to Bluesky. This is is nothing to do with a political statement, but entirely due to the fact it’s the only place that uses the ATProto. Truth be told, I really wanted Substack to allow for external publications to duplicate content and syndicate comments, but I don’t think they’ll do that any time soon. As fast as AI is, enabling comments is only a part of it. It’s the dealing with the spam that’s the issue.
The good news is though if you want to follow along, you can subscribe for free and on your terms. If anything I’m going to figure out a way to allow comments on subscribers first.
Anyway. It’s been a hoot really. I’ve really appreciated your input and support over the last few years. It’s hard to believe it was four years to the day almost I left that tech job. If you had of told me AI would be a thing I’d have laughed just as hard as petrol and diesel being just about the same price.
The workshop is thankfully tidier though.
If you’re not bothered and don’t want to jump over to my new site where I write much more frequently I understand. Thanks for following along in any case.
My name is Jamie Curle and I’ve been designing, developing and deploying web stuff since 1998 and a woodsman since 2022. You’ve been reading Life of Treedom.
Cheers,
Jamie.
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