Douglas Ireland

Category: Uncategorized

I Built My Own Search Engine (And You Can Too)
Soundtrack to this post.

Every time I typed something into Google, I thought about who else was reading it.

Not in a paranoid way. Just in the quiet, background sense of knowing that somewhere, a profile was being updated. Another data point added to the picture they have of me. Douglas Ireland, Paisley, searched for: bus times, herniated disc recovery, Viking history, Oldham Athletic score.

It starts to feel less like a search engine and more like a diary that someone else owns.

Somewhere in a building like this, a profile with your name on it is being updated. Photo: Centaur server room by Ttog via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

So I built my own.

The part I enjoyed most was not the installation. It was making it mine.

SearXNG out of the box looks like SearXNG. Clean, functional, unmistakably generic. But the templates are open, the CSS is yours to change, and nothing is locked down. So I started pulling at threads.

First it needed a name. DouglasBot Search. Then a logo, a pixel-font wordmark in cyan and purple sitting next to a robot avatar I had generated for an earlier project. Then a dark, slightly brutalist colour scheme that matched the aesthetic I had in my head. Then a custom placeholder in the search bar. Then a rewritten About page that sounds like a person wrote it rather than a committee.

At some point it stopped feeling like a piece of software I was running and started feeling like a thing I had made.

DouglasBot Search – running at search.douglasirelanddigital.com

Then I added custom search shortcuts, called !bangs, so I can type !r selfhosted to search Reddit or !!osm Edinburgh to pull up a map. I even added a random ad rotator that displays one of my own projects on the results page. Advertising my own things to myself. The circle is complete.

That is the part nobody tells you about self-hosting. The technical setup is just the door. What is on the other side is a blank canvas, and how much you do with it is entirely up to you. Most self-hosted SearXNG instances look identical. Mine does not. That feels worth something.

DouglasBot Search lives at search.douglasirelanddigital.com. It is a private, self-hosted search engine that runs on my own server in a data centre in Germany. It does not store what I search for. It does not build a profile. It does not know my name. It just searches.

How does it actually work?

DouglasBot Search is built on SearXNG, a free and open-source metasearch engine. A metasearch engine does not crawl the web itself. Instead, it sends your query to multiple search engines simultaneously, collects the results, and presents them to you without passing on who you are. You get the results. Google gets nothing useful.

Setting it up required a VPS, Docker, and a reverse proxy called Caddy to handle the domain and HTTPS. If none of those words mean anything to you, do not worry. The point is that the technical barrier, while real, is lower than you might think. The SearXNG documentation is good. There are Docker images ready to go. I had a working instance running within an afternoon.

Why bother?

Because I think the act of self-hosting is, as I wrote in an earlier post, a political one. When I use Google, I am a tenant. When I run my own search engine, I am an owner. The distinction matters more than it might seem.

There is also something satisfying about using a tool you built yourself, even if “built” in this case means configured, customised, and made your own. It is the difference between a rented flat and a place where you are allowed to paint the walls.

The results are genuinely good, by the way. It pulls from multiple sources and returns clean, uncluttered results without the sponsored entries and SEO slop that litter a standard Google page. I use it every day now. I have set it as my default browser search engine. I do not miss Google.

Can you actually do this yourself?

Yes. You need:
- A VPS (I use Hetzner, which is EU-based, reliable, and not expensive)
- Docker and Docker Compose installed
- A domain name
- An afternoon and a willingness to read documentation
The SearXNG project has everything you need to get started. Search for “SearXNG Docker install” and follow the official docs. If you get stuck, the r/selfhosted community on Reddit is full of people who have done exactly this and are happy to help.

It is not magic. It is just a small, deliberate choice to take back a corner of your digital life.

One search at a time.
May 10, 2026
A Note on the Words at the Top

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The three quotes at the top of this blog aren’t decoration. They’re a kind of shorthand for how I look at the world, and for the pace at which I’ve learned to do so.

George Orwell, 1943. NUJ membership card photograph. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

George Orwell writes: “If I had understood the situation a bit better I should probably have joined the Anarchists.” I’ve always liked how provisional that sentence is. It isn’t a slogan or a posture. It’s an admission that understanding changes you, and that many political positions only look unreasonable when viewed from a distance. Orwell isn’t pledging allegiance so much as acknowledging that power, when examined closely, often looks less legitimate the longer you stare at it.

That line resonates with me because anarchism, as a philosophy, has always felt less like chaos and more like an ethical demand. It asks us to justify authority, to minimise coercion, and to trust people more than systems. The older I get, the more persuasive that feels, not as a fantasy of perfect freedom, but as a framework for asking difficult questions about who decides, who benefits, and who bears the cost.

Glasgow Central station. Photo: Geof Sheppard, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Ian Dury’s line, “It takes much longer to get up north, the slow way,” is personal in a different way. I grew up in the Manchester area and moved to Scotland at 36. Ten years ago now. It took me a long time to go up north, in every sense. Geography, money, inertia, and habit all have their own gravity. The slow way isn’t just about distance on a map. It’s about the routes that are available to you at a given point in your life.

There’s no self‑pity in that lyric, just a recognition that movement is uneven. Some people get express trains. Others change twice and wait on cold platforms. I recognise that in my own story and in the wider world. Progress, whether personal or political, rarely arrives all at once. It comes in stages, through weather, detours, and delayed connections.

Aaron Swartz. Art: Kris Newby, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Aaron Swartz puts the sharpest edge on it: “Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves.” Once you accept that, a lot of the modern world makes grim sense. Who gets to know things, to fix things, to question things, is never accidental. Control over information quietly shapes what feels possible.

That’s one reason this site exists as it does. I built my first website in 1995, back when the internet was slower, stranger, and less certain of itself. Before dopamine loops and surveillance became the default business model. This blog is deliberately quiet. No metrics, no amplification economy, no pressure to perform. Just writing when it’s ready.

Taken together, these three quotes point toward the same instinct. Scepticism of unquestioned authority, patience with complexity, and a belief that understanding, real understanding, takes time. They gesture toward anarchism not as an identity to wear, but as a lens. A way of asking better questions about power, community, and responsibility.

That’s the ground this blog grows on. Reflections on digital rights, climate, social justice, and everyday life in the west of Scotland, mixed in with football, watches, and naps. An attempt to be a principled citizen without forgetting to be a regular human, and a reminder that taking the slow way isn’t a failure. Sometimes it’s the only way you actually learn where you are.

April 22, 2026
The Gregorian Pop Cover I Didn’t Know I Needed

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I was looking through Tidal for some relaxing music to play whilst doing the housework this morning when I stumbled across a Gregorian chants meditation playlist. It immediately made me nostalgic for that brief, strange period in the 90s when the Chant album by the Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos unexpectedly shot up the pop charts.

The iconic 1994 album cover. (Image via Wikipedia).

Do you remember that? Suddenly, ancient monophonic plainsong was everywhere, from chill-out rooms to car stereos. Then, just as abruptly, it vanished into the ether, leaving us all wondering if it had been a collective fever dream.

Thinking I would revisit that vibe, I decided to give the playlist a go. The first few tracks were exactly what you would expect. It sounded like a scene from The Name of the Rose, somber and atmospheric.

But then, a Gregorian Chant cover of John Lennon’s Imagine came on and stopped me in my tracks.

I absolutely loved the rhythm of the sound. There was something fascinating about the juxtaposition of the deeply religious musical style against the famously humanist, secular anthem of the lyrics. It shouldn’t work, yet it somehow does.

As I let the playlist run, it just kept giving. Later on, there were covers of Lady in Red, Angels by Robbie Williams, and plenty more. I didn’t know I needed this in my life, but I think Gregorian chant covers of pop songs might just be my new obsession.

February 14, 2026
Stop the Presses: Supreme Court Rules Consumers Apparently Confused by Oats

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If you thought common sense was making a comeback in 2026, I have some bad news for you.

Today, the UK Supreme Court handed down a final verdict in the long-running, and frankly exhausting, battle between Swedish oat drink maker Oatly and the powerful dairy lobby, Dairy UK. The unanimous ruling is that Oatly has lost the right to trademark their slogan “Post Milk Generation” for their food and drink products.

Why? Because apparently, the highest court in the land agrees with the dairy industry that the word “milk” is far too confusing for us mere mortals to handle unless it comes directly from an animal’s udder.

The legal basis for this decision rests on the idea that using “milk” terminology for plant-based products is misleading. The Justices argued that the phrase “Post Milk Generation” did not clearly describe the product’s characteristic (i.e. being dairy-free) and might leave poor, bewildered shoppers wondering if the carton contained no milk or just a little bit of milk.

I’m sorry, but do they take us for idiots?

A variety of Oatly’s oat-based drinks on a supermarket shelf. The UK Supreme Court has ruled that the company cannot use the word “milk” to describe these plant-based alternatives. Image: Tiia Monto, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

This ruling is a victory for pedantry over reality. It is a desperate cling to outdated definitions championed by an industry terrified of changing consumer habits.

Let’s apply this “confusion” logic elsewhere in the supermarket aisle, shall we?

When I buy fish fingers, I am fully aware that I am not purchasing actual anatomical digits harvested from cod.

When I buy baby oil, I do not assume it is made from babies.

When someone buys a veggie burger, nobody, and I mean nobody, is distressed to find a lack of ground beef inside.

We know that oat milk is squeezed from oats. We know almond milk comes from almonds. We get it. The only people who seem “confused” are the lobbyists running Dairy UK and the lawyers arguing these semantics.

Oatly’s response hit the nail on the head. Bryan Carroll, their UK general manager, called this what it is: a move to “stifle competition” that “solely benefits Big Dairy.”

We are living in a time where shifting toward more plant-based diets is crucial for ethical and environmental sustainability. We need to be encouraging these swaps, making them accessible and appealing. Instead, we are wasting years and untold amounts of money in court debating whether the word “milk” can be used to describe a creamy, white liquid that you put on your cereal, just because it didn’t involve a cow.

The dairy industry is fighting a losing battle against cultural shifts. Trying to fence off common language through legal action will not stop people from choosing sustainable alternatives. It just makes the industry look petty and out of touch.

The courts might say we are not a “Post Milk Generation” yet, but the consumers already know where the future lies, regardless of what the label is allowed to say.

February 11, 2026
Thank You, Ward 27: The Safety Net and the Spider Web
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I have been out of hospital for three days now. The silence of my own bedroom is still a bit jarring after weeks of beeping monitors, rattling drug trolleys, and the constant theatre of the ward.

The backbone of the service. It is the staff, not the system, that holds everything together. Image by the Scottish Government. Licensed under CC BY 2.0.

First, I need to say it: the staff on Ward 27 were marvellous. From the consultants to the cleaners, they are the glue holding a fraying system together. They treated me with dignity, humour, and skill. They saved my life.

But now that I am out, I can say something else: the system they work in is breaking.

I was part of the problem. For three weeks, I occupied a bed that could have gone to an emergency admission. Why? Because my consultant knew that if he discharged me and requested my scans as an “outpatient,” I would be waiting months. By keeping me in the bed, he could order them as an “inpatient” and get them done in days.

It was a brilliant workaround for me, but a disaster for the NHS efficiency stats. I was essentially “bed blocking” my own recovery just to navigate the bureaucracy.

And looking around the ward, I realised I wasn’t the only one there because of a systemic failure.

It seemed to me that a huge number of patients were there not because of bad luck, but because of what we clinically call “lifestyle factors” and what we should politically call “despair.”

The data backs this up. In Scotland, we see nearly 30,000 hospital admissions a year purely due to alcohol. Drug-related hospital stays are rising again too, with over 11,000 cases in the last year alone.

The NHS is currently functioning as the emergency room for a society that is failing its citizens long before they reach the hospital doors. We are treating liver failure in Ward 27 because we didn’t treat the alcoholism in the community ten years ago. We are treating malnutrition and obesity because healthy food is expensive and addiction is a salve for poverty.

We cannot “fix” the NHS just by throwing money at hospitals. That is like trying to fix a leaking roof by buying more buckets. We have to fix the roof.

If we want to protect the NHS, we have to talk about:
1. True Preventative Care: We need to stop treating addiction as a crime and start treating it as a health crisis before the ambulance is called.
2. Social Care Integration: We need a social care system that actually works, so patients don’t have to stay in hospital simply because there is no one to look after them at home.
3. Honest Triage: We need a system where a consultant doesn’t have to game the system and block a bed just to get a patient an MRI scan.
The NHS is the greatest achievement of our society. It is the only reason I am here to write this. But if we want it to survive the vultures who are circling, we have to stop using it as a sticking plaster for broken social policy.
- Alcohol Data: Alcohol Related Hospital Statistics 2024/25, Public Health Scotland (Published Jan 2026).
- Drug Data: Drug-Related Hospital Statistics Scotland 2023/24, Public Health Scotland.
January 31, 2026
The View from Ward 27

Soundtrack to this post.

The view from Ward 27. From the “incinerator” chimney to the Oldbar Hills, with the helipad waiting on the green. Image by Douglas Ireland. Licensed under Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0.

When you are confined to a hospital bed, your world shrinks to the size of a room. The only connection you have to the outside is the window. It becomes your television, your cinema, and your clock.

I have spent a lot of time staring out of mine.

The foreground is dominated, as all hospitals are, by the car park. It is a constant ballet of arrivals and departures. You see the relief of people going home and the anxiety of people arriving. It is the most honest theatre in town.

Beyond the tarmac, the view gets more interesting. To the right, there is a sprawling, somewhat soulless new build estate. It stands in stark contrast to the three solid blocks of council flats rising up in the distance. It is a little slice of social history right there in the architecture.

Then there is the chimney.

It is a massive, grey concrete finger pointing at the sky. I have decided, based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever, that this is where they incinerate the amputated body parts. I am sure the hospital facilities manager would tell me it is just the boiler flue or part of the laundry system, but my version fits the mood better.

In the distance, I can see the tops of the Oldbar Hills. They are a nice reminder that the world is bigger than this ward, and that the weather is doing something other than recirculating through the air conditioning.

But the real highlight is the helipad.

Every so often, the air around the hospital changes. The noise builds, the downdraft hits, and the air ambulance comes in to land. It usually arrives from the Scottish Islands, bringing someone across the water for care they can’t get at home.

The dramatic disruption of the day: the air ambulance arriving from the islands. Image by Stephanie Crew. Licensed under Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0.

It is a dramatic disruption to the slow routine of the ward. For a few minutes, we all stop what we are doing, patients, nurses, cleaners, and watch the machine touch down. It is a reminder of the incredible logistics that keep this whole system running.

For now, I am just a spectator. But the view isn’t bad.

January 23, 2026
The Vultures Circle: Defending the NHS from the Tech Bros
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The vultures are circling our infrastructure, both physical and digital. Photo by Sam Cherone on Unsplash.

I am writing this from a hospital bed in Paisley. For over two weeks, I have been a guest of the state. My treatment, my meals, and my recovery are being powered by a system built on a simple, radical principle: that human life has an intrinsic value which cannot be calculated on a balance sheet.

The NHS is the closest thing we have to a sacred institution. It is socialism in practice. And because of that, it is hated by the most powerful people on Earth.

Across the Atlantic, Donald Trump is back in power, emboldened by a coterie of Silicon Valley “tech bros” and venture capitalists. These are men who view the state not as a protector, but as an obstacle. To them, the NHS is not a triumph of civilisation; it is an “inefficiency” waiting to be disrupted. It is a market they haven’t been allowed to corner yet.

Make no mistake, they are coming for it.

This is not a conspiracy theory. We have the receipts. Donald Trump has previously stated on camera that in any trade deal with the UK, “everything is on the table,” including the NHS. His trade negotiators have consistently pushed for “full market access,” which is diplomatic code for dismantling the price controls that stop US pharmaceutical giants from charging us American prices for life saving drugs. They want to break the NHS model because it is bad for their shareholders.

And the tech invasion has already begun. Look at Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of Palantir and a vocal Trump supporter. He has described the British public’s affection for the NHS as “Stockholm Syndrome” and claimed the system “makes people sick.” Yet despite his contempt for the institution, his company was awarded a massive contract to run the “Federated Data Platform” for the NHS in England. They are not waiting at the gates anymore. They are already inside the server room.

The danger isn’t just that they want to sell us insurance. It is that they want to mine us for data. To the tech oligarchs backing the US administration, the NHS is just a massive, unexploited database. They see millions of health records, genetic profiles, and histories that they can feed into their proprietary AI models to generate profit.

They want to turn patients into products.

This is where my physical reality here on the ward meets my digital reality on the server.

I have spent the last few months aggressively moving my digital life onto my own VPS. It is a modest setup: 8GB of RAM, an 80GB SSD, and a 1TB storage box. But it is mine.

When I run my own cloud, I am removing myself from the jurisdiction of the Silicon Valley data brokers. I am refusing to let Google or Microsoft scrape my emails, track my location, or feed my photos into their algorithms. I am reclaiming my digital sovereignty from the very same people who are eyeing up the NHS for parts.

There is an ideological line between defending socialised healthcare and self-hosting your data. Both are acts of resistance against a worldview that says everything, your health, your memories, your location, your blood, must be for sale.

A reminder that the fight for the NHS is happening on the streets as well as in the wards. Image by Alan Shearman. Licensed under CC BY 2.0.

The Counter-Offensive

It is easy to feel helpless when you are up against billionaires and governments, but resignation is just another form of privatisation. If we want to keep the vultures away, we have to make ourselves indigestible. Here is where we start:
1. Lock the Gate: In England, you can click a button to opt out. In Scotland, they have made it harder. The easy “SPIRE” opt-out system was closed in 2023. But you still have rights. You have the “Right to Object” to your data being processed for research and planning under data protection law. It isn’t a simple form anymore; you have to write directly to your GP Practice Manager and explicitly state that you object to your data being shared for purposes other than direct care. It is a hassle, but that is the point. Make them work for it.
2. Join the Frontline: Campaign groups like We Own It and Keep Our NHS Public are fighting the stealth privatisation of the service. They need members, they need money, and they need voices. Join them.
3. Support the Staff: When nurses and junior doctors strike, they are not just fighting for pay; they are fighting for the safety of the service. Support them on the picket lines. A well-funded workforce is the best defence against a private buyout.
4. Reclaim Your Digital Self: You might not be able to build a server in a hospital bed like me, but you can take small steps. Switch to privacy-focused browsers. Use Signal instead of WhatsApp. Every byte of data you deny Big Tech is a small victory for sovereignty.
The Line in the Sand

The tech bros want a world where you rent your digital existence from them, and where your healthcare is determined by your credit score. They want us to be serfs in a digital company town.

I refuse.

I will defend the NHS because it treats me as a human being, not a customer. And I will keep maintaining my little server because it treats me as an owner, not a user.

The vultures are circling, both in Westminster and Washington. Keeping them away from our hospitals and our hard drives is the most important fight we have.

Don’t let the bureaucracy stop you from locking the gate. I have prepared a sample letter for Scottish patients to exercise their Right to Object. Click here to view it.
January 23, 2026
The High Cost of Being Nasty

Soundtrack to this post.

I am currently on day 16 as a guest of the NHS. When you spend this much time on a ward, you have a lot of time to observe the ecosystem around you. You see the stress, the rush, and the incredible patience of the staff.

Today, while I was down getting a plasma exchange, I spotted a poster on a roll-up banner that stopped me in my tracks. It wasn’t a warning about infections or a guide to washing hands. It was titled INCIVILITY: THE FACTS.

The “Incivility: The Facts” banner I spotted on the ward. A stark reminder that rudeness has a measurable cost to patient care.
Image by Douglas Ireland. Licensed under Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0.

It turns out that being rude isn’t just unpleasant. It is dangerous.

The poster laid out the hard data on what happens when someone is rude in a medical setting. The numbers are staggering. 80% of recipients lose time worrying about the rudeness. That is a massive amount of mental energy being diverted away from the job at hand. Even worse, 38% reduce the quality of their work and 48% reduce their time at work.

In an office job, a 38% drop in quality might mean a bad spreadsheet. In a hospital, as the poster bluntly states, “Less effective clinicians provide poorer care”. The slogan at the bottom really drives it home: Civility Saves Lives.

It got me thinking about a post I wrote a while back about catching flies with honey rather than vinegar. I wrote then that I had tried vinegar, sharp words and cold silences, and found it useless. This poster proves that it is not just useless; it is actively destructive.

When you are nasty to someone, you are not just venting your own frustration. You are throwing a wrench in the gears. You are creating a blast radius. The poster notes that even witnesses to rudeness see a 20% decrease in performance and a 50% decrease in willingness to help others.

Think about that. Being rude to one person makes the people watching half as likely to help someone else. It spreads like a virus.

I learnt this lesson when I was a toddler. It didn’t take a Harvard Business Review study for me to figure out that it is infinitely easier to get someone to do something for you if you are nice to them. If you scream and stamp your feet, people shut down. If you smile and say please, doors open.

It is beyond my belief that fully grown adults still struggle with this concept. You see it in shops, in traffic, and sadly, even in hospitals. People seem to think that being aggressive displays dominance or gets results. The data shows it does the exact opposite. It makes the people trying to help you slower, more worried, and less effective.

My stay here has reaffirmed what I have always suspected. Being nice is not just a “soft” skill. It is an essential survival mechanism. Whether you are trying to get a nurse to check your IV or trying to navigate a difficult meeting at work, civility is the grease that keeps the machine running.

So, if you can’t be nice just for the sake of being a decent human being, be nice because it is the only way to get anything done. As the banner says, incivility affects everyone.

We could all do with remembering that politeness costs nothing, but rudeness can cost everything.

January 22, 2026
Fugitives in the Pasta Aisle: The Extreme Measures Needed to Protect Your Privacy

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Last month, I wrote about evicting “Big Data” from my digital life. I migrated my entire digital ecosystem onto my own server. It went far beyond simple file storage; I now host my own search engine, media streaming, location tracking, and full personal cloud, reclaiming my digital sovereignty from the likes of Google and Microsoft. It was a technical challenge, but it was a battle I could win. If you own the hardware, you own the rules.

Stuck in a hospital bed, I have been researching how to apply that same logic to my weekly shop. This is not just an intellectual exercise. When I am discharged, I will be unable to drive for several months. My usual freedom to choose where I spend my money will be gone, shrinking my world down to walking distance. That leaves me with exactly one option: the Tesco just down the road. I would not normally choose them, but geography has made me a captive audience. Hoping to reclaim some agency, I thought I could code a solution from here, but I found the reality is far less forgiving.

The physical token of the data tax. To access the standard price, you must carry the tracker. – “The Tesco Clubcard containing contactless technology, and the keyfobs” by Marccoton, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

We are all familiar with the “Clubcard Price.” You walk down the aisle for coffee or olive oil and see two prices. The first is a reasonable £6.50. The second, for non-members, is a punitive £11.00. For years, we have been trained to view the lower price as a reward, a discount for loyalty. But let us be honest about what this really is. It is not a discount. It is a Data Tax. The £11.00 is a fine you pay for refusing to hand over your identity.

I had a plan to circumvent this. Being a problem-solver, I thought about launching a service on this site: a “Communal Clubcard.” The idea was simple and socialist in nature. We would share communal cards, pooling our collective bargaining power to get the lower prices without giving Tesco our individual shopping histories. We would pollute their data stream with noise and reclaim the discount.

It turns out, they are way ahead of me.

I looked into the logistics, and the pitfalls are designed specifically to crush this kind of collective action. Tesco now uses “velocity checks” to detect if a card is used in Glasgow and London within the same hour, instantly locking the account. They have updated their scanners to reject screenshots of barcodes. They are phasing out physical cards in favour of apps that generate rotating, expiration-prone QR codes.

They have not just made it difficult to share; they have engineered the system to ensure a one-to-one surveillance ratio. They do not just want a customer to buy the beans; they need to know that Douglas Ireland bought the beans, at what time, and what he bought alongside them.

This brings me to a depressing realisation. I can self-host my email. I can self-host my photos. But I cannot self-host my groceries.

In the digital world, open-source software like Nextcloud offers an escape hatch. If you have the skills and the patience, you can opt out of the surveillance economy. In the physical world, that escape hatch is being welded shut. The supermarkets have established a monopoly not just on food, but on the terms of exchange.

There is a workaround, but it borders on spycraft. To avoid the tracking, I would need to set up a “burner” account with a fake name and a masked email address. Crucially, I would have to pay in cash every single time. If I were to slip up once and use my debit card, their systems could link that payment token to the burner account, retroactively tying every bag of pasta and pint of milk to my real identity.

Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon (1791). A prison design where the inmates are constantly watched but cannot see the observer; the perfect metaphor for the modern supermarket aisle. – Plan of the Panopticon by Jeremy Bentham (1843), via Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.

Is this what privacy has become? A luxury good available only to those willing to act like fugitives in the pasta aisle?

There is a profound inequality here. We often talk about the “poverty premium,” where being poor costs more (prepayment meters, high-interest loans). We are now seeing the emergence of a “privacy premium.” If you can afford to pay the non-member price, you get to keep your data. If you are struggling with the cost of living, you are forced to sell your privacy just to afford the basics.

My attempt to build a communal alternative failed because the system is rigged against anonymity. But it was a useful failure. It highlighted that the fight for data sovereignty is not just about servers and code. It is about the right to exist in public spaces without being tracked, indexed, and profiled.

I might have secured my digital home, but outside the front door, the company town is bigger than ever. And for now, it seems I have to choose between my principles and the price of olive oil.

I am stuck paying the premium for now. If any readers have found a viable solution, I would be very interested to read about it below or on my Keep in Touch page.

January 19, 2026
Sleepless Nights and Side Projects: Building a Game from a Hospital Bed

There’s nothing quite like a hospital stay to make you appreciate the small things, like silence, privacy, or a decent night’s sleep. Five nights in, and it looks like I’m here for a few more. The highlight of my stay so far? A spinal tap is on the cards. Joy.

Last night was particularly rough. I couldn’t quite put my finger on whether it was the symphony of snores and other, less pleasant noises from my ward-mates, or just my brain refusing to shut down. Either way, sleep was not on the agenda.

So, what’s a guy to do at 3 AM in a hospital ward? Well, if you’re me, you pull out your laptop and tinker with a side project. In this case, a lightweight web game designed for a sight-impaired friend.

The game itself is a simple two-player reflex game. The goal was to make something accessible, private, and functional across both mobile and desktop browsers. No frills, no fuss, just a clean, responsive bit of fun.

Screenshot from the game.

If you’re feeling curious (or just bored), you can give it a shot here: https://reflex.douglasireland.com/. I’d love to hear what you think.

And if you’re up for a game against a very bored hospital patient, feel free to drop me a line via https://douglasireland.com/chat/. It’s not every day you get to play-test a game from a hospital bed, after all.

If nothing else, this little project has been a good reminder that even in less-than-ideal circumstances, there’s always something productive (or at least distracting) to be done.

January 10, 2026