Gmail: Google, please give us better font options!

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Google, while I appreciate the efforts you’re going to make A.I. genuinely useful in Google Workspace, I’d really like you to revisit a few basic options that have gone untouched for decades. I’m talking about font selection and font sizes. At the moment, this is all you get:

In this case, I’ve chosen the larger size rather than normal. Normal, to me, is far too small when composing and sending messages. And what’s worse, you can’t specifically set a size for reading emails that have been sent in plain text. What are small, normal, large and larger sizes? Who knows – they are not allocated a number size – unlike the majority of font size options in.. oh, let me see, pretty much every other bloody product. Including Google Docs.

Whereas this is what I see in Outlook and Outlook for Web, I get a much better range of options:

Aptos 14 in Outlook is a good size. Larger Sans Serif in Gmail is larger than Aptos 14, though it is close. But it’s not close enough and annoys the heck out of me. As somebody who started their email journey on quite literally text terminals where there no such things as fonts or font sizes (as such). Everything was consistent.

Gmail has unfortunately been one of the few services that hasn’t really kept up with the basics – instead choosing AI over all else, and appears to be slipping behind even good old Pine which was a very capable email client back in the day. I just don’t get as much joy as writing emails with Gmail as I do with Outlook or any other client.

Reading email when the sender uses Gmail’s default small font or plain text is also a terrible experience. Take this email from my server to let me know local backups have completed. The font is too small. Gmail offers me no official method of setting a default size for reading email.

I’ve tried to create a Chrome extension using Claude that will override Google’s default fonts and font sizes, but while it works in principal, it’s an uphill struggle with potential compatibility issues and future updates from Google.

There is also a third-party Chrome extension that I’ve used in the past called V7 Gmail Zoom – and it works wonderfully well. You can set default text sizes for both reading and composing. But because Gmail ends out such tiny text by default, and having now gone “large” to make thing easier – email I send myself looks too big.

Sigh. This shouldn’t be a thing in 2026. Come on, Google, fix this stuff.

Eurovision be damned..

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Eurovision gets weirder each year, with some truly awful songs that could have been generated by A.I. Well, I thought – I like that challenge – and here are my entries. I was curious as to what Google’s Gemini music generator could do.

Here’s Disco Banjo – I wrote the chorus only. The A.I. made up all the rest. It is very silly.

Also, it’s too damn hot…

My third and final video game credit..

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Thanks, YouTubers, for releasing entire gameplay walkthroughs before the official release date. Though I should really be saying: bad YouTubers, bad. To your beds. Naughty YouTubers.

But at least this confirms that myself and others that have now left the company have been given credits for this game which as been in development for as long as I was at SMG. One day I shall look forward to playing it myself.

I am somewhat amused with my own IMDb entry in that the “Known For” section shows three video games and one video game film adaptation.

Back to the future.. the white ZX Spectrum

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Having grown up mainly around the ZX Spectrum (the ZX81, the 48K, 48K+ and the +2A), it makes me happy to see companies releasing authorised modern equivalents of these 8-bit masterpieces (we have the Commodore 64 Ultimate and 64C Ultimate, the Amgia A1200, and the ZX Spectrum Next).

I must admit I like the idea of this white ZX Spectrum based on the rubber key variety. It’s been fully updated with HDMI and modern inputs including USB-A ports. £129. I’d also like to own the Amiga A1200 (£169) as there was no possible way of owning one back when I was a kid – it was far too expensive (as was the BBC Micro which had the best keyboard of any of the 8-bit computers).

However, even if I had the budget for them, I don’t have the space as it is. I’ve also feel that I’ve moved on quite a bit from the 8-bit retro gaming scene (though I occasionally yearn for a quick go at Chuckie Egg). Things got really interesting when I moved up to an Amstrad PC3086. It didn’t have a hard drive, but it did have two types of floppy drive and you could easily play decent games thanks to its VGA graphics (which was fancy at the time – especially at that price point) even if you had to keep swapping disks out every so often.

Ah, the memories.. but it was a right bugger to type on

But it’s great that there are companies out there that cater to those who are nostalgic for the good old days of gaming and programming. It makes us appreciate what we had before all the nonsense that we have now (Windows 11, I’m looking at you).

The Atari ST or the Amiga A1200 was THE ultimate gaming machine back in my day

So long, and thanks for all the fish, Tim Cook

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I must admit that I am rather sad that Tim Cook is stepping down as CEO of Apple. During his tenure, he’s seen the launch of what I would consider to be three of Apple’s greatest achievements in the past 20 years: the Apple Watch, and Apple Silicon Macs (e.g. the M series).

The Apple Watch has played a vital role in my health (its sleep apnea detection forced me to go and see a doctor, and I now have a CPAP machine) and continues to do so by monitoring my steps and other vital signs to improve my overall fitness and health.

The Apple Silicon Mac, when it first launched, proved that moving away from Intel was a very smart move despite launching in the middle of the COVID pandemic. I personally thought it was strange timing, but thankfully, I was proven wrong. The M1 series proved to be an absolute powerhouse of a computer, which is still going strong 5 years later – many people are still perfectly happy with the performance of their machine despite the M5 series potentially being three times (or more) as fast. I will always try to get a Mac for work – to give you an example, my current work M4 Pro MacBook Pro allows me to work completely untethered all day and still have enough juice for the evening. It’s extremely power-efficient and fits in well with the university’s energy policies – probably more so than the standard Windows laptops.

And I’ve always seen Apple gear as a good investment; it’s excellent value for money in both the hardware, software and services. I’ve got fair and decent pricing whenever I’ve sold Apple kit (unlike my Windows laptops). In terms of services, under Cook’s management, we’ve seen the launch of Apple TV, which has given us some of the best science fiction (For All Mankind, Severance, Silo, Pluribus) and drama (Slow Horses) and factual content (Long Way Up, and Long Way Home) I’ve seen anywhere. News+ is a great aggregation of newspapers and magazines, and Apple Music provides me with a quality music service where I can upload my own music library across all my Apple devices easily and without fuss – all in excellent quality.

Apple hasn’t always gotten it right, and they can be quite stubborn at times, but ultimately, the whole experience has been far more positive than with other technology providers. The most recent annoyance was having to prove to Apple that my 83-year-old dad, who only has an iPad, is old enough to browse the web. For me, my Apple account was old enough to immediately pass, but there was a lot of kerfuffle with credit cards, which I wanted to ensure did not end up on the account (which, thankfully, it didn’t). However, I blame the UK government for this more than I do Apple, which I suspect was ordered to implement it sooner rather than later.

You’ve got mail!

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Bit of a strange week for postal mail. As we head towards the local council elections in May, I’ve been bombarded with letters from candidates. I’m sure the independent candidate tried to call the other day, but I was in the middle of a Teams work call. He left a leaflet. Then there were handwritten letters addressed to either me personally or “the resident” from the Lib Dems and the Conservatives, and a leaflet from Reform, which was torn up and thrown away immediately.

What amused me was a handwritten letter from a religious group – possibly THAT group that usually calls around when you least expect it (no, not the Spanish Inquisition – they’d be 192 years too late). I only knew it was some religious thing from an enclosed pamphlet about Jesus and God and things of that nature. The letter itself was indecipherable. The handwriting was so illegible I suspect it might have been written in ancient Aramaic (as opposed to aromatic, which conjures the images of delicious duck in hoi sin sauce).

On the electronic mail front, I had to sigh when the latest news of Directive 8020 from Supermassive Games, for whom I worked up until September of last year, had ended up in my Google Workspace spam folder. Given that I had set up the infrastructure for the marketing department to ensure maximum delivery (ensuring DKIM, SPF, and DMARC were all correct, etc.) for this sort of thing, it was hugely frustrating to find that Gmail decided to throw it in the junk because other people had been reporting those kinds of emails as spam. You can do everything in your power, technically, to get mail delivered, but you’re still at the mercy of a mail provider’s anti-spam/anti-phishing/anti-malware heuristics as to whether it will get seen by anybody. I signed up for the mailing list. It’s double opt-in (e.g. you get an email to confirm that you want to subscribe), but Google knows best. Anyhow, I’ve had to mess up my contacts list by whitelisting a no-reply email address because of Gmail’s design….

Anyway, Directive 8020 is due for release on the 12th May. I’m still undecided whether I’m going for the PC version (RTX 5070 Ti with 12Gb VRAM with Ultra 9 275Hx CPU) or the PS5 Pro (which apparently the game is optimised for).

Happy 11th birthday, Sven the Cat

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Sven is my father’s cat, and is perhaps the chillest, most relaxed feline I have ever met. He likes pets, sleeping, pootling around the garden, and sleeping. He follows Dad around like a shadow – even to the toilet – and likes to “help” out with computer problems by sitting on the printer (which was the case when I was dealing with family IT over the Easter weekend).

Happy birthday, Sven.

The joys of benefits bureaucracy when returning to work

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Woke up this morning to find that my potentially last Job Seekers Allowance didn’t show up in my bank account. I was told by my work coach that I would be covered until my first pay cheque/deposit. This highlights my biggest complaint with the benefits system that I have been relying on for the past six months – it’s messy and confusing.

When I signed up for the new style Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) they recommended I sign up for Universal Credit too (if only to ensure that I could cover interest on mortgage payments after 3 months of not being able to find work if I needed it). UC payments are made monthly, JSA payments are made every two weeks. But because I had applied and was claiming JSA, it effectively wiped out any and all JSA payments. So my UC statements allow show a payment of £0.00 for each month I was unemployed. But I don’t get any statements for JSA.

If you miss an appointment or fail to carry out the requirements of the work plan, they can apply sanctions against your payments. This, to my knowledge, never happened during all the time I claimed. When I got confirmation of the UAL contract I spoke to my work coach earlier this month to confirm that I had the job. She explained that I would still get JSA for the remainder month. But no end date was ever given or confirmed. When I received a payment on the 11th March, it was for £40 less than previous payments.

So I’ve used the Universal Credit journal (which is effectively used for *everything* including JSA) to reach out and ask what’s happening and to obtain clarification around the whole situation. Now, accordingly to UAL’s employee portal, I should be paid on the last day of this month – and after that, everything should start returning to normal with regards to my finances.

Don’t get me wrong, I am incredibly grateful to the UK government and the local Woking JobCentre Plus for supporting them throughout the redundancy and the time I’ve been off-work (and to Supermassive Games for providing a good and decent severance package) which has supported me well for six months. But I do wish there was better information and systems surrounding JSA and UC (combined) so that I know exactly when I’m being paid, and what I’m being paid.

Harry Pothole and Money Pit of Gloom

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I don’t want to be a downer for the new Harry Potter TV series from HBO Max. Clearly, many people have put a substantial amount of effort into it, as have the people who helped make the film series (like me). But given both Warner Bros. and Paramount’s debt, it doesn’t seem likely to me that either can go on continuing to spend substantial sums of money on flogging remakes or continuations of franchises such as The Lord of the Rings without something giving way.

I’m concerned that, in several years, either WB or Paramount (or the combined entity) will eventually succumb, leading to IP asset stripping and being sold to the vultures that I’m sure are circling the properties of both companies as I type this. It wouldn’t surprise me that a company like Netflix couldn’t then just swoop in and bag those properties for themselves at a price substantially cheaper than what it would have cost them to have bought Warner Bros. in the first place.

We’ve seen in recent days that you can’t take anything for granted. Epic Games, makers of Fortnite and a former potential employer from last year when I applied for a data wrangling job within their Metahuman division, announced on Tuesday that they are laying off 1,000 employees because people weren’t engaging enough with Fortnite. What hasn’t helped is Epic fighting (and subsequently spending a shit load of money on) Apple and Google over third-party payments and stores in Apple’s and Google’s ecosystems.

A week earlier, Sony Pictures announced the imminent closure of Pixomondo, the visual effects company responsible for film and television visual effects on major series, including virtual production on recent Star Trek series such as Discovery, Strange New Worlds, and Starfleet Academy (which in itself has just been cancelled by Paramount within the past week). Some of the company will be absorbed into Sony Pictures Imageworks – but I’d certainly expect to see a substantial number of layoffs as a result.

Creative Corporate America seems to be suffering from Shit Hitting The Fan syndrome at the moment. Spending more money than is being earned (“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income, twenty pounds, annual expenditure, twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.” – The Micawber Principle) and subsequently flailing (and failing) to find the right investors who will bring them back on track, even after restructuring.

And all of this is not helped by a certain useful idiot causing worldwide economic chaos because nobody will tell him “no”.

Up above the streets and houses

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Went outside on the roof terrace at work yesterday as it was fairly quiet, and you couldn’t really ask for a better view of London while having your lunch. You can see one of UAL’s campuses quite clearly (see last photo), and the OXO tower on the South Bank. It was also a good chance to put the iPhone 17 Pro Max’s cameras to the test using the various lenses and zoom levels.

When the weather improves, I’m sure people will be fighting for a table to sit outside and enjoy the London skyline. Speaking of fighting for seats, I had another incident where I booked a desk – a week beforehand, and somebody was already using it when I got into the office, so I was sitting in a cramped meeting nook for most of the day with just the 14″ laptop screen. I’ll be working from home today to give my limbs a chance to unwind.