Panic attacks

The general and the particular

Doing it by hand

Happy new year

Fixing Twitter

Toys

Inventing

Next year

Cooking

Inside-out

Near-future systems

History

Gardens and gardening

Back to Twitter

Phones

An apology

Cats

After the web

Beauty

Radio

Focus

Pubs

Siri

Why I don't ride a bike in London

Swearing

Death

Awful

Messy

Languages

Board games

Ubuntu project setup

Parliament Week

Reading

Back to Tinderbox

Why I'm writing

Why I don't hate the Kindle

What did you want to be when you grew up?

We're living in a post-search world

Visual programming

Video games

Twitter stuff

Towards the evening

The trouble with text files

Tasks

Social spam

Sleep

Simple websites with a Mac

Religion

Privacy

Pictures

Nothing

Music

Movable Type

Meteorology

Letting go

Launchers

Knowledge work

Instapaper

Innovation

How naive I am

How computer codes work

How I write

Good things

Getting stuck

Emptying to fill again

Dressing

Criticism

Competition

Breaking up

Authenticity

Age

I live in London and work at the UK Parliament. I'm one member of a service design team. I don't work for central government, a government department or a government agency. I'm not a civil servant. I'm not a politician or a researcher. I'm a staffer, not a contractor.

My name is Robert Brook. It doesn't have a vowel at the end. And I'm Robert, not Rob. Yes, I do work in the Parliamentary Service. Yes, I do work in the technology department now.

To clear up any misinderstanding: I don't work for Hansard. Now, don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against Hansard. Some of my best friends work for Hansard. Well, okay, some people I know work for Hansard. But I don't.

I have a really interesting job and I'm proud to have worked with some extremely able and committed people, both now and in the past. Our team works on several projects, some of which are public. If you're into public service delivery over the web, I'd love to talk.

There are photos of me on Flickr: I really do look like a sort of grumpy trainspotter. I used to appear in a podcast called R2, which was not safe for work. I run a few harmless Twitter bots. I post photos to Flickr, mainly from my mobile phone - but not very often. I use Instagram now and then. I listen to music at Last.fm. I also have a Tumblr site at rbrtbrk.com.

I don't hosts comments on this site. I sometimes edit posts after they've be published - though only to add information. If there's anything you'd like me to write about, or clarify, please let me know.

How to contact me If you're on Twitter, you can message me at @robertbrook. My personal email address is mail@robertbrook.com - you're welcome to use it. I read email at that account at least daily. If you know my work email address, or you can guess it, please don't expect an immediate acknowledgement or reply.

If you know my personal mobile or home numbers, you'll know I don't take voice calls or pick up voicemail. SMS only please.

Disclaimer I don't write about or comment on matters relating to the staff, members or policies of the UK Parliament; government or the civil service; individual MPs or MEPs; devolved administrations within the UK or any organisation that might be reasonable understood to be 'political'. Yes, I have my opinions, but no, I don't share them publicly.

This site was last updated on 26 Jan 2012.