chameth.com the personal website of Chris Smith

My interests

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favourite things

Inspired by Chris Burnell, this page lists things I’m currently interested in, in no particular order. A lot of these interests wax and wane somewhat over time; I might go a while without doing something, then my interest will perk back up again. I’m doing this to give people an idea about the person behind the website (this is a personal site, after all!). If anything here catches your attention and you want to geek out about it, drop me a message.

Last updated: 15th October 2026

The open web

I love the web. I miss the days when it wasn’t so dominated by corporations and social media: when everything didn’t have to seem so polished, and people just did things because they were passionate about them, not to “go viral” or whatever.

It’s still a great way to connect with people, and I wish more people would put themselves out there outside the walled gardens of Facebook and its ilk. I subscribe to a bunch of RSS feeds from personal blogs (I should really add a blogroll at some point…) and love stumbling across new, original sites.

Tinkering & automation

I like being able to fiddle with stuff, understand it, and tweak it to work how I want. I love open source software, and stuff that caters towards power users. I’m happy fiddling with electronics, and enjoy DIY.

I run Linux on all my computers, and will tinker with configs to get everything working just so. I write custom styles and user scripts to make websites look and behave how I want to. Using a mobile phone makes me sad because they’re so limited in what they can do in that regard. I have a 3D printer, and gleefully churn out bits of plastic that perfectly fix problems. I don’t tend to print big “fun” things, but a lot of holders, inserts, cases, hooks, and so on.

In the same vein, I really like automating things. It’s very satisfying to cobble something together that replaces a manual process, especially a tedious one. Often times the biggest hurdle is interacting with a walled garden, or closed data source. It shouldn’t be difficult to find out if there’s a new book in a series available to buy from Amazon, but it’s damn near impossible. Grr.

Programming

I program for my day job, but I also really enjoy it as a hobby. Some of this is an overlap with tinkering, but I also like the abstract concept of programming as well. There’s something deeply satisfying about designing something well. Getting the level of abstraction right so it’s not too cumbersome but will likely be good enough for future changes. Finding a nice elegant way to do something. Even just refactoring to make something consistent can make me very happy.

My programming languages of choice are:

Recently I’ve been using LLMs more and more (see the expanding scope of coding agents). It’s a very different kind of enjoyment to what I get from hand-rolling code, but it’s still very enjoyable to me. Being able to go from a few sentences of English to a full application is wild, and guiding the LLMs down the right path is still rewarding.

Video games

I tend to get super into a game, play it every waking moment for a little while, and then drift away from it. Sometimes I just run out of things that interest me, or it just stops being fun for whatever reason. Other times a shiny new thing takes its place. I generally prefer games that I can play cooperatively with friends. The ones I keep coming back to are:

I also enjoy attending LAN events, although it’s more for the social aspect than actually getting sweaty in video games. I’m pretty sure I’ve been to at least one LAN where I spent more time programming than playing games…

Fitness

I’m currently into running. I started off walking, but wanted a bit more bang for my buck. I also dabble in cycling a little, when I have time and the weather’s favourable. I’ve got a fitness page that tracks some things, alongside a page for my walking history, one that tracked my progress through the couch-to-5k programme, and one for my parkrun participation.

My goal is to run a marathon before I turn 40. I’ve got a plan that seems achievable, and have booked some 10k races and even a half marathon. Despite that I’m not sure how realistic a goal it is, but I guess we’ll see!

Puzzles

I love a good puzzle, especially in the format of a puzzle hunt. My favourites to compete in are Enigame and Glyph. In the same vein, I’m a big fan of Escape Rooms.

I also enjoy crosswords, an occasional sudoku, the NYT connections puzzle, and debugging why none of my code works.

Films

Check out my films page for more details:

/films/

I’ve been watching a lot of films recently. I discovered I like horror films; who knew?! To get a quick look at what I’m into, I rank all the films I’ve watched in this list:

Watched films ranked

Poster of MidsommarPoster of Easy APoster of HackersPoster of The MatrixPoster of Sinners

Every film I’ve watched since I started logging, ranked.

Obviously super subjective, and subject to change often and arbitrarily.

269 films

Music

Check out my music page for more details:

/music/

Here’s what I listened to most recently:

Yours Truly, Angry Mob
Kaiser Chiefs — Ruby Yours Truly, Angry Mob Scrobbled 3m ago

Books

I am a voracious reader. I’ll often read for an hour or more before bed. Occasionally I’ll get hooked on a book and accidentally read it to the end, and not get to sleep until 5am or something silly.

I generally read sci-fi and litRPG (a somewhat niche genre, where the characters follow RPG-style game rules; something about the progression you get when people can explicitly level up really tickles my brain).

Some favourites:

Board Games

Check out my board games page for more details:

/boardgames/

I like modern board games. I have a decent collection and will sometimes lug it around to foist on my friends at events, and sometimes have a dozen turn-based games going on Board Game Arena. I’m a big fan of engine building, but I’m also a sucker for unique mechanics and really well executed themes. Some picks: