Contact Iain Weir

The Iainbox around this message is a joke: it's an inbox, it's just Iain's, and Notmail is not really mail. This bit is not a joke: I'm always up for a conversation about digital transformation, product development or sports technology. Email is best.

Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ifweir
GitHub: github.com/shutteritch

What I can help with

• Digital transformation. Platform migrations, systems integration, digital strategy.
• Product development. From concept to launch, user research to iteration.
• Sports technology. Performance analytics, fan engagement, broadcast innovation.
• Consulting. Technical leadership, product strategy, team management.

Whether you're looking for a collaborator, a consultant, or just want to talk about technology and rowing, say hello.

Things I've built

• fantasyrowing.com
• targetsplits.com
• tapdown.io
• winterrowingleague.com

If one of them has been useful to you, you can buy me a coffee.

--
Iain Weir
Newcastle upon Tyne, England
Sent from a 56k modem, so this may take a moment

TOUR DE TOON — RACE BULLETIN
Tour II · September 2026 · Stage 34

Team Monday sign off with a flourish on the hill that always hurt
A last-gasp climb of Gibson Street gave Iain, racing for Team Monday, one final number to be proud of as the Tour draws to a close for them.

Read the full stage report →

New to the race? The Tour de Toon is Iain's bike commute across Newcastle, reported as though it were a grand tour, because a ride to work and a ride to work with a race number on it are the same ride and only one of them is interesting.

Every ride is a Stage. Four full weeks, starting on the first Monday of the month, make a Tour. When the calendar leaves a spare week before the next Tour begins, that week is the Classics: one-day races with a winner and nothing carried over.

There is only one rider, and it is Iain. He races for a different team every weekday — Team Monday through Team Friday, with Team Weekend guesting — and it is the teams, not the rider, that contest the classification. Four weeks gives every weekday team exactly four days, so the table is fair by construction and the excuses have to be better.

The jerseys: yellow for the best average speed, green for points won on the named segments of the route, polka dot for the climbing, and white for the best effort on a segment the Tour has only just discovered. Each stage is written up from the ride's own data — the speeds, the segments, the wind, the hill that went badly.

Standings. Team Friday lead the general classification on 24.8 km/h from 6 stages. This is subject to change, usually by Thursday.

Standings, jerseys and every stage so far →
Subscribe to the bulletin by RSS →

You are receiving this because the rider put you on the mailing list himself, from an account he also owns, having first written the bulletin, ridden the stage and set the results. The unsubscribe link genuinely works. Nobody has ever used it, on account of nobody else being on the list.

I've been using LLMs to write code for a while. The Tour de Toon is the first time I've put one inside the product: it reads my ride off Strava, gets handed the facts and a few notes on style, and writes the stage report you can see in the bulletin above.

It's a closed loop, Strava in and this site out, so nobody else can talk to it. Except that anyone can name a Strava segment on my route, and the segment names go into the prompt. That is the whole attack, and it's laughable, and it's also enough.

The article is about that: what changes when the LLM is the product rather than the tool, the options for keeping strangers out of the prompt, and why it's worth deciding on purpose before you hand a model your data and your tools. My three year old's term for the attacker is in there too.

Read: Building with AI, and building AI in →

Sent from the same account that wrote the article, built the pipeline and rode the stage. It is a small operation.

Congratulations! Your free Notmail account is now active. You have 2 MB of storage — enough for approximately 400 emails, or eleven photographs.

Your address is [email protected]. Tell your friends! Tell your family! Print it on a business card in Comic Sans!

Remember: never give your password to anyone, and always sign out when using a shared computer at the library.

This message will be kept in your Iainbox forever, because deleting it feels like throwing away a photograph.

Dear Notmail Member,

Following a meeting, your Inbox has been renamed your Iainbox. It works exactly like an Inbox, except that it is Iain's, which the old name failed to make clear.

Frequently Asked Questions
Q. Is it still an inbox? A. Yes.
Q. Then why? A. The stationery had already been printed.
Q. Can I change it back? A. No. Options > Folders > Rename is greyed out, and will remain greyed out until at least 2026.
Q. Is Notmail even mail? A. Not really. It is a contact page. Hence the name.

Notmail: it's not mail, and your Iainbox is not an inbox. We hope this clears things up.

> > > > > FORWARD THIS TO 10 PEOPLE IN THE NEXT 5 MINUTES

> > > > > or you will have bad luck for SEVEN YEARS. This is not a joke,

> > > > > a woman in Ohio ignored it and her computer exploded.

> > > >

> > > > Ha! Thought you would like this one.

> > >

> > Passing it on!!

>

Iain — is this real? Also your father cannot find the internet again. He says the blue E has gone. Have you eaten?

Love Mum xxx

📎 dancing_baby.gif (1.4 MB)

All staff are reminded that at 00:00 on 1 January 2000, every computer, kettle, lift and traffic light may cease to function.

Please complete the following before leaving today:

1. Print all of your files onto paper.
2. Write the year "2000" on a post-it and attach it to your monitor.
3. Fill the bath with water.

We have been assured by the vendor that the mainframe is compliant. We have also been assured by the vendor that the mainframe is not a mainframe, so confidence is mixed.

Retrospective note from 2026: nothing happened, and a generation of people quietly learned that boring preparation is what makes disasters look like overreactions.

Iain — the crews are asking about Saturday. Any chance of the photos this week?

Last year the other photographer took eleven days and by then everyone had stopped caring. Two of the parents said they would have bought prints if they had arrived while they still remembered the race.

> They will be online tonight and in the post tomorrow.

> That is the whole business, really — the pictures are not better than

> anyone else's, they are just there while it still matters.

Perfect. See you at Henley.

Dave (♥ ~*aWaY*~ ♥) has just signed in.

He has changed his personal message to song lyrics again. It is not clear who they are aimed at. It is never clear who they are aimed at.

Dave says: "hey"

Dave says: "u still up?"

Dave says: "nvm"

Your homepage ~iain/rowing/index.html is now live. Current features:

• A visitor counter (currently reading 00000047, of which 44 are you)
• A MIDI file that starts automatically and cannot be stopped
• An animated "UNDER CONSTRUCTION" sign that has been there for two years
• A guestbook containing one entry, from Dave

Tip: consider a tiled starfield background. Everyone is doing it.

Twenty-six years later the counter has gone, the MIDI has gone, and the site is still under construction. Some things are load-bearing.

Somebody built a prediction-league app for rowing fans, single-handedly, from concept to store. That somebody was you, and you are reading your own marketing email, which is a low moment.

Top 50 in the App Store's Sports category. 4.9★ from 36 reviews. Over 60% of surveyed users say they watched racing they otherwise would not have.

Read the case study →

Thanks for the conversation — the piece is up.

We talked about live data in broadcast, why rowing is harder to televise than almost anything else, and what happens when you put a GPS unit in a boat and a graphics engine on the riverbank.

Read the interview →

DEAR ESTEEMED FRIEND,

I am the PRINCE OF THE RIVER TYNE. Following a regrettable incident at a regatta, the sum of FORTY MILLION POUNDS (£40,000,000) in unclaimed prize money sits in an account I cannot reach, as I am a river and do not have a passport.

I require only a TRUSTWORTHY PARTNER to receive these funds. For your assistance you shall receive 30%, a commemorative blazer, and the eternal gratitude of the North East.

PLEASE REPLY WITH UTMOST URGENCY AND CONFIDENTIALITY.

Filed under Junk, where it has sat for twenty-three years, still hopeful.

*** YOU ARE THE 1,000,000th VISITOR ***

You have been selected to receive a FREE iPod Nano!!! Simply click the flashing banner 47 times and complete 12 offers including a book club, a fishing magazine and a timeshare in Rhyl.

Nobody has ever received the iPod. Not once. Not one person.

Your domain is expiring. Renew now for the low price of £249.99 per year.

We are not your registrar. We have never been your registrar. We found your details in a public database and printed this on a letter that looks like an invoice.

The single most effective piece of marketing of the decade, and it was a lie in a beige envelope.

Thanks for the chat — CV attached as promised. Twenty years across finance, content, sports technology and digital transformation.

The short version: I apply technology in ways that measurably change how people behave.

📎 IainWeirCV.pdf (412 KB)

Attachment unavailable. Iain writes the CV for the role rather than keeping one on a shelf — ask him for it.

The longer version is on the Work page →

This draft is empty. It has been empty for twenty years.

Whatever it was going to say, the moment passed, and the world kept turning. Let this be a lesson: send the email.

You have been outbid!

Item: SONY PSP (BRAND NEW SEALED!! NO RESERVE!! L@@K)
Your maximum bid: £81.00
Current bid: £81.50 by consoleking1987
Time remaining: 4 minutes 12 seconds

Do not let it get away! Return to the item and increase your maximum bid now.

You will lose this auction by fifty pence in the last nine seconds, and you will think about it, on and off, for twenty years.

Hello Iain, and welcome to this week's MoneySaving Weekly. Grab a cuppa. This one's a biggie.

*** THIS WEEK'S TOP TIP: RECLAIM YOUR BANK CHARGES ***

Been stung £30 for going 47p overdrawn? YOU MAY BE ABLE TO GET IT BACK. Print the template letter, post it recorded delivery, and wait. Thousands are doing it. The banks are hoping you won't.

THIS WEEK'S TOP DEALS

1. A high street bank is BRIBING new customers with a FREE £5 to switch. Switch, take the fiver, switch back in six months. This is not cheating. This is tarting.
2. 0% balance transfers are now up to TWELVE MONTHS. Move your debt, pay it down, set a reminder for month eleven. SET THE REMINDER.
3. Buy through a cashback site first and get paid for shopping you were doing anyway. It takes nine seconds and pays for Christmas.
4. Supermarket loyalty points are worth FOUR TIMES more if you swap them for days out instead of groceries. Nobody does this. Do this.
5. Your "free" mobile insurance probably isn't. CHECK. Cancel. That's £84 a year.

MARTIN'S— sorry, PENNY'S MONEY MANTRA: "Do I need it? Can I afford it? Have I checked if it's cheaper elsewhere? Will I use it?" If you answered no to any, DON'T BUY IT.

FORWARD THIS TO A FRIEND! Every penny saved is a penny earned, and every friend forwarded is one more person who will also never work out how to unsubscribe.

Til next week,
Penny

You are receiving this because you ticked a box in 2004. The unsubscribe link goes to a page that says "are you sure?" and then does nothing. Twenty-two years later you have made a kind of peace with it.

Congratulations! Your item NOKIA 3310 (works, no charger) sold for £3.20.

Postage charged: £1.50. Actual postage: £4.10. Envelope: your own. Trip to the post office: forty minutes, in the rain.

Please leave feedback for snake_champion_99, who has left you the following: "item as described A+++ WOULD BUY AGAIN AAA++".

You have received an animated greeting card!

To view it, click the link below, install a plug-in, restart your browser, install a different plug-in, give up, and telephone your auntie instead, which is what she wanted in the first place.

The card played a MIDI version of a song she likes. The card is gone now. She would still like the phone call.

WHY PAY M0RE FOR 1NK???

Our compatible cartridges are just as good as the branded ones and will absolutely not leak black ink over the inside of your printer, your desk, the carpet, or the essay due tomorrow.

They will do all four.

Progress: 47%
Time remaining: 14 hours, 22 minutes
Speed: 4.1 KB/s

Please do not use the telephone. Please do not let anyone else use the telephone. Please explain to your mother, again, why she cannot use the telephone.

At 94% someone will pick up the handset downstairs and you will start again tomorrow.

That is all the mail there is. There is no more.

Thank you for reading someone else's Iainbox for this long — genuinely, that is a lot of scrolling for a joke on a contact page.

If you would like to send a real message to a real person, the New Message button at the top does exactly that, and it reaches me.