The Public Domain
What do Winnie the Pooh, Dr Jekyll, and Peter Pan have in common?
Alvin Bryan
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Latest posts
2024 in Review
Never again.
White Hippo Cartoons
An overview of the Scandi phenomenon and its creator.
What made you want to stop coding?
The perennial question of coding and developer advocates.
Gatsby to Astro
Why and how I migrated this website from Gatsby to Astro.
2023 in Review
A varied year filled with many experiences.
18 months in DevRel
What I did during my last 6 months as a Developer Advocate at Contentful.
A year as a Developer Advocate
What I did during my second 6 months as a Developer Advocate.
Friendly conference questions
How to use breakout discussions to make asking questions at conferences more friendly.
Privacy and security, quickly
A simple list of best practices for online privacy and security.
L&D budgets for web people
Some of us are lucky enough to work for companies that offer an “education stipend” as a benefit. Here are some tips to make the most of it.
2022 in Review
A year of highs and lows
My first 6 months as a Developer Advocate
I’ve been a developer advocate full-time at Contentful for 6 months. I feel extremely fortunate. I love this job so much. There’s an unsaid tradition to write a blog post when you cross the 6-month milestone, so here we go.
How I became a developer advocate
When I meet developers, “How did you become a developer advocate?” is the question that I get asked the most. This is the long answer.
Tips to remember latitude and longitude
I like coding maps, but would always mix up latitude and longitude. I came up with some tips to remember them.
Layoffs
My past layoff, what I wish I knew, and some tips if you've been laid off too.
Learning to code in time of crisis
Whether you’ve been laid off, struggling to make ends meet with the crazy inflation or dissatisfied with your current job, you may have wondered: Could I work in tech?
How ethical alternatives succeed: a Signal case study
In January 2021, Signal was only known by journalists and privacy geeks. In a few days, it topped the charts and was on everyone's phones. Why?
2021 in Review
Another weird, exhausting year
Arranging objects in 2D and 3D
Neat visual arrangements made with code
Things I don’t know
Here are the (coding-related) things I don't know, as of 2021. In an effort to help junior developers feel more comfortable.
What’s the problem with metadata?
Big, data-hungry companies claim that the collection of metadata is harmless. That's not true.
Software engineering and barriers to entry
In the past decade, job titles for people who code have shifted from "developer" to "engineer." This could do more harm than good if we're not careful.
Manage your personal knowledge with a second brain
About the problem that 𐃏Roam Research, Obsidian, Logseq, and others try to solve.
Why I love Audio Drama
Delving into audio dramas, one of my best discoveries from 2019. Includes my favourites
Note-taking apps for the data conscious
My requirements for a notes app and a rundown of candidates.
What’s a digital garden?
Explorations and thoughts on digital gardens.
2020 in Review
2020, you know, what the hell.
Nifty command lines: tldr
Learn about other commands in a human-friendly way
Nifty command lines: host
Domain records made less weird. Plus GitHub and Gitlab domain settings.
Nifty command lines: rename
Batch-rename your files quickly
Nifty command lines: tree
A cool way to show your files and folder structure
Nifty command lines
In this series of articles, I'll share a few command-line tools that have been helpful to me.
Under the hood: WebGL sketch
A daily log for the homepage graphics.
Under the hood: Tech Stack
Looking at the different technical choices I made for this website.
New Website!
Motivations and goals for this personal website.
2019 in Review
Another year in review. It's been a unique year in many respects.
2018 in Review
I write this review well into 2019 already, but who cares? This is mainly for myself, but I enjoy reading these and you probably do too.
Weak References in JavaScript
Looking at Weak and Strong references in JavaScript. It's a concept front-end developers are not used to.