For the past few weeks I’ve been working on a personal project. I came up with the idea as a joke response to a post (since deleted) written by a friend elsewhere. But what is this idea? There already exists a programming language Erlang. I have designed a language unrelated to this but with the name uhhlang . It is a stack-based language and the ONLY valid tokens (aside from comments) are…
This post was written as part of the 2024 A-to-Z of Blogging challenge . For every Monday to Saturday in April (meaning 26 days), an article corresponding to each letter of the alphabet is to be written. An index of my entries can be seen here . I’ve mention in several posts in this series that I enjoy language - and languages. The language I started studying most recently is Mandarin, sometimes…
This post was written as part of the 2024 A-to-Z of Blogging challenge . For every Monday to Saturday in April (meaning 26 days), an article corresponding to each letter of the alphabet is to be written. An index of my entries can be seen here . English has some lesser used and (and somewhat archaic) words to describe time relevant to the present. The first of these is representative of today’s…
This post was written as part of the 2024 A-to-Z of Blogging challenge . For every Monday to Saturday in April (meaning 26 days), an article corresponding to each letter of the alphabet is to be written. An index of my entries can be seen here . For the letter X , today's entry is a head nod to former Greek economist and Prime Minister Xenophon Euthymiou Zolotas . English has inherited words from…
This post was written as part of the 2024 A-to-Z of Blogging challenge . For every Monday to Saturday in April (meaning 26 days), an article corresponding to each letter of the alphabet is to be written. An index of my entries can be seen here . I’ve been in involved in web-adjacent technology for pretty much all of my working life. I’ve worked on some significant large scale websites (both…
This post was written as part of the 2024 A-to-Z of Blogging challenge . For every Monday to Saturday in April (meaning 26 days), an article corresponding to each letter of the alphabet is to be written. An index of my entries can be seen here . Today’s challenge letter is V and the topic I’ve chosen is Vexillology . Wossat? It’s the study of flags. I hesitate to call it an interest of mine, since…
This post was written as part of the 2024 A-to-Z of Blogging challenge . For every Monday to Saturday in April (meaning 26 days), an article corresponding to each letter of the alphabet is to be written. An index of my entries can be seen here . When I still lived in Manchester a friend asked me to join a small project he’d created. This was a small volunteer organisation which hosted websites for…
This post was written as part of the 2024 A-to-Z of Blogging challenge . For every Monday to Saturday in April (meaning 26 days), an article corresponding to each letter of the alphabet is to be written. An index of my entries can be seen here . Today’s entry in the A-to-Z of Blogging Challenge is a bit of a rant. The letter is t and the topic is Tracking . I hinted the other day (when talking…
This post was written as part of the 2024 A-to-Z of Blogging challenge . For every Monday to Saturday in April (meaning 26 days), an article corresponding to each letter of the alphabet is to be written. An index of my entries can be seen here . A few months ago I encountered an open set of guidelines for publishing structured data on websites. This standard is referred to by the name “schema.org”…
This post was written as part of the 2024 A-to-Z of Blogging challenge . For every Monday to Saturday in April (meaning 26 days), an article corresponding to each letter of the alphabet is to be written. An index of my entries can be seen here . Continuing the A-to-Z Challenge, today’s letter is R and the topic is RSS . RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a way that a site can publish its…
This post was written as part of the 2024 A-to-Z of Blogging challenge . For every Monday to Saturday in April (meaning 26 days), an article corresponding to each letter of the alphabet is to be written. An index of my entries can be seen here . Continuing the A-to-Z Challenge, today’s letter is Q and the topic is QR Codes . First off, what are they? The abbreviation QR code is short for “quick…
This post was written as part of the 2024 A-to-Z of Blogging challenge . For every Monday to Saturday in April (meaning 26 days), an article corresponding to each letter of the alphabet is to be written. An index of my entries can be seen here . Today’s letter is P and the theme is punctuation . In particular I wish to talk about two punctuation marks: The Oxford Comma and the Interrobang. The…
This post was written as part of the 2024 A-to-Z of Blogging challenge . For every Monday to Saturday in April (meaning 26 days), an article corresponding to each letter of the alphabet is to be written. An index of my entries can be seen here . Today’s letter is O and the associated topic is -ologies and -isms . I love words and etymology. As a child I used to read the dictionary recreationally,…
This post was written as part of the 2024 A-to-Z of Blogging challenge . For every Monday to Saturday in April (meaning 26 days), an article corresponding to each letter of the alphabet is to be written. An index of my entries can be seen here . Today's topic is one that makes me slightly nervous, although that's not today's word. The word (perhaps phrase would be better) is new beginnings .…
This post was written as part of the 2024 A-to-Z of Blogging challenge . For every Monday to Saturday in April (meaning 26 days), an article corresponding to each letter of the alphabet is to be written. An index of my entries can be seen here . Today's letter is M and the associated word is Mathematics . I've enjoyed numbers and maths for as long as I can remember. In school numbers and…
This post was written as part of the 2024 A-to-Z of Blogging challenge . For every Monday to Saturday in April (meaning 26 days), an article corresponding to each letter of the alphabet is to be written. An index of my entries can be seen here . Today’s L-word is “Languages”. I’ve had an interest in languages for as long as I can remember. My mum is good at languages too, so perhaps some of her…
This post was written as part of the 2024 A-to-Z of Blogging challenge . For every Monday to Saturday in April (meaning 26 days), an article corresponding to each letter of the alphabet is to be written. An index of my entries can be seen here . One of the hobbies I have (though I’m less active in it at the moment) is knitting - mainly by hand though I’ve done a tiny bit of machine knitting when I…
This post was written as part of the 2024 A-to-Z of Blogging challenge . For every Monday to Saturday in April (meaning 26 days), an article corresponding to each letter of the alphabet is to be written. An index of my entries can be seen here . This website is simple - both in terms of functionality and design. This is intentional. I want to be able to focus on the content. Other than the comment…
This post was written as part of the 2024 A-to-Z of Blogging challenge . For every Monday to Saturday in April (meaning 26 days), an article corresponding to each letter of the alphabet is to be written. An index of my entries can be seen here . My sense of integrity is important to me, including in the workplace. I’ve a few stories but two scenarios in particular come to mind. The first is: I was…
This post was written as part of the 2024 A-to-Z of Blogging challenge . For every Monday to Saturday in April (meaning 26 days), an article corresponding to each letter of the alphabet is to be written. An index of my entries can be seen here . Like many of my peers in tech, my handwriting is pretty awful. For many years whilst I was in school I had private handwriting lessons. It did help a…
According to this , April 9th is CSS Naked Day! Quoting from the website: “The idea behind CSS Naked Day is to promote web standards. Plain and simple.” Today, therefore, I’ve removed the CSS declarations from this site (with one tiny exception that appears on one page. Can you find it?) A bit of silliness. Why not‽
This post was written as part of the 2024 A-to-Z of Blogging challenge . For every Monday to Saturday in April (meaning 26 days), an article corresponding to each letter of the alphabet is to be written. An index of my entries can be seen here . I like to play games - of the boardgame and cardgame variety. A few years ago I came across a flowchart which can help one to decide what game to play…
This post was written as part of the 2024 A-to-Z of Blogging challenge . For every Monday to Saturday in April (meaning 26 days), an article corresponding to each letter of the alphabet is to be written. An index of my entries can be seen here . Low effort post since I'm visiting family today. Today's letter is 'F' and the word is "Felines". As a child I grew up with cats but lived in rented…
This post was written as part of the 2024 A-to-Z of Blogging challenge . For every Monday to Saturday in April (meaning 26 days), an article corresponding to each letter of the alphabet is to be written. An index of my entries can be seen here . The series “A-to-Z Blogging Challenge” continues with today’s blog entry on the topic of Events . I have a number of varied hobbies and it’s fun to spend…
This post was written as part of the 2024 A-to-Z of Blogging challenge . For every Monday to Saturday in April (meaning 26 days), an article corresponding to each letter of the alphabet is to be written. An index of my entries can be seen here . Living alone I don’t bake desserts all that often because I’ll be tempted to eat them at an unhealthy rate! But I do enjoy baking for a social event,…
This post was written as part of the 2024 A-to-Z of Blogging challenge . For every Monday to Saturday in April (meaning 26 days), an article corresponding to each letter of the alphabet is to be written. An index of my entries can be seen here . A few months ago a friend introduced me to Caddy , a webserver. Why yet another one? Well, ultimately this one fits my needs better. The huge benefit,…
This post was written as part of the 2024 A-to-Z of Blogging challenge . For every Monday to Saturday in April (meaning 26 days), an article corresponding to each letter of the alphabet is to be written. An index of my entries can be seen here . One of the numerous hobbies I have is bellringing. The -ology word for it is campanology but virtually no one in the community calls it that. A rather…
This post was written as part of the 2024 A-to-Z of Blogging challenge . For every Monday to Saturday in April (meaning 26 days), an article corresponding to each letter of the alphabet is to be written. An index of my entries can be seen here . I was thinking recently that I've let my blog languish for a long time (having checked, it's over two years). Apt in timing, yesterday I discovered the…
Over the past few weeks a word puzzle called Wordle has become popular on social media , or at least on Twitter/X, the only social media forum in which I have any kind of active presence. For those not familiar with the game, the goal is to determine the 5-letter target word by making guesses at that word and being told which of those letters appear in the target and of those letters which are in…
This post is nothing to do with public transportation. Instead I refer to the concept called the Bus Number, which is a way to quantify organisation risk. It refers to the minimum number of people in an organisation that need to be hit by a bus for there to be lost knowledge. A less jarring version of this term is the lottery factor; referring to people who would leave the organisation were they…
For the past year or two I’ve been tracking my finances using a Plain text system called beancount . Following on from yesterday’s post on online grocery shopping , I was thinking about the sorts of graphs I can extract from my Beancount data. For the graphs below I’ve left the dates present but removed the numbers. The shape is what tells the story. My grocery expenditure , with bars for each…
Last October I started grocery shopping online. This worked very well for around 9 months. Product accuracy was high and it was very easy to request a refund (at point of delivery) for unwanted substitutions or for items extremely close to expiry. But even still, the vast majority of items were in stock and so things were rarely a problem. But around August of this year, things took a downturn.…
Another nostaligiac post! In the past I used to write a lot of prose. My dayjob has occasional call for it now but my time is normally spent writing code and mentoring people. That lack is part of my motivation for wanting to kickstart this blog. I’ve no idea how long I’ll keep this up. Maybe just until the 25th. Most of what I write (and wrote, for that matter) is report or tutorial in nature…
My niblings are aged 5 and 7. Due to COVID I’ve not been travelling to see broader family much but I have had a few videocalls with them. Because they both have an interest in science and doing things, I’ve come up with a few ideas for activities. On one such occasion I talked them through making a lemon drizzle cake ( my own recipe, available here for those interested ). On another occasion I…
A couple of months ago I discovered the website for the so-named microCOVID project . What’s a microcovid? It’s a unit by which one can estimate risk of contracting covid based on one’s lifestyle - things such as how one travels to work, with how many people, how far apart and so on. One can enter one’s risk appetite and the website will show whether the indicated activities put someone above or…
When I first gained access to the Internet in the mid 90s, the world was a very different place. The web was still in its infancy. Usenet was still very popular. Online culture was very much focussed on sharing of information rather than the skew towards collection of data that seems to proliferate today. One of the things I remember is ROT13 - a simple way that text would be hidden, but done so…
I see lots of advice about how for candidates on how to prepare for interviews, covering both algorithm specifics (e.g. “how to crack the technical interview”), and how to prepare for common non-technical questions (“Why do you want to work here?”, “Where do you see yourself in five years time?” and the like). But interviews are a two way street. They’re not solely for the company to decide…
A few days ago I wrote about an issue which was particularly tricky to debug . Here’s another such story from a few months ago. Context At this client, we support the websites used by members of the public when applying for or renewing passports online, along with the associated applications, systems, and third-party providers needed for these. Problem A specific customer’s passport application…
Don’t name things new or old ! Systems are replaced in IT often (though perhaps not as often as we might sometimes like or that they deserve!). Some of the time, these old and new systems will co-exist. Given enough time, such a system might even be replaced a second time, maybe with some of the same staff members present and even by the same staff members. When in the middle of such a transition,…
Meetings are a necessary part of pretty much any office-based job. (I’ve only minimal experience in other work sectors so cannot meaningfully comment on them). People often feel both that meetings are unproductive and that they take time away from work itself getting done. There may be an element of truth in this but that doesn’t mean that meetings are forgoable. I say that well-run meetings can…
I’ve been writing code for a very long time. I like to think I’m good at it, but know also that I can be better. My current job, as much as I enjoy it, has limited scope for writing software; it’s typically limited to writing Infrastructure as Code which is close, but not entirely the same. To scratch that itch, and keep skills honed, I like to make use of puzzle websites. These are websites which…
According to a colleague I mentored around 10 years ago, “What do the logs say?” is one of my mantras. I guess that’s fair. It probably still applies now. [Current colleagues, feel free to pass comment!] Logs are designed to be a useful source of diagnostic information and they’re often the first thing I check, after any message immediately output in stderr or stdout. But what happens when logs…
“How do I write good code?” was a question put to me by one of my direct reports a little over a year ago, in one of their one-to-ones. I was able to give a brief answer, but the question has been ticking over in my mind. A few days ago I launched this blog, and so I thought it would be a good opportunity to put some of those digested thoughts into written form. There isn’t a simple answer this…
Like much of those in systems/development and sys/dev-adjacent roles (and many other industries, for that matter), I’ve been working from home for the vast majority of the past 2 years. I have only occasionally travelled in to either the office or to client sites. During this time, my employer has grown from 80ish employees to 130ish employees. Some people I’ve not met in person. And for a long…
This post started off as a conversation with a Twitter mutual (also called Matt), in which we lamented some of the pain-points of HTML and came up with a couple of proto-ideas of solutions. Markup, particularly in HTML and its relatives, can often have deeply nested tags. Sometimes, when writing a closing tag, the hierarchical context of its opening countpart can be off-screen. This is…