Tommy Palmer's Blog

A hot take about Tailwind

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I've used Tailwind on more than a few projects, and I tend to go back and forward on my opinion of it. Unlike most people who use it though, I actually like writing plain old regular CSS. But calling CSS plain, old, or regular, is unfair. Compared to what I first learnt in 2006 CSS can do so much more. Despite advances in CSS, Tailwind has grown in popularity enough that it's now shipped with frameworks like Phoenix, Laravel, and Tanstack.

Many frontend developers use Tailwind as part of their standard stack. As a side effect, lots of public code is written in Tailwind, which allowed AI coding agents to be trained on it. In turn, this led to effects like Tailwind purple, where every AI spits out obvious Tailwind influenced UI.

Tailwind's recent layoffs were well publicised, with the founder attributing that to a drop off in sales of Tailwind ecosystem products which he blamed on AI usage.

Don't mistake this post as a celebration of job losses to AI. I am definitely wondering where my career goes after it's prompts the whole way down. Tailwind is a methodology, so it was always at risk of something else coming along and usurping it. Still though, it's not a good look to launch a new product weeks after laying off most of the team.

But if an AI can spit out a decent looking template using Tailwind in seconds, why pay for anything but token usage?

Inline freestyling

Tailwind solves 2 main problems:

removing the need to understand what styles apply to what elements - aka scoping
copying elements from one project and keeping the styles is possible - aka portablity

For some, CSS' approach to scoping doesn't make sense. But as frontend shifted from people who know HTML, CSS, and JS, to people who only know React, understanding how CSS works became a less common goal for many frontend developers. React didn't ship with an opinionated way to work with CSS, which led to a whole ecosystem attempting to solve it for those that thought it was a problem. Packages like CSS modules, CSS-in-JS, Styled Components, and finally Tailwind.

Tailwind also solved the problem of building something that looked good without much work. The creators of Tailwind provide plenty of off the shelf components for you to copy and paste into your project. Once you've got Tailwind set up in your project, it takes a few minutes to get whole design systems together that look OK. Tailwind allows you to assume that with certain class names, the building blocks of your project will look the same as they do on the docs. A further ecosystem capitalised on the portability, with component libraries like daisyUI and shadecn/ui.

Other frameworks, like Svelte and Astro, solve scoping and portability natively by allowing you to write regular CSS and compiling it down to scoped CSS for the browser. I can't find a link, but I remember watching the creator of Svelte, Rich Harris, deriding React for shipping without a way to write CSS.

I know that people use Svelte and Astro with Tailwind, but in the projects I've built with those I haven't felt a need for it.

Like anything else in making computers do what you want, CSS seems wild and unpredicatable when you don't know it. In my opnion, all you need to do is spend some time with it, and you'll learn to love it.

The hot take

Tailwind got popular because React didn't ship with a native way to scope styles within a component.

Web frameworks like Phoenix (my favourite), copied React's approach to state management. The Phoenix team also recently shipped colocated hooks to write your JavaScript next to your backend Elixir code.

I hope they follow Svelte and Astro's lead and do styles next, because at its' core, Tailwind is a way to solve those problems I mentioned earlier - scoping and portability. If frameworks provide native ways to scope styles and allow whole components to be copied between projects, then some people might learn CSS.

Honourable mentions

📖 I missed the cultural zeitgeist of it, but I'm tearing through Carless People. Each page reveals a new horror that is somehow a shock but not surprising in the slightest.
🎮 I replayed Dishonored 1 and then all the DLC for the first time. What an amazing game. I took my time and absorbed all that Dunwall had to offer.
🎮 Going straight into another game set in a fake version of the UK, I've picked up Fable 3 before the new one comes out. Technically it hasn't aged the best, but I'm still enjoying it. Quests like helping a man get divorced, putting on a party for ghosts, and farting into a bandit's face, have really set the tone.
📺 Small Prophets was a cosy supernatural delight. I really should watch Detectorists.
🎙️ The Devil You know was fantastic. A whirlwind tour of the Satanic Panic filled with unimaginable crimes, horrible bastards, and innocent victims.

Who even asked for this?

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The crypto trend brought some utter shit to my LinkedIn inbox. Jobs at stock traders using knock off cartoon characters as currency. They said that blockchains, and ledgers, and decentrialisation, were the future.

Then came the metaverse. Not that I ever got a job offer from Meta, but I was always impressed at the amount of absolute bollocks they pedalled. They said that it was the future of human interaction before they even shipped legs.

Now we have artifical intelligence. Google has abandoned search in favour of AI, data centres are popping up everywhere, and everything seems to come with it included. They say it's the future, and if we're not on board we'll be left behind.

Some tech companies have came up with a groundbreaking use of AI - generating fake AI influencers.

By my own admittion, I'm a bit of an AI sceptic. I use it for coding, both in work and on side projects, but I don't use it for making crap pictures full of wonky perspectives. At the lowest level of bits of AI that I see absolutely no point in, sits AI influencers.

I don't care about influencers, but I thought the whole point is to use their personality to sell stuff? AI has no personality, therefore, it shouldn't influence.

Who is asking for a shiny skinned imaginary woman to sell them a monthly mattress subscription?

Slopify

I've had a few recruiters hit me up from these AI influencer companies. At no point in the product features on the marketing does it ever mention fraud. As developers and designers our job is to extrapolate out uses for products and plan for those in advance. Have people bought into the hype so much that they don't see how it's ruining society?

You could call it a bubble, a hype cycle, or absolute bollocks, but one thing about generative AI is different - it allows people to reframe their version of reality and spread it to others. It is a tool to will into existance something that didn't exist before, without thought, skill, or nuance.

"What about Photoshop?" you may ask? Then you should read this piece from The Verge.

AI is enabling racists, facists, and Governments to pump out real looking propoganda at an industrial scale and none of them seem to care that it's unravelling the real world. Tech companies are speedrunning us right into a reality were proof doesn't mean anything anymore. With a prompt, I can make something that disproves your proof.

Honourable mentions

Sorry for such a horrible post, but it's something I've been mulling over for weeks. I didn't even do a year in review because I felt so bleak about it. Anyways, here's some fun stuff:

📖 I read Rendezvous with Rama over a few days on various modes of transport. It was incredible. I'm hyped for the film adaption. It also really reminded me of the Outer Wilds DLC. Dark, foreboding, mysterious, and completely alien. I loved it.
📺 Fallout season 2 continues to be great. And because of it...
🎮 I've also been playing Fallout: New Vegas. It's easily my favourite Fallout. Now that I understand Obsidion games I maxed out Speech first. The weird ways to talk yourself out of problems always makes me laugh.
🎮 BALL x PIT is incredible, and addictive. I've been playing it so much I've been seeing the Tetris effect when I go to bed.

I'll hopefully find something nicer to write about next time.

Opening the Valve

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Recently, Valve announced a new home console. It's sort of like a PC, but also not like a PC. The Steam Machine is a PC that can sit in your living room under your TV.

I've owned an Xbox Series X for about 4 years and love it. With an Xbox, also comes Game Pass, which has given me a broader selection of games than I probably would've played otherwise. I think it's a great service, and for me, it's always been well worth the money. And that was before I figured out I could get it free with my phone contract.

Microsoft's long term strategy for the Xbox and Game Pass seemed to be working, and providing an opporunity for Xbox Games Studios' own developers to make some truly weird and interesting stuff. Just from memory, there's been a game that looks like a medieval manuscript about the Protestant Reformation, a first person Indiana Jones game that isn't about shooting guns, and a psychadelic walking simulator were you play as a lighthouse with legs. They haven't all been bangers though. Microsoft gathered this portfolilo by spending so much money the UK Government got involved.

But even Microsoft's unlimited money isn't really that unlimited. Now that they need/want the Xbox and Game Pass to be profitable, they've started cancelling games, laying off developers, and even closing whole studios. There were some really promising things in the pipeline, like the Perfect Dark sequel, Rare's Everwild, whatever John Ramero was working on, and something new from the team behind Just Cause.

I bought an Xbox Series X off the back of Microsoft's planned games, so it was dissapointing to see each of these cancellations. The console wars are bullshit, but I spent my time and money on a device and a platform that I thought would follow through on those plans. If Microsoft isn't going to let their teams cook, then what's the point of the supposed financial security that being part of Microsoft gives them?

Unforseen consequences

When I think back to the 4 years of owning an Xbox Series X, and the years before that with a PlayStation 4, the highlights of gaming for me have nearly all been indie games. Outer Wilds easily became one of my all time favourites, Chants of Sennar broke my brain (in the best way), and I found it difficult to stop playing Hades over anything else.

While these games come to other platforms, they always arrive on PC first. For me, there are two barriers to becoming a PC gamer:

I spend all day at my desk. I don't like finishing work for the day and relaxing where I've just finished work.
I want a machine that I know will play the games I like. I don't want to spend time thinking about drivers, graphics cards, CPUs, etc.

I know the Steam Deck exists, but I already have a Switch that fulfills that need. What I want, is a home console with the selection of a PC. With the Steam Machine, Valve just removed my two obstacles to this dream console. If they can deliver something within a reasonable price range, that plays most of the Steam catalogue, then I guess I'll be a PC gamer. Is it even still a PC if it works like a console and sits under your TV?

Microsoft have been trying to blur the lines for years, but Valve have may have gotten there first.

Honourable mentions

🎮 The Outer Worlds 2 is a delight. Genuingly laugh out loud funny, which is hard to do in games. Putting the art in artifical cracked me up, and multi-purpose cleaner/food made me stop and read the adverts.
🎮 Still playing Hades 2. Got a few Olympus clears so I'm progressing, but Typhon is hard as nails.
📖 Also still reading Fall of Hyperion. It's a long book, but I'm nearing the end and still really enjoying it.
📺 The Chair Company is mad, just like I Think You Leave Was, but I love it.
📺 Blue Lights season 3 is good. I love seeing Michael Smiley pop up in more things.
🏋️‍♂️ After many weeks off exercise I've been using the kettlebell again in an effort to fix my dodgy knee. 6 months on and no real improvement, so I need to do something about. The bad knees flaw in Outer Worlds 2 hit close to home.
🧑‍💻 Maybe this place needs a redesign...

Grapefruit

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT

In 1984, a 21 year old woman named Mary Manning had seen enough. Mary was working at a branch of Dunne Stores, a supermarket chain located in central Dublin. Mary had seen enough of the injustices of apartheid and decided to do something about it - she refused to handle grapefruit imported from South Africa.

Mary was soon joined by another worker named Karen Gearon. When they continued to refuse to handle South African goods, they were both suspended. Their trade union had already issued directions to not handle produce from South Africa, so the suspension caused another 10 workers to go on strike.

Support for the strike grew slowly, but one of the supporters was a South African man named Nimrod Sejake. Nimrod was a former cell mate of Nelson Mandela who was living in exile in Ireland. His support brought the strike’s attention the archbishop of South Africa, Desmond Tutu, who took a detour to Dublin on his way to Oslo to collect his Nobel Peace Prize.

When he met Mary Manning and the other striking workers, he invited them to South Africa. Travelled there in 1985, but were refused entry and deported back to Ireland. The deportation became national news in Ireland, and brought even more attention to the strike.

The strike continued until 1987, when, due to public pressure, the Irish government banned the importation of South African goods. The ban was the first ban of South African imports by a Western Government.

A few years later, when the striking workers met Nelson Mandela, he told them that their strike showed “ordinary people far away from the crucible of apartheid cared for our freedom”.

Big names, bad opinions

It's been a weird few months of working in tech, and I'm not even talking about AI.

DHH wrote some absolute bollocks on why London should stay white. If you haven't read it yet, you'd be better off reading this. Or this one from my former colleague Tekin.

At the same time, the CEO of Vercel posted a happy selfie with a genocidal head of state.

We also have the senior management of the biggest companies in the world bowing down to and agreeing to whatever old shit the US comes out with.

If you think we should keep politics out of tech, then tell the (m|b)illionaires to do it first. Their money and influence has emboldened some real pieces of shit, who in turn have caused job losses, misery, violence, state sanctioned kidnappings, mass surveilance, removal of rights for LGBTQ+ and disabled people. Beyond that, their actions impact us all.

What happened here? Maybe the mask slipped, maybe power corrupted them, maybe it was all an illusion to begin with.

It used to be somewhat enjoyable.

So what?

The story of Mary Manning and the other Dunne Stores strikers is still important. The systems in which we all operate are ran by people with practically unlimited money. Mary Manning was probably paid not much more than minimum wage and her refusal to handle grapefruit from an apartheid state changed Government policy.

As people without the money or power to influence international policy, we can still exert our influence with our actions.

I'm not going to eat at a local Café that plays racist news on the TV. I'm not going to drink in a pub if the owner wants to deport anyone who isn't white. I'm not going to buy books written by someone who takes joy in causing other people's misery.

I'm also not going to host my websites on a platform ran by someone who is mates with people causing the death of thousands of people. So, this is the first post after moving this site back, once again, to Netlify.

Imagine what we could do if we were more like Mary who refused to handle the grapefruit.

Honourable mentions

🧑‍💻 I started a new job this week. It's great so far.
🎮 While watching the Machine Games documentaries and when it got to Wolfenstein I realised they passed me by. I highly recommend them given the current state of everything.
🎮 Hades 2 is great. I thought it was just more of the same at the start, but the more I play, the more I uncover the differences.
📺 Wayward is so creepy it's giving me weird dreams.
📺 Alien: Earth also gave me a weird dream - John Malkovich was an android chasing me around a building. Yes, I know that he's not in it.
📺 We're a bit behind on Taskmaster, but I'm enjoying it so far.
📺 MAFS once again, and there's no real nutcases this time, but some very awkward people. Everyone just needs to go to therapy.

My home cooked app

Wed, 17 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I like music, and spend a lot of my time, money, and energy seeing live music. Lots of weekends spent at festivals, club nights, and gigs, and even DJing myself.

When the lineup for an event is announced and posted to one of the many music related group chats I'm in, someone will make a playlist with tracks from the artists playing at the event. This act of preparation not only allows you to get excited for the event, it also acts as research in scoping out new acts, enabling you to get the most music for your money.

But it's a laborious process. Searching, dragging, and dropping. For an event with more than a handful of artists, that's a lot of work.

However, I'm a developer, and if there's one thing I know how to do, it's to automate laborious processes.

Headliners

To make this easier and faster, a while ago I built Lineup.fun. It's the simplest solution to my problem - you paste it a list of artist names and it generates a playlist of all their top 10 tracks.

One thing I didn't account for, was that the first result might not be the one you want. Here's 2 examples that I've ran into:

Most people know Duran Duran, but there's also Duran Duran Duran, and they sound very different:

There's also Lenny Dee, the organist, and Lenny Dee, the industrial techno DJ:

My friends and I, are more likely to be into Duran Duran Duran, than Duran Duran. And the DJ Lenny Dee, rather than the organist.

This was a real probem for the main users of the App - me.

Up next

Over the Summer I took the time to rebuild Lineup.fun from scratch and fix this problem. After rebuilding Is It Shorts Weather Today? I wanted to use something different.

The original version of Lineup.fun was in SvelteKit, but made extensive use of features that were sadly removed from Svelte - custom events and stores. I like Svelte and SvelteKit, but I haven't used React since Castrooms, so I thought it was time to refamiliarise myself with it.

My recent time with both has shown me that I like Svelte's component syntax and SvelteKit's simplicity, but Runes make me feel like I'm writing React. I like the idea of Svelte for Sites, React for Apps, but with Astro and my Elixir experience there's more nuance to this for me -

Astro for sites, Svelte for small Apps, React for medium client side Apps, Phoenix for big Apps.

There may be more features eventually, but everyone keeps asking me for AI parsing of a lineup image, which is a fine idea, but really I just want to let you throw a link at it and it does the work. More backend-ish stuff like that means I'll probably lean on Phoenix a bit more for it. Or maybe even it'll be an excuse to try Gleam.

Micro-rave

Just as the big C kept us all at home, I read An app can be a home-cooked meal. An evergreen post if there ever was one.

Lineup.fun is very much a home cooked meal of an app. I've got analytics on it, but basically nobody else uses it and I don't mind. It makes one minor thing in my life a lot easier, and that's what I built it for.

As a developer, being able to build things to solve your own problems is a very powerful thing. I honestly love it.

Honourable mentions

👨‍💻 I'm also working on another home cooked app that solves another music related problem for me. Hopefully I'll be able to share more soon.
🎛️ I DJ'd at my friend Miranda's birthday and remembered to hit record for the first time in ages. It was a lot of fun.
🎮 I finished Stray over a couple of days and it was an absolute delight.
📺 The finale of Foundation season 3 was incredible. Some bits missed the mark for me but I was ok to let those slide. Hopefully season 4 is even better.
✈️ A lot of travelling.
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 We went to the Edinburgh Fringe with some of Lila's family. Saw lots of comedy, a few celeb spots, and even bumped into an old friend who's number I had lost. A great few days there.
🇮🇪 Followed by going back home for my brother's wedding, which was a lovely day. It's mad seeing him all grown up.
🇮🇹 Then, to a friend's wedding in Sicily. We had 1 full day in beautiful Palermo so we went to look at a load of skeletons. The wedding itself was at this amazing vineyard in the countryside. A lot of us got to DJ with this incredible valley backdrop.
🇨🇦 From Italy, back to London to unpack and repack, and then now I'm in Canada for a few weeks working from my in-law's. They also have a pool and the weather is still hot, so I'll definitely be using that.

Adding Spotify now playing to Astro

Thu, 07 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I'm working on a new version of Lineup.fun, and because I can't finish one side project without starting another one, I spent some time recently adding a Now Playing section to the footer here. This post is a guide for doing this in Astro, with a little bit of Svelte.

What we're going to do is set up an API route that is signed in as you, so if you're playing a track it will return the track's data. Just like how if you listen on your phone with Spotify open on your computer the desktop app or the web browser is showing the same track.

I mostly followed this great guide with a few changes, but I've laid out all the steps here anyways.

Authorisation

Create your app in the Spotify Developer portal, using https://127.0.0.1:4321 for the callback URL and select Web API under the "Which API/SDKs are you planning to use?" section. Copy the client_id.
Make a GET request to the following URL replacing YOUR_CLIENT_ID with yours:

https://accounts.spotify.com/authorize?client_id=YOUR_CLIENT_ID&response_type=code&redirect_uri=https://127.0.0.1:4321&scope=user-read-currently-playing

Authorise the application.
This will redirect you back to your local app with a long URL, copy that somewhere. This contains your authorisation code, which we will then exchange for an access code.
Base64 encode this: YOUR_CLIENT_ID:YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET. If have Node installed, which you probably do if you're using Astro, run nodejs in your terminal and then you can use this to encode it:

const client_id = 'YOUR_CLIENT_ID';
const client_id = 'YOUR_CLIENT_ID';
const client_secret = 'YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET';
Buffer.from(client_id + ':' + client_secret).toString('base64');

Make a POST request with a content-type of x-www-form-urlencoded to https://accounts.spotify.com/api/token with the following params:

{
	grant_type: "authorization_code",
	code: YOUR_AUTHORISATION_CODE_FROM_STEP_4
	redirect_uri: "https://127.0.0.1:4321"
}

Along with an Authorisation header of the base64 value from step 5:

Basic BASE64_ENCODED_FROM_STEP_5

The response from this will include a refresh_token. This is the last thing we need for our API access, so copy this somewhere to use later.

The backend

Add your client ID, client secret, and refresh token, as environment variables:

# .env
CLIENT_ID=
CLIENT_SECRET=
REFRESH_TOKEN=

Now we can add our endpoint that our component will hit, the code that hits Spotify, and the Typescript interface, if required:

// src/pages/api/spotify.json.ts
import type { APIRoute } from 'astro';
import { getNowPlaying } from '../../lib/spotify';
import type { SpotifyPlayerResponse } from '../../lib/types';

export const GET: APIRoute = async () => {
	const response = await getNowPlaying();

	if (response.status === 204 || response.status > 400) {
		return new Response(
			JSON.stringify({
				isPlaying: false
			})
		);
	}

	const player = (await response.json()) as SpotifyPlayerResponse;
	const isPlaying = player.is_playing;
	const title = player.item.name;
	const artist = player.item.artists.map((_artist) => _artist.name).join(', ');
	const album = player.item.album.name;
	const albumImageUrl = player.item.album.images[0].url;
	const songUrl = player.item.external_urls.spotify;
	const duration = player.item.duration_ms;
	const progress = player.progress_ms;

	return new Response(
		JSON.stringify({
			isPlaying,
			title,
			artist,
			album,
			albumImageUrl,
			songUrl,
			duration,
			progress
		})
	);
};

// src/lib/spotify.ts
import querystring from 'querystring';

const clientID = import.meta.env.CLIENT_ID;
const clientSecret = import.meta.env.CLIENT_SECRET;
const refreshToken = import.meta.env.REFRESH_TOKEN;

const TOKEN_URL = `https://accounts.spotify.com/api/token`;
const basicAuth = Buffer.from(`${clientID}:${clientSecret}`).toString('base64');

const getAccessToken = async () => {
	const response = await fetch(TOKEN_URL, {
		method: 'POST',
		headers: {
			Authorization: `Basic ${basicAuth}`,
			'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'
		},
		body: querystring.stringify({
			grant_type: 'refresh_token',
			refresh_token: refreshToken
		})
	});

	return response.json();
};

const NOW_PLAYING_URL = `https://api.spotify.com/v1/me/player/currently-playing`;

const getNowPlaying = async () => {
	const { access_token } = await getAccessToken();

	return fetch(NOW_PLAYING_URL, {
		headers: {
			Authorization: `Bearer ${access_token}`
		}
	});
};

export { getAccessToken, getNowPlaying };

// src/lib/types.ts
export interface SpotifyPlayerResponse {
	is_playing: boolean;
	item: {
		name: string;
		artists: { name: string }[];
		album: {
			name: string;
			images: { url: string }[];
		};
		external_urls: {
			spotify: string;
		};
		duration_ms: number;
	};
	progress_ms: number;
}

The frontend

Astro uses a concept called Islands Architecture, which means that Astro only runs client side JavaScript on specific components. To do this, you can use many different frontend frameworks, but I chose Svelte. This is my component placed in the footer:

 <!-- NowPlaying.svelte -->
<script lang="ts">
	interface Player {
		isPlaying: boolean;
		songUrl?: string;
		title?: string;
		artist?: string;
	}
	let playerPromise: Promise<Player> = (async () => {
		try {
			const resp = await fetch(`/api/spotify.json`);
			if (!resp.ok) throw new Error('Fetch failed');
			const spotifyResponse = await resp.json();
			return {
				isPlaying: spotifyResponse.isPlaying,
				songUrl: spotifyResponse.songUrl,
				title: spotifyResponse.title,
				artist: spotifyResponse.artist
			};
		} catch (error) {
			return { isPlaying: false };
		}
	})();
</script>

{#await playerPromise then player}
	{#if player.isPlaying}
		<a class="now-playing" href={player.songUrl}>
			Now playing:
			{player.title} - {player.artist}
		</a>
	{/if}
{/await}

A few things to note here:

I'm not using all of the response from /api/spotify.json, but I've left it in the endpoint to show what you could use from the Spotify response.
This component only renders anything if I'm currently playing. There's nothing stopping you from doing like an on air/off air thing.

And the last bit is to import and render our Svelte component from an Astro file:

<NowPlaying client:idle />

Spot the client:idle property. This is one of Astro's client directives that tell it how to hydrate the component. Use whatever is appropriate for your use case.

Now, if you play a track on Spotify and refresh, you'll see Now playing: We Like To Party! (Vengabus) - Vengaboys or whatever other bangers you choose to listen to.

Wrapping up

There's only a few steps here, but it's an interesting way to use the Spotify API. Thanks again to Thomas Moran for his original post, and for writing most of the code that I adapted for Astro.

If you use this guide, or have any questions or feedback, get in touch via email or Bluesky.

Honourable mentions

🎮 In prep for The Outer Worlds 2 I got the Spacer's Choice Edition of the original on sale. I dropped off near the end of it the first time and so some bits where familiar, but after playing Avowed I now understand what Obsidian aims for with their games and I'm really enjoying it.
🎮 Wheel World is so nice but holding the trigger to accelerate absolutely wrecked the RSI in my right forearm. With my knee injury real cycling is off the table too, so not being able to finish it was disappointing.
📖 The Mountain In The Sea was fantastic. It made me feel bad about eating Octopus, which I suppose is the point of it.
📺 Foundation season 3 is great. I'm waiting for it to finish before reading the second book again.
📺 Long Way Home has given me another burst of interest in getting a motorbike. Lila and my Mum aren't too pleased, but my mates are very encouraging.
🇮🇪 Back home this week for some family stuff. It's weird moving away and seeing everyone age so much. Like watching a TV show with a time jump between seasons, there's whole bits of life that I just wasn't around for. My parents, aunts, uncles, and my granny, are all getting on, and the time I spend with them is precious.

Accessibility and friction

Wed, 23 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Minimum Viable Product means different things to different people. Shipping a first version of a digital product is easy, but qualifying what exactly is minimally viable is hard:

Should it work on mobile?

Do you need branding?

Have you tested it in multiple browsers? Multiple devices? Multiple operating systems?

One thing that plenty of people are guilty of, myself included, is ignoring web accessibility. Maybe those people don't know what it is, so let's define it. From Wikipedia:

Web accessibility is the inclusive practice of ensuring there are no barriers that prevent interaction with, or access to, websites on the World Wide Web by people with physical disabilities, situational disabilities, and socio-economic restrictions on bandwidth and speed.

Sounds good, right? Well not everyone agrees.

Rich Harris, the creator of Svelte, shared this screenshot of Hacker News a few days ago:

<blockquote class="bluesky-embed" data-bluesky-uri="at://did:plc:anvvmj5rdxhzo26gmhkgshnn/app.bsky.feed.post/3lu3nb4xp4k2c" data-bluesky-cid="bafyreibmgz5rszvkhspqlnegm3qm5p2jmy4lmiaukzud2v7le6e6yqcbdm" data-bluesky-embed-color-mode="system"><p lang="en">even by HN standards this is an all-timer<br><br><a href="https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:anvvmj5rdxhzo26gmhkgshnn/post/3lu3nb4xp4k2c?ref_src=embed">[image or embed]</a></p>— rich harris (<a href="https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:anvvmj5rdxhzo26gmhkgshnn?ref_src=embed">@rich-harris.dev</a>) <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:anvvmj5rdxhzo26gmhkgshnn/post/3lu3nb4xp4k2c?ref_src=embed">July 16, 2025 at 3:35 PM</a></blockquote><script async src="https://embed.bsky.app/static/embed.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

What this Hacker News poster is referencing is this - Svelte is a compiler, and when it compiles your code it will warn if you're doing anything wrong when it comes to accessibility.

The OP calls this idea woke, because everything they don't like must be woke, and they don't like their framework shaming them for bad web development.

You would think this person would want to build products that have the opportunity to reach as much of the free market as possible?

Putting in the work

Good on Rich for his response. Open source authors like Rich, core team members, and contributors, all do so much work so that we can build amazing things.

There is an often repeated mantra from the Government Digital Service that applies here:

"Do the hard work to make it simple"

Svelte introduces just enough friction to encourage developers to build better websites.

Rich and the rest of the Svelte team have done the hard work to make web accessibility simple. Through their work, they set out their vision for what the modern web experience should be

I share their vision of the web, one that is accessible to all and equitable for all.

Those people who don't want that? Fuck 'em.

Honourable mentions

🎮 I picked up Plague Tale: Innocence on sale and I'm really enjoying it. The Last Of Us vibes set in 14th century France is an unusual take on a game but the setting and story is great. I think the overflowing waves of rats is giving me weird dreams.
🎮 Indika is another unusual game in an usual setting - a descent into madness of an Eastern Orthodox nun in an alternate reality early 20th century Russia. It was such an insane game that I really loved.
📖 I finished Party Lines: Dance Music and the Making of Modern Britain. A brilliant book about the history of dance music in the UK and how that history is intertwined with politics.
📖 I also bought a Kindle for the first time since I'm doing loads of travelling over the next few months. First up on that is Mountain in the Sea. I'm only about 1/5 of the way in and I can see why it's won so many awards.
📺 Foundation is back, and I've only watched the first episode but it was great. I'll wait and see what they do with the Second Foundation storyline before I decide if this season is good or not.
📺 Trainwreck has some wild stories but Astroworld was really scary. I've been in situations at festivals where it feels like a crush is about to happen and left, so I can see how easily something like that could happen.
📺 Human was a really interesting watch that unfortunately had to sprint through some topics. I'd have really enjoyed a few more episodes of breathing room for them to go deeper.
🔗 Nobody Has A Personality Anymore is an interestingly damning look at how we overanalyse every quirk as something to be fixed.

Is It Shorts Weather Today?

Tue, 24 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT

For 14 years now, I’ve operated a website that does 1 thing - it tells people if they should wear shorts that day. Nothing more.

People love it. Here's some feedback I've received from The Internet:

Wow. “Somebody has to have made something like this…” Lo and behold… Thank you eternally, Tommy.

I enjoy your websites a lot. Especially the shorts one.

THANK YOU.

Today, I’m releasing another new version. I thought this would be a good opportunity to tell the story about my silly weather website.

The idea

Back in May of 2011, I was 22 and had just recently finished University. Not working weekends for the first time since I was 17 was glorious. Summer was a few weeks away, but I was already enjoying all the Sun I could.

Belfast weather during the summer can be sunny, and might reach a level you could describe as warm or even hot.

During an evening in May, a friend and I were talking about how we couldn't decide if we should've worn shorts that day. We joked that there should be a single serving site for this purpose.

If you're not sure what a single serving site is, here is the explanation from wikipedia:

A single-serving site is a website composed of a single page with a dedicated domain name and which serves only one purpose.

The next day, I got to work.

2011 - Version 1.0

That conversation alone was enough to give me a vague plan - using a location, hit an API to get a weather forecast, do some sort of logic with the weather, and finally render a decision.

I seem to remember we used Geonames at work for something and I had discovered that when returning a location from the API it also contained the current weather. As was the choice for Ruby developers at the time, I built it in Coffeescript with a Sinatra backend. I'm not sure Coffeescript is used any more, but it was popular in 2011.

It gave the user an answer, but in a particularly Belfast-ish way like:

Get your legs out! It's a schwelterin' 21 degrees.

Are you not wise? It's a baltic 9 degrees.

After posting it on Twitter, my friends loved it.

Thanks to the Wayback Machine, we can see what it looked like, without the TypeKit font unfortunately.

The original design

2014 - Version 2.0

Thanks to the archeological history contained on Github, I can see that during March 2014 I swapped Geonames out for OpenWeather. From what I remember, Geonames was shutting down the API I was using, and so that change wasn't by choice. Other updates continued at regular pace for a month or 2.

This version was not long after I started working at GOV.UK, where, during my first week I got into the lift with a teammate and some strangers. The teammate introduced me to Henry, who showed me a website on his phone that told you if you should wear shorts or not that day, to which I responded:

See the way it says "Made by Tommy" at the bottom. That's me I'm that Tommy.

2015 - Version 3.0

This project was the first of many joke websites that I've made over the years. Back in the day, Heroku was a good place to host Ruby applications for free. When they reduced this free tier to static projects, that forced me to rebuild for a third time. Joke websites are an expensive hobby and I wasn't going to shut down such a popular service.

Now was the time to rip out all the Ruby and Coffeescript and go all in on purely artisanally handcrafted HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

2016 - Version 4.0

For some reason I decided to rebuild it in Ember. As a former Rails dev I remember that Ember was used by many Rails companies and I liked the idea of it.

This was also around the time that Dark Sky was big. If you didn't use it or don't remember it, Dark Sky had a revolutionary feature that would send you a push notification when it was about to rain where you were. I discovered that their free API tier returned a daily forecast, so this release included a Shorts Weather forecast.

People loved it, but the logic was getting complex. I would get sent tweets kicking off that 18 degrees and sunny isn't Shorts Weather, while other people would say they could go as low as 15.

I would sometimes quickly deploy a change to the trigger on a particularly nice day if I thought I might get such feedback.

A free lunch

In February 2016, I started working at Deliveroo. I moved to London in 2013 but with such huge cultural impact of the project and regular updates, my friends in Belfast still used the service.

When I joined Deliveroo, I was placed on the marketing team who were just about to launch our referral scheme. In a perfect coincidence of timing, Deliveroo was also about to launch in Belfast. I had the idea to put a link with my referral code in the footer. For every £5 off their first order my friends would use, I would get £5 in credit. The problem was that I only got the credit when they place their first order, but each account had a maximum number of 50 redemptions.

Everyone was using the code, but only some people purchased, so I quickly hit the redemption limit. With so few of those redemptions following through and placing orders, I didn't get my £250 in credit.

I asked the product manager could I increase my own limit and he said yes, so I bumped it to 100.

Then Deliveroo increased the amount from £5 to £10 and again I hit my limit, so I asked again, but this time that PM was off and I had moved teams, so I asked a more senior PM and her response was: "Absolutely. You don't have to ask again. Get as many customers as you can."

Eventually, some dickhead had put my referral code on a voucher website and it was found by someone at the company. This meant that I wasn't allowed to increase it again under the non-assumption that it was me who put it there.

As I worked at Deliveroo, I knew that each redemption had a 3 month expiry date. I had hundreds of pounds to spend over the summer before it expired. I was going to eat like a king, otherwise it would go to waste.

I sampled my way through any and all central London restaurants opened at lunchtime. Money was no object, so why not spend 25 quid on sushi for lunch? Double meat burritos, with guac. Always with a side. Once I even ordered lobster and wagyu beef at home, but in a cruel twist of irony it never got delivered.

After this, sometimes literal, gravy train had screeched to a stop, I had totalled £1500 in credit. Not bad for a joke.

2017 - Version 5.0

I could see what way the wind was blowing in the Frontend Wars, so now was the time to ditch Ember and move to React. This also called for a redesign, and you can't beat a gradient.

Now with more gradients

2021 - Version 6.0

2020 was quite a year. We were all stuck inside and watched a lot of news. One particular headline worried me a lot - Apple had bought Dark Sky. After the purchase, Apple announced that the Dark Sky API would eventually be shut down.

In 2021 I also had bit of a professional crisis. Deliveroo had left me burnt out and I wanted something more from coding, so I started learning more creative coding pursuits in my spare time. I picked up a few courses from SuperHi in a sale and got to work.

With Dark Sky being sunsetted, I went back to using OpenWeather. This meant no more daily forecast. OpenWeather's free tier has the current weather and a forecast every 3 hours for 5 days. Every 3 hours isn't much use to me so current would have to do for now.

After completing the Shaders for the Web course I knew I had to use it. I altered one of the projects to end up with a trippy background. Someone pointed out that it looked like one of those heatwave warning images that we're familiar with now, so maybe I was trying to subtly remind everyone that climate change is real.

To simplify, I got rid of the "It's a schwelterin X degrees" statements, which left it simple enough to go back to just HTML, CSS, and JS.

Because I had a lot of spare time in 2021 I also added some new features. Previously it only searched using your current location, so I added a location lookup, which allowed me to place the location in the URL, which in turn allowed me to use those values on the initial request. Now I had shareable URLs.

WebGL edition

With shareable URLs now possible, the analytics has shown me that even the Maritime & Transport technology Young Professionals society at Delft University of Technology was linking to it.

2025 - Version 7.0

So why now?

I have a million ideas for projects, and although rebuilding an old one is easier, even a single page that does one thing involves a lot of work.

As more people are now using it, they might disagree with my Hibernian definition of what constitutes shorts weather, so I wanted to allow the trigger temperature to be set.

This newest version is built in SvelteKit, for a few reasons:

The previous few versions were just HTML, CSS, and JS, but always with an API proxy. The last one used a Netlify function. SvelteKit allowed me to keep the API proxy within the same codebase and make it generic between hosting providers, so a perfect excuse to use Cloudflare Workers.
Working with components is nice, and although I could've built it in Astro like this website, I would've ended up using Svelte where I needed interactivity anyways. It's close enough to HTML, CSS, and JS.
Svelte is lightweight enough that I don't feel bad like sending the whole React runtime to the user's browser.
Since I'm adding personal settings, this would mean that there's more logic. It made sense to use TypeScript and actually write some tests.
Svelte is great.

I probably could've solved all of those things except the last one with vanilla HTML, CSS, and JS if I had tried, but Svelte took care of a lot of the extra work for me.

But still, why now? It's summer and I felt like working on something fun to answer the eternal question - Is it shorts weather today?

The future - Version ?.0

Will I ever rebuild it again? Probably.

There's some immediate changes that I'd like to investigate, and one idea that is in the "Might Do" column on the roadmap, but that's another few years away.

The present

I've been running Is It Shorts Weather Today for my whole career and it's been a constant opportunity to try new things as I wanted to learn them. Side projects are fun, and joke websites are funny, but I hope that spending this much time and effort on a joke is even funnier.

I'm a big fan of be the change you want to see and I love making mad shit. I'd love to see more websites that are mad as shit.

Honourable mentions

☀️ I went camping in the New Forest for the solstice and it was definitely shorts weather.
🔗 As a speaker of Hiberno-English, this article on the loss of linguistic diversity due to AI usage concerns me.
🔗 The future of the internet is in the past. I've been in the game for 15 years so I remember being excited about all the things mentioned here, and a bit dissalusioned by the state of modern web development.
🎙️ Hot Money is back. The amazing podcast from the Financial Times is back for season 3 and this time about how a fraudulent German fintech company is linked to the Russian government.
📺 We finished White Lotus season 3 and I enjoyed it, but I do feel that the joy of watching rich people ruin their lives is having less impact each season.
🎮 After picking up my Playdate again I've spent some time playing the games I'd bought previously so I've gotten really into Reasonant Tale - a tiny Zelda-like with lots of charm.
🎮 I also restarted and came back around to Atomfall. Imagine Fallout in the Lake District. Unlike Fallout, It's more survival than RPG but I'm really enjoying unravelling the mystery.

Artifacts From Another Universe

Tue, 17 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT

When I was 9 years old, my uncle gave me his copy of DOOM. Far below the age where it may have been appropriate, it was an introduction to Hell that I adored.

My evenings and weekends were spent trawling through corridors leaving trails of blood and guts behind me. Hoards of demons stood between me and the exit, and the only way through them was with punches, bullets, shells, plasma bolts, rockets, and big fucking projectiles.

The vaguely satanic imagery was something I didn't see that often in Belfast during the 90s. To me, DOOM felt like a real life Necronomicon. Dropped into the disc drive to lead me on some Ash Campbell-esque quest to fight the dead. Not that I had seen Evil Dead at this point, but you get the idea.

DOOM felt like something alien. Something weird. Something forbidden. It was like reality had cracked and I had an object which shouldn't exist in our world.

That feeling has stuck with me ever since.

Round the bend

I've written about the Playdate before when mine finally arrived. When it launched, it included a season of games delivered straight to the device, with 2 arriving each week.

Unfortunately, the Playdate shipped in groups, so the idea of everyone playing the same 2 games each week didn't really work when everyone got their Playdates at different times.

Season 2 has just launched, and there are now many Playdates in the world, so this time it's different. We're on Week 3 and there's already been some great games, my favourite so far being Dig Dig Dino. I want to share a surprise anomolous addition to the lineup from Week 1, Blippo+.

When the first batch of Playdates came online, something strange happened. All at once, the screens pulsed with an unusual pattern of TV static. Was it a software glitch? Or interference from a transmission coming from somewhere beyond our world?

Blippo+ is an TV channel broadcast from a planet that I think is called Blippo? Their scientists have detected something they call The Bend in the space time continuum near their planet that has allowed them to broadcast their prime time content with us, their aliens.

Now in Week 3 of this broadcast, it appears they are preparing a crack team of Bendonauts, completely chosen at random, to send through The Bend and make first contact with the human race.

It's full of some incredibely weird shit. Here's a rundown of the shows I've seen:

Bliptionary - an educational broadcast teaching the aliens (us humans) some common Blippo language
Subspace Lunchbox - different types of food for different types of beings, I think? I watched a pair of hands assemble a lunch for robots with gear crackers
Clone Trois - a soap opera about clone nurses called Echo and Gemini which is the same actor portraying 2 characters on the phone to each other
Quizzards - a Dungeons & Dragons style role playing game but it's a quiz where instead of a dice the Dungeon Master asks the players trivia questions

It's got a real Hypnospace Outlaw feel to it that I love. I can't get enough of these weird pieces of culture where people go all out. I hope we see more cool stuff like this from whoever is behind it? Maybe it really is the Blippos?

Blippo+ gives me that same sense of joy I had when I first played DOOM and it's definitely worth checking out if you enjoy that feeling too. Currently only available on Playdate, it's coming to Switch and Steam later this year.

Honourable mentions

I've read some great articles recently on AI, such as:

🔗 My AI skeptic friends are all nuts went pretty viral. My view is that this is a marketing piece disguised as a hot take. It has some good points without much nuance, but the tone is deliberately colloquial in such a way to stand out. Just keep in mind that Fly.io has tried to position itself as the best place to run applications that require AI to work.
🔗 Looking elsewhere from Robb Owen. He articulates many of the same things I've been thinking about the race the bottom for costs, while maximising output for profit.
🔗 AI got no taste from Coops. Like him, I broadly like AI, and I agree with his take. Everything in my day job recently has been investigations and fixing bugs, rather than adding new features, so I haven't had a chance to try it on a large production codebase yet.

Other stuff, not about AI:

🔗 Kareem Rahma of Subway Takes interviewed by The Face. I love his videos, so it's nice to hear his takes for a change.
🎮 DOOM: The Dark Ages, while not as groundbreaking as the 2016 edition, was a lot of fun. Parrying is great, and a really interesting way to switch up first person shooter combat.
🎮 After DOOM, I picked up Avowed again about 5 hours from the end. It's interesting to see a game approach a story with colonisation and erasure of culture with such nuance. I really enjoyed it, and it's left me hyped for The Outer World 2.
📺 Taskmaster ~season~ Series 19. The lineup this year is absolute chaos but Jason is unbelievable.
📺 Race Across The World has finished, and we've added so many more destinations to our bucket list from it. As a Thomas who is close with his Mum, Thomas and Caroline were lovely to watch, but really I was rooting for any of the teams this year.
📺 The Tylenol Murders was a crazy watch. The next day I went to buy some ibuprofen from Tesco but the packet was ripped so I got paranoid and put it back.
📖 Party Lines: Dance Music and the Making of Modern Britain is a brilliant book about how politics and raving in the UK are more intertwined than we realise.
🎶 I went to the last ever Balter Festival recently, which was very silly. Musical highlights aside, they had a "throw the dildo on the Tory" game, which made me laugh a lot.
🌽 The Lambeth County Fair was great. We got there early enough to beat the queue for the famous vegetable sculpture competition.
🧑‍💻 I've been writing a lot of side project code recently and hopefully I'll be able to reveal what I've been working on soon.

The Charlie Brooker Cinematic Universe

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

New episodes of Black Mirror are out, and once again has some great episodes about Wot If Ya Mum Ran on Batteries. As an anthology show, each story is separate, but many people have spotted references between episodes.

This post contains some light spoilers for earlier episodes of Black Mirror.

It all started in The National Anthem when Prime Minister Michael Callow got piggy with it. He's then mentioned in loads of episodes, including Hated in the Nation where robotic bees cause a few issues. These events both appear in Black Museum, which also features a lot of other episodes. And so on, and so on.

There's one reference everyone misses, and it's from one of Charlie Brooker's early works - Nathan Barley.

Nathan Barley is a show about mid 00's media people who work in Shoreditch. The titular Barley describes himself as a "self-facilitating media node". His main enterprise is Trashbat.co.ck, said aloud as "trashbat dot cock". The original content is gone, but it was a satire of websites that were common at the time - collections of flash toys with assorted videos of pranks, and of people hurting themselves and each other. In between this he makes films, DJs, and runs club nights. All in an effort to stay cool while constantly teetering on the edge of anxiety over irrelevancy.

Even in 2025, it's worth a watch. Some of the jokes are a little dated, but it mostly holds up. You'll have fun spotting a lot of now very famous faces during the beginning of their careers. Like Black Mirror, it was a show about predicting the future, but unlike Black Mirror, it was accidental. It even used the phrase hand-held twit machines a full year before Twitter was launched:

They babble into hand-held twit machines about that cool email of the woman being bummed by a wolf. Their friend made it. He’s an idiot too.

Julian Barratt, who plays Dan Ashcroft, said they would need to approach a 2nd series differently because "everything from it kind of came true".

Onto the link.

Well weapon

In the 3rd episode of Nathan Barley, Nathan and Claire return from the pub to find Nathan's housemate enjoying himself with some dirty late night TV. The TV mentions the male performer by name, Rod Senseless.

And where else does Rod Senseless show up?

He's the male pornstar that the UK Government try to use as a body double for Michael Callow right back in The National Anthem.

So not only do many episodes of Black Mirror exist alongside each other, they exist alongside Nathan Barley.

Totally fucking mexico.

Honourable mentions

It's been a while, so I'll try to remember everything.

📖 I finished Children of Dune and found it to be quite a slog near the end. It might be a long time before I read God Emperor of Dune.
📖 I also read This Is How You Lose The Time War. A very unusual book that didn't quite click with me at the start, but by the end I loved it. If the adaption ever gets made I'm very curious to see how it'll work.
📖 For the first time in many years I bought a magazine. (Side note: there's no magazine emoji?) The Fence is full of great articles, some funny, some depressing, and some insightful. It's got some of my favourite authors in it so I thought I'd give it a whirl and I thoroughly enjoyed it with a beer in the sun on Friday.
🎙️ Revolutions is, unsurprisingly, a podcast about revolutions throughout history. However this season is about a Martian revolution more than 200 years from now. Produced like a historical documentary it really scratches that itch the The Expanse has left.
🎮 I'm nearing the end of Avowed and it's good, although not as awe inspiring as Skyrim. Bethesda games are (usually) great exploration games with RPG elements, while Obsidian make great RPGs. The melee feels good, the quality of life stuff is so much better than Starfield, at times writing is funny, and the companions make a real difference to combat and story. I'm enjoying it a lot, despite the downsides.
📺 Last One Laughing UK and Ireland were so much fun. I'm a fan of the format from the original Japanese show Documental.
📺 Common Side Effects is a show about a man discovering a magic mushroom that can heal any ailment and the efforts the US healthcare industry goes to cover it up. It's from some of the same animators as Scavenger's Reign so it looks fantastic.
📺 Kings of Tupelo is a documentary about one of those crazy stories that you would not believe unless you watch it - one of the 2 brothers who do an Elvis impersonator double act uncovers a conspiracy to harvest organs in a hospital and is then accused of trying to kill Barack Obama.
📺 Like everyone else, I watched Severance and enjoyed it.
🎨 I managed to catch the Electric Dreams exhibition at the Tate. Unfortunately it was during half term so it was like an Hieronymus Bosch painting, but I still enjoyed it.
🇻🇳 I'm leaving for a 3 week trip to Vietnam in 20 minutes.

Copilots and Shortcuts

Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I love keyboard shortcuts.

One of the first things I did on my first Mac was to install Quicksilver, the OG Application launcher, and hide the dock.

After a long time with LaunchBar, I eventually settled on Raycast. It's one of the most powerful applications on my machine. With ⌘ + Space, and a few more keystrokes, I can make it do anything.

I spend nearly all day using my code editor. If I'm not coding for work, I'm often coding for myself. Many keyboard shortcuts that I learnt with Textmate still do the same thing in newer editors. My career took me through Coda, Sublime, Atom, and now Visual Studio Code.

Between the app launchers and code editors, it was worth it to learn how to control my Mac with just my keyboard. All of those years spent avoiding the mouse forced me to learn what felt like hidden incantations.

Both Raycast and VS Code now have AI built in. It's in your OS, your phone, and even your washing machine. AI usage is a common topic of conversation when I speak with other developers. Opinions always differ on any tool, but my usage of keyboard shortcuts made me use it slightly differently, and I wanted to share that.

Natural text

Most people know that you interact with GitHub Copilot by pressing tab to accept the suggestion on screen. If it's not right, you can type a bit more, and then see if the next suggestion is right.

Most people don't know that macOS has shortcuts for moving through text. ⌘ and ←/→ move to the start or end of the line. ⌥ and ←/→ do the same by word. Adding Shift will select the text, while ⌫ deletes it.

One day, a wrong keypress taught me a new way to use Copilot. Buried in the docs under "Partially accepting suggestions" it explained what happened. ⌘ and → accepted the suggestion word-by-word.

Discovering this shortcut changed my whole way of working with Copilot. No longer was it occasionally taking me in wrong directions. Now, I was helping it to help me. Instead of tabbing to accept the whole suggestion, I could take a bit, write a bit, take a bit more, and write a bit more.

As developers, AI is another tool in our toolbox. People hated on SCSS when they wanted to stick with CSS. Haml made writing HTML easier, but many purists hated it. Emmet was a revolution, but plenty of people didn't install it.

Copilot is another tool. Learning how to use our tools well makes us better developers.

Honourable mentions

🎬 We went to see Moonwalkers. Visually impressive and lots of fun. Nothing compared to visiting NASA though.
📺 Rotating through all the streaming services has brought us back to Apple TV. Catching up on Severance, Slow Horses, and Bad Sisters has been great.
🎮 I finished Starfield and it was ultimately a huge disappointment. At some point I'll write about why.
🎮 I'm so hyped about DOOM: The Dark Ages that I restarted DOOM: Eternal. I never finished it on PS4, so I'm giving it a second go on Xbox and it's just as fun another time round. The gameplay loop is chaotic perfection.

This used to be a Utopia

Wed, 22 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

What a week. And it's only Wednesday.

The fake pro-gamer who runs the biggest shithole on The Internet just did a Nazi salute live on TV, which one TV network edited out. In his new job, named after his favourite meme, he'll cut Government spending while his companies survive on subsidies.

Another power mad gym bro wants to force everyone to play with him and his toys, but is experiencing a similar kind of spiral. He says things like compassion, working in diverse teams, and facts, aren't manly enough. He ignores the role his life's work played in the death of thousands of people and instead wants to fill the world with lies that Shrimp Jesus is real.

The axis of assholes surrounding the US presidency started out in Tech, and now they want some say in ruining the World.

What happened to them? The early Internet was all about connecting people from different backgrounds, now it's about making money and controlling power.

The author, Séamas O'Reilly, has written a brilliant piece for The Irish Examiner that highlights some of their recent transgressions.

Musk speaks like a man who believes his own insane conspiratorial guff, because he does. For years, we’ve watched as the most malodorous portions of the internet have fully infected his brain and transformed his entire personality.

Zuck avoided this fate by not having a personality to begin with. It is difficult to imagine him holding a strong view on anything, for much the same reason it is difficult to imagine him enjoying a poem or a sandwich. It would be like attributing sentiment to a set of venetian blinds. There is simply nothing there.

Jimmy Wales and Tim Berners-Lee had the right idea. Or be like Tom from Myspace and just take the money, get into photography, and then fuck off on holiday forever.

Coping mechanisms

What are we going to do about it? I honestly have no idea.

If you can somewhat face the impending onslaught of coverage, you should read things like Molly White's newsletter, Citation Needed, alongside the news that made her famous, web3 is going just great .

For Podcasts, I like The Vergecast. For more skeptical voices in Tech I stick to Better Offline, Tech Won't Save Us, and System Crash. Even the odd episode of Behind The Bastards covers your favourite Tech bastards. All of this assumes you can somehow not cringe every time you hear one of their names.

I'll probably play more videogames, read more books, bake more bread, go for more bike rides, make more mad shit, subscribe to more RSS feeds, delete all the news Apps, and maybe finish some side projects.

The world that these weirdos thrive in was made by people. People decided how these systems work. Systems change, empires fall, elections still happen, and we can try to remake the world a different way. Just don't let the bastards grind you down.

Honourable mentions

Season 3 of From is terrifying. I'm having to ration it to 1 episode a night so it doesn't give me weird dreams.
I finished Children of Memory. Unfortunately it was my least favourite of the series, but still really good.
I also read Blindboy's latest book, Topographia Hibernia. Some bits made me laugh, but one unsettling story left me feeling awful. A new experience with books for me.
Having dropped off of Chants of Sennaar a while ago I picked it up again right near the end. Coincidentally right as Polygon published a great article on the difficulty of translating a game about words, but also without written dialogue. I might just look up the solutions to the last few puzzles though.

Dance Music, counter culture, and the new mainstream

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

At the end of December I managed to catch Reverb just before it finished. It was an exhibition that featured many pieces, by different artists, all on the subject of music culture. I went on a Friday afternoon, so it was quiet and I got to take my time through it. One of the pieces, a film, really stuck with me. It was just over an hour long but I sat and watched the whole film, which I never do.

Everybody In The Place - An Incomplete History of Britain 1984-1992 is a recording of lecture that the artist, Jeremy Deller, gave to an A Level politics class. It covers the introduction of house music to the UK, how that music became more electronic, and eventually, how Acid House came to dominate Britain.

Deller shows that Acid House was part of a pivotal moment in British history. Happening just after the Miner's Strike, it was part of a shift in how people, and especially young people, socialised. The film has many standout moments, but the section on Castlemorton and how people outside of the movement reacted was one of my favourite bits.

Dance Music started as a counter cultural movement, emerging from gay clubs ran by Black men in Chicago. It's now one of the dominant forms of culture worldwide. Everybody In The Place is amazing piece of art, not only because it covers part of that rise, but also how it explains what it means to be part of a culture like that.

Honourable mentions

🎮 Indiana Jones and The Great Circle was delightful from start to finish. It's got some issues with cameras and pathfinding, but that's common with AAA games these days. There's also lots of to enjoy, like whacking Nazis in the nads with guitars, Troy Baker's voice, intricately detailed locations all around the globe, and most surprisingly, it's a first person game where you barely fire a gun.
🎧 What Did You Do Yesterday? has been a nice new bit of background chatter between comedians.
📺 The Rehearsal was fantastically weird, and my first experience of Nathan Fielder. We'll definitely be watching Nathan For You very soon.
📺 Fantasmas is another weird watch this week. The dialogue, sets, and plots, are so bizarre and I love it. It's been a weird week of TV I guess?
🎬 I thought The Fall Guy was better than lots of the original reviews said. A lovely silly action comedy with impressive stunts. The behind the scenes shots of the stunts during the credits was a nice touch.

Yearnotes: 2024

Mon, 30 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT

It's Christmas time! So that means I delay writing this until near New Year's Eve. On Christmas Eve we watched Love Actually for the first time and I agree with everything Jezebel said on the film. Absolute dogshit. We had friends over for Christmas Day with a short visit to our local pub for a few hours. On Boxing Day we had our now traditional party for all the Christmas orphans who stay in London like us.

Onto the highlights.

We got married! It was amazing! It was also the first time our families had ever met, and thankfully they all got on well. We had a huge party with all our friends. Instead of doing a first dance, I secretly taught Lila how to DJ and we surprised everyone with a B2B set.
With our families coming for the Wedding, we rushed to finish the house and garden renovations just in time. Those are mostly finished, as much as it's ever mostly finished. Owning a house can be an absolute nightmare.
2 weeks before her Hen, Lila came off her bike and broke her kneecap in half. The timing was awful, but she was out of the leg brace and off the crutch by the big day. It's going to be a long recovery, so we recently started back to the gym to aid that along.
I'm still running, although that's dropped off a bit in December when I swapped to the gym. Being back at the gym is nice but I'm dreading how mad it'll be in January.
Right at the start of the year I got a new job at Sona. Everyone's very nice, I'm writing Elixir, we work a 4.5 day week, and we get to expense any books. It's a great job.
I didn't travel too much, other than Florida for Kennedy Space Centre, the Cruise, and 5 days in Miami. We're saving the honeymoon for 2025.
Other than the Wedding set, my music output took a bit of a backseat to many other things this year. I've made a conscious decision to switch from Traktor to Pioneer just to make gigging easier, but Rekordbox is so much worse. Maybe once I get used to it I'll think differently. I did play my first gig on XDJs at a local brewery, which was lots of fun and a good first step to take. Over the Christmas period I also started learning Sonic Pi, but my soundscapes must've been too weird because I blew my speakers.
I aimed to read 12 books this year, only managing 8: Dune Messiah, Foundation, Children of Time, Children of Ruin, Pathogenesis, Did Ye Hear Mammy Died, Ubik, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. My books per year YoY average has doubled from last year, so next year I should hit 16.
Game(s) of the year (that I played in 2024): Cyberpunk 2077 was amazing. Balatro was a horrible and amazing addiction. Starfield is a disappointment that I can't help but keep playing. Animal Well was a beautiful mystery. Elden Ring finally clicked with me, but I've dropped off right near the end. Maybe I'll finally finish it in 2025. Right at the end of the year Indiana Jones and The Great Circle snuck in as a great high budget walking sim.
For film, Kneecap was my standout. Dune: Part 2 was great. I've managed to log everything on Letterboxd as far as I can remember. TV wise, Dune: Prophecy was slightly good, but not great. Like everyone, I loved plenty of zeitgeisty things like Fallout and Shogun, but my surprise hit was From - a Lost like show about a town nobody can escape from. I can't wait for season 3 to hit the UK.
My musical highlights were plentiful, and like their film, Kneecap's album was definitely top. Hudson Mohawke, Special Request, WaqWaq Kingdom, and 4am Kru were my faves from Bangface Weekender. Ladyscraper at The Black Heart in March was incredible breakcore and a flashback to when breakcore was more frequently played. Recently I've also attended more gigs, and Lankum was my favourite of those. I've never really been into Irish trad music, and listening to Kneecap's album has pushed me to give it a shot.
I posted a lot more this year than any other. 1 post a month, if I count this one. Having your own slice of the web is great. My most popular post was on my time working as a one person Engineering team, with my list of pubs coming second. My personal favourite was writing about Cyberpunk 2077
Speaking of, as Twitter continues its' death spiral it made more sense to move to Mastodon, but now nearly everyone seems to have settled into BlueSky. That's good. I'm not sure it's a meaningful difference from how Twitter was set up, but at this point who cares. I just want to hang out with nice people online.
Three more tattoos this year, including my first flash, which was my first at a convention. It's as addictive as everyone says. It might be a few months before I get my next.

There's probably a lot that I'm forgetting, but I'm too full of cured meat and cheese to remember most of it.

Until next year.

My best pubs in London

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Back in the olden times, going into work on Tuesday meant picking up a free copy of Timeout before getting on the Tube to read all about the goings on in London. Now, there's no print edition, but they still update their website every Tuesday. Recently, they published their indisputable, irrefutable and 100 percent accurate list of the the best 50 pubs in London.

My favourite beer blog, Boak and Bailey, posted this in response:

<blockquote class="bluesky-embed" data-bluesky-uri="at://did:plc:exhx5q5gbqbxphm6cvga76dr/app.bsky.feed.post/3la7vtc5obo25" data-bluesky-cid="bafyreigvw3vbywjdsvw4ufehhiih7ncad5mqvhnv5kyxjtwpe2gu5jql5a"><p lang="en">Remember, if you see a list in a newspaper you don't like, that's nature's way of telling you to make your own list. (We would like to read your list.)

boakandbailey.com/2018/10/on-l...<br><br><a href="https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:exhx5q5gbqbxphm6cvga76dr/post/3la7vtc5obo25?ref_src=embed">[image or embed]</a></p>— Boak & Bailey (Jess & Ray) (<a href="https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:exhx5q5gbqbxphm6cvga76dr?ref_src=embed">@boakandbailey.bsky.social</a>) <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:exhx5q5gbqbxphm6cvga76dr/post/3la7vtc5obo25?ref_src=embed">November 5, 2024 at 6:55 PM</a></blockquote><script async src="https://embed.bsky.app/static/embed.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Now I love hanging out in pubs, and I've spent most of my adult life in London, so here's my own list of best pubs in London.

The Anchor & Hope, Clapton

There's something about a drinking nice cold pint right next to a body of water that really elevates the whole experience. The Anchor & Hope is a tiny community ran pub, but spills out onto the path that runs alongside the River Lea.

You'll see a lovely cross section of East London citizens taking up the picnic tables, while dogs and bikes fit in between any gaps. A mate was in there once by himself, when a group of people walked in and asked "Do you do coffee? And can I see the wine list?", to which the old punk barmaid replied, "Fuck off back to Shoreditch".

The Auld Shillelagh, Stoke Newington

A legend of an Irish pub in London. The Auld Shillelagh serves all the standard drinks that you might expect from an Irish pub, and although I'm not really a Guinness drinker, I have been reliably informed that they pour it well.

Once when I was in there on a Friday night a proper seafood seller was coming round, so I helped myself to a little pot of prawn cocktail. My only experience of the classic pub fish man, but it made me wish it was still common.

It also serves Nordie Tayto, which as you'll see is a recurring theme when it comes to pubs that I enjoy.

The Blue Posts, Berwick Street Market, Soho

With an interior that looks like it hasn't changed from the 70s, The Blue Posts feels like a proper old battle cruiser. It gets very busy in the evenings, but also a lovely spot to grab a table with a book during the day. There are several pubs called The Blue Posts all within or near to Soho, but it's not really known why, so make sure you get the right one.

Bradley's Spanish Bar, Tottenham Court Road

About as Spanish as San Miguel, Bradley's is a little red oasis hidden away down a side street. An ancient looking jukebox sits just inside the door, where you might see a similarly aged regular sat at the bar. There isn't much to the pub, but the history is an interesting one.

The Cock Tavern, Hackney Central

A craft beer pub in Hackney isn't exactly original, but The Cock is one of the best. The beer selection is stellar, the decor is classic, the atmosphere is solid, and the 'beer garden' is laughably bleak. The eponymous Cock was even kidnapped, but eventually returned in September 2022.

The Cross Keys, Covent Garden

Although the front looks overgrown, hidden inside is a carpetted cavern covered with plenty of tat. A lovely place to spend an afternoon taking it all in.

The Dicken's Inn, Wapping

Sat within Saint Katherine's Way, The Dicken's Inn is another pub covered in plants situated near a body of water. When you're stuck in the no man's land of Tower Hill, this is a solid spot for a pint. If you sit outside you can also gawk at all the fancy boats docked up.

The Euston Tap, Euston

Outside the worst train station may be an odd spot for a great pub, and although the West Hall is small, the Euston Tap has more than enough personality to make up for the surroundings and the size. The selection is top notch and there is lots of space outside.

Exmouth Arms, Farringdon

London has plenty of nice pubs, covered in green tiles, sitting on the corners of nice streets, but the Exmouth Arms is special to me because it's where my wife and I finished our first date.

Howl at The Moon, Hoxton

Most of the pubs on this list are simply here because I enjoy being in them, but The Howl is different. When I first moved to London, I lived behind the building facing it. Between Paddy's Days, GAA finals, Ireland rugby games, and any night I fancied, I spent a lot of my time there. Eventually, I even became friendly with the owner. By no means a traditional take on an Irish pub, it is still an Irish pub, and was a little slice of home away from home when I needed it the most.

The Lamb, Highbury & Islington

There's something special about a dimly lit pub at night, especially during the winter months. The Lamb's black floor and ceiling make it feel darker than it really is, so it feels extra cosy. And they serve Tayto.

Lord Nelson, Southwark

A flat roof pub joined onto a block of flats is not a place you might expect to be on this list, but the Lord Nelson is a colorful spot filled to the brim with kitchy tat that turns it into a divebar down an otherwise non-descript street.

Mannions Prince Arthur, Tottenham Hale

Another microcosm of Ireland, this one ran by a Roscommon couple and in an area more known for warehouses, of both the industrial variety and 40 people living there variety. To my shame, I only discovered it recently, but it immediately became a firm favourite.

The Nag's Head, Walthamstow

There aren't many places that have as much unique personality as The Nag's Head. The landlady, Flossie, is practically a celebrity, and you'll see her there being followed around the pub by her poodles. Famously filled with cats, one by one they've all passed away over the years, so the bar is flanked on one side by a cat shrine, with a David Bowie shrine on the other. It all feels a bit like drinking in an Flossie's living room. And best of all for a DINK couple living in Walthamstow, it's a childfree pub.

In an interview on Timeout's podcast, Love Thy Neighbourhood, Flossie revealed that when she bought the pub she got rid of the bar stools so women felt comfortable coming up to the bar, and started a rumour it was going to be a gay pub to scare off the old regulars for a bit. What a woman.

Pelt Trader, Cannon Street

When a pub becomes the office regular, it can lead to many nights filled with gossip and laughs, but when I worked above it, it felt like The Pelt Trader was even better than a normal regular. It boasts a fantastic beer selection and serves some of the best pizza I've had in London. The lads from our New York office said it was the best pizza they'd had outside of New York.

The Pride of Spitalfields, Spitalfields

Carpetted floors, red velvet seats, classic decor, and ancient photos on the wall are hallmarks of a great pub, and The Pride of Spitalfields has them all. There's even a pub cat who might steal your warm seat when you get up for another round.

The Seven Stars, Holborn

A weird little spot that you might miss walking by, unless you're keeping an eye out for the strange collection of tat in the window. Green check tablecloths sit inside two tiny rooms and constant rotation of pub cats in ruffs have stood guard. A beatifully weird pub with a long and interesting history.

Tamesis Dock, Vauxhaull

Some pubs overlook The Thames. This one is in The Thames. A pub on a boat, or maybe the pub is the boat? Enjoying your pint while the waves gentely rock you is an odd feeling. If you time it right when the tide is going out, you can even feel the boat settling into its' cradle.

The Toucan, Soho

There are plenty of pubs London that serve shit and unreal Guinness, but The Toucan is on another level. People spill out of the small ground floor room onto the street, while in the basement below, pint shaped stools painted like Guinness sit in front of another bar with a serious whiskey collection. My favourite thing about the pub is a quote on the wall in basement from former DUP leader Ian Paisley:

"There is nothing I'd like to see more, than the Devil's Buttermilk be banned."

The Wenlock Arms, Old Street

A proper pub on a lovely corner in a quiet Hoxton street. It's an old spot with wonky floorboards, a fireplace, and a piano. Another one that sells Tayto too, but I'm an easy mark for that distinctive flavour with a pint in a nice place.

<hr/>

This is my list of 20. I probably could've put more down but I tried not to just list every pub I like. There's also some that don't exist anymore like the Bree Louise. As Boak and Bailey said, share your list with the world.

Honourable mentions

🔗 I'm using BlueSky more and more. Follow me.
🎙️ I really enjoyed this episode of Twenty Thousand Hertz on Hans Zimmer's work on the Dune films.
🎵 After a few bumper weekends of music, Lankum was definitely the highlight. A modern take on traditional Irish music. My parents weren't into that stuff so I don't really have an appreciation for it, but Kneecap has gotten me into a broader selection of modern Irish acts.
🎬 Small Things Like These was a brutal watch. I expected it to be better, and the ending wasn't great, but it's an important story.
🎬 Like everyone else, I watched The Substance. So fucked up. I loved it.
🎬 Most of the other things I watched over October to scare myself were awful. Immaculate was the only highlight.
📺 Everyone Else Burns Season 2 was great. Kate O'Flynn is hilarious.
📺 MAFS UK was an abomination. Nearly everyone should've went for therapy instead. Some proper bullying not being called out by the experts. I'm not sure I can handle another series.
📺 Taskmaster Season 18 is over. I've been a fan of Zaltzman for years so it was wonderful to see him on TV. Rosie Jones was disgusting and hilarious.
📺 The first episode of Dune Prophecy is out. I enjoyed it, and without spoiling anything I think they're hinting at something not in the films yet but is in Dune Messiah. I hope they nail this. With Foundation being half amazing and half shit, I want a good TV sci-fi adaption to work.
🎮 Balatro on mobile is such an addiction. I've got to endless mode with a few decks, but I don't think I have the time to craft crazy broken builds like I see online.
🎮 I finally finished Cyberpunk 2077. What an incredible journey.
🎮 I also gave Starfield a second chance, it's OK, but compared to Cyberpunk it's such a letdown and a missed opportunity. I'm looking forward to when someone can figure out how to make a better Starfield.
📚 After finishing Children of Ruin, I had to start Children of Memory instantly. I'm about 100 pages in and it hasn't quite grabbed me yet, but I think I felt the same with Children of Time so I'm determined to finish it.

Kneecap and the importance of stories

Sun, 29 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT

If you don't know them, Kneecap are a hip hop trio from West Belfast who are famous for rapping mostly in Irish and being very politically vocal. Their popularity has recently reached a crescendo, with a Glastonbury performance, a debut album, and even a film.

I'm a huge fan. I'm also from the same bit of Belfast. My Irish is limited to a few words and sentences, but I understand enough. I've been to multiple shows, seen the film twice, and managed to get into their album launch party at Molly Bloom's in Dalston.

Exactly like a West Belfast pub.

Living in London, I know more mainland Brits than the average person in Ireland might. Most of those friends I know through music, and they know how much I'm into Kneecap. This has led to many late night conversations over Kneecap and the Irish language. I always use this as an opportunity to point out that I speak Hiberno-English. Or put another way, English words with Irish grammar.

Kneecap, and I, are both from a part of the world with a distinct cultural identity. One that, outside of the North of Ireland, is rarely shown in media. A history of music and language exist alongside solidarity with Palestine, a dark sense of humour about our turbulent past, and a healthy distrust of the British State and Royal Family.

Outside of BBC NI and UTV, stories from Irish Catholics weren't heard. Let's not forget that it wasn't that long ago that our elected representative's voices were literally not allowed on TV. What might've been deemed politically sensitive to some, is a way of life where I come from.

Being from the Catholic/Nationalist part of Belfast, any national identity that I have is steeped in centuries of colonisation, cultural supression, and mainland ignorance of our history.

Now though, Kneecap is telling our story to the world. I think that everyone should listen to the album, watch the film, and maybe learn cúpla focal.

Honourable mentions

🎮 Soaking up all of Elden Ring as I near the end. What an incredible game.
🎮 Balatro is very addictive. I might be developing a problem.
🎮 I played a bit more of Chants of Sennar on a recent flight. I don't think it's a perfect game, but it's an interesting and fun take on the Metroidbrainia genre.
📺 Married at First Sight UK has started again and it seems like they've managed to find an even worse cohort of people.
📺 I heard about From via The Besties. It's a Lost-like show with 3 seasons that was completely new to me. I'm getting very into it.
📺 Taskmaster Season 18 is great. It's unfortunate that dickheads have made it all about Rosie Jones and how her disability makes it less enjoyable for them, but if anything, she's using it to her advantage.
📖 Children of Ruin is absolutely mad. After reading Children of Time in a week on the cruise I couldn't wait for the sequel. It's just as wild and creepy. I love it so much.

Remote Lurking

Thu, 22 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT

It's easy to always think back to March 2020, and what that did to us all, but instead I like to think back to Summer 2020 - with the big C keeping us inside for the past 3 months, everyone was desperate to socialise. Many of us bent the rules without breaking them, until restrictions temporarily allowed for meeting outdoors in small groups.

The yearning to meet friends was so desperate for my ~Partner~ Wife and I that we even became friends with neighbours and strangers. Some of those strangers became good friends, and recently attended our wedding.

But time moves on from that glorious Summer. Hugging friends and shaking hands is allowed again. Being inside with strangers is fine. But for most computery jobs, we're all still working remotely.

The case for Remote Work

Most of us have been doing this for over 4 years now. I think we all have our own reasons that we enjoy it. For me, life seems to be at a slower pace. Without a commute, I can fit in a run before work, chores, errands, or just relax. If you've got kids, I understand that spending more time with them would be a huge benefit.

Really, it means that your time is your own. No longer is the extra time around your work owned by your employer. It's yours to do with as you please. And that's a big deal.

We aren't going back to working in offices five days a week. That much is clear.

You won't miss it until it's gone

But there's a downside that I see. I have 2 younger brothers. They're 9 and 11 years younger than me, so both in their mid 20s. When I was that age, going out with colleagues was a way to become friendly with them, and in turn become friendly with their friends.

When I moved to London I knew a few people, but it's a big city and they were scattered all over the place, with their own plans. After work drinks was an easy way to make new friends. Some of those people have became friends for life.

What happens now that nearly everyone works from home? If you're in the office some of the time does that still happen? With the loss of the workplace social circle, have we lost the opportunity to turn colleagues into friends?

What can we do?

Working from home can be lonely. There's plenty of evidence saying so. But what can we do about it?

Co-working doesn't help. In my experience the cohesion of post work socialing needs to be organised by the office manager and it's up to them if they do it or not. Moving co-working space and leaving behind those other members that you didn't form a bond with in the first place means you probably won't be invited back.

But there's now a growing movement to reignite Union membership among Tech Workers. Ethan Marcotte and his book You Deserve a Tech Union have certainly helped with that.

In decades past, traditional Trade Unions often grouped together to run co-operative social clubs. In Walthamstow, where I live, there is one such social club. Built in 1919 as a place where local Trade Union members could meet, it was a pub, event space, and local community hub. Now, it's used for much the same purpose by the whole community. Maybe there's something there. I'm not suggesting that Prospect open a co-working space that doubles as a pub, but potentially what we need is a Remote Workers Social Club.

Working from home by yourself wouldn't mean being alone. Meetups, social events, and just chatting over a pint could be something organised by your local branch of the RWSC.

Something to think about anyways.

Honourable mentions

💒 Getting married was unreal. We had the best day with friends and family. Instead of doing a first dance, I secretly taught Lila how to DJ and we did our first set together.
📖 I finished re-reading Foundation and couldn't help but feel the Empire half of the TV show was better. A book of conversations is hard to adapt. I'll continue re-reading the subsequent books in the series. I remember them getting better as it went on.
📖 Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? was a beautiful book that I read over 2 days. It made me laugh loads and cry by the end. It also put me back on track for at least 1 book a month this year.
🎮 This post was in part inspired by the lovely wrap up with all the people involved in Psychodyssey.
🎮 I finished Fallout 4 and grew so tired of it by the end. I'm not sure if I'll go back to it for the DLCs. I would love Fallout: London to come to consoles but it's never going to happen.
🎮 Thank Goodness You're Here is a delight. It's rare for games to be funny.
🎮 Coming back to Elden Ring a third time and the game has finally clicked with me. I now understand that using absolutely everything the game gives me is the way it's meant to be played. Starscourge Radahn is vanquished and Nokron cleared.
📺 Finally watched Oppenheimer and it was great. Having listened to both seasons of The Bomb I knew who Fuchs was and what was coming.
📺 True Detective: Night Country was weird and cool. Now I want to watch The Thing.
📺 House of the Dragon S2 was good, but I'm not sure if they're able to keep the momentum with Paddy Considine.
📺 The Bear S3 was enjoyable, but not as much as the other seasons. I still loved watching it.
🔗 Teenage Engineering's new Medieval Instrument launch video gives off big Holy Mountain vibes. I watched it so many times.

Here's to The Naysayers

Tue, 09 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

In 1972 a report was published on humanity's impact on the Earth. The report outlined how, given the current trajectory of economic and exponential population growth, humanity's use of finite resources would eventually cause our systems to collapse. The Limits to Growth was written by a group of researchers who were commissioned by a group called the Club of Rome.

The Limits to Growth was a wake up call. In retrospect, it's easy to see how right the writers of The Limits to Growth were, but many people and corporations rallied against it. They worked to silence and discredit the team behind it.

Tipping Point is a podcast that chronicles the origins, publication, and impact of the study. I listened to it a few months ago and it has really stuck with me.

It's difficult, hearing that things so impactful to us now were obvious to a select few. They tried to tell the World, but the World didn't want to listen.

Listen to Tipping Point. Share it with others and tell the world. Maybe things have a chance of not ending up so fucked as we think?

Honourable mentions

I haven't posted in a while, so there's a lot to mention.

Fallout the show, made me go back to Fallout 4. It's good, but some bad game design decisions forced me to pick a specific side. Fuck The Institute, without them the Railroad is meaningless, the Minutemen are annoying, and so the only logical choice to stop The Institute is the Brotherhood of Steel.
After listening to too many podcasts about imminent global collapse, I started listening to Three Bean Salad. I loved it so much, but it felt like nonsense so I went all the way back to the start from 2021.
I was lucky to go to Kneecap's album launch party in Dalston. It was wild. Fine Art has been on repeat since then. It's an incredible selection of music from three of the finest lads West Belfast has ever produced.
The next night I also went to see their film, which is also incredible. Maybe I'm biased, but it deserves all the praise it'll get on general release in August.
Shogun is as good as everyone said.
I've fallen behind on reading at least 1 book every month this year. Pathogenesis has crept into July. It's a great book though and I can't stop telling everyone about it.

Something personal

I'm getting married this month! It's very exciting, stressful, and expensive. I can't wait.

Cruisenotes

Fri, 03 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Our day at the Kennedy Space Center was just the start of 2 weeks in Florida. The main reason we were there was to go on a cruise with Lila's Mum and Stepdad, her stepsiblings, and their kids.

It was a strange experience, and a type of holiday that most people from Europe don't do, so I thought I'd write about it.

The ship

We were on the second biggest cruise ship in the world, the Wonder of the Seas. It's big, but after a week it felt small.

The top deck has waterslides and pools, and a few outdoor bars. The pools are small, so it's more like a Hieronymus Bosch waterpark with little demon children everywhere. There's an adult only section, but it's got a plastic roof so it heats up like a PVC conservatory. When it was very hot outside, it was too hot in there.

Wonder has a central atrium with an outdoor boardwalk at one end, while the middle has an outdoor park. It's weird, but a nice space. They even play bird noises in a nice touch of climate emergency dystopia.

Food

There's a main buffet open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The food is fine. Ironically, the Indian food is probably the best thing there. My guess is because lots of the staff are Indian they know how to cook good food.

There's a huge dining hall for people to have a sitdown meal each night. The food there is fine too. The menus are themed on a cuisine, but for example, one night was Italian and the main was a lasagna and it was fine.

Those are both all-inclusive, but there's extra restaurants that aren't included. We didn't bother with any of those so I can't comment, but I wouldn't hold out any hope of any better food.

Alcohol

There's an extra all-inclusive drinks package. Working out the cost came to ~£1100 for both of us. Everyone in your cabin needs to take the package. We had decided not to do that in the run up to it, but our first drink of 2 cocktails would've cost us $40, so on the first day we changed our mind and splurged.

We worked it out afterwards in the Royal Caribbean app and reckon it would've cost us roughly double if we hadn't had the drinks package.

There were rumours of a 15 minute time limit on how frequently you can get drinks. I'm definitely not advocating you get free drinks and give them to people in your group who don't have the drinks package, but there's nothing stopping you.

Entertainment

There's a few shows each day that work like game shows including Mr & Mrs, and The World's Sexiest Man competition. A 75 year old man won that and clinched it with his answer to "if you were a drink what type of drink would you be" - a 40 ounce Corona because he likes beer.

In the evening there was some standup and an aqua theatre show on different days. One night had a Marvel rip off musical in the theatre.

Islands

We stopped at three islands, with the first one owned by the cruise line - CocaCay. The adult only beach was an extra charge for the day, but we found a free beach on the other side of the island to sit on for the day.

St Thomas was up next and didn't have more than a few main streets selling jewelry and tourist tat.

St Martin/Sint Maarten was the last and was a bit more interesting. We had an excursion booked for what is apparently the World's Steepest Zipline. It was a pretty scary view from the top of the mountain but a lot of fun on the way back down. The coach drivers who took us to and from the mountain were entertaining tour guides, explaining the weird setup of the island by having 2 of everything - 2 countries, 2 governments, 2 passports, 2 capital cities, 2 airports, 2 wives for each man, and 2 coach drivers who repeated the same joke.

Review

We were in a group of 20 people so it was nice to see Lila's family when they live in Canada, but we wouldn't do a cruise if it was just the 2 of us. It's a good holiday if you've got kids, as they can do whatever they like with plenty for them to do.

With lots costing being extra, it's a high end shopping mall at sea. I spotted tours of the ship in the app and suggested we do those only to discover it cost an extra $200 per person.

The restaurants and bars present a simulation of atmosphere exactly like a mall and lack any level of authenticity that you might want to experience when you visit another country. Maybe that appeals to some people, but I didn't enjoy it.

It reminded me a lot of how simulated and fake Las Vegas felt. The ship even has a casino room specifically for the smokers.

Tips

If you still want to go, here's some tips:

Get a sea facing cabin so you have some level of privacy from people looking in your window.
Don't stay in a cabin on the highest cabin deck. Above that deck will be the buffet dining area, so you'll be woken up to sounds of cooking, moving furniture, and lots of footsteps.
Book an excursion every day the ship is docked. You may as well go and do some experience that you can't do elsewhere. We regretted not booking a sea turtle snorkeling session on St Thomas.
Bring a good book, or 2. You'll be sitting around a lot so have something to entertain you. They charged $30 per day to use the Internet, so maybe a digital detox is better?

Kennedy Space Center

Wed, 01 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Lila and I just returned from Florida. We did a bunch of different things while we were away. The first one was out of this world.

Since I was a child, I was obsessed was science and space exploration. Visiting Kennedy Space Center was absolutely a dream come true. The spectacle and the enormity of what NASA accomplished was incredible to see.

Nerding out about Space actually began the night before on our first night in Florida, when we got to watch a rocket launch from the beach next to our hotel. Perfect timing for a sci-fi enthusiast who had just travelled halfway round the world.

The launch was scheduled for 9:40pm, but that time came and went. We stood on the beach with Lila's stepbrother and his kids wondering if anything would happen.

Suddenly the night sky to the North bloomed like a star had just been born. Arcing up and to the side, it trailled away from the Earth, followed by the boom of the engines reachng us. We stayed to watch the rocket separation and what looked like the Starlink satelitte dispersal. A once in a lifetime event for me. I was smiling from start to finish.

KSC gave me the same reaction. You arrive straight in front of the Rocket Garden, with a real Saturn IB on its side. There's plenty on display to see after that - the Vehicle Assembly Building, replica test equipment, spacesuits that have been on the moon and are still covered in moondust, a Saturn V rocket, a Lunar Module Eagle, and even the real fucking Space Shuttle Atlantis, along with loads of other stuff.

Some shots from the launch and the visitor center.

America as a vibe

When I was a kid, NASA and the Space Shuttle was the coolest thing I could think of. The NASA worm and Helvetica on the side of a human-made spacecraft always stuck in my brain. Seeing these objects and learning about their history was a real highlight of the trip.

Something else stuck with me though - how impossible it all was. Putting humans on the Moon and building a long term habitat in Space were the culminations of thousands of extremely smart people. America, with the help of a few Nazi scientists, did the impossible.

With the scorch marks on Spacecraft next to the Stars & Stripes, you can understand the wave of American Exeptionalism that followed the space program. There's also several exhibits on the challenges encounter, like the disasters in the space program, including the Challenger and Columbia.

Coming away from the visitor centre I couldn't help but be excited about the future. If you're into science, technology, or space, definitely give it a visit.

Little Tech

Thu, 11 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMT

There's been a noticeable shift over the last two years or so towards owning your own corner of the Internet. Besides myself, plenty of others are doing the same. Mattias Ott even has a newsletter all about it.

Cultivating your own digital garden is one part of taking back the internet, but we're still figuring out what the post Twitter community looks like.

I made friends on Twitter. It was a special place. I miss it. Like an ex that broke all our collective hearts, we're still working through that grief.

We need to try and move on - make new relationships, memories, and Internet friends.

Other things

We're planning our Wedding, a cruise, a holiday in Miami, and a garden renovation. All in the next 4 months. No sweat.

📺 The Scoop was a wild watch. I love a good story about how massive pieces of shit the Royal Family are.
📺 Still MAFS Australia. A facsinating insight into the human condition of wanting love and terrible plastic surgery.
📺 Taskmaster season 17 is off to a strong start. I'm cheering on Joanne McNally for Ireland, but John Robins and Sophie Willins are cracking me up.
📺 Big Mood on Channel 4. Real life besties Nicola Coughlan and Lydia West play fictional besties hanging around Hackney while Coughlan's Maggie deals with being constantly on the verge of a mental health crisis. Funnier than it sounds.
🎙️ Joanne McNally's podcast on the Avril Lavigne doppelganger theory has been cracking me up. She's hilarious, and the levels she goes to made me laugh out loud.
🎙 BBC Sounds really smashed the recommendations with The Bomb. I listened to season 1 in a few days. It follows the story of Leo Szilard and his role in the creation of the atomic bomb. It's made by someone whose grandfather worked on the Manhattan Project, so it grapples with that too.
🍿 Both the old and the new Roadhouse films. Equally good and shit in different ways.
🍿 The Antisocial Network was crazy. Who would've guessed the history of the US pivoted at an anime convention.

🎮 Under the castle on the Playdate is such an addictive little game. It's interesting to see how developers approach making games with such limitions.
🎮 Dipping back into Halo: Infinite for The Yappening event. Fighting waves of Grunts is total carnage, and they're surprisingly difficult for the lowest level of the Banished hierarchy.
🎮 Game Pass added Shadow of the Tomb Raider, so I got around to playing the previous game, Rise of the Tomb Raider. It feels like a mix of The Last of Us and Uncharted. A lot wonkier than what Naughty Dog might put out, but it's scratching that itch.

Dune, Avatar, and worldbuilding

Wed, 20 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Unless you've been living in a cave, you've probably spotted that the second part of the Dune duology has taken over the world. I'm a huge fan of the book, and to see it finished with such a spectacular entry is a relief. I loved every second of it and drank it up like a fresh pint of worm water on Arrakis.

I'm also a huge fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Like Dune, there has also been a recent adaption and a universally panned previous one.

While sometimes dismissed as a kid's cartoon, Avatar has a simple premise and builds from there - the world is divided into four countries, where each ethnic group can control one of the four classical elements through an ability called bending. While this ability is not always inherited, one person in the world can control all four. The lore is deep and complicated, and everyone in the world has their own motivations.

Watching both of these adaptions recently, there's a big difference is how they stuck the landing.

This post contains minor spoilers for the start of Dune: Part 2 and the premise of a few episodes of Avatar, both the original animation and the new adaption.

Rules

Great worldbuilding is about setting up rules, and then seeing what impact it would have on the world and the characters. Arrakis is an inhospitable planet, and the things you see reflect that. There's a great scene early on where the Harkonnen forces drop down to capture Paul and Jessica. Like the Fremen, the Harkonnen forces have suits built for the harsh environment. Vents spin and whir, because the Harkonnens need to deal with the heat just like everything else on Arrakis. Things feel dirty, worn, and believable.

The world of Avatar depicted in the the original animation also does this really well. Earthbenders carve great cities out of the ground, Airbenders live in monasteries high up in the mountains, Waterbenders at the Northern Water Tribe constructed their city out of ice, and Firebenders can more easily work with metal - so they've reached a stage of industrial revolution that has enabled them to wage war on the other three nations largely unchallenged.

Avatar the animation and Avatar the recent live action adaption differ when it comes to this level of worldbuilding. In the animation, each nation builds their culture and technology around their respective bending ability. A great example of this happening during an important early part of the Avatar story. The main characters arrive at the great Earth Kingdom city of Omashu and marvel at its' three peaks that tower high out of the mountain. To aid the citizens in travel, tracks cross back and forward through the city, rising through all the various levels.

In the adaption, these tracks were designed by a single man - the Mechanist. He exists as a character in the animation, but his role in the greater conflict was merged with an unrelated feature of the world. In the animation, the track network still exists, but Earthbenders are the source of power, not machinery. In the animation, the world has been through a genocide followed by one hundred years of war because of bending. It shows the reliance that all nations put on bending and how bending can be a source of great power and great danger.

By making a choice to leave details like this behind, the adaption is telling a subtly different story. There's still rocks, fire, ice and air flying. There's still genocide and war. But the world just doesn't feel the same as it did when I saw it the first time round.

Stick the landing

Denis Villeneuve also decided to leave elements out of Dune. Element that I'd love to have seen, such as the Spacing Guild and the wider landed gentry of minor houses that also lived on Arrakis. They aren't such a big deal though, as these aren't too important to the story of Dune - a story about plans within plans, factions tugging at fate, and ultimately one of Paul's relationship with the Fremen.

Avatar's story is about Aang and his friends, but the story is also about bending, its' impact on the world, and Aang's relationship with his bending. It's just a shame they left so much of that story out.

Other things

Apart from those, I've also been enjoying:

The last few bits of Cyberpunk 2077.
Taskmaster New Zealand - almost as good as the UK one. Season 2 is some of the craziest stuff I've seen on TV.
Married At First Sight Australia - Lila got me into the UK one last season, and this one is wild.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow - I rinsed it in a few weeks. What a glorious tale of art, friendship, love, and play.
Memories - I took myself off to the Prince Charles Cinema to see this being shown on a Friday afternoon and loved it.
I've been playing some more delightful things on my Playdate.
The Gentlemen on Netflix was a fun watch. So much fun that we binged it in a day.

I ❤️ Night City

Thu, 29 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT

“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”

When William Gibson begun Neuromancer with that, a dead channel meant static. As technology has changed, so has the meaning of that description. We begin the story in Chiba City with a downtrodden hacker, Henry Case, as he is given a chance at redemption. Neuromancer deals with technology, sentient Artificial Intelligence, Space Colonisation, simulated reality in a technological singularity, and many other themes that we're used to now, but at the time, they were groundbreaking.

Chiba City streets by Andrew Porter

Cyberpunk as a genre started with Neuromancer. Through Ghost in The Shell, The Matrix, and more, we end up with Cyberpunk 2077.

In Cyberpunk 2077, we explore Night City. Sitting on the Californian coastline and independent from the New United States of America, Night City exists as a capitalist maximum in a society ruled by corporations.

A view of Night City

The technological singularity has reached a crescendo - Humans swap their organic limbs and organs for artificial versions, giving them an advantage in the workplace, sports, and sex. Memories can be recorded and played back as Braindances, leading to a whole new industry of recorded entertainment, crime, death, and pornography. NC's leading cab company is run by an AI that doesn't ask questions. The highest earners in society play fast and lose with those who live literally and figuratively below them, while the poorest have no choice but take out huge loans and upgrade their bodies to have any chance at escaping poverty.

The Arasaka parade flows through upper Japantown

Cyberware surgeries are done by Ripperdocs - back alley surgeons with a vibe more akin to a tattoo studio than a hospital. Ditching your 'ganic parts for chrome doesn't come without risks though - some people with chrome lose it and lash out, often killing others in the process. Although Cyberpsychosis is rare, nobody knows what causes it. Even if your brain survives the upgrades, since you've got cyberware, you'll need to take immunosuppressive drugs for the rest of your life.

While human limits can be surpassed, healthcare is still an issue. Ambulance services are stretched thin, so if you've got the money, you pay for a Trauma Team subscription. They'll monitor your vitals and swoop in via Arial Vehicle, dropping their crack team of paramedics who are armed with enough firepower for any issue.

Two shipping vessels on approach, seen from Arroyo

All of this technological integration comes with other dangers too. Netrunners can hack and control any connected device, and in 2077, all devices are connected. Security cameras, lights, doors, windows, cars, guns, eyes, ears, limbs, and even your impulses, could all be coerced into doing what the attacker desires.

Gang warfare ravages the city. The Tyger Claws rule Japantown, Little China, and Kabuki, while the Valentinos own Heywood. The Voodoo Boys specialise in Netrunning, ruling through extortion and dealing in cyberware. Maelstrom goes for more chrome than the general population, even in 2077, and has no issues with flatlining you to take yours. If you're unlucky, you might be an innocent bystander in daily disputes between the gangs.

Gangoons meeting over a drink

You'll encounter back alley deals, some of which have clearly went wrong for one of the parties involved. Domestics are common too, but intervening might not be advisable - you don't know if someone has Gorilla Arms ready to punch a hole through your organic ribcage.

Don't worry though, there's plenty of new friends out there for you to meet too! The law abiding denizens of this wonderful city are just as interesting.

Kabuki

Night City is pure visual cacophony. Neon signs pulse along lively streets filled with markets and traders. Graffiti follows buildings and walkways like urban snakes. Advertisements fill screens, persuading you to buy synth-meat or promoting the newest episode of Watson Whore. Above you, roads, public transit, and Aerodynes, pass between gargantuan residential mega-buildings and corporate headquarters - huge blocks of steel and concrete that blot out the sun. Holographic beams shoot out of the tallest buildings, occupying premium adspace that trails off into the sky. Music, sirens, disagreements, conversations, and the occasional sound of gunfire fill the air.

Heywood Waterfront

After dark, the city gets upgrade. More lights and more sounds push the limits of your attention span. Head to famous clubs like The Afterlife or The Totentanz to get a real taste of what Night City citizens enjoy when the sun goes down.

The Afterlife

A preem place

My time with Cyberpunk 2077 is nearly coming to an end. I've stopped the main storyline just short of the last mission and I'm working my way through Phantom Liberty. At times, the game has bugs and is still a bit janky, but overall it's a solid mix of immersive sim and Grand Theft Auto.

While the side quests and gigs sway between dull and interesting, the main storylines and characters are incredible. Night City is filled with plenty of weirdos and scum so you'll make many friends and enemies during your time there.

It's astounding that CD Projekt Red have done what many others haven't - built a world that feels truly cyberpunk. It's captivating, terrifying, and awe-inspiring. I think everyone should visit.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a game unlike any other.

Don't forget the Context

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT

About 10 years ago, I burnt my hand one morning while cooking breakfast. After a trip to A&E, my right hand was bandaged up leaving it painful to close. Any movement of the fingers on my right hand caused the skin to crack. It wasn't pleasant.

After a few days it was back to normal, but the situation left me with a newfound understanding of using a computer with an impairment. It was also around this time that a graphic made by Microsoft made the rounds.

I sympathise with the Viking.

I often think of this image, and how obvious it seems. It's something that everyone building products should see. With the Situational column, I think it touches on something deeper which most companies completely ignore - the context of use.

While I don't want to shit on any individual's work, I think it points to a larger problem in product development - when we build features, we ignore possible contexts in which they might be used.

iOS Focus

Focus was released in 2021 with iOS 15 and while it was mostly a good idea, the Driving mode was a fucking pain in the arse. I understand that America is a car centric country, but iOS would push an alert when traveling over a certain speed with just 2 options - Enable, and dismiss. No option to dismiss forever.

Living in London, I take public transport and cycle a lot. I continually got hit with this until I found online that there was a setting to not suggest it.

Airbnb

It's been a while since I used an Airbnb, since they are single handedly destroying the housing market in multiple cities, but when I did, I encountered one real ignorance of context.

I had organised a weekend in Paris for Lila's birthday. After getting off the Eurostar, we followed the address that I had in Google Maps. When we got off the Metro, the real problem started - signal was patchy, and the details of our booking were not saved offline. We had no idea where we were, what building it was, and how to get through the door. Eventually I got enough signal to get some information, but it was about 10 minutes of stress.

Is it that Airbnb staff don't actually travel that much? Maybe they always had good mobile data coverage? It seems like such an obvious use case to me that I can't help but think that someone suggested it only for it to languish at the bottom of the backlog.

Monzo

Before traveling last year I needed to organise my travel insurance. I didn't spend too long thinking about it, so I upgraded my Monzo account to their premium offering which includes it among a range of benefits.

Monzo's hot coral card became something of a trademark, but the premium level upgrades that to a metal one.

Monzo's Premium Card

The premium level increases the amount of cash that you can withdraw while outside of the UK. What a great thing to make traveling easier, except for one fatal flaw - the metal card isn't solid metal, it's actually a layer of metal on top of a layer of plastic so it's thicker than a normal card.

There's a reasonable chance that it won't fit into a cash machine. If you've just got your Monzo premium card with you and need some cash, you might end up in tough spot.

When I was in Mallorca recently, there were people selling cocktails on the beach who only took cash. My card didn't fit in the cash machine just off the beach. I luckily had something else, but what use is a card that won't fit in a cash machine?

Form and function

Everyone deserves good software and products, but when you're building something, think about how everyone might actually use it.

You don't want to ship a chocolate teapot, or a debit card that won't fit in cash machines.

Tales from a solo dev

Mon, 22 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Right at the end of 2023 I finished up working at CastRooms. I was one of four people there, and the only developer, although I preferred to say that I was the best developer at the company.

Many in our industry think about joining a startup from day one. Having done it, I do think it's something everyone should try if you get the chance, but it's not easy. It can be hard fucking work.

To give you some background, the CastRooms product was a DJ video streaming service with a simultaneous video call. Far away from strings going in and out of a database that I'd done before. By my own admission, I was trying to do some complex and weird things with audio and video in the browser.

Working by myself was tough, but here's some lessons that I learned along the way.

Perfect is the enemy of good

Don’t question your own work too much. Your job isn’t to write perfect code, if such a thing even exists. Your job is to write code for features, and ship them as fast as possible. You don't need an imaginary fellow developer in your head whispering nit-picky comments in your ear. You'll be merging +2000 line PRs and shouldn't have thoughts like that.

It has to be done, and has to be done quickly, so trust your own instincts.

Maybe in 10 years time, new developers will be questioning all your decisions and slagging you off via emojis. You won't care though, because you'll be long gone, sipping cocktails on a beach on your island that you bought with the proceeds of the IPO. Hopefully.

Cut your losses

Many times, an approach to a problem didn't quite work out, forcing me to start a new branch and try again. Maybe that wouldn't be the case on a team, where tickets can be discussed and planned in advance, but when you're on your own you've got to try what you think might be right.

The slightly mysterious nature of audio and video on the web meant that more than once, I spent days building features only for it to not work exactly as planned. Many times, the best course of action was to start again. Luckily with git, I could keep that previous work around and recycle bits and pieces. But starting over with a blank slate was hugely beneficial.

If it doesn't work out, don't beat yourself up. Take what you've learnt and try again.

Read the docs

You won’t be able to talk to your team about your issues, and sometimes, that is brutally defeating. When I was in a team, I'd post a message in Slack - but without other developers to work with, who do I turn to?

I had to get good at not just reading, but finding docs. API references sit high up in the results, but finding the right blog posts and Stack Overflow pages can be more difficult. Learning the Google or DDG tricks over many years came in dead handy.

When you do find what you think might be the right page, really take your time and try to understand what you're trying to find.

Understanding what you really need to search for to solve a problem, is something that some people in our industry struggle to learn.

You're not alone

Even being the only dev, you're not really alone. There's plenty of developers out there willing to help you - you just might not know where to find them yet.

When I worked at Deliveroo, a round of layoffs caused those at risk to form an independent Slack to chat about the redundancies. After the dust settled, it became an ex-Deliveroo Slack. When I did need help, I was able to post there and talk through my React problems with my frontend friends.

If you don't have a crew of emoji obsessed ex-colleagues, I also recommend joining communities for the tools you're using. Slack and Discord's impact in obscuring documentation has been discussed a lot recently, but that's where people hang out now. I made use of the Elixir and LiveKit Slacks, and the Svelte Discord. When people could help, they did. Unfortunately some questions went unanswered, but that's more on the complexity of the work I was doing than availability of people with the right knowledge.

<hr/>

There's four bits of advice that I could put down in words. If you find yourself in a similar situation, I hope it's useful.

If you ever meet me for a coffee or beer, I'm sure there's plenty more I could say.

2023 retro

Sat, 30 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Here's a rundown of things I did in 2023:

I proposed to Lila on a beach at sunset in Portugal and she said yes.
My time at CastRooms came to an end, which I'll elaborate on soon.
I got my second and third tattoos. And finances permitting, I'll have a fair few more next year
Took up running again thanks to Couch to 5k and got up to running about 7k. Sickness messed that schedule up in December but hopefully 2024 allow me to get back into it.
We did a lot of work to the house, including getting into The Safe. It's very nearly done, as long as you don't count finishing a room, skirting boards, or internal doors.
I read and finished 5 books. Not a lot compared to others, but 5 more than previous years - Dune, Dune Messiah, A Modern Way to Live, The Clean Coder, and Human Origins: 7 million years and counting. There's a couple of half finished books that I want to finish off soon too.
Lila had some surgery early in the year so we didn't travel too much. When I went to ElixirConf EU, she came out and we stayed another week. We also had a weekend break to Magaluf for my birthday, which is an extremely strange place.
Festival wise, we got to go to Bangface, Boomtown Fair, and Field Day. A good year for festivals, but might try and do something else next year, or the year after.

2024?

I got a new job at Sona and start in the New Year. I'm excited to be part of a team again and happy to be working on a product with existing and regular users.
We're getting married and our planning has went as far as the venue, but that's the important bit, right?

My Films, Games, and TV, of 2023

Thu, 28 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Films

Throughout 2023, I've logged every film I've watched on Letterboxd. It looks like there's a bit of a gap around May and June, which was probably due to watching Grand Designs in preparations for our home renovations.

Most of the films I watched weren't from 2023, so here's some highlights from those:

Banshees of Inisherin

The folly of civil war is a tough subject to tackle with humour, but watching a film with such an Irish cadence to the dialogue was fantastic.

I, Daniel Blake

The state of UK society and welfare state is even worse than in 2016 and that scene in the food bank left me in tears. The dig at Digital By Default also hit me really hard. I worked on that process, and the outcome depicted in the film made me feel awful.

The Whale

I'm one of those people who doesn't know their dad, so this film was tough to watch. Brendan put in a beautiful performance but Sadie Sink really brought together all of the emotions and anger I had when I was that age.

For my film of 2023 though, it's got to be <span style="color: var(--pink-5)">Barbie</span>. I'm still surprised that a film as insane and off the wall ever got greenlit and approved by Mattel.

Games

I played plenty of amazing games this year but by far the best were:

Cyberpunk 2077

I didn't bother with it after the disastrous launch, but with patch 2.0 I gave it another start. I'm working my way up to the DLC so it sort of counts as a 2023 game. Night City is gorgeous and fun to explore, but some of the main quest story scenes get very dull in parts that I stopped paying attention.

Jusant

A beautiful and zen climbing sim set after an unspecified disaster that has removed all the water from the world. After years of dull climbing started by Uncharted, Jusant comes along and makes the climbing fun. Game Maker's Toolkit conveniently just released a video detailing why the climbing feels so good.

Dredge

A horror fishing game seems like an unlikely combination, but it uses the sea and a day/night cycle to increase your madness which causes more fucked up things to happen. Cthulu like monsters, horrible looking fish mutations, and rocks that weren't there during the day, are all pretty standard when going mad at sea.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Being a software engineer in a world of software can sometimes be a boon, but with TOTK, I felt like a caveman using an iPhone for the first time. How they built the physics and machine crafting is beyond anything that most games ever accomplish. There are still Youtubers who are uncovering new and weird ways to build machines. It didn't have as big an impact for me as Breath of The Wild, but it's still an outstanding game, and definitely my game of the year.

TV

2023 had plenty of great follow up seasons that I loved - Succession, Top Boy, Time, and Black Mirror, were all great. Black Mirror's Loch Henry and Joan is Awful were up there with some of the best episodes that I've enjoyed.

I've got three picks for my top new TV of 2023:

The Last of US

I'm a big fan of the games and some shoddy CGI backdrops not withstanding, I thought the show was basically perfect.

Blue Eye Samurai

A late entry in the year Netflix release and watch for us over Christmas. Great action scenes and an interesting central character made this an instant classic.

Jury Duty

An absolutely normal guy is an unwitting participant in a fake trial on jury duty. Think The Truman Show with more improve. Everyone is an actor, except for the central Hero Character. The real life actor James Marsden plays an extreme version of himself. He becomes example of Hollywood big names trying to use their status to get special treatment. Several scenes had me laughing so hard it hurt and the finale includes a heartwarming reveal. The show feels like a study of the hero character's humanity.

New Year, New Site

Sat, 23 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT

A few weeks back I decided to hold off posting and instead give my site a makeover.

Having your own website, and enjoying the act of designing and building websites, can be extremely cathartic - you're the client, so all decisions and priorities can be yours to decide and prioritise.

I’ve been off work during December (more on that another time) and between putting my lacklustre DIY and woodworking skills to use on our house renovation, I’ve been able to chip away at it on the sofa. Lila even turned to me one afternoon and went “It’s mad how much you love coding.”

The reasons are the same as every other time I’ve redesigned and rebuilt it - to learn something new and to flex my design muscles.

Mission planning

If the goal is a redesign, then I need some self imposed constraints. I wanted to keep the individual colors for each post, but to strip it back otherwise. Simplifying the color palette then also allows me to add something that I really wanted - a light and dark theme.

I love learning new languages and frameworks, so why not experiment with something new. The previous version was built with SvelteKit, which is a fantastic framework, but does a lot of stuff that I don't need for a mostly static blog. If I want to something interactive, then I would definitely miss it. After writing a lot of React over the last 2 years, I definitely prefer Svelte. But then I heard about Astro.

Astro is a static site generator built for content focussed sites. It has an amazing superpower that lets you opt in to client side JavaScript with Islands of interactivity using whatever frontend framework you like.

Launch day

If you aren't reading this on your favourite RSS reader, you're looking at the redesign. Four weeks after deciding to start the project and just in time for me to relax over Christmas, I've shipped it.

After so much color and shadows with the previous version, I went with a much flatter design with the gorgeous Inter typeface from Rasmus.

OpenProps gives me some nice defaults to work with, but mostly it's pretty vanilla CSS. Shout to Josh Collinsworth's article on Tailwind for putting me onto OpenProps. As I moved away from Tailwind, having a load of predictable defaults was the thing I missed the most, so OpenProps was a nice addition to my stack.

There's still some bits to do to get back to feature parity. The big missing thing is dynamic OpenGraph images which I had working in SvelteKit. A straight port of the code to Astro endpoints wasn't working, so that will be done soon-ish. Maybe followed by a blog post.

Since it's my first project with Astro there also plenty of things that I haven't used yet, but having my own site I can tinker with it all I like.

Post mission report

Astro has been really nice to work with.

After front end web development workflows swung towards abstractions on top of abstractions, the pendulum has been swinging back the other way for a few years. Browsers can do a lot more than they could ten years ago and Astro feels like another chapter in the story of the Embrace The Platform movement.

Places where I'd previously used props for presentation between components, I was able to refactor it to use CSS variables. Having no client side JS by default, forced me to go with HTML and CSS first. The way it should be.

I'm glad I have my own website.

App defaults

Sun, 03 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Jumping on the bandwagon. There's more stuff on my Uses page.

📨 Mail Client: Gmail
📮 Mail Server: Gmail
📝 Notes: iOS Notes and Notion
✅ To-Do: Things
📷 iPhone Photo Shooting: iOS Camera
🟦 Photo Management: iOS Photos
📆 Calendar: Apple Calendar and Google Calender for work
📁 Cloud File Storage: iCloud
📖 RSS: Reeder
🙍🏻‍♂️ Contacts: Contacts
🌐 Browser: Arc
💬 Chat: Slack, Discord, Apple Messages, WhatsApp, Signal, and Messenger
🔖 Bookmarks: Arc and Raindrop
📑 Read It Later: Pocket
📜 Word Processing: Notion, Google docs
📈 Spreadsheets: Google Docs
📊 Presentations: lol
🛒 Shopping Lists: Notion
🍴 Meal Planning: Notion
💰 Budgeting and Personal Finance: Google Sheets
📰 News: The Internet
🎵 Music: Apple Music, Spotify, and recently Doppler
🎤 Podcasts: Apple Podcasts
🔐 Password Management: Secrets

RSS was a glimpse of a future

Mon, 20 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT

About a year ago, I wrote a post when I got back into blogging and RSS. I'm still doing both of those things, but I've also been building a few more projects.

Some of the best things you can work on solve problems for yourself, and I wanted to build something that would collate all the exhibitions on at major cultural institutions in London. Normalised, searchable, filterable, and readable.

Nothing too wild I thought. I'll just need to combine all the RSS feeds that the respective sites publish for their upcoming exhibitions. To my surprise, none of them had RSS feeds.

Interoperability on The Internet

I've made websites for half my life, and I've seen many things come and go. With the recent breakout of AI fever, one thing that came back to me, was the idea of The Semantic Web.

On that page, there's an interesting quote from Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web:

I have a dream for the Web in which computers become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A "Semantic Web", which makes this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The "intelligent agents" people have touted for ages will finally materialize.

Intelligent Agents? Although that sounds a lot like the current wave of AI chatbots, I think it could also mean something else.

Blogging as a standard

I remember when most major sites had RSS feeds. Big organisations rallied around the idea. My final project in University, was a graph dashboard with some very simple sentiment analysis of RSS feeds from major news sites.

That was 2011. I was able to build something that could pull in data from all these different sources and display it in a way that was useful to me.

Trying to pull together data for my exhibitions project left me dissapointed. The Tate, Natural History Museum, Wellcome Collection, V&A, and many others, were feedless. It's been a long time since I saw the little orange badge, but I expected better from these cultural institutions.

Meaning in the madness

I think, that Blogs and RSS were a little taste of this semantic web.

Now, we've got many sophisticated ways of parsing and using this data, but it's all at an OS level by Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.

Google pushed the spec of Atom and RSS with Google Data and Kinds. We have some great extensions of content here - event start and end dates, locations, quality ratings for reviews, and people associated with the content.

Kinds a great idea. It's what I hoped we had by now.

It's just a shame that using and remixing the web is only capable by big companies.

October 2023 Media Diet

Tue, 31 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT

It's the perfect day for a rundown of all the spooky things I've enjoyed this October.

Hereditary

Ari Aster can do no wrong. This one is about a family dealing with grief and the trauma that we inherit from our parents. It's surprising, interesting, and brutal. Worth not watching the trailer below just to get the full impact.

The Fall of the House of Usher

An Edgar Allen Poe anthology meets Succession by Mike Flanagan. Haunting of Hill House is one of my favourite things Netflix has done, but I thought that everything since then has been a bit ... crap. Luckily, this time round he really smashed it. Bruce Greenwood is absolutely brilliant as a spooky Logan Roy.

The Midnight Club

Last year's Flanagan thing that somehow I missed. It's OK and at least more interesting than some of the previous ones.

A Quiet Place Part 2

I loved part 1. This one switches up the formula in a way that I won't spoil, but it's definitely influenced by The Last of Us.

Old

It's been a while since I watch a Shyamalan film. I enjoyed the inventiveness and unraveling of the situation. There's a few real gruesome moments that make it extra fun.

Cocoon

Cocoon is the new game from the designer behind the famous indie darlings, Limbo and Inside. Although not spooky, it's definitely somewhere on the spectrum of bio-mechanical HR Giger-esque body horror.

You play as an alien humanoid bug thing exploring a World that contains orbs, which can contain other Worlds, which can contain other orbs, which can all effect each other.

The end of Men In Black when aliens are playing marbles with is a good comparison.

I finished it today, and towards the end it had some amazing mind bending puzzles with ingenious solutions.

Unhonourable mentions

Insidious Chapter 2 was terrible and Malignant was so bad we turned it off after 30 minutes.

Boxed sandwiches

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I have lived in London for 10 years now. There are many things I love about this city, but one thing I don't understand is why everyone here loves a sandwich in a box?

It's pretty standard in Ireland for small shops to have a deli counter. Fresh sandwiches are a staple of the University student diet.

In many parts of Ireland, the Chicken Fillet roll has reached a status shared only by holy artifacts.

So I ask myself, why does Britain love sandwiches that come in boxes?

I have a theory.

Rail bread

Recently, I watched an interesting a show on whatever Channel 4's streaming platform is called this month - The Secret World Of Sandwiches.

Look, it was a very hungover day on the sofa, this was a good watch.

Anyways, in the show, it charts the history of high street sandwich chains in the UK.

Before there was M&S and Pret, the main place you bought boxed sandwiches was on trains. The food car on National Rail trains sold simple sandwiches, an easy thing to sell from a place without a hot kitchen.

Marks and Spencer's saw an opportunity to sell better sandwiches from branches based within train stations.

My hot sandwich take

Ireland's reliance on train infrastructure is minimal compared to the UK, which means that Irish people don't have the same emotional or historical relationship to train travel as British people.

No train travel, no boxed sandwiches.

Input Me To Death

Tue, 12 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I've filled in a lot of forms lately.

We've been in our house for two years and now we're doing renovations. We're buying kitchens, radiators, and doors. All of those require setting up a new account to checkout.

Our home insurance is also up, so time to shop around for a new deal.

I had to report a missed bin collection to my local council.

I've filled in a lot of forms lately.

90% of them barely fucking worked.

The worst offenders

Render.com

Even developers, when faced with this super helpful error, might struggle to create a new database.

How am I meant to understand this?

After some work it became apparent it didn't like dashes in the database name.

Admiral insurance

I couldn't add Lila as a second driver to my car insurance because it thought her phone number was invalid.

Waltham Forest Council

The date picker was a dropdown of recent dates. Upon submission, the form errored and told me I hadn't entered the date in the right format.

American Express

For some reason it masks some characters in the username field when logging in with a saved username, like a password field would. Occasionally, the browser remembers your username with the dots as the characters like example••••. This isn't your username though, so now you're logging in with the wrong username.

One Time Passcodes

Masking the input for a one time passcodes might seem secure, but it makes it more likely that you lose your position as you glance back and forward between your phone.

Barclay's

I'm a Monzo customer, but I use Barclay's for a few things. When did high street banks get so complicated for logging in? You've got a membership number, memorable word, 5 digit passcode, and an app based pin sentry. How are you meant to keep track of those things without writing them down somewhere, thus making them insecure?

I also use Secrets for password management, but you can see how someone who doesn't use a password manager would just write these on a post-it note and stick it to their screen.

One shout out

Over the years, giving companies, and/or friends that worked at said companies, some grief about their UX, sometimes managed to get features built. My contribution to the Monzo codebase, was getting Apple's OTP autocomplete attribute added to Monzo's 3D secure prompt.

It's one of my favourite features in iOS. It's even extended to emails with OTP in iOS 17.

Loading pains

There's been plenty of critique recently of single page apps, but my biggest issue with them is focussing on rendering anything first.

Then, I watch a loading animation, while I wait on the thing that I wanted to actually load. It sometimes feels like I need knowledge of how the proverbial sausage is made in order to eat the sausage.

It's not just bad, it's infuriating.

The Safe

Wed, 30 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Two years ago, I made an amazing discovery.

My girlfriend Lila, and I, were a week into home ownership. Our first home together. We were still unpacking and deciding where to store everything.

It was a Saturday morning. A friend was dropping round to give us his old drill. Just as he arrived, I crawled into the cupboard under the stairs to start packing away our camping and festival gear. Summer things that wouldn't be used for another ten months.

I spotted a black cube to my left.

A surprise feature that wasn't in the listing.

A mystery.

A locked safe.

By my own admission, I'm terminally online. I remember the locked safe thread on Reddit. Finding a locked safe is a dream come true.

So we now own a locked safe. Next thing is to break into it.

Attempted break in #1

I was sure to capitalise on this discovery by sharing it online. Straight away I posted it on Reddit and Twitter. The comments had the same thoughts that I had - what was in it?

I tried to move it out from under the stairs, but it wouldn't budge. A couple of minutes with a crowbar moved it enough to shine a torch behind it and see that it was bolted to the wall from the inside. Now we know it's both locked and not moving from that spot.

The immovable secure storage under our stairs wasn't a huge priority, so it sat there, silently taunting me. What secrets did it hold?

I had to know.

Attempted break in #2

Months go by.

Friends ask me "How's the house going?" only to cut off my answer with the real question - "What about the safe?"

As part of some DIY we got the front door lock changed. I asked the locksmith can he crack safes. No, but he know's someone who can.

WhatsApp messages go back and forward. Photos and explanations.

Then, silence.

He stopped replying.

The mystery lived on.

Breaking in

So now it's August 2023. A Bank Holiday weekend. We're starting renovations on the downstairs. My mate Chris is our plumber and working on moving our boiler. I mention The Safe. It's next to our gas main, so he had a look.

"We'll have that out today"

Finally!

The day has come.

Thanks to my prior crowbar attempt, he was able to get behind it and lever it out. It pulled away from the wall leaving behind one of the bolts, and several dents from crowbars.

Chris took a hammer and crowbar to the back of it.

It didn't last long.

We were in.

Finally cracking the safe.

Inside we found absolutely nothing.

Sometimes, the mystery is more fun than solving it.

Surprise & Delight

Mon, 21 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I just got my Playdate a few days ago. A tiny yellow square of fun. From the moment you turn it on, it provides so much joy. I had a smile on my face even during initial setup. Once you get going, the intro tutorial that teaches you the controls is a delight.

Many years ago, I worked in an Apple Store when wired earphones were common. They broke constantly. We always opened new iPods for various reasons so had hundreds of spare earphones sat in a drawer. When customers came in with broken earphones, we walked away with "Let me see what I can do" and came back with a new set. No charge, no faff, no paperwork. We called these Surprise & Delight earphones.

I always loved this term. It's a nicer way of saying "Under promise and over deliver". In software, if a user clicks on a button, why not use that interaction to add an extra bit of fun?

Even after a few hours of use, my Playdate is full of surprise & delight. New software is literally unwrapped by two robot arms. It takes 2 presses of the lock button to unlock it, each press opening a closed eye on the little guy's ~~screen~~ face.

I can't wait to play with it more.

Juicy

After Wordle was sold, I listened to an episode of the Syntax podcast which interviewed Josh Wardle. In it, he brought up a talk on the concept of Juice in game design.

From the description of the talk:

A juicy game feels alive and responds to everything you with do tons of cascading action and response for minimal user input.

Substitute game with software and you realise just how boring software can be. With the move away from skeuomorphism, we lost some of that juice.

It doesn't have to be that way though! We're in an era of modern browsers with CSS transitions and animation libraries. Go wild if you like, or don't. Maybe not if you work on a Will writing service or some serious healthcare software. I'm not saying we should go back to wood textured shelving backgrounds, but think about what you're working on and what extra things you can do to make it feel tactile.

The Playdate is so fun to use it's all I could think of from the moment of unboxing. The box even says have fun on the inside. The juice that Panic added adds so much to it. Instead of being just another gadget, it becomes this little yellow robot of fun.

I think software could do with having more juice.

Apple Music Taste

Sun, 16 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT

A few months ago I decided to give Apple Music a shot.

I've been a Spotify user on and off for years. Since I DJ, I resisted for a long time and stuck to listening to music that I had downloaded over the last decade and a half.

Eventually, I went all in on Spotify. My music collection still lives locally, since it's required for DJing using Traktor. With my job and personal life existing on 2 different laptops, it also made it easy to listen to the same music everywhere.

In our cloud based modern life, for most people, Spotify is now the way that music is discussed, shared, sourced, and listened to. Going to a party or away on a trip with friends? There's probably a Spotify playlist in a WhatsApp group chat for you to add songs to. Spotify has slowly became the default.

So why switch?

Colly wrote up a good review that echos a lot of my feelings. But for me, there were 2 big reasons.

Offline support

I'm begging people who work in Tech to try and use their products with Airplane Mode on.

Spotify must be trying to hit an API every chance it gets, because it constantly throws up an error alert when it doesn't have network access. Although I work from home 100% of the time these days, when I take the tube and want to listen to some music, I don't want to be told off for having no network access when I'm several metres underground.

Apple Music will happily work away without network access.

The Apple Ecosystem

I've been a Mac user for more than 15 years. I've got an iPhone, Airpod Pros, Apple Watch, and a personal 14" Macbook Pro, along with one for work. It's safe to say I'm in deep when it comes to Apple's products.

I started running again a few months ago with my Apple Watch providing the soundtrack. Spotify is patchy at best on the Watch. Switching from my MacBook Pro, to the Phone, and to the Watch, always caused hassle.

Apple Music has no such problems. The ecosystem provides.

Back to Spotify

I haven't cancelled my Spotify subscription though. I still bounce back and forward between them.

There's one main reason for that - my music taste.

It's safe to say, my music taste is pretty weird. I mostly lean into electronic music, with a big affinity for hardcore and all its' subgenres and off shoots. I'll also listen to ambient and lo-fi. Or maybe even hip-hop and grime.

Spotify understands this and serves me up accurate recommendations. My Daily Mixes are segmented in a way that's easy to understand what music informed their contents. It's easy to pick what I want to listen to at any given moment. Discover Weekly and Release Radar are great ways to dip into unfamiliar and newer tracks.

Apple's offering on that front is OK, with their Daily Mix equivalent of Chill, New Music, Favourites, and Get Up! playlists. I prefer deciding on the music style, rather than what mood Apple has decided that it evokes.

When I do find an artist that I like on Spotify, I'll fire up their Artist Radio and see what else they bring me to. Apple Music has the same functionality, seemingly just a bit more hidden than Spotify. Some big name artists also have 4 playlists that Apple Music creates: Essentials, Deep Cuts, Inspired By, and Influences.

I'll be the first to admit that most of my music isn't that popular or well known, but the only artist that I regularly listen to that has these playlists was Aphex Twin.

Aphex Twin's playlists

For most artists, I'm lucky if they have 1 of these standard 4.

Lastly, the Browse section of Apple Music is meaningless to me. I don't want Pop, R&B, Soul, or chart Dance music. I'd rather some algorithm recommends me accurate stuff than a hand curated page of drivel.

I don't care about Playlists Apple loves. I want Playlists I love.

Who the hell are all these people?

Algo-rhythms

I'll probably stick with both for now. Apple's ecosystem helps a lot. Spotify's continual push towards Podcasts within the same space doesn't work so well for me and Apple keeping them separate is a nice bonus to my switch.

There's some core things that Spotify could improve and make me go back 100%. Offline support and better predictability to switch device would probably do it.

Apple Music would really need to provide a better experience of personalisation to get me to go all in.

Monthnotes: June 2023

Tue, 04 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hotted June on record for the UK. It certainly felt like it.

Everything's fine.

It was Lila's birthday right at the start of the month, when we were in Manchester. It was hot there, but nice to wonder round all the breweries and enjoy the weather. The warmth continued right into the next 2 weeks.

Mobile madness

I spent most of the month working on getting a mobile MVP of CastRooms working. It was a big challenge, but I learnt a lot about browser behaviour on mobile devices. The M for us in MVP meant that we don't have Twilio video calling working yet, but that's future Tommy's problem.

Old friends and late nights

The weekend after Manchester I went to a Deliveroo reunion at one of our old haunts in Fitzrovia. It was for the 10th anniversary of the company. I spent 5 years there, so there were a lot of familiar faces. I'm still good friends with a few of them, who I see every few weeks. It was really nice to catch up with people and find out what everyone is up to.

That night I was playing a set at a friend's 40th birthday. So after a load of daytime pints I went home, ate some food, and had a disco nap before heading back out near midnight. It was at an old strip club in Shoreditch - which is now just a regular nightclub. She rented the basement function room. Pole still in the centre and little booths at the side for lap dances. Certainly up there with one of the stranger venues I've played at.

Field party

Another busy weekend had my flying back to Belfast on Thursday for a packed itinerary. My parents were away at the weekend, so I fit in some time to see them along with other family and old friends.

We went to a new pub, or new to me anyways - The Reporter.

Situated in an area which previously housed the various newspaper offices in the area (The Reporter. Get it?) it had walls full of newspaper clippings and photos of presumably some previous regulars.

Some photos from the night

It also had Neck Oil for £3.80, so it was light on the wallet.

The primary reason for being there was to go to a friend's family farm and drink with a pile of lads. Good wholesome fun of getting drunk and sitting around a fire. The weather even held out. It was probably some of the best weather I've seen in Ireland.

Everything's fine.

Honourable mentions

BBQs with friends are nice. We hosted a few and went to a few.
I'm still playing lots of Zelda. I've finished the 4 temples, but have no plans on ending the story for myself any time soon.
I played a little bit of the new season of Halo Infinite. I'm still enjoying it, but if I can ony play for 10 minutes sometimes it's not enough time to find a game and have fun.
We watched all of Long Way Round, Long Way Down, and just this week, Long Way Up. Now I want to go and travel/cycle/motorbike round the world all the time.
We also rinsed Silo, so by the time the finale was up we were up to date. It's good. Amazing set design. Everything looked like you'd expect if you were living in a Vault-tec Vault.
I listened to Behind The Bastards' episodes on Vince McMahon of WWF/E and Stockton Rush of the recent Titanic sub disaster. Insane and funny in equal measures.

An extra honorable mention to me, for writing a blog post this month that wasn't Monthnotes - Feeds for the soul.

Feeds for the soul

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT

2023 has been the year of big tech in some sort of self imposed death spiral. Management at Twitter and Reddit seem steadfast in fucking over their most diehard users.

For me, 2023 was the year that I got back into RSS feeds.

RSS is a breath of fresh air from the algorithmically produced stream of content that I see on traditional social media. Being able to control what I read, in what order, and when, is really nice.

I was a heavy user of both Reddit and Twitter. My Twitter use has dropped to almost zero, although I still read it every now and again. Reddit I'm not sure if I'll give up soon, but it might happen the way things are going. RSS is slowly becoming the best way to read content on the internet - again.

In the spirit be the change you want to see in the World, I've changed my feed to have the full text. It wasn't a conscious choice when I wrote the code for generating the RSS and it has been on my todo list for a while. It's nice to change it and make the RSS experience better.

An ask for recommendations

On Mastodon, Ethan Marcotte posted asking for some recommendations.

I responded with Brr.fyi. A blog from a worker at McMurdo Station. It's a look into the mundane but fascinating things that go on when you put humans into one of the places on Earth that humans aren't built for. What other kind of writing would give me an insight into all the different types of doors that they have?

Most of my feeds are Tech related or personal blogs, but here's some others that I'm enjoying:

ooh.directory - a regularly updated directory, which has helped me populate my feeds
It's Nice That - creative industries coverage
Bangkok Glutton - a foodie blog from someone living in Bangkok, but regular international posts
Bikepacking.com - articles about traveling long distances by bike
Kottke - the OG link blog and still as good as ever

Feed me!

I hope people give RSS feeds a chance. Maybe you're giving it a second chance like I am?

If you've got any recommendations for me - hi@tommyp.org or @tommyp.

Monthnotes: May 2023

Tue, 06 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Music has the right to children ascending the throne

Right at the top of the month, I was at my favourite music festival getting destroyed and listening to stupid donk remixes. Much better than watching some fat fingered fuck sit on a gold chair.

Weird to be a staunch anti-monarchist and see it everywhere before and afterwards, but not during. Even on our way back on the Monday, we stopped in Birmingham Star City and they had a statue up. It was pretty ironic that a man who has never worked a day in his life was asking people to donate a day of unpaid labour to charities just after a horrific display of ostentation.

Bangface is where I get to hear all the music that I love and hang out with my friends that I only see once a year.

It's a pretty special place to me.

We felt brutally sick afterwards, which wasn't as much fun.

Venues

We've been browsing wedding venues and picked one that we think really suits us. We picked somewhere in North East London that is in a pretty area. Now comes the rest of the planning.

The last weekend in May had us at a wedding in Oxford. The venue was beautiful, and it was fun to go to another wedding while planning our own.

Wales

After Oxford, we drove a rental car out to Porthmadog in Wales. The Welsh Highlands is full of incredible landscapes.

We visited Portmerion one day, which is a surreal Italian style town right on the coast with some other mad stuff, like a chines style lake, and a dog cemetary.

Portmerion

We followed a little trail that took us out to a view point. The tide was way out, so the view was incredible.

Clouds passing over the sand like alien spaceships

On our second last day, we booked a boat trip out to a Puffin Island near Llanfairpwllgwyngyll. The wind was insane and we saw that other tour companies had cancelled their trips out that day. Our boat operator carried on. They took us further inland for a quick tour and only told us we wouldn't head out towards the sea when we got back to the pier. It was pretty disappointing.

In Porthmadog, we went to a nearby pub on two of the nights. On the first night, a Tuesday, the Police were called after we left to deal with two drunk women. And then they were called again when one of the women tried to kick the door in. When we went back a few days later the barman told us the story. That evening, a family kicked off at being served a chicken wing with a pink tendon. They ate the rest of the wings and then due to some miscommunication when paying for what they had ate, the Police were nearly called again.

Wild scenes in Porthmadog.

The day after we left that where the highest temperature in the UK was too.

Manchester

Continuing our week away, we finished it in Manchester with some friends. Touring shops, pubs, taprooms, and restaurants. It was the FA Cup Final, Arctic Monkeys, and Coldplay, so it was a pretty busy weekend. I've been in Manchester a few times before, but this was the first time I properly got to explore it.

Honourable mentions

The Legend Of Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom - Incredible fun. What a game. Full of slapstick comedy as I try to build contraptions to complete elaborate tasks only to completely fuck it up in a hilarious way.
Taskmaster Season 15 - Speaking of completing elaborate tasks and fucking it up in a hilarious way, Taskmaster is as good as ever.
Human Origins: 7 million years and counting - I bought it in the oldest bookshop in the world a few weeks back when I was in Lisbon, which seemed a little ironic to me given the subject matter. It's been a nice read instead of doomscrolling.
Succession - Still the last episode to go, but I think it's been spoiled for me.

Monthnotes: April 2023

Mon, 01 May 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I started writing this straight after my last one. That's some personal growth right there. I did only manage this sentence, but still.

Work

Rough times with Svelte. I'm doing some funky stuff with video and WebSockets over at CastRooms, but with downtime in product planning I tackled some tech debt and decided to port our big React component to a SvelteKit app. It was going well, until I ran into problems with videos freezing. I'm almost certain that React's explicit rerenders and Svelte's implicit rerenders are the difference causing the issue. Once I get this figured out, it'll make a good blog post.

Hyper mobile

I started running again recently with a Couch to 5k app. I messed my ankle up right at the start of Covid by going from running 5k to running 10k overnight. I used to run 10k every few days and thought I could do it again easily, but I ended up unable to walk for a few days.

This time, I'm taking things slowly and building my tolerance back up. I finished week 5 just before I went to Portugal.

It's nice being able to run again. I've missed the solitude and the nature.

Lisbon

ElixirConf EU 2023 was on in Lisbon this year. I stayed for an extra week afterwards. Lila joined me for lots of walking, eating, drinking and chilling on the beach. And we got engaged, which is amazing.

A great city, and we have a great reason to go back now.

Watch

Barbarian is a great horror film about an AirBnb. Perfect to watch before we stayed in one in Lisbon.
Beef was great. Go watch it.
All Quiet on The Western Front was harrowing, but I'm glad we watched it.
Jurassic World Dominion was absolute mess.

I'm still logging everything at Letterboxd.

Games

Destiny 2: Lightfall has some of the worst plot of the world of Destiny so far, but the guns still feel amazing and the multiplayer is great. I'm enjoying it, but sometimes it's a pain in the arse when you get killed with a gun that can only be obtained by a high level raid.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is a game I've tried before, but the janky controls and animations made me give up. I'm trying it again, but I might just watch a recap before the sequel.
I started Metroid Prime Remastered a few weeks ago, but only just finished the tutorial. I picked it up again this weekend and I'm enjoying it. Some of the gameplay and quality of life features are a bit dated. I'm sure in 2002 it was mind blowing.

ElixirConf EU 2023

Sun, 30 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I'm just back from ElixirConf EU. My first conference since the big C, and my first Elixir conference since 2016.

Day -1

I got to Lisbon on Tuesday, for training on Wednesday, and the conference ran until Friday. I was staying about 10 minutes away from the conference hotel. The room looked alright, but the hotel was covered in references to old Hollywood stars - Audrey Hepburn, James Stewart, and Alfred Hitchcock. They called the hotel Hotel Florida, which seems like a weird thing to do with all the Hollywood references. Maybe Planet Hollywood owns any references to that?

After dropping my bags I went for a beer at a local place and got a Francesinha. That is a meal made for drinking.

Day 0

I was mostly there for a WebRTC workshop from the folks behind Membrane. Nice guys, and although it was their first time giving the workshop, I thought they did a great job. Some minor stuff to improve on. I was surprised at people showing up to the workshop having not written any Elixir or not followed any of the instructions. It wasn't exactly cheap.

Day 1

The first day of talks started with one on Livebook. I haven't used Livebook at all, but it was super interesting and really sold it to me. Another talk on the same day showed how to use it to debug a production app. I'll definitely use that.

Unsurprisingly, lots of the talks focussed on LiveView. I've been slowly working through the Pragmatic Studio course and used it a bit for work. Optimizing LiveView for Realtime Applications had some great tips on using it in big apps. At work, I'm just using it for an admin UI, but I'm building something else with it too and this was a good talk full of practical tips.

A really fun talk, was on building Not Hotdog. I'm still amazed by computer vision and machine learning, so this was mind blowing.

Lars Wikman finished the day with another mind blowing talk titled Lively LiveView with Membrane. He built the slides with LiveView, and used Membrane and Nx to do live subtitles. He even changed slides with just his voice. It was really fun. I got a chance to tell him how much I enjoyed it at the end of Day 2 in the pub just before he had to leave. He even mentioned me in his writeup.

Day 2

In the morning, the CTO of Auroville showed how they moved from Drupal to Elixir. After working at GOV.UK, I'm really interested in how government can use technology. Hearing how a city built out the infrastructure for citizens and businesses was really cool.

Product focussed analytics for LiveView was a perfect talk for me. Figuring out how we can use a specific technology to build better products for users is always interesting. It turns out you can build live dashboards using LiveView to understand user behaviour.

James from Electric SQL showed their product - an offline client side local database that can sync with and resolve conflicts when it reconnects to the database in the cloud. It was really cool, and an interesting counterpart to so much LiveView, which requires a constant connection. I'll be following it closely.

Chris McCord's keynote was a great look at how far LiveView has came. It's insanely powerful. I'm looking forward to working with it even more.

We finished the day with drinks at Musa da Bica. It was a nice way to round off a great week. The talks and the chats in the pubs left me feeling inspired - and excited to keep working with Elixir.

I'll definitely be back to ElixirConf.

Monthnotes: March 2023

Mon, 10 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I'm late again, but getting better.

March started off with me going for a double 40th birthday party at a big mansion near Buxton. It's usually a wedding venue, but we set up a rig and had everyone DJing. It's not the first time I've done that, but it's a lot of fun every time. I feel incredibly lucky to be able to do that with multiple groups of friends.

Crawl

I went on a pub crawl with some friends that I met during a lockdown. We sat at a table next to them when you could only sit outside and got chatting. We've became good friends since then. We crawled around some of my favourite spots in Hackney. Here's the list:

Someone on the pub crawl, who was English, kept impersonating my accent. It pisses me off a lot and I fucking hate it, so I gave off to him. Luckily, my friends were on my side. They're from New Zealand and probably get the same shit too.

Brat

Lila couldn't come on the pub crawl, but her and I went to a few of the same spots in Hackney after an amazing lunch at Brat. We ordered some bread and when it came it turned out to be a giant slab. Everything was amazing.

Beyond the Streets

We went to the Beyond The Streets exhibition at the Saatchi gallery. I found it pretty ironic that an art gallery founded by someone who helped the Conservative Party get elected had an exhibition on hip-hop and graffiti culture.

Ignoring the hypocrisy, the exhibition was great. We went on a Friday night. It's been a while since I went to any of the art gallery or museum lates. I used to go to loads, so it was nice return to that side of culture in London.

Work

I've been tackling some tech debt in work. Our repo is a Phoenix app which has a single page with a big React component view. I started pulling it apart into a Phoenix API and a SvelteKit app. It's going well, but Svelte has some quirks that come with the learning curve of building something large. Maybe I'll write about that more in future.

Housekeeping

I did some tidying up round here. Changing font sizes, line length, removing the link to my Twitter, and consolidating my work and about pages. Removing Twitter was sad, but it needed done.

This Next month

Since I'm technically late, I should really get started on next month now.

PsychOdyssey

Thu, 23 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Over the last few weeks, I've been glued to one of the best documentary series I've watched in ages - PsychOdyssey. It's a glimpse inside the videogame studio Double Fine, as they work on on a new sequel to their beloved cult classic, Psychonauts.

Previously, on PsychOdyssey

First, some background:

Double Fine are known for being an extremely creative studio. Founded by Tim Schafer, who previously worked at Lucasarts. He worked on some popular games like Secret of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango, and Full Throttle. While working on Full Throttle, a game about a biker gang, he wanted to have an interactive peyote trip. Lucasarts objected, so he quit and founded his own studio.

Double Fine's first game, Psychonauts, was an action platformer in the lineage of Mario 64. You play as Raz, a boy who has ran away from his circus acrobat family to join a summer camp for children with psychic abilities. He hopes one day to join the titular Psychonauts - a psychic spy agency.

Psychonauts differs from other platformers by its level setup. In most games of that genre, the levels pull from common archetypes like ice, lava, jungle, etc. In Psychonauts, you enter people's minds and exist in a space representing their mental state, defeating enemies and completing tasks centred around their particular condition.

It's most famous level is The Milkman Conspiracy. Set inside the brain of Boyd, a Milkman obsessed with conspiracies, you explore a 1950s American suburban street populated with shady G-men watching you. The G-men pretend to be housewives and construction workers and speak in nonsense while the street itself twists within 3d space back onto itself, representing the twisted logic that Boyd sees in the world around him.

The development was difficult for the team, and although it wasn't a commercial success, it received a lot of critical acclaim. Over the years, more and more people have played Psychonauts and loved it so much, that even the existence of a sequel was hotly anticipated by many.

Office culture

At 21 hours long and spread across 31 episodes, on the face of it, it's a huge commitment to watch this thing. It absolutely flies by and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in creative work. It's a fascinating insight into work that is software development in the traditional sense, but coming at it from a different angle.

Like all workplaces, personalities can get in the way and people clash, but nobody is exactly a villain or a hero. People come and go during the 6 years of filming. Some departures are amicable, while others are not. There's an old and new guard, and some people completely new to the industry join during the development.

Lots of the old guard have worked together at Double Fine for nearly 20 years, and they have some amount of shared culture and bonding from the time spent together. You see them try to adapt to new people and new ways of working, while the new people try to adapt to the existing culture.

Psychonauts 2 is a much bigger game than anything that Double Fine have made before. The creative nature increases the scope of work involved as many characters have many different artistic depictions matching the artistic style within each level. You see this challenge really hit the team hard. There's some amazing story arcs as they struggle to handle the workload, deadlines, and finances.

Making a good game

It's great to see such an in-depth look within one of the most creative teams in the industry working on one of the most creative games in recent memory. After having played Psychonauts 1 and 2, watching this is amazing. You see how a passing comment or a joke turned into an idea, which turned into a prototype, which got the whole team thinking, and then they build something good, fun, heartfelt, or just plain weird.

Not everything is a fully formed idea right at the start, and you get to see the process that forms the finished product.

One level involves reuniting a brain in a jar with a body, who then gets overwhelmed with their new senses. You enter the brain, which eventually manifests a trippy music festival camp ground in the style of Yellow Submarine. It started out completely differently, and seeing the iterations of that level and how it came to be is one of my favourite bits.

The C word

Psychonauts 2 eventually came out in August 2021, so it's probably not a surprise that you see the impacts of the Coronavirus pandemic in the documentary, alongside all the other shit the world threw at us between March 2020 and then.

Finishing the documentary left me missing life before 2020.

I'm now working from home 100% of the time, and if I could pick my perfect setup, I'd work somewhere hybrid. I miss the comradery of office life. The lunches, the jokes, and the drinks after work. I like my own space and my own setup, but I also like hanging out with other people.

The Journey They've Been On

I loved Psychonauts 1 and 2. I love videogame documentaries. I love documentaries. I love learning about how creative people work. I love absolutely everything about this series.

Even though I have no interest in sports, I loved Welcome to Wrexham. Although it is technically a sports documentary, it's also not about sports. It's about working class people and investors making a business gamble.

Similarly, PsychOdyssey is a videogame documentary, but it's about how creative people build something so creative. It's about how close businesses like Double Fine can come to running out of money. It's about how working relationships can blossom and break with equal ferocity. It's about art.

Give it a go. I think you might like it

Second chances

Sat, 11 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

If you ever meet me, I could happily talk for hours on end about TV, films, and videogames. One thing I love about all those things is how there are basically no whole original new ideas. Everything is a remix, and then, every so often, something comes along so completely unlike everything else before it that it reinvents the genre - or even the medium.

Recently, I've experienced a TV show, a book, and a videogame, for the second time. The first time round, each of them didn't grab me at all, but after giving them another go I'm loving each of them.

Curb your Enthusiasm

I'm a massive Seinfeld fan. When my partner and I started seeing each other, it was the show we put on after coming back from the pub. We ended up watching all of it together - the second time for both of us. I even went on the Seinfeld tour with the real Kenny Kramer. If you're a Seinfeld fan, you might remember that this was even parodied in an episode.

For all my love of Seinfeld, I hadn't watched Curb your Enthusiasm until a few years ago. The first few episodes were so cringe inducing that I gave up with it almost immediately.

At the end of last year, I gave it another go. I'm midway through Season 9 now and absolutely loving it. I can't believe it took me this long to watch it and enjoy it, but I'm glad I did.

Dune

One of the biggest cultural gaps in my life, is being a keen reader. I've just never found that much of the time or attention span comes naturally to me. I'm trying to change that, so I've finished a few books that have taken me years to read and bought a few that I've always wanted to read. I did really enjoy audiobooks, and Dune was one of my favourites, so I've picked it up and slowly working my way through it.

As everyone comes back to the indie web and away from social media, an article I read a while ago really stuck with me. The easiest way to avoid doomscrolling is to have a book with you for those moments of boredom. I'm hoping to stick with this idea.

Elden Ring

If you're not a gamer, you might not know of a company called FromSoftware. They've reached a level of success over the last 10-15 years for making brutally hard games - Dark Souls, Demon Souls, Bloodbourne, and most recently, Elden Ring. They've been so critically well recieved that they've even became their own genre - Soulslike.

I tried Elden Ring when it came out and it didn't click with me at all. I knew it would be hard, but I didn't realise it would be cryptically hard. With all of the awards at the end of the year, I gave it another try. I asked some friends for help understanding the gameplay systems systems. After their help and some extra research I've ended up loving it. What a fantastic game.

Second time's the charm

Ever had something not click with you when you thought it should, why not give it another go?

Me, after defeating Margit, The Fell Omen

Monthnotes: February 2023

Wed, 01 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

My partner had surgery had the end of January, so her and I have been taking it easy.

Bread and beer

I had a bread making class right at the start of the month at ProCook in Tottenham Court Road. Like everyone, I tried making sourdough bread during a lockdown. The crust came out perfect, but inside wasn't cooked. I didn't want to make a fresh loaf of bread every day so there wasn't much point in trying keep a starter going. We made 4 different types of bread, so this weekend I tried making bread again and it came out fantastically. Expect more bread chat in the future.

Straight after the bread class I met some ex-Deliveroo folks for drinks at one of our old haunts. It was nice to catch up with people and see familiar faces. I worked there for 5 years and some of those people I haven't seen since they left, or when I left in 2021. I also highly recommend showing up to the pub with a rucksack full of freshly baked bread to share with people. You'll be very popular.

Cabin fever

Now that I'm working from home 100% of the time, I'm starting to go a bit spare. Being at home so much over the last few weeks hasn't helped much either. I'm trying to get out of the house and Walthamstow at least once during a weeknight and at the weekends too. It's hard to work anywhere except my home office as the product I'm building at CastRooms needs a decent Internet connection for me to test video and audio. Doing a mic check in a café might not go down too well.

Our founder and I went to an electronic music conference called AVA at The Printworks. I loved the conversation with David Rudnick. He's one of my favourite designers working right now so it was a nice surprise to see him on the lineup. I've been at The Printworks for some events and even a conference and work afterparty. It's a cool place, but such a huge cavernous warehouse used for dancing crowds that a few people sat on deck chairs left the space extremely cold. We left early to go and sit outside a pub in the Sun to warm up, even with it being 4 degrees celsius outside.

Travels

We planned a holiday to Vietnam, but we've had to cancel it. Luckily we're getting a full refund so we aren't down anything to cancel it. Immediately after we were meant to get back I was flying to Portugal for Elixirconf EU. Instead, she's going to fly to Lisbon and meet me. We're going to spend a lazy week hanging out in Lisbon, which will be lovely.

Busy, busy

I've started a big burst of tech debt tackling in work, which I'll be writing about soon. I'm getting to use SvelteKit and Elixir, because I get to decide what to use. It's a learning experience for sure, but a fun one.

I want to write more here, which I failed on this month, but on advice of Andy Bell, I'm trying to find some process that works. Collecting ideas and setting aside time is my first attempt, so I'll see how that goes.

Read

10 years of Meteor - a look back at 10 years of this interesting JS framework that had amazing ideas, but got eclipsed by so many of its' peers.
An introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer - many of my friends of been laid off and some of those are joining unions, so this article was a great read.
The Window Trick of Las Vegas Hotels - I'm an architecture and psychology nerd, so using one to trick the other is super interesting to me.

Watched

Welcome to Chippendales (Disney Plus) - I had no idea how much crime was involved in the story of a male stripping empire. A great watch, and listening to the podcast after it was fun too.
The Last of Us (NowTV) - It's fantastic. Bella Ramsey is great.
The Gold (BBC) - The true story of the biggest robbery in the UK by the 80s. A fun watch of cops and robbers trying to outsmart each other.

Played

Lots more Elden Ring. I want to write up my experience when I finish the game.

Monthnotes: January 2023

Thu, 09 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Yeah, yeah. I realise I'm late.

New Year's Eve

I played a gig on New Year's Eve in the basement of an Italian restaurant in Stoke Newington. It's been a while since I played in front of big crowd that included people that I didn't know, which was pretty exciting.

Although it was a private party organised by friends, we could invite other sound people that we knew. The bit of London and the UK rave scene that I inhabit isn't that large and people are pretty dedicated. It was a nice surprise to see a lot of familiar faces that I didn't know were coming, including a few that don't live in London.

You can listen back to the re-recording. Re-recorded only because when I listened back to it some of my mixing was dodgy. Playing at 3am on NYE will do that to you.

It made me realise how much I miss DJing. This year, I'm going to try and do more of it. I've already got two more gigs lined up at friends birthday's.

Countryside

My partner had to go in for some surgery at the end of January, which necessitated self isolating for two weeks in advance. Before that, we went out to a little Airbnb near Thetford Forest with a hot tub which was great, until the hot tub broke on the 1st full day we were there. It was a little shepherd's hut on a lake inhabited by a few ducks and a very aggro swan.

Some photos from the trip

Misc

I got a new tattoo. It's a skeleton at a rave. It's not exactly how I imagined it, but I love it. It's a fun design that mixes old styles with something new and weird. It's meant to be two-partner. It's on the back of my right leg and was super painful near the top, so I might wait a bit for the next one.

Watched

Glass Onion - like everyone else
Am I Being Unreasonable? - I love Taskmaster and Daisy Mae Cooper was new to me when she was on it. This is a comedy, but with some hard hitting dramatic stuff and a few twists and turns.
10 dollar death trip - a brutal documentary about the fentanyl crisis in Vancouver
White Lotus S2 - Hard to compare it to the first season, but it stands almost as well by itself. The Sopranos was one of our lockdown watches, so it was nice to see Michael Imperioli show up in something else.
The Batman - a decent take on Batman's more detective side and I enjoyed it way more than any of the Marvel stuff that I've watched recently.
Banshees of Inisherrin - Absolutely incredible. The dialogue is pitch perfect for the way Irish people talk to each other.

I'm trying to log all the films I watch on Letterboxd. Follow me if you're on there.

Read

After buying the book in September, I finally made an effort to start reading Dune. I listened to the audiobook years ago, but I wanted to try and finish the book before part 2 of the film comes out. There's some scenes I remember in the book that weren't in the film that focus in on the scarcity of water, but the film gets that point across in other ways.
The disappearance of the ashtray is an article about a class of object that took on an artistic look, but is no longer present in modern life. When I was at the British Library in Euston for the first time I saw wall of shelves separated by vertical panels. Only when I walked past them a second time did I realise they were phone booths. I find remnants of previous human behaviour like that really interesting.

Played

After giving Elden Ring a second chance I'm really enjoying it. I asked some friends for advice on getting good and picked up a new character that I made previously. It turns out when you understand the mechanics for a game that complex it actually becomes fun.

Elephanti Sunt Personae

Tue, 31 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

After moving to Walthamstow, I kept finding status of elephants all over the area. With no obvious clues to the reason or origin, it became a real life Easter Egg in my life. I resigned myself to the fact that I would never know why or how Pink Elephants came to reside in my borough.

Statues on Orford Road and Lea Bridge Road

Eventually, I found a mural on one of the streets.

The mysterious Elephant mural

I still live in Walthamstow, but now nowhere near these statues. After I moved house, I eventually forgot about the Elephants. Until just recently when I cycled past the mural.

Elephanti Sunt Personae led me to We Are People. A guerilla art campaign to show that the consciousness of an Elephant and other species can be considered comparable.

Elephants are people, one day this will be thought self evident to all

The future of transport

Sat, 21 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the future of transport.

In July last year, my car overheated and had to be scrapped. I mostly used it for the weekly shop. But a few times a year I'd drive a few hundred miles around the country for music festivals, weekends away, and visiting friends. After that July, I had no more big drives planned, so I held off immediately buying a replacement and decided to wait and see if I could survive without.

Since then, I've adapted to living without a car. I work from home nearly 100% of the time, so I don't have a commute. I'm also lucky enough to live in London and within Waltham Forest, which was part of the Mini-Holland programme. Waltham Forest is a nice place for cycling, with a lot of bike lanes and low traffic neighbourhoods. I'll cycle to meet friends, run errands, go shopping, and go to the pub.

Cargo

My house is on the North side of Walthamstow. The canals and the towpaths run alongside us North to South, which also runs right underneath the North Circular, which itself is followed by industrial estates and retail parks.

When we were doing a lot of DIY to the house in November, Lila ran out of ceiling paint, so I hopped on my bike with my takeaway tray and cycled the 10 minutes over to B&Q. Coming back with 10 litres of white matt paint was a little wobbly, but doing it a second time would be fine.

My first test of no car club

I love this bike. I've owned it for seven years. It's got a hub gear, which means I can change the gear while stationary. No downshifting when coming up to traffic lights and I can zip off when the light goes green. Adding the basket 18 months ago made me love it even more.

Distance

Carrying capacity alone, does not a transport mode make. I love cycling, but sometimes I don't want to arrive somewhere as a sweaty mess and need to cool down or have a shower. When I worked in central London I cycled in about half the time. The first place I lived was only a 20 minute cycle to the office but when I moved to Walthamstow, it became closer to 50 minutes. Showers and lockers in the office made it a good workout. Free exercise without paying for the commute.

Recently a friend decided to sell his e-bike, so I jumped on the offer. £500 is a steal for an e-bike. Cycling all over with little effort is nice, but if I was cycling longer distances regularly I'd prefer the exercise. The battery is good, and it's fun to glide along. The furthest I've cycled is probably 18km with about 1/3 of the battery remaining.

Longer journeys

When my car had to be scrapped, we were on our way to spend the weekend with friends in Devon. Rather than cancel, we rented a little Seat Ibiza from a HiyaCar and didn't let our car trouble ruin a good weekend.

Just last weekend, we rented another car through HiyaCar to drive out to a little Airbnb about 2 hours from London. Along the way, we discussed the pros and cons of becoming car owners again. Once we'd talked it through and crunched some numbers, we decided to stick with our setup for now. We don't do long car journeys that often to warrant spending a few thousand on a car, with another thousand for insurance on top.

Two wheels good, four wheels bad

We went to Rotterdam at the start of the Summer on the Eurostar. Rotterdam is like a nicer Amsterdam. We cycled out of the city and through the Dutch countryside, full of amazement at the bike-first culture that the Dutch have. Other cities are taking notice, like Paris.

If you want to help the environment, one of the best ways you can do that is to get rid of your car. When we had ours, we would drive short distances that we could've cycled.

Maybe bikes, and by extension e-bikes, are the real transport of the future. Combined with a solid train network, you can go nearly anywhere. Not flying cars, self driving cars, cars in enclosed tunnels or cars in a vacuum tube.

Monthnotes: December 2022

Sat, 24 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMT

We finished off a load of DIY just in time for Christmas. After owning the house for a year, it's nice to have least done half of it. Our house is starting to feel like ours.
At Castrooms, we had a few test parties culminating in a set from a guy who regularly plays at Notting Hill Carnival. I managed to get a pretty difficult feature working just in time. It was a great way to end the year.
I've got more and more into RSS feeds again. I bought Reeder on macOS and iOS which is really nice, but it has a few little differences from NetNewsWire which I'm still getting used to. I've enjoyed coming back to reading blogs. It's a better way to ~doom~scroll when I'm bored. I also added RSS to this blog, if that's how you roll.
I wrapped up work on the 16th and had grand plans of making great use of my time. Instead, I mostly played Destiny 2 and Vampire Survivors.
I did however, add albums to Lineup.fun, which has already came in handy for end of year lists.

Here's some things I've enjoyed

The aforementioned Vampire Survivors. It combines the great element of idle games like Universal Paperclips which Bullet Hells
Christmas specials everywhere, but Behind The Bastard's Keep The Yultide Gay chronicles pre-Christian Christmas: Part 1 and 2

30 year loop

Sat, 03 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Many years ago, I read this incredible article about how pop culture exists in 30 year loops. It's why Back to the Future jumps from 1985 to 1955. There's plenty of examples within that article and now that you know about it, you'll see it everywhere.

Now that we're firmly in the 20s, we can see a big resurgance of pop culture from the late 80s and early 90s. Remakes, revists and spin-offs have came back around again - Dune, Scream, Top Gun, Jurassic Park, Toy Story and Predator to name a few.

When I read that article and started to notice the 30 year cycle in media, I also noticed that a lot of the games that I played around that time fully embraced the 80s 8 bit retro era. Celeste, Hyper Light Drifter and Return of The Obra Dinn were 3 of the biggest, and all recall an older era and the limitations emposed by technology.

What the article put forward, made me think that eventually, we’d begin to see newer games referencing the games of the mid to late 90s. Until recently, I hadn’t seen much evidence of that assumption. Only in the last few weeks did I start playing 2 new games that have distilled the games of that era.

Prodeus

One of the first games I ever played, was DOOM on an uncle’s PS1. I remember barely any of it, other than the hard as nails difficulty, incomprehensible story, and the brutal guns.

Prodeus takes all its inspiration from those early DOOM games. The guns, graphics, and gore, are all throwbacks to that style of first person shooter from the 90s.

Signalis

This one is a bit different for me, as it’s channeling the early survival horror genre, which I was never into. Resident Evil and Silent Hill are what I’ve seen it compared to. I never had the patience for those games, but I loved this one. I’d also compare it to Metal Gear Solid for a lot of reasons.

It’s full of CRT scan lines, limited inventory, save points instead of checkpoints and some very cryptic puzzles.

The CD case

Playing Signalis reminded me of one of my favourite puzzles in Metal Gear Solid - you obtain a disc before need to contact a character on your radio. You're told "the frequency is on the back of the CD case". I have no idea how long I spent trying to look at the disc in my inventory, which you actually can't do. Eventually, I realised the the frequency was in a screenshot on the back of the physical game case. Searching for this online still has plenty of people trying to figure it out. I think this must be one of the most incredible examples breaking the fourth wall and one that might only be possible in the medium of videogames.

Once more, with feeling

Fri, 11 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Yet again, here I am, attempting to blog regularly.

In previous years, I had a blog that involved designing each post. A carefully hand crafted framework and toolchain allowed me to create a post with individual colours, layout, and art direction. Sometimes the design I had in my head wouldn't translate to the screen easily, so I'd spend many hours over many days, tinkering away. Either getting it right, or figuring out something else that I liked.

I also made the mistake of thinking that every post had to be a think piece. That I had to have some grand idea worth exploring.

I've recently tried to get back into RSS feeds. Familiar names and URLs keep resurfacing from 10ish years ago. One site I came across was Chris Coyier's, and one of the first posts I read from him was There is no bar, which has this thought provoking question:

Why do people have a hard time with that publish button, even on ready-to-rock personal sites?

For me, the hard time of publishing was waiting for a deep thought and designing something that I was happy with - they kind of went hand in hand. A great article deserved a great design. Without one, I couldn't let the other see the light of day.

A new adventure

Since April, I've been working on a startup in the music streaming space called Castrooms. It's a new and exciting thing to be the <strike>only</strike> best engineer at the company. One of my colleagues, Will, has been writing for years, and is increasingly putting out thoughts and questions on Twitter. We both spent formative parts of our careers at the Government Digital Service, where we constantly heard Make things open: it makes them better.

Not many people in our field get to do what I'm doing - working on something from the beginning, that I'm personally interested in. Maybe I should write about it?

It's also technically hard. We're combining real time audio and video from many sources and using multiple third party services together. I'm writing some complex and horrific code. But that's all OK because it's a startup, so we're still figuring things out and prototyping. Maybe I could write about that?

Shit's on fire yo

Much of the modern web is a walled garden. When I last tried to start blogging, I kicked it off with a post titled "Let's make mad shit". I didn't write as much as I wanted to after that, but I did make a few mad shit things, like Lineup.fun. I still think we need more art galleries than malls on the web. And for me, I want some way to express myself online that can't be ruined by a serially divorced dad obsessed with imaginary trains.

Once more, unto the breach

So, yet again, I'm saying that I'm going to blog more. I'm cutting myself some slack this time round. Everything I write doesn't have to be some well researched and deep article. It can just be something I want to share. This doesn't have to be some world changing website. I can just have fun with it.

My little corner of the Internet is just that - mine.

Let's make mad shit

Sun, 03 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT

2020 has shown us that The Internet can be utter shit. It's awful. It's full of depressing news, racism and people without medical degrees thinking their opinion is as valid as a Doctor.

But 2020 has also shown us that the Internet can be amazing. It kept us together and in touch when we couldn't do it in real life. It allowed for so much creativity, interaction and communication in this fucking terrible year. So many people out there are making cool things but we don't see it because we get bogged down hating all of the terrible shit.

Remember when people had blogs? And they wrote things? Everyone had their little corner of The Internet. Now we write them in 35 part Twitter threads. Or even worse, Medium articles. You want me to make an account on Medium just so I can read more than 3 articles a month? Oh and if you're trying to browse them on mobile, I hope you have an iPhone 12 Pro Max because otherwise you'll not be seeing the article when the page loads.

Both of those are terrible ways for us to create and share things.

Even with all of that stuff making the Internet worse, people are still making fun and cool things on The Internet.

Here are a few things I enjoyed in 2020:

Poolside - ultra vibey website and app that brings a pool party to your internet communication device.
JavaScript30 from WesBos - I'm pretty good with JavaScript but in an effort to understand it more deeply, I did this free course at the start of Summer. It took me a bit more than the 30 days, but I found it really enjoyable beginning my day with some coding and Wes' cheesy jokes.
Jon's experiments with three.js shaders.
Jonty's camjam - watch a feed from a selection of random TFL CCTV cameras.
govbins - I helped Harry rebuild govbins this year, but even with my obvious bias I've enjoyed the abusurdity of people taking photos of wheelie bins.
it is what it is - an injoke taken to an extreme but then used to raise awareness about systemic racism
Sketch's article about native being better - regardless of weather or not you agree with their point, you have to agree that it looks absolutely gorgeous.
Clubhouse - drop in audio chat that replaced office shit chatting for me and kept me slightly more sane whilst working from home.
Ogmios' School of Zen Motoring - drives through North East London with a soothing narration.
I Thought About That A Lot - a series of essays which includes a really touching story about disposing of a body and thoughts on Caroline Quentin's career.
Many Twitch DJ streams from my friends, with a simultaneous Zoom call to chat and see familiar faces.

A while ago I'd decided to start blogging again in 2021, but I didn't really know what to write about first. Before my thoughts started to coalesce, I read this great blog post from Simon Collinson and suddenly it all made sense to me.

He talks about two things I want to call out here:

Admittedly, most company or client work tackles real issues for real people; it’s rarely a sandbox for us to climb into and make mad shit.

He's absolutely right on this point. Even as someone doing more development than design, I have ideas of fun things to build or fun ways to build them that I just don't get to do. Why don't I do that? I should do that!

And this:

...just because GOV.UK does an excellent job of helping you pay your car tax doesn’t mean your own playground should look like it’s been built with a government design system.

Although we should make sure our own spaces work for everyone we think will use them, if you want to do something weird with your own site, go ahead! Why not? Nobody is going to tell you it impacted conversion or a client didn't like it.

Like most people in 2020 I also watched The Social Dilemma, though I watched it later than most on 1st January 2021. Something stuck out to me near the end, when Bailey Richardson described The Internet now as being like a mall and that she remembered when The Internet was full of creativity.

I want more art galleries and less malls.

We used to have fun on the Internet.

We used to make mad shit.

I'm going to do that again in 2021.