Remy Sharp
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The Radleys [book]
An easy read, good for the holiday. I chomped this down in a matter of days (though it helped being by the pool to spend more time reading). I've read a number of Matt Haig's books and find I prefer his older material over the newer books, and this book fitted nicely into that category. Without examining…
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Spike Milligan: Man of Letters [book]
A book of letters…kinda made me want to write letters… I picked this up based on "funny books" though I'm really not sure how I landed on this book. I know, sort of, Spike Milligan's work, but only from TV. I didn't know he was an author, particularly from funny war stories so I missing considerable…
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The Left Hand of Darkness [book]
300 pages but wow it felt 4 times longer... I found the writings quite difficult to consume. A lot, if not all the names were sounds but without any familiar rhythm, and Le Guin was describing, with I assume great accuracy a world with locations, cities, regions and mountains - but I was struggling to…
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AI: did you check your work? [blog]
There's no denying that the web industry, as with many others, has AI and LLMs as a ubiquitous presence. There's all kinds of different uses for LLMs, and comes with all the ethical concerns - ignored or perhaps at the heart of your use. More recently "vibe coding" has me…wary.
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Showing book clippings on my blog [blog]
After jailbreaking my Kindle and seeing how simple it was and how all existing functionality was retained, I spotted that there was a My Clippings.txt file on the Kindle when mounted (I'm sure it's always there, I just hadn't mounted before). This prompted me to get all my clippings (or as I think of…
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Minority Rule: Adventures in the Culture War [book]
Maybe you've read this book, and you feel a sense of despair. I think before read the book I had a sense of despair. This book did an excellent job of articulating my despair. Articulating ideas that I couldn't put words to on my own. I bought this book on pre-order after seeing Ash Sarkar on Pod Save…
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How I made an LED driver smart… [blog]
…by just a little. Our family bathroom has a cabinet with an IR sensor that turns on LEDs in the side of the cabinet. The IR sensor is "wave your hand under the cabinet" and the lights go on or off. The littlest uses this light (instead of the overhead which is connected to the extractor fan - i.e. loud…
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Do politics belong at web events? [blog]
This question has been asked before and discussed before and I've always looked on from the sidelines, even though, as a conference organiser, I do in fact have fairly strong opinions about this.
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Making a Killing (DI Fawley #7) [book]
Wanted to like it more, the gimmicks frustrated me. I've read every DI Fawley book and I've always enjoyed them. I'm starting to think of these books as a bit of guilty pleasure. However, I'm limited to reading on the Kindle which means the medium which I read is rather specific. Hunter will (as in:…
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The day piracy changed [blog]
It certainly wasn't today. It was some time ago, but I wanted to mark this in my blog as a reminder that once, long ago, piracy was, well, stealing. That's all changed now.
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Devs: draw your line [blog]
This post is for my developers out there, web and otherwise. We have super powers. We can make something functional from practically nothing. And you know what they say about great power… So this is short and sweet: know where you draw the line and stick to your god damn guns.
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The Time Machine [book]
Facinating for when it was written, but felt like it was sort of missing a story. I'm definitely reading these older classics so that I acquaint myself with what I've assumed all my peers read when they were younger, so this eventually made its way into my reading list. It's an incredible story given…
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Upgrading USB devices to USB-C [blog]
For a small home project, my son suggested adding some under lights to a plant stand we recently added to our kitchen. I figured we could do this with a cheap LED strip and it could connect to the "house" using Zigbee and Home Assistant. All was well until I realised the plug socket nearest the plants…
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How to disable Google Gemini in your Google Workspace [link]
Google's AI offering came along to paid accounts without permission or request. What made it worse is that it couldn't be turned off, which… I don't even have words. It was via Jan on Mastodon that I'd seen it wasn't possible to disable. But Jan having more persistance than me actually managed to find…
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Blog Questions Challenge [blog]
I remember seeing something very similar doing the rounds on that site we used to use called "Twitter", possibly back in 2007. Anyway, fast forward a full grown adult and it's making the rounds, except this time instead of looking dough eyed from afar, that lovely man Stuart tagged me (though arguably…
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Home Assistant: how get real-time UK electricity and gas [blog]
There's a number of ways to get real-time electricity readings into Home Assistant. I'm currently using a Puck.js to read the blinking light on my meter but our gas meter is one of the new ultrasonic ones (in particular there's no readings or lights without physically interacting with it), so there was…
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The Man Who Died Twice (Thursday Murder Club, #2) [book]
Reeks of "cosy crime" - and that's good. There's a reason that Richard Osman's series has been a runaway success for many people (or at least I can believe it) - the story is well written, the characters are extremely well drawn and the pages are a pleasure to digest. I keep thinking I'm further along…
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What is good web design, and bad web design? [blog]
My son, aged 13, was given this question for his homework recently. As someone (me!) having worked on the web professionally since 1999, I felt a connection to this particular bit of homework. Obviously we clashed (homework sucks, both for kids, parents and teachers) - but I thought it would be a good…
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The Echo Wife [book]
Could not put the damn book down! Very easy book to read, and annoyingly difficult to stop reading late at night. The story is told from Evelyn's perspective, a brilliant scientist working in the field of human cloning. There's a lot that goes on in the book, both from the story moving forward and driven…
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Server isn't sending content length [blog]
As part of the ZX Spectrum community I wrote a tool that can download content over HTTP from a ZX Spectrum Next, but one prerequisite is that the content-length header is present (so it operate properly). A friend from the community runs a server and built a (really nice) GUI tool on top the .http command…
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My 2024 [blog]
This year zipped past for me, mostly because I had my eye on an event in November for most of the year, but here we are: the close of '24 and on the doorstep of '25. In this post I'll try to remind my future self of what I did, but unlike previous years, there's a lot less public work (side projects…
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Starter Villain [book]
Cats…sentient cats. A fun, good length book that doesn't take itself too seriously (which, sentient cats is probably the first clue). On reflection (and since the blurb already gives this away), the "hyperintelligent talking spy cats" are a core mechanic of the story, I do now wonder why they hadn't…
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FFConf 2024 [blog]
Our 16th year, 17th outing (it's complicated with doubles for 3 years and skipping the pandemic years…) completed two weeks ago, and it is high time I post my thoughts. There are two parts this post breaks into: the day itself and the amazing talks, and the lead up and its future.
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The Answer Is No [book]
Brief, sadly, on all aspects. I knew this was a short read, and having come out of Frank Herbert's Dune at almost 900 pages, a nice little chomp down on a Backman book was exactly what I wanted. Except, frustratingly, I ended up feeling a little cheapened by this book. I've loved Backman's other books…
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Dune (Dune Chronicles, #1) [book]
Incredible world building, but I definitely felt the story lost me multiple times. I've watched Dune 1 and 2 before having read this book, so I had a distinct advantage that Denis Villeneuve's version was already in my head and gave me an (effective) leg up on the visualisation of the world that Herbert…
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Build and run online services _easily_ [link]
I find this very cool that the Gov.uk / GDS have released their platform tooling (in particular forms) to the public sector.I can imagine it's a jump to go from project in the public sector to being able to implement all the nuts and bolts it requires, and this platform looks to cut right through the…
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The Open Source AI Definition – 1.0 [link]
There's now an official definition of "open source AI", which companies like Facebook have been using (prior to this definition) to effectively attempt to convince us (Devs) that the models are in keeping with the values of Open Source.When the reality for many of these companies and their models is…
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Ted Chaing on AI and art [link]
I can't stop thinking about this quote from Ted Chiang (originally snipped by Simon Willison). Art is notoriously hard to define, and so are the differences between good art and bad art. But let me offer a generalization: art is something that results from making a lot of choices. […] to oversimplify…
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The moment before: 30th Aug [blog]
I don't like waking up on this particular day. I almost want to just skip the day and not face it. I don't like it because I know there's a version of me that's waking up to this particular morning in 2010 still innocent and full of hope and excitement that our first child is on their way. That version…
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I Will Luddite AI by Robert Kingett [link]
A long but excellent article or even essay on AI, it's appeal to the blindness community, prompt injection, hacking and a wealth of links and well thought out discussion. Like Robert I only really learnt the real meaning of "luddite" this year, specifically because of AI, and he goes on to discuss this…
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Making a dumb doorbell smart [blog]
And no, I didn't just pop a bow tie on my doorbell! I recently installed Home Assistant on a spare Raspberry Pi I had laying around, and though our house isn't very smart-enabled, I thought it wouldn't be too hard to improve our cheap doorbell to notify through our Google home speakers (or even phone…
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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? [book]
Really interesting ideas sandwiched in a bit of a weird trip. I'm sure there's an English studies thesis for this book, but I'm utterly unqualified. This book was, kind of all over the shop. I'm very familiar with Blade Runner (both director's cut and OG) and I'd known ahead of time that the book it…
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SENDUNE html email designers [link]
The SENDUNE email designer focuses on simplicity and ease of use. It is light-weight. It does pure HTML - no intermediate code wranglers like mjml. There is no lock-in of any kind. Save HTML output as a template and use with ANY email service provider.I can't get over how any simple design is still so…
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Screen reading eff eff conf [blog]
In a recent (personal) audit of accessibility and continued struggle to get my head around Voice Over (for macos), I remembered that the spoken sound of "ffconf" (as I'll usually display it) is "ef-conf" all sounded out in two syllables (it's hard to explain). So I wanted to revisit if it was possible…
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Is AI part and parcel of web dev? [blog]
Over the last year+ I've seen AI quickly increase its dominance in the social feeds I follow. I know I'm in an echo chamber, but it feels like working on the web, you/we must understand how AI works and have some kind of integration in our products. It feels like it's being bulldozed by private companies…
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Book Lovers [book]
A romance story, some clever writing, slightly predictable, not entirely my bag. I think, because I only started reading in the last decade, that I've not read a "proper" romance novel before. I can't say that I'm won over by the genre through, but that's my failing and not the book's. The story does…
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Say what? On tinnitus and hearing [blog]
In January this year I was upgraded from guy who has tinnitus and bad hearing, to upgraded ears (via hearing aids) and, for a brief time, no tinnitus.
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Adding tests to a TypeScript, Next, tRPC project without the faff [blog]
Aside from the cringe inducing stack I've got layered, with client projects you (actually, me) work with the hand you've been dealt. I needed to add tests to this particular project (which will eventually be open source) and the typical route would have been Jest, but that failed hard. So here's what…
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Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow [book]
Favourite book of my year: wonderful. I loved the characters. I've loved the story telling. I loved the passion around work. I loved the love between the characters. Crossing multiple decades but the crux takes place during the height of 1990s PC gaming. i.e. shortly after Doom - and our characters are…
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Casio f-91w Modding [blog]
I do love my Pebble mostly because it still uses tactile buttons and it's a slim watch. Though recently I saw that Casio offered a design in a bright orange colour (and then found a multitude of colours available) and really wanted to brighten up my style. Obviously, quickly it got out of hand!
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Tokyo Express [book]
Lovely old time detective story. I do love an old book. Written in 1958, post war in Japan, mostly a story about...sort of...trains. I knew Japan was big on trains (similarly to the UK, it's our mode of transport), but reading about how they would plan their journey often sleeping overnight, upright…
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Retro print patterns with CSS [link]
Ana Tudor, as always, shows excellent methods to create (what I'd call) retro print effects to images using CSS.This is something I've typically turned to PhotoShop to (struggle) with, but Ana shows how this can be done with CSS.In Ana's CodePens, SCSS is used, but even the compiled CSS is relatively…
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Here and Now and Then [book]
The heart break of time travel. I enjoyed this book. The time travel core mechanic is…okay. It's not perfect/bullet proof, but it works to create the impossible problem. The main character is, a little all over the place. It's not enough to be distracting, but often I found myself thinking "this guy…
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Why Good Captioned Videos Are Important [link]
Absolutely essential reading and viewing on how to produce captions with valuable real world examples of how to completely mess it up (and a lot of social posted videos do the bad mess version). As someone who's hard of hearing and uses captions on all viewing media that I can, I already feel this. Excellent…
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CSS text fragment selector (please) [blog]
A little while ago (read: 14 years ago) I wished for a parent selector, and we finally have :has 🎉. Now, how about the ever useful jQuery selector :contains but reusing the text fragment syntax?
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groupBy and other ways that I'm an old dog [blog]
More of a TIL but my blog is rather bare lately, so this will do. I was browsing the excellent MDN to check something and came across both Map.groupBy and Object.groupBy. A handy static method for keying an array by some property (I'll show working example in a moment). Pretty useful, but I quickly realised…
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Weyward [book]
A little predictable. The book is broken across multiple eras and lives of women who are related, three in particular, changing the written voice used (so it's reasonable to follow as it jumps). The problem I had, particularly having just come off What About Men? was that every single male character…
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Cricut Explore Air 2 [tif]
I've been eyeballing Cricut machines for a few years now, but it was mostly for stickers for my own use and the cost just couldn't be justified. However, last Sunday I found a faulty Cricut on eBay, put an offer out and it arrived on Wednesday for a total of £35 (including postage). When plugging the…
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What About Men? [book]
For me: a must read. Reading Moran's book I could quickly see that I was the exact target audience for the content: white, cis, straight, leftie male. I try my best to be a feminist but I know that sometimes I end up being an apologist for my own gender. Moran doesn't slam men in her book (as easy as…
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Apple going to kneecap the web: PWAs [blog]
Remember the days that Apple used to pitch itself as David in the David and Goliath stories? Well, the tables have turned. Apple, in a short number of days, are going to intentionally kill off PWA support. 2-March 2024: Apple has backed down (for now), thanks to the efforts of amazing people, but the…
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