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alexwlchan

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alexwlchan
It’s cool to care I’m sitting in a small coffee shop in Brooklyn. I have a warm drink, and it’s just started to snow...
yesterday
3

It’s cool to care

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

yesterday
I’m sitting in a small coffee shop in Brooklyn. I have a warm drink, and it’s just started to snow outside. I’m visiting New York to see Operation Mincemeat on Broadway – I was at the dress rehearsal yesterday, and I’ll be at the opening preview tonight. I’ve seen this show more...
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alexwlchan
Cosmetic updates to this site As well as changing the way I organise my writing, last year I made some cosmetic improvements to...
2 days ago
4

Cosmetic updates to this site

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

2 days ago
As well as changing the way I organise my writing, last year I made some cosmetic improvements to this site. I design everything on this site myself, and I write the CSS by hand – I don’t use any third-party styles or frameworks. I don’t have any design training, and I don’t do...
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alexwlchan
How I create static websites for tiny archives Last year I wrote about using static websites for tiny archives. The idea is that I create tiny...
3 days ago
7

How I create static websites for tiny archives

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

3 days ago
Last year I wrote about using static websites for tiny archives. The idea is that I create tiny websites to store and describe my digital collections. There are several reasons I like this approach: HTML is flexible and lets me display data in a variety of ways; it’s likely to...
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alexwlchan
Good embedded toots In my previous post, there was a first for this site: I embedded a post from Mastodon. Like many...
a week ago
11

Good embedded toots

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a week ago
In my previous post, there was a first for this site: I embedded a post from Mastodon. Like many social media services, Mastodon has built-in support for embedding posts. If you’re looking at a public post, you can get a snippet of HTML and JavaScript to show that post in another...
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alexwlchan
Unexpected errors in the BagIt area Last week, James Truitt asked a question on Mastodon: James Truitt (he/him) ...
2 weeks ago
12

Unexpected errors in the BagIt area

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

2 weeks ago
Last week, James Truitt asked a question on Mastodon: James Truitt (he/him) @linguistory@code4lib.social Mastodon #digipres folks happen to have a handy repo of small invalid bags for testing purposes? I'm trying to...
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alexwlchan
Making inventory spreadsheets for my LEGO sets One of my recent home organisation projects has been sorting out my LEGO collection. I have a bunch...
2 weeks ago
9

Making inventory spreadsheets for my LEGO sets

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

2 weeks ago
One of my recent home organisation projects has been sorting out my LEGO collection. I have a bunch of sets which are mixed together in one messy box, and I’m trying to separate bricks back into distinct sets. My collection is nowhere near large enough to be worth sorting by...
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alexwlchan
Adding auto-generated cover images to EPUBs downloaded from AO3 I was chatting with a friend recently, and she mentioned an annoyance when reading fanfiction on her...
2 weeks ago
19

Adding auto-generated cover images to EPUBs downloaded from AO3

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

2 weeks ago
I was chatting with a friend recently, and she mentioned an annoyance when reading fanfiction on her iPad. She downloads fic from AO3 as EPUB files, and reads it in the Kindle app – but the files don’t have a cover image, and so the preview thumbnails aren’t very readable: ...
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alexwlchan
Looking at images in a spreadsheet I’ve had a couple of projects recently where I needed to work with a list that involved images. For...
a month ago
29

Looking at images in a spreadsheet

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a month ago
I’ve had a couple of projects recently where I needed to work with a list that involved images. For example, choosing a series of photos to print, or making an inventory of Lego parts. I could write a simple text list, but it’s really helpful to be able to see the images as part...
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alexwlchan
randline: get a random selection of lines in a file using reservoir sampling I’ve posted another command-line tool on GitHub: randline, which gives you a random selection of...
a month ago
39

randline: get a random selection of lines in a file using reservoir sampling

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a month ago
I’ve posted another command-line tool on GitHub: randline, which gives you a random selection of lines in a file: $ randline < /usr/share/dict/words ultraluxurious $ randline 3 < /usr/share/dict/words unexceptionably baselessness salinity There are lots of tools that solve...
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alexwlchan
How I test Rust command-line apps with `assert_cmd` Rust has become my go-to language for my personal toolbox – small, standalone utilities like...
a month ago
41

How I test Rust command-line apps with `assert_cmd`

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a month ago
Rust has become my go-to language for my personal toolbox – small, standalone utilities like create_thumbnail, emptydir, and dominant_colours. There’s no place for Rust in my day job, so having some self-contained hobby projects means I can still have fun playing with it. I’ve...
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alexwlchan
How I use the notes field in my password manager I use 1Password to store the passwords for my online accounts, and I’ve been reviewing it as a new...
a month ago
55

How I use the notes field in my password manager

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a month ago
I use 1Password to store the passwords for my online accounts, and I’ve been reviewing it as a new year cleanup task. I’ve been deleting unused accounts, changing old passwords which were weak, and making sure I’ve enabled multi-factor authentication for key accounts. Each...
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alexwlchan
My favourite books from 2024 I read 58 books this year – slightly down on last year, but I’m still happy with that number. I...
a month ago
47

My favourite books from 2024

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a month ago
I read 58 books this year – slightly down on last year, but I’m still happy with that number. I spent a lot of time this on my own writing and crafting, and I had less time for books. I returned to a couple of favourite authors and their latest releases – including Toshikazu...
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alexwlchan
I deleted all my tweets I had a complicated relationship with Twitter (now X). I wasted a lot of time there, got into some...
a month ago
28

I deleted all my tweets

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a month ago
I had a complicated relationship with Twitter (now X). I wasted a lot of time there, got into some embarrassing arguments, and wrote things I now regret. But it’s also where I met friends and partners, started my career in cultural heritage, and began my queer awakening. Maybe...
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alexwlchan
Not all blog posts are created equal For a while now, this website has been my own personal writer’s block. I was struggling to write,...
a month ago
43

Not all blog posts are created equal

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a month ago
For a while now, this website has been my own personal writer’s block. I was struggling to write, even when I had good ideas; if I wrote something I liked, I was often reluctant to publish it; if somebody asked to read the site, I’d wince before giving them the link. Something...
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alexwlchan
How I name my computers I got a new Mac mini this weekend, to replace my aging Intel iMac. I’ve already done most of the...
3 months ago
52

How I name my computers

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

3 months ago
I got a new Mac mini this weekend, to replace my aging Intel iMac. I’ve already done most of the setup, and this blog post is one of the first things I’ll make with it. I’m quite pleased with how quickly I can get up and running with a new machine. There’s one hard part of...
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alexwlchan
Moving my website from Netlify to Caddy I had a long train journey on Tuesday, and I spent the time moving this website from Netlify to a...
3 months ago
45

Moving my website from Netlify to Caddy

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

3 months ago
I had a long train journey on Tuesday, and I spent the time moving this website from Netlify to a Linux server running Caddy. (Yes, the Wi-Fi on European trains is reliable enough to make that possible, even pleasant.) Hopefully nobody noticed! When I flipped the DNS records to...
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alexwlchan
A script to verify my Netlify redirects I’ve changed the URL design on this website a couple of times. The current structure seems to be...
3 months ago
50

A script to verify my Netlify redirects

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

3 months ago
I’ve changed the URL design on this website a couple of times. The current structure seems to be working fairly well, but I made some dubious decisions when I started out that really didn’t scale. (Like having a single folder for all of my /images/ – of which there are now over...
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alexwlchan
Using static websites for tiny archives In my previous post, I talked about how I’m trying to be more intentional and deliberate with my...
4 months ago
45

Using static websites for tiny archives

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

4 months ago
In my previous post, I talked about how I’m trying to be more intentional and deliberate with my digital data. I don’t just want to keep everything – I want to keep stuff that I’m actually going to look at again. As part of that process, I’m trying to be better about organising...
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alexwlchan
Making alt text more visible I add alt text to every image on this site. I have an automated check to remind me to add alt text...
4 months ago
54

Making alt text more visible

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

4 months ago
I add alt text to every image on this site. I have an automated check to remind me to add alt text before I publish the site, but that means alt text has often been an afterthought – something I’d dash out at the very end of writing a post. I wanted to give it more attention, and...
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alexwlchan
Flickr Foundation at iPres 2024 &rarr; I wrote about a recent conference trip for the Flickr.org blog: In September, Tori and I went to...
4 months ago
46

Flickr Foundation at iPres 2024 &rarr;

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

4 months ago
I wrote about a recent conference trip for the Flickr.org blog: In September, Tori and I went to Belgium for iPres 2024. We were keen to chat about digital preservation and discuss some of our ideas for Data Lifeboat – and enjoy a few Belgian waffles, of course! We ran a workshop...
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alexwlchan
Putting history on the map &rarr; Back in July, we built an interactive map for the Flickr Commons Explorer. I wrote an article for...
4 months ago
17

Putting history on the map &rarr;

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

4 months ago
Back in July, we built an interactive map for the Flickr Commons Explorer. I wrote an article for the Flickr blog about some of the photos I found using the map – including Antarctic explorers, northern factories, and Hawaiian industry. [If the formatting of this post looks odd...
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alexwlchan
Two examples of hover styles on images I enjoy adding :hover styles to my websites. A good hover style reminds me of how fast and...
4 months ago
55

Two examples of hover styles on images

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

4 months ago
I enjoy adding :hover styles to my websites. A good hover style reminds me of how fast and responsive our computers can be, if we let them. For example, I add a thicker underline when you hover over a link on this site, and it appears/disappears almost instantly as I move my...
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alexwlchan
Drawing a better bandwidth graph for Netlify I currently host this site on Netlify’s Starter plan, which means I can serve 100GB of bandwidth per...
5 months ago
64

Drawing a better bandwidth graph for Netlify

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

5 months ago
I currently host this site on Netlify’s Starter plan, which means I can serve 100GB of bandwidth per month. That’s usually plenty, and I’ve only exceeded it a few times – this site is mostly text, and I only have a modest audience. I can see how much bandwidth I’ve used in the...
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alexwlchan
Going between Finder and the Terminal Earlier this week, Dr. Drang wrote a post about a few automations he uses to go between the...
5 months ago
48

Going between Finder and the Terminal

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

5 months ago
Earlier this week, Dr. Drang wrote a post about a few automations he uses to go between the Terminal’s command line and the Finder’s GUI. He has some neat ideas, and I particularly like his AppleScript sel for selecting multiple items in Finder. I’ve written a couple of similar...
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alexwlchan
Digital decluttering I spent a lot of my formative Internet years in online fandom. I read novel-length stories about...
5 months ago
58

Digital decluttering

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

5 months ago
I spent a lot of my formative Internet years in online fandom. I read novel-length stories about Doctor Who characters; I swooned over fan art of the Lizzie Bennet Diaries; I pored over in-depth analyses of each episode of Carmilla. Most of that is gone now. Links rot quickly,...
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alexwlchan
Mountaintop moments Last weekend, I was in Edinburgh for the Fringe, and I’m so glad I went. I met new people, hung out...
6 months ago
53

Mountaintop moments

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

6 months ago
Last weekend, I was in Edinburgh for the Fringe, and I’m so glad I went. I met new people, hung out with some Internet friends in-person, and saw some great theatre. It was fun, but also exhausting. By the final day, I was worn out and ready to sleep in my own bed – but now I’m...
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alexwlchan
create_thumbnail: create smaller versions of images I’ve made a new command-line tool: create_thumbnail, which creates thumbnails of images. I need...
6 months ago
59

create_thumbnail: create smaller versions of images

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

6 months ago
I’ve made a new command-line tool: create_thumbnail, which creates thumbnails of images. I need image thumbnails in a lot of projects, and I wanted a single tool I could use in all of them rather than having multiple copies of the same code. It takes three arguments: Your...
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alexwlchan
Plates and states I was recently visiting Vermont for a work trip – my first time in the USA since I was a child. I...
6 months ago
61

Plates and states

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

6 months ago
I was recently visiting Vermont for a work trip – my first time in the USA since I was a child. I was drawn to the license plates on passing cars, and how they look different to the cars I’m used to. Whenever I visit new places, I enjoy looking for the tiny bits of infrastructure...
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alexwlchan
Google is showing outdated results from the UK’s election Last week, fourteen years of Tory government came to an end with a Labour landslide. It was a rough...
7 months ago
53

Google is showing outdated results from the UK’s election

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

7 months ago
Last week, fourteen years of Tory government came to an end with a Labour landslide. It was a rough night for every Conservative candidate, many of whom either lost their seat or saw their majorities severely diminished. One of those Conservative candidates was Nigel...
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alexwlchan
Doodling with the Mac’s command icon The command key (⌘) has been a ubiquitious part of the Mac for over forty years. It was chosen by...
7 months ago
75

Doodling with the Mac’s command icon

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

7 months ago
The command key (⌘) has been a ubiquitious part of the Mac for over forty years. It was chosen by legendary icon designer Susan Kare, who picked it from a symbol dictionary – this shape was already being used in Sweden to highlight an interesting feature on a map. It’s an...
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alexwlchan
emptydir: look for (nearly) empty directories and delete them I’ve posted a new command-line tool on GitHub: emptydir, which looks for directories which are empty...
8 months ago
54

emptydir: look for (nearly) empty directories and delete them

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

8 months ago
I’ve posted a new command-line tool on GitHub: emptydir, which looks for directories which are empty or nearly empty, and deletes them. This isn’t a completely trivial problem, because emptiness is deceptive. Consider the following folder. Finder tells us it has 0 items, so it...
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alexwlchan
Improving millions of files on Wikimedia Commons with Flickypedia Backfillr Bot &rarr; I’ve written a post on the Flickr Foundation blog about Flickypedia Backfillr Bot, a new bot I built...
8 months ago
56

Improving millions of files on Wikimedia Commons with Flickypedia Backfillr Bot &rarr;

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

8 months ago
I’ve written a post on the Flickr Foundation blog about Flickypedia Backfillr Bot, a new bot I built last year and which has been running ever since: Last year, we built Flickypedia, a new tool for copying photos from Flickr to Wikimedia Commons. As part of our planning, we asked...
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alexwlchan
The surprising utility of a Flickr URL parser &rarr; As part of my work at the Flickr Foundation, I wrote a little Python library that can be used to...
8 months ago
46

The surprising utility of a Flickr URL parser &rarr;

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

8 months ago
As part of my work at the Flickr Foundation, I wrote a little Python library that can be used to parse Flickr URLs. For example: $ flickr_url_parser 'https://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/4727552068/' {"type": "single_photo", "photo_id": "4727552068"} This started...
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alexwlchan
The surprising utility of a Flickr URL parser &rarr; As part of my work at the Flickr Foundation, I wrote a little Python library that can be used to...
8 months ago
21

The surprising utility of a Flickr URL parser &rarr;

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

8 months ago
As part of my work at the Flickr Foundation, I wrote a little Python library that can be used to parse Flickr URLs. For example: $ flickr_url_parser 'https://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/4727552068/' {"type": "single_photo", "photo_id": "4727552068"} This started...
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alexwlchan
Drawing repetitive radial artworks I was waiting for a meeting to start the other day, and I was idly doodling in my notebook. I’d just...
8 months ago
75

Drawing repetitive radial artworks

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

8 months ago
I was waiting for a meeting to start the other day, and I was idly doodling in my notebook. I’d just had a text from a friend about an upcoming trip to Ireland, and she’d sent me the four-leafed clover emoji (🍀), so I was sketching some petal-like shapes. These are a few of my...
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alexwlchan
Documenting my DNS records I had to change some of my DNS records recently, a phrase which strikes fear into the heart of...
9 months ago
43

Documenting my DNS records

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

9 months ago
I had to change some of my DNS records recently, a phrase which strikes fear into the heart of sysadmins everywhere. It all went fine, but I definitely felt like I was playing with fire. My current domain registrar is Hover, and the only way I can manage my domains is through a...
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alexwlchan
Documenting my DNS records I had to change some of my DNS records recently, a phrase which strikes fear into the heart of...
9 months ago
29

Documenting my DNS records

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

9 months ago
I had to change some of my DNS records recently, a phrase which strikes fear into the heart of sysadmins everywhere. It all went fine, but I definitely felt like I was playing with fire. My current domain registrar is Hover, and the only way I can manage my domains is through a...
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alexwlchan
Preserving pixels in Paris Last month, I was in Paris for the IIPC Web Archiving Conference, a two-day event to discuss the...
9 months ago
70

Preserving pixels in Paris

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

9 months ago
Last month, I was in Paris for the IIPC Web Archiving Conference, a two-day event to discuss the preservation of websites and social media. It was my first time attending, and I was there with both a professional and a personal interest. This post has some thoughts and photos...
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alexwlchan
Preserving pixels in Paris Last month, I was in Paris for the IIPC Web Archiving Conference, a two-day event to discuss the...
9 months ago
29

Preserving pixels in Paris

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

9 months ago
Last month, I was in Paris for the IIPC Web Archiving Conference, a two-day event to discuss the preservation of websites and social media. It was my first time attending, and I was there with both a professional and a personal interest. This post has some thoughts and photos...
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alexwlchan
Creating a Safari webarchive from the command line Recently I’ve been trying to create a local archive of my bookmarked web pages. I already have tools...
9 months ago
71

Creating a Safari webarchive from the command line

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

9 months ago
Recently I’ve been trying to create a local archive of my bookmarked web pages. I already have tools to take screenshots, and I love them as a way to take quick snapshots and skim the history of a site, but bitmap images aren’t a great archival representation of a website. What...
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alexwlchan
Creating a Safari webarchive from the command line Recently I’ve been trying to create a local archive of my bookmarked web pages. I already have tools...
9 months ago
22

Creating a Safari webarchive from the command line

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

9 months ago
Recently I’ve been trying to create a local archive of my bookmarked web pages. I already have tools to take screenshots, and I love them as a way to take quick snapshots and skim the history of a site, but bitmap images aren’t a great archival representation of a website. What...
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alexwlchan
What comes after AWS? James Governor posed some interesting questions yesterday: Grumble Bundle @monkchips ...
9 months ago
87

What comes after AWS?

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9 months ago
James Governor posed some interesting questions yesterday: Grumble Bundle @monkchips what are the core primitives developers need for building and deploying modern applications? what platform services does the underlying infrastructure need to...
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alexwlchan
What comes after AWS? James Governor posed some interesting questions yesterday: Grumble Bundle @monkchips ...
9 months ago
19

What comes after AWS?

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

9 months ago
James Governor posed some interesting questions yesterday: Grumble Bundle @monkchips what are the core primitives developers need for building and deploying modern applications? what platform services does the underlying infrastructure need to...
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alexwlchan
What is psephology? Yesterday there were local elections in the UK, and this morning I’ve been catching up on the...
9 months ago
46

What is psephology?

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

9 months ago
Yesterday there were local elections in the UK, and this morning I’ve been catching up on the news. As I was reading Yohannes Lowe’s live coverage in the Guardian, I spotted a word I didn’t recognise (emphasis mine): Labour and the Conservatives are each defending about 1,000...
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alexwlchan
What is psephology? Yesterday there were local elections in the UK, and this morning I’ve been catching up on the...
9 months ago
22

What is psephology?

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

9 months ago
Yesterday there were local elections in the UK, and this morning I’ve been catching up on the news. As I was reading Yohannes Lowe’s live coverage in the Guardian, I spotted a word I didn’t recognise (emphasis mine): Labour and the Conservatives are each defending about 1,000...
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alexwlchan
Taking scheduled screenshots of my website A few weeks ago I was reading the DPC Bit List, an inventory of digital materials and the risks...
10 months ago
70

Taking scheduled screenshots of my website

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

10 months ago
A few weeks ago I was reading the DPC Bit List, an inventory of digital materials and the risks associated with their long-term preservation. What formats need urgent attention before they’re lost forever, what mediums are already being well-preserved, and so on. For example,...
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alexwlchan
Taking regular screenshots of my website A few weeks ago I was reading the DPC Bit List, an inventory of digital materials and the risks...
10 months ago
22

Taking regular screenshots of my website

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

10 months ago
A few weeks ago I was reading the DPC Bit List, an inventory of digital materials and the risks associated with their long-term preservation. What formats need urgent attention before they’re lost forever, what mediums are already being well-preserved, and so on. For example,...
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alexwlchan
Getting faster Jekyll builds with caching in plugins This website is a static site built with Jekyll, and recently I overhauled the process for...
10 months ago
54

Getting faster Jekyll builds with caching in plugins

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

10 months ago
This website is a static site built with Jekyll, and recently I overhauled the process for generating the site. This should be invisible if you’re just a reader, but it makes a big difference to me – like any software project, I’d accumulated cruft and complexity, and it was time...
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alexwlchan
Getting faster Jekyll builds with caching in plugins This website is a static site built with Jekyll, and recently I overhauled the process for...
10 months ago
22

Getting faster Jekyll builds with caching in plugins

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

10 months ago
This website is a static site built with Jekyll, and recently I overhauled the process for generating the site. This should be invisible if you’re just a reader, but it makes a big difference to me – like any software project, I’d accumulated cruft and complexity, and it was time...
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alexwlchan
The Star-Spangled Ballad In an hour or so, Hannah Waddingham will take the stage at the Royal Albert Hall, and present this...
10 months ago
48

The Star-Spangled Ballad

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

10 months ago
In an hour or so, Hannah Waddingham will take the stage at the Royal Albert Hall, and present this year’s Olivier Awards. I won’t be there, but a number of dear friends are in the audience, and we’re keeping our fingers crossed for Operation Mincemeat – a musical with which we...
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alexwlchan
The Star-Spangled Ballad In an hour or so, Hannah Waddingham will take the stage at the Royal Albert Hall, and present this...
10 months ago
15

The Star-Spangled Ballad

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

10 months ago
In an hour or so, Hannah Waddingham will take the stage at the Royal Albert Hall, and present this year’s Olivier Awards. I won’t be there, but a number of dear friends are in the audience, and we’re keeping our fingers crossed for Operation Mincemeat – a musical with which we...
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alexwlchan
flapi.sh: a tiny command-line tool for experimenting with the Flickr API &rarr; I use the Flickr API pretty much every day in my day job. Within the first week, I bashed together a...
10 months ago
81

flapi.sh: a tiny command-line tool for experimenting with the Flickr API &rarr;

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

10 months ago
I use the Flickr API pretty much every day in my day job. Within the first week, I bashed together a couple of command-line tools to make a simple tool for exploring the API. They’re not meant for building “proper” apps, more for quick experiments and seeing what API responses...
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alexwlchan
flapi.sh: a tiny command-line tool for exploring the Flickr API &rarr; I use the Flickr API pretty much every day in my day job. Within the first week, I bashed together a...
10 months ago
15

flapi.sh: a tiny command-line tool for exploring the Flickr API &rarr;

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

10 months ago
I use the Flickr API pretty much every day in my day job. Within the first week, I bashed together a couple of command-line tools to make a simple tool for exploring the API. They’re not meant for building “proper” apps, more for quick experiments and seeing what API responses...
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alexwlchan
The new Flickr Commons Explorer &rarr; One of the things I’ve been working on at the Flickr Foundation is a new “Commons Explorer”, a way...
10 months ago
78

The new Flickr Commons Explorer &rarr;

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

10 months ago
One of the things I’ve been working on at the Flickr Foundation is a new “Commons Explorer”, a way to browse the photos in the Flickr Commons. Flickr Commons is a collection of historical photography from cultural institutions from all around the world, all with no known...
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alexwlchan
The new Flickr Commons Explorer &rarr; One of the things I’ve been working on at the Flickr Foundation is a new “Commons Explorer”, a way...
10 months ago
14

The new Flickr Commons Explorer &rarr;

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

10 months ago
One of the things I’ve been working on at the Flickr Foundation is a new “Commons Explorer”, a way to browse the photos in the Flickr Commons. Flickr Commons is a collection of historical photography from cultural institutions from all around the world, all with no known...
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alexwlchan
Monki Gras 2024: Step… Step… Step… Yesterday I gave a talk at Monki Gras 2024. This year, the theme is “Prompting Craft: examining and...
11 months ago
40

Monki Gras 2024: Step… Step… Step…

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

11 months ago
Yesterday I gave a talk at Monki Gras 2024. This year, the theme is “Prompting Craft: examining and discussing the art of the prompt in code and cultural creation”. I did a talk about my experience of learning these new AI tools, and I draw comparisons to learning to dance. This...
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alexwlchan
Monki Gras 2024: Step… Step… Step… Yesterday I gave a talk at Monki Gras 2024. This year, the theme is “Prompting Craft: examining and...
11 months ago
14

Monki Gras 2024: Step… Step… Step…

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

11 months ago
Yesterday I gave a talk at Monki Gras 2024. This year, the theme is “Prompting Craft: examining and discussing the art of the prompt in code and cultural creation”. I did a talk about my experience of learning these new AI tools, and I draw comparisons to learning to dance. This...
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alexwlchan
Moving my YouTube Likes from one account to another I used to have two YouTube accounts, and I wanted to consolidate them into one. I had two accounts...
a year ago
38

Moving my YouTube Likes from one account to another

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
I used to have two YouTube accounts, and I wanted to consolidate them into one. I had two accounts as a way to keep two separate watch histories. I was watching videos about gender and trans stuff before I came out, and I didn’t want them appearing in my main account – say, when...
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alexwlchan
Moving my YouTube Likes from one account to another I used to have two YouTube accounts, and I wanted to consolidate them into one. I had two accounts...
a year ago
16

Moving my YouTube Likes from one account to another

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
I used to have two YouTube accounts, and I wanted to consolidate them into one. I had two accounts as a way to keep two separate watch histories. I was watching videos about gender and trans stuff before I came out, and I didn’t want them appearing in my main account – say, when...
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alexwlchan
Making a PDF that’s larger than Germany I was browsing social media this morning, and I saw a claim I’ve seen go past a few times now – that...
a year ago
34

Making a PDF that’s larger than Germany

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
I was browsing social media this morning, and I saw a claim I’ve seen go past a few times now – that there’s a maximum size for a PDF document: Terrible Maps @TerribleMaps Maximum size of a PDF, version 7: 381 km × 381...
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alexwlchan
Making a PDF that’s larger than Germany I was browsing social media this morning, and I saw a claim I’ve seen go past a few times now – that...
a year ago
11

Making a PDF that’s larger than Germany

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
I was browsing social media this morning, and I saw a claim I’ve seen go past a few times now – that there’s a maximum size for a PDF document: Terrible Maps @TerribleMaps Maximum size of a PDF, version 7: 381 km × 381...
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alexwlchan
The Collected Works of Ian Flemingo On Monday evening, about two hundred Mincefluencers descended on the Fortune Theatre for “Operation...
a year ago
39

The Collected Works of Ian Flemingo

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
On Monday evening, about two hundred Mincefluencers descended on the Fortune Theatre for “Operation Human Thermos”, a fan gathering to celebrate Operation Mincemeat, a musical that gives us all the warm and fuzzies. A lot of people dressed in cosplay to mark the occasion, and I...
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alexwlchan
The Collected Works of Ian Flemingo On Monday evening, about two hundred Mincefluencers descended on the Fortune Theatre for “Operation...
a year ago
17

The Collected Works of Ian Flemingo

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
On Monday evening, about two hundred Mincefluencers descended on the Fortune Theatre for “Operation Human Thermos”, a fan gathering to celebrate Operation Mincemeat, a musical that gives us all the warm and fuzzies. A lot of people dressed in cosplay to mark the occasion, and I...
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alexwlchan
The best way to tell a website your age There’s a growing number of countries creating laws that require age verification laws to access...
a year ago
33

The best way to tell a website your age

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
There’s a growing number of countries creating laws that require age verification laws to access certain content online. Now children can be protected from adult content like well-organised spreadsheets, YouTube videos about kitchen appliances, and websites that sell you...
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alexwlchan
The best way to tell a website your age There’s a growing number of countries creating laws that require age verification laws to access...
a year ago
11

The best way to tell a website your age

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
There’s a growing number of countries creating laws that require age verification laws to access certain content online. Now children can be protected from adult content like well-organised spreadsheets, YouTube videos about kitchen appliances, and websites that sell you...
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alexwlchan
What mammal is that? I was visiting my parents over Christmas, and they have a large dog called Ziva. I like to take...
a year ago
13

What mammal is that?

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
I was visiting my parents over Christmas, and they have a large dog called Ziva. I like to take silly photos of the family pets, and this is one from last week that shows off a super-sized snoot: No Photoshop here, just my iPhone’s Ultra Wide camera held...
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alexwlchan
What mammal is that? I was visiting my parents over Christmas, and they have a large dog called Ziva. I like to take...
a year ago
12

What mammal is that?

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
I was visiting my parents over Christmas, and they have a large dog called Ziva. I like to take silly photos of the family pets, and this is one from last week that shows off a super-sized snoot: No Photoshop here, just my iPhone’s Ultra Wide camera held close to...
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alexwlchan
My favourite books from 2023 I read 75 books this year, which is slightly up on previous years (2022, 2021). I’m pleased with...
a year ago
11

My favourite books from 2023

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
I read 75 books this year, which is slightly up on previous years (2022, 2021). I’m pleased with that number, although overall I found it a slightly disappointing year for reading. Although I read more books, there were less that I really loved – less of the sort of book that...
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alexwlchan
My favourite books from 2023 I read 75 books this year, which is slightly up on previous years (2022, 2021). I’m pleased with...
a year ago
20

My favourite books from 2023

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
I read 75 books this year, which is slightly up on previous years (2022, 2021). I’m pleased with that number, although overall I found it a slightly disappointing year for reading. Although I read more books, there were less that I really loved – less of the sort of book that...
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alexwlchan
Getting the path to the note I have open in Obsidian I have a bunch of Python scripts I use to clean up text files, and I call them by passing the path...
a year ago
66

Getting the path to the note I have open in Obsidian

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
I have a bunch of Python scripts I use to clean up text files, and I call them by passing the path to the text file as an argument, for example: $ python clean_up_text.py /path/to/text/file.md This is mostly fine, but finding that path is a bit annoying when I want to run them...
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alexwlchan
Getting the path to the note I have open in Obsidian I have a bunch of Python scripts I use to clean up text files, and I call them by passing the path...
a year ago
12

Getting the path to the note I have open in Obsidian

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
I have a bunch of Python scripts I use to clean up text files, and I call them by passing the path to the text file as an argument, for example: $ python clean_up_text.py /path/to/text/file.md This is mostly fine, but finding that path is a bit annoying when I want to run them...
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alexwlchan
Setting up Fish to make virtualenv easier Since I started my new job, I’ve been doing a lot more work in Python. As I was starting with a...
a year ago
20

Setting up Fish to make virtualenv easier

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
Since I started my new job, I’ve been doing a lot more work in Python. As I was starting with a completely clean slate, I wanted to try setting up Python the “right” way – or if not “right”, at least better way than my previous pile of hacks and kludges. (I don’t remember much of...
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alexwlchan
Setting up Fish to make virtualenv easier Since I started my new job, I’ve been doing a lot more work in Python. As I was starting with a...
a year ago
16

Setting up Fish to make virtualenv easier

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
Since I started my new job, I’ve been doing a lot more work in Python. As I was starting with a completely clean slate, I wanted to try setting up Python the “right” way – or if not “right”, at least better way than my previous pile of hacks and kludges. (I don’t remember much of...
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alexwlchan
Telling mechanize how to find local issuer certificates I was doing some work on my library lookup tool recently, and I ran into an issue with mechanize,...
a year ago
12

Telling mechanize how to find local issuer certificates

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
I was doing some work on my library lookup tool recently, and I ran into an issue with mechanize, the Python library I use to simulate a web browser. I’d upgraded my version of Python and mechanize, and now I wasn’t able to connect to HTTPS sites. If I tried a simple...
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alexwlchan
Telling mechanize how to find local issuer certificates I was doing some work on my library lookup tool recently, and I ran into an issue with mechanize,...
a year ago
13

Telling mechanize how to find local issuer certificates

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
I was doing some work on my library lookup tool recently, and I ran into an issue with mechanize, the Python library I use to simulate a web browser. I’d upgraded my version of Python and mechanize, and now I wasn’t able to connect to HTTPS sites. If I tried a simple...
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alexwlchan
Making the fish shell more forgetful For quite a few years, I’ve been using fish (https://fishshell.com/) as my shell. One of the cool...
a year ago
13

Making the fish shell more forgetful

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
For quite a few years, I’ve been using fish (https://fishshell.com/) as my shell. One of the cool things it does is autosuggestions from my shell history. As I’m typing, it suggests (in light grey) a command I’ve run before. I can press the right arrow to accept the suggestion,...
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alexwlchan
Making the fish shell more forgetful For quite a few years, I’ve been using fish (https://fishshell.com/) as my shell. One of the cool...
a year ago
15

Making the fish shell more forgetful

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
For quite a few years, I’ve been using fish (https://fishshell.com/) as my shell. One of the cool things it does is autosuggestions from my shell history. As I’m typing, it suggests (in light grey) a command I’ve run before. I can press the right arrow to accept the suggestion,...
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upvote [alt+ctrl+↑] downvote [alt+ctrl+↓]
alexwlchan
Hyperfocus and hobbies &rarr; One of the last things I did at Wellcome Collection was writing a story about hyperfocus and how it...
a year ago
13

Hyperfocus and hobbies &rarr;

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
One of the last things I did at Wellcome Collection was writing a story about hyperfocus and how it affects my cross-stitch. I’m really proud of this one, and I hope you’ll consider reading. Writing for Stories was one of my “bucket list” items while working at Wellcome, and I...
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alexwlchan
Hyperfocus and hobbies &rarr; One of the last things I did at Wellcome Collection was writing a story about hyperfocus and how it...
a year ago
14

Hyperfocus and hobbies &rarr;

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
One of the last things I did at Wellcome Collection was writing a story about hyperfocus and how it affects my cross-stitch. I’m really proud of this one, and I hope you’ll consider reading. Writing for Stories was one of my “bucket list” items while working at Wellcome, and I...
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upvote [alt+ctrl+↑] downvote [alt+ctrl+↓]
alexwlchan
Finding the biggest items in my Photos Library I’m approaching the limit of my current iCloud storage tier, and most of that is my Photos...
a year ago
87

Finding the biggest items in my Photos Library

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
I’m approaching the limit of my current iCloud storage tier, and most of that is my Photos Library. I don’t really want to pay for the next iCloud storage tier – I’d be tripling my bill, but I’d barely use the extra space. (My library grows pretty slowly – I’ve only added ~6GB of...
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alexwlchan
Finding the biggest items in my Photos Library I’m approaching the limit of my current iCloud storage tier, and most of that is my Photos...
a year ago
17

Finding the biggest items in my Photos Library

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
I’m approaching the limit of my current iCloud storage tier, and most of that is my Photos Library. I don’t really want to pay for the next iCloud storage tier – I’d be tripling my bill, but I’d barely use the extra space. (My library grows pretty slowly – I’ve only added ~6GB of...
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alexwlchan
Spotting spam in our CloudFront logs About two months ago, I wrote about some Python code I’d written to parse CloudFront logs. I wrote...
a year ago
36

Spotting spam in our CloudFront logs

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
About two months ago, I wrote about some Python code I’d written to parse CloudFront logs. I wrote this code to help with analysing some searches on wellcomecollection.org, and I thought it would be useful to explain a bit more of what I was doing. There’s a lot of spam in the...
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alexwlchan
Spotting spam in our CloudFront logs About two months ago, I wrote about some Python code I’d written to parse CloudFront logs. I wrote...
a year ago
14

Spotting spam in our CloudFront logs

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
About two months ago, I wrote about some Python code I’d written to parse CloudFront logs. I wrote this code to help with analysing some searches on wellcomecollection.org, and I thought it would be useful to explain a bit more of what I was doing. There’s a lot of spam in the...
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alexwlchan
Adding locations to my photos from my Apple Watch workouts A week or so ago, I was hiking around Lake Bohinj, a gorgeous Alpine lake in northwest...
a year ago
15

Adding locations to my photos from my Apple Watch workouts

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
A week or so ago, I was hiking around Lake Bohinj, a gorgeous Alpine lake in northwest Slovenia. It’s a very photogenic landscape, so I was taking some pictures with my “nice” camera. It’s an Olympus that takes better photos than my iPhone, but it’s quite old and it doesn’t have...
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alexwlchan
Adding locations to my photos from my Apple Watch workouts A week or so ago, I was hiking around Lake Bohinj, a gorgeous Alpine lake in northwest...
a year ago
13

Adding locations to my photos from my Apple Watch workouts

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
A week or so ago, I was hiking around Lake Bohinj, a gorgeous Alpine lake in northwest Slovenia. It’s a very photogenic landscape, so I was taking some pictures with my “nice” camera. It’s an Olympus that takes better photos than my iPhone, but it’s quite old and it doesn’t have...
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upvote [alt+ctrl+↑] downvote [alt+ctrl+↓]
alexwlchan
Fare-Wellcome Collection I still remember the first time I visited Wellcome Collection – just over seven years ago. I was...
a year ago
38

Fare-Wellcome Collection

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
I still remember the first time I visited Wellcome Collection – just over seven years ago. I was living and working in the Cambridge at the time, and I’d come into London for the day to hang out with a friend who lived near King’s Cross. We wandered up the Euston Road, popped...
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alexwlchan
Fare-Wellcome Collection I still remember the first time I visited Wellcome Collection – just over seven years ago. I was...
a year ago
14

Fare-Wellcome Collection

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
I still remember the first time I visited Wellcome Collection – just over seven years ago. I was living and working in the Cambridge at the time, and I’d come into London for the day to hang out with a friend who lived near King’s Cross. We wandered up the Euston Road, popped...
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alexwlchan
How I set up my Obsidian vaults Obsidian still feels like my “new” app for managing my notes, but according to my daily journal I’ve...
a year ago
69

How I set up my Obsidian vaults

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
Obsidian still feels like my “new” app for managing my notes, but according to my daily journal I’ve been using it for nearly three years. Time flies when you’re organising information! I’ve grown to really like it, and I expect to keep using it for a while to come. Its approach...
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alexwlchan
Finding a mystery IAM access key Recently I had an issue with some IAM keys. Somebody was trying to use an IAM access key to download...
a year ago
22

Finding a mystery IAM access key

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
Recently I had an issue with some IAM keys. Somebody was trying to use an IAM access key to download some objects from S3, and it wasn’t working – it was giving a “permission denied” error. I wanted to inspect the permissions, but first I had to find where this IAM key came...
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alexwlchan
A blue plaque for Hester In the last year, my theatre trips have been dominated by Operation Mincemeat, a comedy musical...
a year ago
26

A blue plaque for Hester

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
In the last year, my theatre trips have been dominated by Operation Mincemeat, a comedy musical currently playing in the Fortune Theatre. The writing is clever, the songs are catchy, and it’s laugh-a-minute funny, but it can also be solemn and moving. The show is based on the...
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alexwlchan
Tag your infrastructure-as-code resources with a link to their definitions The aspiration of infrastructure-as-code tools is that you use them to manage everything. You create...
a year ago
20

Tag your infrastructure-as-code resources with a link to their definitions

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
The aspiration of infrastructure-as-code tools is that you use them to manage everything. You create all your resources by writing a file that defines them, and any time you change something, you update the definition in that file. It’s a nice idea, but easier said than...
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alexwlchan
Parsing CloudFront logs with Python I’ve been doing work recently to analyse some CloudFront access logs. There are lots of ways to do...
a year ago
15

Parsing CloudFront logs with Python

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
I’ve been doing work recently to analyse some CloudFront access logs. There are lots of ways to do this, and I normally reach for Python inside a Jupyter Notebook because those are tools I’m very familiar with. I’ve done this a few times now, so I thought it’d be worth pulling...
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alexwlchan
My Python snippet for walking a file tree I write a lot of one-use Python scripts for quick analysis or cleaning something up on my disk, and...
a year ago
14

My Python snippet for walking a file tree

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
I write a lot of one-use Python scripts for quick analysis or cleaning something up on my disk, and they often involve iterating over a folder full of files. The key function for doing this is os.walk in the standard library, but it’s not quite what I want, so I have a wrapper...
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alexwlchan
My custom &lt;picture&gt; plugin for Jekyll About seven months ago, I did a complete rewrite of how I handle images on this site. It’s working...
a year ago
26

My custom &lt;picture&gt; plugin for Jekyll

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
About seven months ago, I did a complete rewrite of how I handle images on this site. It’s working well and nothing seems to have broken, so I thought it might be good to explain what I’m doing. For readers: I want images to load quickly and look good. That means looking sharp on...
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alexwlchan
Turning off ECS tasks overnight using an EventBridge Schedule At work, we have a bunch of ECS services that run 24/7, even though they don’t need to. For example,...
a year ago
37

Turning off ECS tasks overnight using an EventBridge Schedule

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
At work, we have a bunch of ECS services that run 24/7, even though they don’t need to. For example, we have a staging version of our website, where we test new changes before they’re deployed to the live site. We’re only making changes during UK office hours, so running the...
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alexwlchan
Preserving Dates during JSON serialisation with vanilla JS For my sins, I’ve spent a lot of the last year dealing with datetime-related bugs. One of our...
a year ago
35

Preserving Dates during JSON serialisation with vanilla JS

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
For my sins, I’ve spent a lot of the last year dealing with datetime-related bugs. One of our longest-standing issues has been around sending Date values via JSON – JavaScript will happily encode a Date value in JSON, but it gets encoded as a string, and there’s no easy way to...
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alexwlchan
Writing a Mac app to review my photos I take a lot of photos. When I’m trying to get a particular shot, I’ll often take multiple pictures...
a year ago
67

Writing a Mac app to review my photos

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
I take a lot of photos. When I’m trying to get a particular shot, I’ll often take multiple pictures in the hope of getting at least one that’s good – and then my camera roll is full of similar images. I always intend to go back and clean up my pictures afterwards – pick the best...
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alexwlchan
*Spy for Spy*, at Riverside Studios Last night I went to see the second preview of Spy For Spy, which I very much enjoyed. It’s a...
a year ago
51

*Spy for Spy*, at Riverside Studios

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
Last night I went to see the second preview of Spy For Spy, which I very much enjoyed. It’s a romance story with a clever narrative twist – it’s being told in the wrong order. Aside from the prologue and epilogue, the show is split into six scenes from the Molly and Sarah’s...
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alexwlchan
Have a single definition of “now” I’ve been doing a bunch of datetime debugging recently, and this function has been an amazing...
a year ago
50

Have a single definition of “now”

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
I’ve been doing a bunch of datetime debugging recently, and this function has been an amazing help: function today(): Date { return new Date(); } It’s not very sophisticated – it just returns the current time – but we use it everywhere we need to get the current time. (You...
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alexwlchan
Starting Docker just before I need it Although I use Docker a lot, I don’t leave it running all the time – it can be quite a resource hog,...
a year ago
78

Starting Docker just before I need it

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
Although I use Docker a lot, I don’t leave it running all the time – it can be quite a resource hog, and even if it’s doing nothing it can make my laptop feel sluggish. I’ll often stop if it my computer feels slow, which is great right until the next time I need to use it: $...
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alexwlchan
Snippets to manage albums in Photos.app Recently I’ve been building some tools to help me manage my photo collection, and part of that...
a year ago
67

Snippets to manage albums in Photos.app

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
Recently I’ve been building some tools to help me manage my photo collection, and part of that involves moving photos in and out of albums. The tool I’ve built is very specific to my workflow and unlikely to be immediately useful to anyone else, but I thought some of the code for...
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alexwlchan
Redecorating my bedroom Back in March, I was visiting my sister and her newly-redecorated home, and it gave me the...
a year ago
48

Redecorating my bedroom

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
Back in March, I was visiting my sister and her newly-redecorated home, and it gave me the inspiration to finally redecorate my bedroom – something I’ve been thinking about for two years. My bedroom used to have white walls, a dark grey feature wall, and a purple sliding...
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alexwlchan
Getting alerts about flaky ECS tasks in Slack At work, we use Amazon ECS to run some of our Docker-based services. ECS is a container...
a year ago
60

Getting alerts about flaky ECS tasks in Slack

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
At work, we use Amazon ECS to run some of our Docker-based services. ECS is a container orchestrator, similar to Kubernetes: we tell it what Docker images we want to run in what configuration, and it stops or starts containers to match. If a container stops unexpectedly, ECS...
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alexwlchan
Using templates in Terraform to document a deployment I’ve been doing a bunch of new Terraform recently, and I’ve started using it to document the...
a year ago
30

Using templates in Terraform to document a deployment

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
I’ve been doing a bunch of new Terraform recently, and I’ve started using it to document the deployments it’s creating. In particular, I’ve started using Terraform to create README files which describe the exact infrastructure it’s just created. Here’s my latest example: a README...
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alexwlchan
Publishing lots and lots of messages to SNS At work, we use Amazon SNS as the trigger for a lot of our data pipelines. You send a message to an...
a year ago
36

Publishing lots and lots of messages to SNS

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
At work, we use Amazon SNS as the trigger for a lot of our data pipelines. You send a message to an SNS topic, and it gets picked up by an SQS queue, an ECS task, or a Lambda function – and they in turn send new messages to other SNS topics, and the pipeline continues. Sending a...
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alexwlchan
Filtering AWS CLI output by tags using jq Recently I was writing a shell script to deal with the AWS CLI, and I wanted to filter the list of...
a year ago
39

Filtering AWS CLI output by tags using jq

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
Recently I was writing a shell script to deal with the AWS CLI, and I wanted to filter the list of results using jq. Specifically, I wanted to filter using some of the AWS tags, which are a bit unwieldy – although the tags form a set of key/value pairs, they’re returned as a list...
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alexwlchan
Cats, cross-stitch, and copyright I’ve always been a cat person, and my favourite species of cat (aside from the cats I’ve actually...
a year ago
27

Cats, cross-stitch, and copyright

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
I’ve always been a cat person, and my favourite species of cat (aside from the cats I’ve actually lived with) is the cheetah. This probably goes back to a school project about cheetahs I did when I was nine years old – I had to write about an endangered species for science...
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alexwlchan
Filtering out bogus requests from Netlify Analytics I host this site on Netlify, and I pay for Netlify Analytics to monitor its performance. It’s...
a year ago
32

Filtering out bogus requests from Netlify Analytics

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
I host this site on Netlify, and I pay for Netlify Analytics to monitor its performance. It’s essentially server-side logging with a dashboard on top, and it’s more than sufficient for the very limited analytics I want to do here. One of the dashboard panels is “resources not...
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alexwlchan
Creating a Python dictionary with multiple, equivalent keys In my previous post, I was creating groups of students, and I wanted to track how many times...
a year ago
86

Creating a Python dictionary with multiple, equivalent keys

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
In my previous post, I was creating groups of students, and I wanted to track how many times students had worked together. I created a nested dictionary to track the pairs: pairs = { 'Alice': {'Bryony': 3, 'Caroline': 1, 'Danielle': 0, …}, 'Bryony': {'Alice': 3, 'Caroline':...
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alexwlchan
Splitting a class into balanced groups Earlier this week, my mum sent me an interesting problem. She’s got a class of 12 students, who are...
a year ago
28

Splitting a class into balanced groups

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

a year ago
Earlier this week, my mum sent me an interesting problem. She’s got a class of 12 students, who are going to meet over 7 sessions. In each session, they’re going to split into 3 or 4 groups, and she wants to find an even distribution of groups – each person gets to work with...
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alexwlchan
Testing JavaScript without a (third-party) framework Last week Julia Evans posted Writing Javascript without a build system, and it resonated with my own...
over a year ago
33

Testing JavaScript without a (third-party) framework

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
Last week Julia Evans posted Writing Javascript without a build system, and it resonated with my own experience. A lot of my websites (including this one) are content sites with just a bit of interactivity sprinkled on top, where I prefer writing vanilla JS over using complex...
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alexwlchan
CSS formatting in the console I was poking around in Google Lens recently (which is Google’s magical reverse image lookup service)...
over a year ago
30

CSS formatting in the console

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
I was poking around in Google Lens recently (which is Google’s magical reverse image lookup service) and I was mildly surprised by what I saw in the developer tools console: Code that runs in the dev console can be very powerful, so I can understand why they want to...
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alexwlchan
Going through my old school papers I left school in 2011, and I graduated from university in 2014. When I was done, I had six plastic...
over a year ago
26

Going through my old school papers

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
I left school in 2011, and I graduated from university in 2014. When I was done, I had six plastic crates full of paper – exercise books, worksheets, school newsletters – everything I’d accumulated over nearly two decades of education. It was a lot. 🤯 I’m trying to reduce this...
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alexwlchan
A Python function to iterate through an S3 Bucket Inventory For a couple of our S3 buckets at work, we use S3 Bucket Inventory to track their contents. Once a...
over a year ago
35

A Python function to iterate through an S3 Bucket Inventory

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
For a couple of our S3 buckets at work, we use S3 Bucket Inventory to track their contents. Once a week, it creates an inventory; a collection of compressed CSV files that describe every object in the bucket. If we want to analyse everything in the bucket, reading this inventory...
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alexwlchan
How moving to the cloud took our digital collections to new heights &rarr; I’ve written another article about digital preservation at Wellcome Collection, this time about the...
over a year ago
27

How moving to the cloud took our digital collections to new heights &rarr;

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
I’ve written another article about digital preservation at Wellcome Collection, this time about the benefits of moving our data storage and processing to the cloud. Building out this infrastructure is a large part of what I’ve been working on for the last six (!) years. It’s been...
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alexwlchan
A bookmarklet to show which responsive image was chosen I’ve had a lot of fun fiddling with the images on this blog recently, and I think they’re better...
over a year ago
30

A bookmarklet to show which responsive image was chosen

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
I’ve had a lot of fun fiddling with the images on this blog recently, and I think they’re better than when I started. I’ve read a bunch of articles on responsive images, and I’ve sprinkled the <picture> and <source> tags everywhere to offer images in a variety of sizes and...
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alexwlchan
Changing the bulb in a Meridian Lighting CIR100B ceiling light I moved into my house a couple of years ago, and for all that time I’ve had a porch light which...
over a year ago
34

Changing the bulb in a Meridian Lighting CIR100B ceiling light

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
I moved into my house a couple of years ago, and for all that time I’ve had a porch light which doesn’t work. I’ve tried taking it apart a couple of times to replace the bulb, but to no avail. Although it’s a simple cylinder with only a black base and a clear cover, I couldn’t...
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alexwlchan
Beware of transparent backgrounds when using AVIF with ImageMagick 6 One of the things I did over my Christmas break was redo all the image handling on this site. Mostly...
over a year ago
26

Beware of transparent backgrounds when using AVIF with ImageMagick 6

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
One of the things I did over my Christmas break was redo all the image handling on this site. Mostly I’m catching up on the current “best practices” for images on the web. I’ve written a Jekyll plugin which allows me to use an image in a post like so: {% picture ...
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alexwlchan
Upward assignment in Ruby Ruby has had leftward assignment (x = 4) since its first public release, and a few years ago it...
over a year ago
33

Upward assignment in Ruby

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
Ruby has had leftward assignment (x = 4) since its first public release, and a few years ago it added rightward assignment (4 => x). Then at RubyConf 2021, Kevin Kuchta explained how to abuse Ruby features to build a downward assignment operator (yes, this really...
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alexwlchan
My favourite books from 2022 I read 71 books this year, which is the most I’ve read in a single year since I started keeping...
over a year ago
29

My favourite books from 2022

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
I read 71 books this year, which is the most I’ve read in a single year since I started keeping detailed records. I don’t set reading goals, but I’m pleased with that. Nearly a third of those books came from my local library; both books I knew I already wanted to read, and books...
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alexwlchan
A script to get Live Text from images One of my favourite new features on Apple’s OSes in the last few years is Live Text, which is an...
over a year ago
22

A script to get Live Text from images

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
One of my favourite new features on Apple’s OSes in the last few years is Live Text, which is an optical character recognition tool that lets you select text in images. This sort of tech has been around for decades, but having it built into the OS makes it much easier to use. The...
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alexwlchan
Getting an Important Internet Checkmark to follow your cursor Are you an Important Brand? Do you have an Internet Presence? Do you worry about being Impersonated...
over a year ago
24

Getting an Important Internet Checkmark to follow your cursor

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
Are you an Important Brand? Do you have an Internet Presence? Do you worry about being Impersonated Or Parodied Online? Then I may have something for you. On your social media, you can bask in the warmth of an Important Internet Checkmark which tells your users that they’re...
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alexwlchan
How we do bulk analysis of our Prismic content At work, we use Prismic as a headless CMS for our public website. If you see images or text that...
over a year ago
28

How we do bulk analysis of our Prismic content

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
At work, we use Prismic as a headless CMS for our public website. If you see images or text that aren’t part of the catalogue, they’re probably managed through Prismic. To help us manage our growing Prismic library, we’ve built a number of tools and scripts to analyse our content...
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alexwlchan
Launching a rocket in the worst possible way Last month, NASA made headlines as they (finally) launched their SLS rocket as part of the Artemis 1...
over a year ago
27

Launching a rocket in the worst possible way

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
Last month, NASA made headlines as they (finally) launched their SLS rocket as part of the Artemis 1 mission. The long and expensive development of SLS has been the subject of much debate, and caused a lot of online rage. I will now induce similar rage at a fraction of the...
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alexwlchan
Getting the base directory of an sbt project This is a command you can run in a shell script to print the base directory of an sbt project: $...
over a year ago
22

Getting the base directory of an sbt project

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
This is a command you can run in a shell script to print the base directory of an sbt project: $ sbt --batch -error "project $PROJECT" "print baseDirectory" | tr -d "\n" For example: $ sbt --batch -error "project ingests_api" "print baseDirectory" | tr -d...
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alexwlchan
Redacting sensitive query parameters with koa and koa-logger At work, we use the Koa framework and koa-logger middleware as part of our website. Together, they...
over a year ago
30

Redacting sensitive query parameters with koa and koa-logger

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
At work, we use the Koa framework and koa-logger middleware as part of our website. Together, they give us nice request-response logs for all our traffic: <-- GET / --> GET / 200 754ms 57.28kb <-- GET /stories --> GET /stories 200 374ms 71.29kb <-- GET /works?query=trees -->...
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alexwlchan
A day out at the Bure Valley Railway Last October, I had a day trip to the Bure Valley Railway, a narrow-gauge heritage railway in north...
over a year ago
27

A day out at the Bure Valley Railway

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
Last October, I had a day trip to the Bure Valley Railway, a narrow-gauge heritage railway in north Norfolk. I came across it quite by chance – I was driving through Aylsham to get to a B&B, and I spotted a sign pointing to the railway. I checked the website for a timetable,...
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alexwlchan
Changing the macOS accent colour without System Preferences In System Preferences, you can change the accent colour of your Mac: This affects...
over a year ago
21

Changing the macOS accent colour without System Preferences

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
In System Preferences, you can change the accent colour of your Mac: This affects colours throughout your Mac’s user interface, including buttons, menus, and tickboxes. When you pick a new colour, it updates everywhere, immediately. I want to write some automations...
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alexwlchan
Ten years of blogging I bought the alexwlchan.net domain on November 8th, 2012, and the first web page would have appeared...
over a year ago
22

Ten years of blogging

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
I bought the alexwlchan.net domain on November 8th, 2012, and the first web page would have appeared shortly after that (but the exact date is lost to history). This means I’ve been writing at alexwlchan.net for about a decade. The site looks very different now to how it...
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alexwlchan
Saving your alt text from Twitter It seems like Twitter might be circling a drain, and so a lot of people are downloading a copy of...
over a year ago
20

Saving your alt text from Twitter

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
It seems like Twitter might be circling a drain, and so a lot of people are downloading a copy of their archive in case the site goes down unexpectedly. But large as it is, the archive doesn’t contain everything: Kate @thingskatedid my twitter archive...
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alexwlchan
A simple gallery plugin for Obsidian &rarr; I’ve been using Obsidian for my note-taking recently, and I really like it. It’s already absorbed...
over a year ago
26

A simple gallery plugin for Obsidian &rarr;

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
I’ve been using Obsidian for my note-taking recently, and I really like it. It’s already absorbed all of my text notes, and I’m gradually using it for images too. To help me find my images, I’ve written a small Obsidian plugin. When I click the little picture icon in the sidebar,...
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alexwlchan
Some small accessibility fixes I’ve been doing a bunch of testing with VoiceOver recently, helping to prepare the digital guides...
over a year ago
26

Some small accessibility fixes

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
I’ve been doing a bunch of testing with VoiceOver recently, helping to prepare the digital guides for a new exhibition at work. I like to think my site is already pretty accessible – I put alt text on my images and I use semantic HTML – but I did find a few rough edges to...
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alexwlchan
Agile and iterative project management Earlier today, I gave a talk for the the Open Life Science Program about agile and iterative project...
over a year ago
29

Agile and iterative project management

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
Earlier today, I gave a talk for the the Open Life Science Program about agile and iterative project management. I was talking about how READMEs serve as the first point of contact for a project; how they get new users interested in and excited about the project. The cohort calls...
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alexwlchan
Finding books in nearby library branches I’m trying to make better use of my local public library. I want to read more books, and borrowing...
over a year ago
21

Finding books in nearby library branches

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
I’m trying to make better use of my local public library. I want to read more books, and borrowing from the library keeps the habit sustainable. It also saves a fair bit of money, and I don’t have to decide what to do with books when I’m done. Recently, I built a tool to help me...
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alexwlchan
Some experiments with circle-based art The header of this site is made of tiling squares in slightly varying shades of red. It’s meant to...
over a year ago
34

Some experiments with circle-based art

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
The header of this site is made of tiling squares in slightly varying shades of red. It’s meant to be subtle, but I think it still gives the site a unique look: I think of this as the “new” header, even though my screenshot library tells me I added it in 2016 (!), as does the...
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alexwlchan
Finding a tricky bug in Elasticsearch 8.4.2 A few weeks ago, I helped to find a bug in Elasticsearch 8.4.2. We’d started seeing issues in our...
over a year ago
25

Finding a tricky bug in Elasticsearch 8.4.2

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
A few weeks ago, I helped to find a bug in Elasticsearch 8.4.2. We’d started seeing issues in our Elastic cluster at work, and I was able to isolate the issue in a small, reproducible test case. I shared my code with Elastic engineers, and that helped them identify and fix the...
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alexwlchan
My (tiny) contribution to Rust 1.64 A couple of months ago, I was writing some Rust, and the compiler spat out an error: error[E0412]:...
over a year ago
25

My (tiny) contribution to Rust 1.64

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
A couple of months ago, I was writing some Rust, and the compiler spat out an error: error[E0412]: cannot find type `Boolean` in this scope --> src/fs_helpers.rs:29:33 | 29 | pub fn is_ds_store(p: &Path) -> Boolean | ^^^^^^^ not found in...
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alexwlchan
“Fixing” the rules of division Yesterday evening, Kate posted this tweet: Kate @thingskatedid i don't...
over a year ago
26

“Fixing” the rules of division

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
Yesterday evening, Kate posted this tweet: Kate @thingskatedid i don't *care* how maths works, half of zero should be 0.5 6:33 PM - 22 Sep 2022 This tweet promptly crawled inside my brain and sat there until I figured out how to make it work. I...
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alexwlchan
The maths cross-stitch that hangs behind me I was chatting to a new colleague last week, and she asked about the picture that hangs behind me...
over a year ago
36

The maths cross-stitch that hangs behind me

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
I was chatting to a new colleague last week, and she asked about the picture that hangs behind me when I’m on video calls – which made me realise I’ve never posted about it here. It’s a rather nice piece that I’m quite pleased with, and it’s worth sharing. Most of my...
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alexwlchan
Generating art from lattice graphs A couple of weeks ago, I went to see my sister playing percussion in a brass band at the...
over a year ago
27

Generating art from lattice graphs

from alexwlchan [alt+shift+b] in programming

over a year ago
A couple of weeks ago, I went to see my sister playing percussion in a brass band at the Proms. While I was on the train home, I had an idea for a fun art project. I sketched it out on a napkin, got it working, posted a few pictures on Twitter, then put it down. On Saturday I was...
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