I caught myself dancing in my chair this week. I was having great fun working on a demo for a workshop next Friday. This is one of the more complicated demos I’ve pulled together and it’s in an area I’ve not historically felt comfortable, Java and Spring. After a week of limited progress, things started to fall into place and I started to get a feel for how I want to use the demo to tell a story. I’m genuinely looking forward to continuing to work on this for the workshop on Friday. I’m hoping to be able to make the demo public.
We woke up on Wednesday without any water. I realised how ill prepared we are for events like this. The only stored water we had in the house was the boys’ half empty water bottles. Given the size of the burst pipe that caused this, I’m amazed that we were back to a reasonable water pressure by Thursday morning. Repairs are on-going. The water network is an incredible feat of engineering. I had no idea that water companies could reconfigure things to allow them to turn up and pump water into the system through fire hydrants to keep the pressure topped up.
I tried printing a couple of A3 photos this week. Until now, all the printing I’ve done has been the traditional postcard size (6x4). At larger sizes, I’ve found the images to be overly saturated. The increased colour isn’t as noticeable in smaller prints. I suspect it may even be desirable. Chris might be right, I should look in to colour calibration if I’m going to print larger images.
Self-hosting win for the week was getting Garage configured to allow me to publish large files now that I’ve cancelled my Dropbox subscription. Garage bills itself as “an S3 object store so reliable you can run it outside datacenters”. It has been delightful to use.
I’m in Edinburgh for a couple of days next week.
I’ve been thinking about:
- How the hell are you supposed to have a career in tech in 2026? by Anil Dash
- Giving University Exams in the Age of Chatbots by Ploum
- I’ve seen a couple of people advertising themselves as vibe code clean-up specialists. Whilst we all know this will be a useful skill, I’m not sure how many organisations will be willing to admit hiring a “Vibe Janitor” (a title coined by Rob Conery)
Albums:
- People Watching – Sam Fender
- Pink Elephant – Arcade Fire
- The Suburbs - Arcade Fire
rainbow - a long exposure photo of a colour changing lightbulb sunrise - looking back over Hammersmith Bridge hungry - how long do I have to wait? hugs - with mum of course stillness - for a long time nothing moved focus - broken, blunt, crumbling, if it makes a mark it’s good satisfaction - there is something undeniably satisfying about using a good peeler
