Repository-to-Prompt Tools
In the rapidly evolving landscape of AI-assisted software development, a new category of tools has emerged: repository-to-prompt converters. These utilities ...
Posts by Year
2024
The Myth of AI-Driven Codeless Development
In a recent internal meeting, Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman made a bold prediction: within two years, most developers might stop coding altogether, tha...
Data First, Code Second
In the world of software engineering, we often glorify elegant algorithms and clean code. Yet, there’s a fundamental truth that frequently goes unacknowledge...
How AI Scientist works
AI Scientist is a groundbreaking system that automates the entire process of machine learning research, from generating novel ideas to producing publication-...
The Unseen Crisis in Open Source: When Critical Infrastructure Relies on Unpaid Labour
The recent supply chain attack involving polyfill.io, which affected over 100,000 websites including high-profile entities like JSTOR and the World Economic ...
The AI Dilemma: Balancing Rapid Advancement and Organisational Readiness
As artificial intelligence continues to evolve at an astonishing rate, organisations find themselves at a critical juncture. The transformative potential of ...
The Slow Decline of Google Search
Google has long been the dominant search engine, but in recent years the quality of its search results has noticeably declined. What was once a source of hig...
New 60fps E-Paper Tablet Sparks Excitement and Scepticism
A startup called Daylight has unveiled a unique new Android tablet featuring a custom 10.5” e-paper-like display boasting a 60fps refresh rate. Whilst e-ink ...
Anthropic’s Groundbreaking Research on Interpretable Features
In a groundbreaking new paper, researchers at Anthropic have made significant strides in understanding the inner workings of large language models like Claud...
The Hypocrisy of Exemption: Politicians and Police Free from Surveillance
In the ongoing debate over the EU’s Child Sexual Abuse Regulation, commonly known as Chat Control, a glaring double standard has emerged. According to the la...
GPT-4o: AI Evolution That Will Change Everything
The arrival of OpenAI’s GPT-4o marks the beginning of a seismic shift in the world of digital assistants. While Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant have been h...
Unveiling Inspect: A Framework for Evaluating Large Language Models
The UK AI Safety Institute has developed an open source framework called Inspect to evaluate large language models in a flexible and extensible manner. Inspe...
Apple’s ‘Crush’ Advert Debacle: A Symphony of Tone-Deafness in an Age of AI Anxiety
Apple’s recent ‘Crush’ advert for the iPad Pro was meant to be a visual tour de force - a sleek, dynamic display of their flagship tablet’s creative might. I...
Charting a Course in an AI-Driven Programming Landscape
The tech world is abuzz with the news of a partnership between Stack Overflow and OpenAI. As developers ponder the implications, questions arise about the fu...
The Slow Decline of Software Efficiency
Over the past few decades, software has grown in size and complexity, while efficiency and responsiveness have declined. This troubling trend has far-reachin...
Apple Forced to Open iPadOS to App Sideloading
In a major development, the European Union has ruled that Apple must open up iPadOS to sideloading and alternative app stores within the next 6 months, just ...
Reddit’s Bot Problem
Reddit, once known as the “front page of the internet,” is clearly facing a growing bot problem that threatens the very nature of the site as a place for aut...
The Evolving Role of Developers: Embracing Problem Solvers in an AI-Driven World
In a world where artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming the software development landscape, it’s easy to get caught up in the hype surrounding tools...
Hashing passwords on Cloudflare Workers
I’ve recently needed to hash passwords as part of authentication endpoints for an API I’m building using Cloudflare Workers. My complete code is below as I f...
2023
Cloudflare’s Outage: A Lesson in Overconfidence and Complacency
The recent Cloudflare outage is a stark reminder that even the most robust and seemingly secure systems are not impervious to failure. The incident, lasting ...
Navigating the Wild West of Web Components
Web components have garnered a lot of attention as a way to encapsulate and reuse HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Despite their promise for modular development, t...
The Ins and Outs of Function as a Service (FaaS)
Function as a Service (FaaS) has made substantial waves in the realm of cloud computing and application development. As a solution architect, it’s essential ...
Rethinking the Smartphone Release Cycle
Yearly smartphone releases have become a ludicrous norm, with companies like Apple, Google, and Samsung barely justifying new models with marginal hardware i...
Beyond the Code - Part 5: Crafting a Cohesive Architectural and Cultural Strategy
The Symbiosis of Culture and Architecture Cultural Influences on Architectural Paradigms Bridging the Gap between Technical and C...
Beyond the Code - Part 4: Case Studies
This post aims to explore the learnings that can be derived from failures and challenges, providing insights into the pitfalls and complexities that can aris...
Beyond the Code - Part 3: Bridging the Gap between Technical and Cultural Silos
The Symbiosis of Culture and Architecture Cultural Influences on Architectural Paradigms Bridging the Gap between Technical and C...
Beyond the Code - Part 2: Cultural Influences on Architectural Paradigms
The Symbiosis of Culture and Architecture Cultural Influences on Architectural Paradigms Bridging the Gap between Technical and C...
Mozilla in the Browser Wars: A Diminishing Force
In the sophisticated landscape of modern web development, the term “Web Standards” often seems interchangeable with “Chrome’s Feature Set.” Mozilla, once a s...
Tips for first-time CTOs of startups
As a first-time CTO of a startup, you have a unique opportunity to shape the direction and growth of the company. However, this role also comes with its own ...
The deterioration of Google search results is making DuckDuckGo better
In recent years, there has been a growing discontent among internet users about the quality of search results provided by Google, the world’s largest search ...
Why don’t startups use .com domains?
Startups can and do use .com domains, and many of them do. However, it is also common for startups to use other types of domains, such as .io, .co, .net, and...
2022
Excited for the Sony 55mm f1.8 Zeiss
Mary is kindly getting me the Sony 55mm f1.8 Zeiss lens for my α7 IV. I already own the Sony 90mm f2.8 macro, and I’ve been wanting the 55mm for a while beca...
This post was (mostly) written by Notion AI
I recently ventured into the world of Notion AI, enabling the features on my workspace with an eager curiosity to see what it could do for my writing. Althou...
The Rings of Power has nothing on Detectorists
After enduring The Rings of Power recently and being unsurprisingly disappointed, I’ve discovered the BBC show Detectorists. This programme has been around s...
What Andor is getting so right
I’ve not seen too much talk about Andor and a lot of people I know who’ve watched the other Star Wars TV shows gave it a miss due to Disney fatigue or a lack...
More writing
I feel like I should write more.
Cancelling Netflix and Spotify
Mary and I cancelled Netflix and Spotify a few weeks ago due to lack of use.
Moron Musk
Watching Musk destroy anything he touches at the moment is excellent entertainment.
Innovative caret
Bike Outliner, a rich text editor for macOS (sadly only macOS 😔) has just received an update that includes a neat feature I’ve not seen before.
Purchase research rabbit holes
I’ve been contemplating getting some binoculars for use at air shows and much like when I was looking for a microscope for micrometeorite hunting or looking ...
Keychron K2 V2 keyboard
Everyone keeps going on about how good Keychron keyboards are so I caved and got one. The keyboard I’ve been using for the last 6 years was still working fin...
2021
Notion API code blocks
The official Notion API finally supports code blocks with a recent update. I’ve updated NotionToJekyll to add this functionality. This post is just a test to...
iPhone 13 Pro
FaceID is amazingly good, particularly considering I was such a lover of TouchID on the iPhone 6S and really did not like the idea of FaceID when it first ca...
I’ve pre-ordered an iPhone 13 Pro
I hate iOS. And I also hate Android. For years I developed apps for both platforms (and Windows desktop too) and for this reason I’m an anti-fanboy. I’m all ...
Time to get planning for Hacktoberfest 2021
I’ve done the last 3 or 4 Hacktoberfests and really enjoyed the motivation to plough into a project during October.
Not-so-smarthome
Having recently moved house, we’ve come to the conclusion that we don’t need and won’t be reinstalling our smart lightbulbs and Amazon Echos, or any other sm...
Are C# GUIDs v4 UUIDs?
No. No they’re not. There’s too much misinformation floating around about this issue and it’s easy to prove they’re not. Although when using Guid.NewGuid() y...
Added categories and tags to NotionToJekyll
I’ve just added post category and tag support to NotionToJekyll using two multi-select columns. This input type is perfect for these fields as they’re just s...
Publishing blog posts from Notion to Jekyll
I use Notion as my personal knowledgebase and normally write blog posts in temporary pages and then manually publish them to my Jekyll site using SiteLeaf. W...
Input select multiple in Blazor
There’s no built-in multiple select in Blazor but it’s pretty easy to get one working without any libraries.
The best software documentation I’ve ever seen
This blog uses Jekyll and I’ve no plans to change that - Jekyll is a great static site generator with plenty of features and a high level of maturity. Once i...
Waiting for the official Notion API
Spring 2021 is still outlined as the release timeframe for the Notion API and I can’t wait. I’ve been using Notion since becoming a Lead Developer to try and...
HTMX & Razor
I’d just started drafting a post about combining HTMX with Razor pages to produce dynamic web applications and thought I’d better quickly check the internets...
UK train dataset
I’ve published a dataset on GitHub that comprises of a single CSV file containing every locomotive in the UK. This includes historic and private locomotives,...
Product idea: verifiable digital document sharing
Some employers, utility companies, banks or government departments still require you to be in possession of physical documents - it’s now 2021 and this is st...
No more .Net Standard 🎉
Whilst reading about the plan for Entity Framework Core 6.0 I noticed a remark about .Net Standard that I’d not clocked last year.
Easiest way to remove Windows 10 bullshit
I like Windows 10. As a developer using .Net and Azure I use Windows all the time and generally think it’s pretty great. However out of the box it does conta...
2020
How to set blob content type when uploading to Azure Blob storage using Azure.Storage.Blobs
I recently wanted to upload something to an Azure Storage Blob Container and specify the content type without having to make another request, sadly there’s c...
Excitement for the future of real-time graphics
A couple of days ago Epic released a video showing a demo for Unreal Engine 5. If you’re reading this then you’ve likely already seen that video, but I wante...
What to talk about on family conference calls
With the ongoing pandemic and ‘lockdown’ facing a decent chunk of the planet, we’ve had to resort to video calls with our families using FaceTime, Facebook M...
How does Amazon DynamoDB work?
I’ve recently been looking into how exactly nosql document databases work. Not just existing solution APIs like Amazon DynamoDB and Azure CosmosDB, I mean ho...
2019
How to run a timer triggered Azure Function instantly when developing
You can set a timer triggered Azure Function to run on startup when built for development like this:
How to deploy server-side Blazor to an Azure App Service
Sadly Microsoft’s documentation on this is non-existent at the moment and there are a couple of tricky parts that caught me out the first time I tried so I t...
2018
Winning Experian’s Hack24 2018 challenge
For the third year in a row I attended Tech Nottingham’s Hack24; a 24 hour hackathon hosted in the heart of Nottingham and sponsored by some of the most prom...
C# nested property accessor
I recently had the need to access a property in another property in C#. Accessing a property value is trivial using PropertyInfo but it’s only capable of acc...
No JavaScript here
Earlier today I turned Cloudflare’s automatic email obfuscation off on this site. Why you might ask? Well because it was the only JavaScript on this site and...
Marvin Visions
Jekyll makes it trivial to edit a site’s look and feel, just modify your sass files and push to Github. I keep playing around with colours, paddings and font...
Ubuntu on Windows
At home I use two computers: a 13 inch MacBook Pro for less intensive tasks and a Dell Precision T1700 with a 4K monitor when I want to stretch the software ...
Migrating to Jekyll
Having spent a lot of time recently (even more than normal) working with Git I decided to once again migrate my site to another content management system. I ...
2016
Teaching at University
Whilst studying for my integrated master’s degree in Computer Science at the University of Lincoln, I’m also demonstrating on a number of modules to enhance ...
Android (and some not Android) device metrics
Google seems to be in the habit of making helpful little websites packed with info for developers. An apparently new addition to their line-up is the Device ...
2015
Are there any benefits to making APIs copyrightable?
The White House has told the Supreme Court that APIs can be copyrighted (arstechnica.com). This is generally being perceived as terrible news, the design of ...
Moving to a Mac
First of all, I feel it’s important to make clear that I’m typically a ‘Windows person’, that is to say, I’ve always used Windows as my primary OS. Of course...
100 Days of Fonts
I thoroughly enjoy looking at implementations of font combinations; the use of space, colour and content are all interesting considerations when choosing whi...
2014
Creating a Koken photography site
I never need much of an excuse to try a new CMS, subsequently I’ve created a new website for myself to showcase my photographic efforts using Koken. Recently...
Joining Ello
Ello.co is a new social network that’s caused a bit of a stir online due to its anti-Facebook attitude, the manifesto makes this fact pretty clear…
Beautifully visualised algorithms
Have a look at these delightfully colourful representations of a few common data structures and algorithms. Sometimes grasping fundamental concepts can be ac...
Minimal form interface
How can web forms be reformed into a 21st century tool for data input? Codrops have published an interesting take on the traditional form that improves usabi...
An eloquent explanation of Heartbleed
The Heartbleed Bug is a serious vulnerability in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library. This weakness allows stealing the information protect...
2013
Introducing the ‘Anyone But Richard M Stallman’ License
Having attended Dr Richard Stallman’s interesting talk at Lincoln University yesterday, I thought I’d have a look on Twitter at reactions to his militant vie...
A place to be inspired: Awwwards
Finding a source of inspiration for a new project can be tough, I think so at least. So when I stumbled upon Awwwards my mind was blown. This site hands out ...
Using Tor for web development
Project Tor enables anyone to browse the internet anonymously as if from another side of the planet. This is useful to those wanting to engage in shady activ...
Moot 1.5 is here and finally brings paid upgrades
As you will be aware by now, I’ve been following the beta journey of Moot, a new and exciting forum system designed to eradicate dated phpBB forums from the ...