Why Product Requirements Documents Transform AI-Assisted Development
You’ve experienced this before: an AI tool generates beautiful frontend components whilst simultaneously creating a backend that expects completely different...
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ai
Building Production Multi-Agent Systems for Research Tasks
Anthropic’s Research feature demonstrates how multi-agent architectures solve problems that single-agent systems fundamentally cannot handle. Their technical...
Securing LLM Agents Against Prompt Injection Through Design Patterns
As LLM-powered agents become increasingly sophisticated and granted access to sensitive tools and data, the security implications of prompt injection attacks...
Why Machines Find Easy Things Hard
Watch a child gracefully pluck a raisin from a bowl, and you’re witnessing a feat that would humble the world’s most sophisticated robots. Yet these same rob...
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
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 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...
programming
Three Lenses for Understanding Software Complexity
Software complexity discussions often devolve into frustrating exchanges where participants talk past each other. The reason is simple: we lack a shared defi...
SQLite’s Architectural Evolution and Performance Optimisation
There’s something rather remarkable about SQLite that extends far beyond its ubiquity. Whilst most of us encounter it daily—embedded in our smartphones, brow...
When Giants Fall - The Anatomy of Google’s June 2025 Outage
On 12 June 2025, Google Cloud Platform experienced what can only be described as a catastrophic failure that brought down not only their own services but cas...
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...
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.
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...
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...
cloudflare
The Cloudflare Trap: How Pay-Per-Crawl Misses the Mark
Cloudflare’s new pay-per-crawl system sounds reasonable on paper: AI companies pay content creators for the privilege of scraping their work. Finally, some e...
Cloudflare Containers Changes Everything for Serverless Computing
Today marks a watershed moment for the serverless ecosystem. Cloudflare has launched Containers, and it fundamentally changes how we think about building app...
Cloudflare Containers - Reimagining Global Compute at the Edge
The computing landscape is undergoing a subtle but profound shift. As organisations embrace distributed architectures and global deployments, the traditional...
What is Cloudflare Developer Platform?
If you’ve heard about Cloudflare’s Developer Platform but aren’t quite sure what it offers, this guide aims to break it down in simple terms without diving t...
What is Cloudflare Workers Analytics Engine?
Time-series databases are hardly new, but Cloudflare’s Workers Analytics Engine offers an intriguing twist on the traditional approach. After diving into its...
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 ...
web
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...
Moron Musk
Watching Musk destroy anything he touches at the moment is excellent entertainment.
video
photography
Thoughts on the Fujifilm GFX100RF
In a world where camera manufacturers battle in technical one-upmanship, Fujifilm has made a curious move. The new GFX100RF presents something genuinely diff...
Exploring the Engineering Marvel of Modern Camera Lenses
I’ve just stumbled upon what might be the most comprehensive resource on camera lens technology I’ve ever seen, and I simply had to share it with fellow phot...
The Nikon-RED Acquisition Signals a New Era in Professional Imaging
The announcement of Z-mount versions of RED’s V-RAPTOR [X] and KOMODO-X cameras marks the first tangible outcome of Nikon’s acquisition of RED. While the mou...
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...
internet
Pika.page vs Bear Blog
Pika.page emerges as the more user-friendly option for beginners seeking modern features, while Bear Blog dominates in performance, maturity, and value for e...
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...
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...
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 ...
dotnet
TPL Dataflow in .NET
If you’ve ever needed to process data through multiple stages with different throughput rates, handle concurrency gracefully, or build a processing pipeline ...
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...
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.
thought
More writing
I feel like I should write more.
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 ...
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...
Mobile
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...
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 ...
hardware
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 ...
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...
software development
The Manufacturing Approach to Software Development
The most profound changes in software development rarely come from new languages or frameworks. They emerge when we fundamentally alter how we approach creat...
Brooks’s Law: Why Adding More People to a Late Project Makes It Later
There’s a peculiar phenomenon in software development that often catches project managers and executives off guard: when a software project falls behind sche...
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...
home
Cancelling Netflix and Spotify
Mary and I cancelled Netflix and Spotify a few weeks ago due to lack of use.
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...
tv
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...
startup
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 ...
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...
leadership
Technical Leadership Mastery for Startup CTOs
Technical leadership in early-stage companies presents a fascinating paradox. The very skills that propel one to the CTO position—deep technical knowledge, a...
Leadership Under Extreme Adversity
This account captures profound insights about leadership, human psychology, and survival in crisis situations through the incredible story of Shackleton’s fa...
idea
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...
dataset
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,...
Blazor
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.
books
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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...
management
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 ...
devops
Back to Top ↑browsers
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...
faas
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 ...
design
Back to Top ↑computing-history
Back to Top ↑web-development
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...
law
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 ...
surveillance
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...
open source
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 ...
ad
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-...
software engineering
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...
innovation
Why Getting Better at Spotting Patterns Makes Innovation Harder
Here’s a surprising truth about intelligence: the better you become at recognising patterns, the harder it becomes to break free of them. This isn’t just tru...
databases
Understanding Bitemporal Primary Keys
Temporal databases just got more interesting. With PostgreSQL 18’s upcoming support for bitemporal primary and foreign keys, we’re seeing a fundamental shift...
coffee
Essential AeroPress Brewing Guide
Basic Recipe & Technique
culture
Digital Culture After Reality
Remember when we worried about authenticity online? Now we scroll through AI-generated faces, synthetic backgrounds, and algorithm-crafted captions without a...
architecture
Knowledge Graphs as Enterprise Data Control Planes
Ask any enterprise architect about their greatest frustration, and they’ll likely describe the same scenario. A simple business concept like “customer” exist...
privacy
When Digital Archaeology Meets Border Control
The US Embassy in Dublin just dropped a bombshell that should terrify anyone who values digital privacy. Future student visa applicants must now provide “all...
claude code
Understanding Claude Code Plan Mode and the Architecture of Intent
Claude Code’s new plan mode solves a problem most developers didn’t realise they had. We’ve grown accustomed to AI tools that immediately start generating co...