technology

You Moved The Button

Most enterprise software gets worse because of the "you moved the button" problem. Software evolves over time. You answer customer requests with new features, extend workflows and add new columns in reports. But your training department are struggling to show customers how everything works. Your documentation team can&

python

SQLAlchemy 2.0 Query Style Is Awful

I write code in Python, and I use SQLAlchemy to connect and query the database. I do this because after 20 years of writing Perl and connecting to the database with DBI and writing hand-rolled SQL, I decided that I wanted a slightly easier life. 99% of all web apps

technology

Tapestry and Timeline Apps

Last week saw the release of a new app from The Iconfactory called Tapestry. It can give you a read-only view of feeds from: * Youtube * Mastodon * Bluesky * Reddit * Tumblr * RSS * Podcasts And more, with the ability to build additional connectors using Javascript. I have heard many people say that they

gaming

PC Gaming is Ruined by PCs

My son spent the weekend thoroughly enjoying Spider-Man 2 on PC, having counted down the days until its release. What both us did not enjoy was getting our gaming PC working well enough for him to play the game after he purchased it. Let us ignore that Sony had pre-order

artificial intelligence

Deepseek and Forced Limitations

Deepseek is fascinating for many reasons. That it appeared out of nowhere and benchmarks so closely to what OpenAIs o1 model is capable of - the supposed current state-of-the-art in AI generative models. That I can download a distilled version of it and run it locally, on my Mac Studio,

development

The Technical Debt Slippery Slope

I had a conversation last week about a new feature implementation that the developers were struggling to get working. They had based it on existing feature, but were having problems getting it to work. After some investigation, I found the issue, but also that the approach they were taking was

television

Live Virtual Tennis

I have seen various attempts at turning live sports into some form of 3D rendered animation. This is usually an attempt to coax younger viewers into watching sport they may previously not have been interested in. The most recent one I've seen is the Simpsons NFL game from

gaming

Nintendo Switch 2

There have been so many leaks over the past couple of weeks, the Switch 2 hardware is not much of a surprise. It looks like a Switch with magnetic controllers, a bigger screen and an additional USB-C port on the top. That it still plays all Switch games is a

construction

Giant HS2 Box Structure

This is a UK construction project doing something that sounds totally ridiculous when you describe it. They need to tunnel under the motorway so that new train lines can be built, and they need the motorway to then pass overhead on a bridge. But they cannot close the motorway for

technology

Homemade IPTV

If you cannot find what to watch on streaming services, but you have a bunch of your own media, like Youtube downloads or DVD rips, then you may be interested in creating your own local IPTV channels. I have been experimenting lately with ErsatzTV, a Github project which you self

technology

Crippled By Experience

I have been doing web development for a long time. In the early days that meant editing HTML without CSS, just font tags and animated gifs in Notepad, uploaded via FTP to my ISP provided "web space". Web pages were basic and very simple to construct. I learned

music

John Williams In Tokyo

I found this when browsing through Disney+ a couple of nights ago. It is impossible to deny that John Williams, as my brother put it, "wrote a few bangers". So of course the music here is fantastic. That he's still sharp at 92 (demonstrated by the

smart home

Agile Octopus Experience

Agile Octopus is a product from the UK energy supplier Octopus which we signed up for in December 2023. Since it is now January 2025, that means we have a full year of data and I thought it might be useful to write up our experience. With Agile, your electricity

development

Work, Good, Fast

There is an adage in software development: * First you make it Work * Then you make it Good * Then you make if Fast Of course it is not always that straightforward. It may not be good, if it is not fast. And it may only be possible to make it fast

technology

Extending Home Network Over UK Aerial Sockets

I don't have many problems with WiFi (I use an Asus RT-AX82U). But for my Synology and other mini PCs mentioned earlier, it's just better if they're on Ethernet. But despite my best efforts while they were building our house, the builders wouldn'

development

Remaking Super Mario World In Godot

I am not a Godot developer, but I am a fan of Super Mario World. And this video series presses my nerd buttons. It's interesting to learn more about both.

technology

Home Hosting With Proxmox And Cheap Mini PCs

I've been having great fun recently using Mini PCs using older laptop chips from one of the many sellers on Amazon, installing Proxmox on them, and using them as a host for virtual machines and Docker containers. First, you put the Proxmox ISO on a USB stick, boot

saas

Product Delivery vs. Project Delivery

In the early days (or years) of a SaaS product you are fighting for product market fit. Even when you know without a doubt that your product serves a purpose that people are willing to pay for, there's a long road between Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and a

apple

The Apple Vision Pro Toaster-Fridge Problem

In 2012, as a jab against the recently released Microsoft Surface - a 2-in-1 tablet/laptop combo - Tim Cook said: "You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator, but those things are probably not going to be pleasing to the user." When Meta demoed Orion for the

technology

Our SaaS Development And Deployment Process

Like every software engineer, I spend a lot of time looking online for solutions to problems (usually via Google, but more recently Kagi and Claude). I am eternally grateful to other engineers who have taken the time to write about their solutions. Especially those who cover the why as well

technology

Picking A Blogging Platform In 2025

Picking a platform to host this blog was harder than I expected it to be. And I didn't think my requirements were that tough: * I just want to write. I'm not interested in images, video, or complex layouts. It's 2025, but I want a

artificial intelligence

AI Chatbots Are Rory Bremner

I've been using this method to describe AI chatbots to non-technical listeners and I continue to find it a useful way to explain what they might expect from one. Especially since Google are aggressively advertising Gemini AI on TV right now. If you don't know, Rory

site

Happy 2025

Everything starts somewhere.