Ross's Micro Blog

After a long time away due to a long-lasting cold/flu virusy thing, I finally got back to swimming today. Straight in with 35 x 25m lengths. And didn't struggle as much with breathing as I thought I would.

I'll take that! 😄

Email subject starts: “Missed Black Friday?”

What? How the hell would I have missed it? Do you know how many emails I got???!

I thought these “wrapped” things were an end of year trend?

Honestly December is so frickin overwhelming. You just bounce from one bit marketing hype to the next from mid-November to mid-January. It’s relentless and I hate it.

I'd love to do advent of code, but, I'm sorry to say, I'm reading many, many school emails and figuring out which kid needs to take which things on which days and it's all I can do not to get that wrong.

Today I broke a number input.

In ways that could have repercussions for our entire design system.

And this is why I hate front-end work.

A box that you type a number into.

Sheesh! 🙄

Very good song cover for nerdy tech coder types:

https://youtu.be/p03oO_7sCaY

After a few weeks of mostly bouncing between tickets and a continuous stream of reviews for others I finally got some focussed flow-state time today and it felt really good. 🙌

Ah yes, it's unsubscribe from mailing lists week!

5 already today.

One was just “There will be a Black Friday offer soon!”

(Sadly, not in my inbox there won’t. Not if you clutter it up with stuff like that!)

I recently got my pre-ordered Playtile (https://get.playtil.es) and it's such a cool little thing.

But what I'm most impressed with is how that have used modern web browser features to make such a functional PWA (Progressive Web App).

https://rosswintle.uk/2025/11/the-amazing-ways-playtiles-uses-the-web-for-retro-gaming/

Oh my goodness. Today I have experienced the WHOLE ENTIRE GAMUT of the human life. ALL the emotions.

It’s all happening to other people. But I have been on the phone, and the taxi driver, for celebration and mourning; for cake and tragedy.

Oh my heart… and oh my dear close people whom I love.

Content warning:Swearing, diseases, not about me

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This is not about me but…

Fuck cancer! Why do you have to be so fucking random and indiscriminate?! Why is all the crap in the world seemingly so badly distributed. Just…. AAAAARRGGHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This “fish commits ‘credit card fraud’” thing was in my feed yesterday and it’s very funny.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_neon_tetra#Credit_card_fraud

This video about jet turbine blades made me say “That’s CRAZY!!!!” out loud several times.

The engineering here is incredible.

https://youtu.be/QtxVdC7pBQM

A kid wants to run a lemonade stand. But they need cash to get started.

Dad: I already gave you £5 pocket money

Kid: That’s not enough!

Dad: I tell you what. I have lemonade in the fridge. I’ll sell it to you for £3 to get you started.

Kid: Deal!

(Later…)

Dad: How’s the stand going?

Kid: Not good. I’ve sold nothing.

Dad: How much is it?

Kid: £3 for the lot.

Dad: I’ve got £3. I’ll buy it from you. And hey, now I’ve given you £8! This is a good business! You want to buy more lemonade?

This just doesn't sound like programming! The whole vibe of this conversation was that of a really smart person flailing around trying to coax a thing with semi-random behaviour to do an important task, and then blaming himself for getting stressed about the thing not doing what you asked it to.

It just reminded me of getting a young kid to do something.

And that usually ended in both of us crying.

"So I'm stuck. It's writing too much code. The code is way too ugly. It’s not using [the UI library] it's just making shit up. [So I got it to do some stuff], and it did that that's what actually unlocked it. So it started to understand what I was asking of it. And slowly it started getting better. But… no dude, you're so stupid, that's so stupid… It just like doesn't… it doesn't like. And I did learn to, like, it's going to get something wrong and I should not be stressed out about it.”

Yes. This IS a terrible analogy. But it occurred to me and I thought it should be shared.

But really. Actual quotes.

"I looked at the code… medium. What happens inevitably, it gets tripped up. It can't do it…

I set it all up… use [things]… generate a requirements doc… I was pretty specific… it like scaffolded that out. It went very broad and built everything but I think that is actually part of the problem. It might have totally invented API endpoints.”

I was listening to two (actually quite reasonable) people talking on a podcast about using AI to code today.

And I realised… it's not like having a junior developer. It's like teaching a baby to walk.

– Anything could go wrong at any moment.
– You don't have a clue what to say to make the right things happen.
– To some extent, the thing will just do the amazing thing sometimes…
– … but it may not repeat the amazing thing the next time, even in the same conditions.