Ross's Micro Blog

Also in “diagrams” – this from Dave Walker is perfect. 🤩

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:yxmwxaytl64kjolzi64nad4n/post/3mxtycbms4s2l

This – storing the document in the URL hash – is the kind of creative thinking that I love.

If you’ve not seen it, here’s my 2-player “word game” clone that works the same way: https://words.pico.games/

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:53ykobfiwdm2ihatqmwdz24l/post/3mxubutwut22h

I know that asking this question here will probably fill me with confirmation bias, but…

For repeated but important tasks, do regular people (I.e. not me) really prefer sending English language commands to a slow and potentially unpredictable chatbot over learning a well-designed UI?

I’ve not been 100% functioning today. Last night and this morning I had pretty debilitating neck/back/shoulder pain. But I also just feel crap. So maybe it’s partly viral or something?

Anyway. This means that my #thankYouToday must be for my amazing wife who has done all the chores today. ❤️

As well as some daily thankfulness I’m trying to share good things that I have or come across.

Yes, yes, this is a very normal social media thing to do. But I’ve not done it much, despite being someone who bookmarks about 5 cool things every day!

Part of my attempt to recognise & share good stuff!

I’ve also, for some reason, been contemplating water a lot lately. This weird molecule that life depends on so much. There is so much of it and yet it is so precious.

The excellent book “Hidden Systems” made me think more about it today.

https://www.hiddensystems.net/hidden-systems

#thankYouToday for water!

Today I’m grateful (#thankYouToday) for my daughter’s taekwondo class. The instructors are so brilliant and it’s a wonderful community thing as well as good for her.

Here’s my Puzzmo profile link if you want to follow/connect:

https://www.puzzmo.com/user/ki/magicroundabout#follow

Puzzmo is an excellent puzzling app. I’m super happy to be a Puzzmonaut. This looks like a great time to try it out!

(I thought it was independent but it’s owned by Hearst! TIL)

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:p5ode5bkf6vjtt6ahtssuxui/post/3mxrgegqg622d

One more #thankYouToday to make up for that rant.

I got a Nebula subscription for my birthday and it’s been wonderful.

I got it to support Tom Scott and his delightful “England” series. But my whole family are binge-watching Jet Lag, and I’ve enjoyed the chaotic comedy of Abolish Everything too.

Friends, we have a super-efficient way of encoding this that needs no cloud-based inference.

This can work tens of times faster, offline, zero cost.

Allow me to introduce you to… “programming”!

🤪🙄

Having done my thankfulness… 😆

Today I saw another classic example of ridiculous LLM use. A “skill” that contained a bunch of plain English instructions:
– ask the user to make this choice
– store the choice as “something”
– if “something” is this then do this thing

Sort of a #thankYouToday (perhaps I need a different tag?) is for the BBC’s “13 Minutes” space history podcast. Real quality radio about the race to space and beyond. Every series has been massively interesting and very well produced and story-told. This season is about the Hubble Space Telescope.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xttx2

Today I’m reading about how ICANN works and, while TLD’s are a bit of a racket really, my #thankYouToday is for the un-seen, back-room work that makes the internet work. It truly is an amazing, global endeavour and it’s been a privilege to grow up alongside it.

https://www.wired.com/story/icann-top-level-domains-meow/

Wait, what? All the supermarket fridges are on the internet?

https://chaos.social/@jonty/117428072074406675

This needs to be immediately followed with:

#thankYouToday for kind, generous friends, that accept me as I am, encourage me, and welcome me into their home.

#thankYouToday for swimming and hot chocolate with my kid, and some much-needed new clothes (with style advice from the same kid!)

https://crikey.social/@ross/117424740928374102

Did some writing… it’s a bit personal, but it seems important and it might resonate with some.

"Things are over-happening. I've been wallowing. It's time to re-focus.”

https://rosswintle.uk/2026/10/the-search-for-joy/

Might just make this my new bio!

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:dvvvi2lfda3eq46zikkozitb/post/3mxgfji7zd22g

They continued with the script.

A few minutes later I started asking if they used their own AI tools and if it had given them any idea of how likely I was to convert. If their AI saved time then was it worth talking to me?

They totally missed the joke.

I bailed after 10 mins.

2/2