2024-05-29 19:40:48

Working in marketing and eCommerce has taught me that I’m a bit of a weirdo.

1. Tiny UX tweaks will not affect my purchase. If I want to purchase something and the cart is just a little bit shit, I’m not gonna then go and buy something else.

2. I find cart reminder emails extremely annoying.

3. I will hunt down your pricing page if I it kills me. Moving the link to it will make it easier/harder, but I WILL find it.

And so on…

2024-05-25 10:15:21

OK. This week I become a proper full-time EV zealot.

I have hired a petrol automatic for a week.

It’s crap. I hate it. It’s loud. It’s unresponsive. The brakes are harsh. Petrol is expensive and smells.

Its only redeeming feature is the range.

Everything else is worse.

(Hybrids probably represent a good half-way. But gosh I love my EV)

2024-05-23 21:50:44

Still freaks me out that “0” is falsey in PHP. In some ways that’s super clever. But in other ways it’s super annoying.

Proper type hints save the day regardless!

2024-05-23 21:17:40

I've been talking a LOT at work about abstractions lately. They're probably all bored of me. And yet, abstractions are SO important.

In code, the right abstraction at the right time is such an enabler!

2024-05-23 21:16:29

Darnit. Both Seagulls AND other vehicles using my car as target practice today.

I'm fine. The car is fine. A minor incident. Just annoying.

And it's covered in bird poop!!

2024-05-20 21:58:58

I used to get excited by big tech announcements. But now it's all just so uninteresting. Is this because I'm old? Is it because there's just SO MANY keynotes and product launches now that it's too hard to keep up? Or… has it actually become boring and mundane for others too?

2024-05-19 16:35:23

These EV Ultra-Rapid chargers at Sainsbury’s (UK Supermarket) are FAB! Real easy to use. And they give you a QR code that takes you to a personalised real-time view of your charge.

Real nice!

2024-05-19 16:33:27

So. Yay! I finished an epic book.

It was GREAT! But I gotta be honest, I wish I’d spent 35 hours reading a book that had some kind of conclusion.

I know it was part 1 of many, but I still wished things were more wrapped up.

Also, there’s too much detail in battle scenes.

But what a great read. I was totally into it for most of the time and I’m not a big fiction reader.

2024-05-16 10:45:13

I’m loving all the retro gaming and emulation stuff that’s happening in a big way now (yeah I know it’s not new).

Questions:

– is there any official way to buy ROMs? Will the game owners ever catch on to this? In happy to pay!
– are downloaded ROMs safe? Can they do anything bad?

2024-05-12 19:33:15

So here’s a thing.

I like structured communication. Document templates. Emails with headings and executive summaries. Bulleted lists. Meeting agendas.

But… it occurred to me today…

Is this a generational thing?

I really want to get others in my life to see the benefits of it.

But are younger generations (I’m mid forties) just not into this stuff? Is it not actually beneficial for them because they are so adept at unstructured comms?

2024-05-10 23:21:41

Wow! This IS a big solar storm. Southern England. We can see aurora with Naked eye despite light pollution. Long exposures working well!!

2024-05-10 07:53:44

The Scrabble game logic and scoring is so well ingrained in my muscle memory. But writing it down was really hard!

Not proud of the code that achieved this. It was pretty brute force!

2024-05-07 21:04:52

A screen grab of a white screen that reads “file Office Open XML word processing document. 120kb”

Oh gosh. If there’s one thing more inaccessible than a PDF for school comms that go far and wide to a diverse audience of people with all sorts of devices and IT skills…

2024-05-06 23:14:50

Loving working on the serverless Scrabble clone. Nice, intricate logic. Fun to test!

words.pico.games/

Fixed some simple, but hard-to-find bugs for edge cases tonight. You can now actually play a game right to the end! 🤦‍♂️

I'm thankful for people playing and reporting bugs! 🙏

Key things to add:

– Skip/swap tiles as a feature
– Double/triple squares on the board

Then it’s kinda complete!

Nice to haves:

– Some drag-and-drop or keyboard entry
– Some instructions
– Better UI/design