Author: Ross Wintle

Parents of SEN kids: I found a book called “Raising the SEN-betweeners” on Kobo/Bookshop.org/Kindle for 99p and the first chapter alone is worth the price.

Very real stories from the front line of parenting with good humour and tips mixed in.

Product tip: If you’re going to give me a 7-day trial of your app you need customer service to respond to questions within 7 days! 😬

Listening to scientists talking is so much better than listening to politicians. Curious. Excited. Smart. Humble.

I think I’m just going to listen to more scientists.

Sunderfolk – a turn-based RPG game on the Switch but controlled from a mobile app – was on sale, and we bought it to day for the school holidays.

Not sure on the game yet. It's probably good (my kid loves it already). But the experience of using the app as a controller is SO clever and well done.

This is the bit of the internet you want to pay attention to today:

https://iartemis2sa.gov/

Amazing #artemis2 imagery coming back.

Gosh darnit those shops installing cameras to catch shoplifters. They deliberately install them in the shops where the most shoplifting happens too. It’s a disgrace. It’s so unfair. They’re just in it for the money.

(This is actually about speed cameras)

RE: https://toot.wales/@rhyswynne/116359319837218581

I updated mine today too!

https://rosswintle.uk/now/

Kid: This live stream from NASA is really boring. Why do you find it interesting?

…

Also kid:

What’s CapCom?

What’s a terminator?

What’s that map showing us?

Wait? They’re not going to land?

Related: The BBC World Service podcast “13 minutes presents" is doing an excellent daily show about Artemis II featuring Tim Peak (UK Astronaut).

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

Peak mentioned that you have to be really careful not to lose anything in space because stuff just floats off. You have to tie it down or it's gone somewhere!

And then you come home to Earth and let go of things and CRAP – they fall to the ground!!! (And they are really heavy!)

I've tuned into some of the live NASA coverage of Artemis II and I swear, everytime I watch they are talking about storage.

Which locker are the suitcases?

The boots are best stored under the seats.

These two compartments have the same label.

Such mundane stuff. But if you live somewhere very small for two days this is what matters.

I especially want to note that Joost mentions the “SQLite compatibility layer made WordPress Playground possible, has already proven that WordPress can run on a completely different database engine”

And it can. But have you seen it? It’s basically a MySQL interpreter for SQLite.

https://github.com/WordPress/sqlite-database-integration

It’s VERY clever. Incredible effort. But this is a massive hack.

And WordPress has many of these.

There are so many components to maintain now. Layer on layer of tech debt. It’s not great.

The most technically sensible post about #WordPress I’ve read in a LONG time.

“Modernizing the boot process, adding an autoloader, fixing the data model — none of that makes for a good keynote slide.

…

WordPress now offers so many layered approaches to the same problems…”

https://joost.blog/wordpress-refactor-not-redecorate/

Bravo, @joost !

I saw a “hoverboard” the other day – those self-balancing wheeled platforms. These were all the rage one Christmas. Everyone wanted one. Many got one. Where are they all now? Landfill? Recycled somehow??

Madness.

I am realising more and more – and I know it’s stupid that it took so long – that electronics last DECADES. Their lifetime is mostly limited by software and batteries.

Which is why I can still use my original Gameboy.

It’s so frustrating that so much is discarded that still has working components.

Had an amazing chat with my wife last night about how generative LLMs are NOT like previous industrialisation / automation of industries. They are replacing the CRAFT and THINKING, not (or as well as) the production.

We could not think of where this has happened before.

Where did automation of an industry do something where the output is different each time?

Reading stuff about LLM coding agents here makes me want to remove all the AI tools from my systems (I experiment at work, virtually no use at home). Hard to believe any security department would approve this stuff.

This is a fascinating discussion on the admin menu UX in #WordPress

https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/24/rethinking-left-navigation/

Turbo Admin has had menu hiding since August 2024. I’m currently adding a better interface and item pinning.

It’s a bit different in that it’s user-specific. But that’s just how Turbo Admin work. It’s WordPress “your way”.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@geerlingguy/116321963195730224

I was working on Turbo Admin again last night. It’s all (apart from the fuzzy search) hand-crafted vanilla JS at this point. Mostly for compatibility: I don’t want to depend on a library that might be needed by something else.

Stuff like this also validates that decision though.

@retrogamecorps Just got the newsletter. The "Retro Game Emulation on the MacBook Neo” video is private?

So Turbo Admin will soon work in #WordPress Playground. Just not with REST API access because <very complicated reasons>.

But it’s very cool. Especially the automated on-boarding clean up! Experienced devs don’t need all that.

Video shows Playground without Turbo Admin and then with. SO much cleaner!!