Author: Ross Wintle

@ivory Did you remove mentions as an option for the little nav bar? Mine has disappeared!

Having not had much opportunity before, I am finally feeling the medium- and long-term benefits of putting my programming opinions into practice on a large codebase and working in a modern software team.

And it turns out they are good opinions. That's a relief!

https://rosswintle.uk/2025/03/i-am-actually-good-at-programming/

I’ve connected to some public WiFi places recently (with VPN!) and many want me to register. So I just register with a random name and an email address at the domain of the establishment I’m visiting. It’s a pointless gate with no verification.

Is it just to annoy people so they don’t use the WiFi?

So my kid has been nagging us for ages about getting a VR headset and we’ve been resisting.

A conversation revealed that he mostly wanted to play Beat Sabre. I’m not paying £300 for that.

So I did a quick search and found a game called Starri that’s £14 and uses webcam motion detection.

This morning the whole family are in on it. Cheaper. Easier. In some ways better.

A real parenting win!!!

I needed to update the best domain that I own. So I took it right up to Laravel 12 and gave it a refresh.

Fun!

https://isthisthingrelaunched.yet.fyi/

Oh my. What Is the world coming to???

…

I bought a bag of small easy-peeler oranges this week and not one of them has gone mouldy!!!

Skype shutting down? I have, like, £4.50 credit from when I needed to send an international SMS about 12 years ago. I’d better get that back. I’ve been religiously keeping it alive.

This nice person bought my #WordPress browser extension today and loves it.

Always great to get feedback like this. (But also great to see the other messages with ideas and discussions about it.)

https://turbo-admin.com/
https://motern.media/@herchenroder/114082420333241431

I'm travelling. Scrabble anyone?

https://words.pico.games/

So the big question I – and I suspect lots of people like me – are asking now is:

What’s a web application stack that I could choose to develop for and make a living from that doesn’t have enshittification and growth-at-all-costs in its near future?

Where do I go now???

Unsolicited Grumbles: Today I learned that if there's one thing worse than an auto-playing hero-section video, it's an auto-playing video that scrolljacks its way to full screen.

No.

Just, no.

Yay! I’m like properly going to WP London Meetup on Thursday for the first time. I’ll finally meet some people in 3D and re-meet some folks I call friends. Exciting!!!

This is a brilliant short film: Space Hoppers in Venice.

How DID they do the stairs???

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrLaERSKFuU

Someone I know made something like this, didn’t they?
https://kind.social/@jerbear/113974461229627846

This came up yesterday and then again today. If it’s about you, you probably REALLY need it. I have it printed out by my desk.

20 Things I’ve Learned as a Systems (over)Thinker

https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/20-things-ive-learned-as-a-systems

My mother in law has an iPhone 8 that we got three years ago, second-hand/refurbished.

Its battery is clearly just giving up. But I don’t know what to do.

If it was me I’d sink the cost and buy a new second-hand refurbished one. I can get an iPhone 12 for £200.

But she’s like: why do these only last three or four years? My previous (dumb) phone lasted about 10 years.

And dang it she’s right.

But battery replacements rarely work well (IMO) and this one looks tricky.

Hmm.

Roses are red.
Like a big London bus.
My kid spent the last two days vomiting.
No date night for us.

Complicated JS build toolchains and massive dependency trees can still go to hell. Yes, even the modern ones.

I just don’t care about your peer dependency hoisting. Whether I’m using JSX or not in my files. If it’s a site, app or library. If it’s require or import.

Just… really… just build the frickin code already without complaining.

Or at least cut the log vomiting and tell me what’s actually wrong.

Sheesh. Have we not made tbis good and stable yet? 🙄

About to turn Copilot off because we have a typo in one of our directory names, but it insists on autocompleting with the correct spelling.

Not worried about losing my job just yet.

🙄😂