Ross's Micro Blog

Well, today I came across Mullvad VPN and what an amazing looking service that I’ve never heard of!!
https://social.lol/@robb/114925211929063231

So my local Chinese take-away restaurant gives you free fortune cookies.

These are now… sponsored!

By a gambling company!!!

I don’t know WHAT to think of this. Is this hilarious? Or awful?? Can it be BOTH???

Can someone be real with me about travelling to the USA right now. You hear the scare stories, but am I really likely to have my phone and socials checked as I enter?

(This would be a work trip)

@macstories @johnvoorhees If there's anything in here that you think should be used to update the original article, please do so! I struggled for a few hours with this and got very confused. But it's such a neat idea!!! 😁

If you, like me, saw the @macstories article about using an 8BitDo controller for automation and productivity, but couldn't get it working, here's some things that might help!

(8BitDo have three, THREE apps with the same name. It's confusing!)

https://rosswintle.uk/2025/07/using-the-8bitdo-micro-game-controller-with-a-mac/

I keep trying the AI assistants.

Just to see.

I thought I’d found a place that was good for them.

Auditing a bunch of React components to rate their complexity based on some very specific rules that I had already written.

With a bit of extra detail in the rules it seemed pretty good at this.

So I asked it to analyse all files in a directory using the specified rules and…

…it missed a file!

If it is incapable of following the most basic instruction, how do I trust it with… well… anything?!

This BBC News article about weak passwords killing a business popped up on my phone this morning:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2gx28815wo

So it's a good time to re-promote my internet security post that's aimed at regular people, helping you take the next step with security:

https://rosswintle.uk/2020/01/stepping-up-the-security-ladder/

This is all going to go to my head, I tell you. I'm going to be unbearable until about the end of October.

Please tell me if I am!! 😳

I don’t do public speaking often. I don’t take my talks on tour. I don’t really like traveling very much, and family commitments prevent me getting out much.

But when I do… oh boy, it’s a BIG deal.

https://rosswintle.uk/2025/07/public-speaking/

(This post includes links to the very few bits of public speaking I've done that have been recorded.

Including, if you missed it, my @wordsesh talk from this year, which can now be watched for free! Thanks @rzen !!)

The only reason I don’t use Koko is that most of my online sites right now are static pages.
https://toot.re/@dvk/114891430661244368

This is amazing.

"Programming Sucks”

https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks

I'm sorry, who now???

😁

(This is the most amazing thing to be invited to be part of. Truly an honour.)
https://indieweb.social/@loopconf/114863510080684202

I have made a terrible parenting error.

Son and I were having a conversation about D&D.

After which he asked "Can I put some music on?"

To which I replied: "You'll need to roll for persuasion."

And now I fear every parental request will get some kind of skill check.

What HAVE I done??? 😂

I've discovered some great little indie iOS (and sometimes Android!) apps recently. I wanted to quickly jot down some links to some of them, and links to the places that I found them – usually interesting newsletters.

https://rosswintle.uk/2025/07/newsletters-and-indie-ios-apps/

Features @hiro, @quicheindustries and others that I don't think are here.

This week my phone has occasionally said.

“Charging On Hold. Charging will resume when [device] returns to normal temperature.”

This is what my brain has been like all day.

It just got down to 20°C and it’s nearly midnight. Brain just started working again!

Let’s go people!!!

😆

The internet is so weird.

Years ago, I made a simple interface to Twitter's advanced search.

I stopped using Twitter a long time ago. But this little thing is BY FAR my most visited side project – it gets 4k views a month! (I know that's tiny, but it's all I got. Lol!)

It's the THIRD organic result on Google for “find tweet”.

Amazing.

https://tweet-finder.veryuseful.app/