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Hi, I’m Alex. Welcome to my website!

A selfie! I’m smiling at the camera, wearing a green dress, and sitting in front of a large amount of green foliage. It’s a sunny day and shining both on the side of my face and the plants.

I’m a software developer, writer, and a hand crafter, and I live in the UK. In my day job I build software for digital preservation, and I think a lot about archiving and long-term systems.

This website is where I share stuff I find interesting or fun. That includes notes on technical problems I’ve solved, personal reflections or thoughts, and fun toys that I’ve built.

I’m queer and trans, and my pronouns are “they” or “she”.

I hope you like it!

Recent articles

  • A Git hook to prevent committing directly to main · Git ·

    I’m not supposed to commit directly to main, but I often forget, so I have the computer remember for me.

  • Describing all my photos · Photo management ·

    When I save a photo, I write a sentence or two of descriptive context. It helps me remember what’s in a photo, why I took it, and how I felt when I did.

  • I don’t want to repeat repeat myself · Regular expressions ·

    I wrote a pair of regular expressions to find repeated words and phrases in my source code.

  • Rebuilding the computer room · Personal thoughts ·

    We traded the physical boundaries of dedicated rooms for the convenience of our always-on digital lives – but recently I’ve been building those walls back up.

  • What can wonky APIs tell us about the web? · JavaScript ·

    An API with an explicitly unused parameter is a testament to the web’s commitment to backward compatibility.

Read more articles →