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Most recent 10 posts

27 May		Getting every item from a DynamoDB table with Python
24 May		Showing human-friendly dates in JavaScript
17 May		The Sachsenhausen concentration camp
16 May		Moving messages between SQS queues
15 May		Downloading the AO3 fics that I’ve saved in Pinboard
14 May		Letter to my MP about Liz Truss and medical treatment for trans youth
13 May		Social media as a growth culture for opinions
12 May		Taking tuple unpacking to terrible places
11 May		The friends I lost along the way
10 May		Make it safe to admit mistakes

Categories

• Amazon Web Services
• Blogging about blogging
• Build automation and build systems
• Digital preservation
• Diversity, inclusion and accessibility
• Git
• Glitch apps
• L^aT_eX
• Languages
• Organising PyCon UK
• Personal
• Photography
• Politics
• Productivity
• Programming and code
• Python
• Scala
• Shell scripting
• Talks
• Terraform
• Working with macOS
• Uncategorised

Amazon Web Services

May 2020		Getting every item from a DynamoDB table with Python
May 2020		Moving messages between SQS queues
May 2020		Illustrating lifecycle transitions in Amazon S3
Apr 2020		Using DynamoDB as a calculator
Mar 2020		Finding the size and cost of each of your S3 buckets
Jan 2020		A deletion canary: testing your S3 bucket permissions
Jan 2020		Finding the CPU and memory bottlenecks in an ECS cluster
Nov 2019		An AWS costs graph that works for me
Sep 2019		Streaming large objects from S3 with ranged GET requests
Jul 2019		Listing even more keys in an S3 bucket with Python
Feb 2019		Working with really large objects in S3
Dec 2018		Getting credentials for an assumed IAM Role
Nov 2018		Finding SNS topics without any subscriptions
Sep 2018		A basic error logger for Python Lambdas
Aug 2018		Implementing parallel scan in DynamoDB with Scanamo
Apr 2018		Two shortcuts for using S3 in the shell
Jan 2018		Getting every message in an SQS queue
Jan 2018		Listing keys in an S3 bucket with Python, redux
Nov 2017		Downloading logs from Amazon CloudWatch
Jul 2017		Listing keys in an S3 bucket with Python

Blogging about blogging

Build automation and build systems

Mar 2019		Creating a GitHub Action to auto-merge pull requests
Aug 2018		Finding slow builds in Travis
Aug 2018		Selective sudo on Travis
Mar 2018		The Hypothesis continuous release process
Dec 2017		Your repo should be easy to build, and how

Digital preservation

Feb 2020		Storing multiple, human-readable versions of BagIt bags
Feb 2020		Building Wellcome Collection’s new archival storage service
Oct 2019		Digital preservation at Wellcome Collection

Diversity, inclusion and accessibility

Mar 2020		Inclusion can’t be an afterthought
Feb 2020		A remote-controlled oven is a safety nightmare
Oct 2019		Adding religious holidays to my calendar
Jul 2019		Section 28, and LGBTQ+ people in UK schools
Jun 2019		An inescapable conclusion
Jun 2019		Hey Apple, cycle tracking isn’t just for women
May 2019		Questions to ask when writing a trans inclusion policy
Feb 2019		More advice on running inclusive and welcoming events
Oct 2018		Open consultation on the Gender Recognition Act
Sep 2018		Content warnings
Aug 2018		Ideas for inclusive conferences and events
Nov 2017		How I ask about gender
Oct 2017		NPR: Graduation Readers At MIT Go The Extra Mile To Pronounce Names Correctly
Apr 2017		Accessibility at AlterConf
Feb 2016		How I use TextExpander to curb my language

Git

Mar 2018		Notes on A Plumber’s Guide to Git
Nov 2017		Pruning old Git branches
Nov 2017		A plumber’s guide to Git
Sep 2017		Some useful Git commands for CI
Jun 2015		Useful Git features: a per-clone exclude file

Glitch apps

L^aT_eX

Jan 2020		A Docker image to run LaTeX
Oct 2017		Four ways to underline text in LaTeX

Languages

Apr 2020		Storing language vocabulary as a graph
Jul 2019		Ten braille facts / ⠼⠁⠚⠀⠃⠗⠁⠊⠇⠇⠑⠀⠋⠁⠉⠞⠎
Jun 2019		Reading a Chinese dictionary / 读一本中文字典

Organising PyCon UK

Personal

May 2020		The friends I lost along the way
Apr 2020		Adventures in euphoria and embodiment

Photography

Mar 2019		A day out to the Forth Bridge
Nov 2018		My visit to the Aberdulais Falls
Jun 2017		A visit to the Crossness pumping station

Politics

Productivity

Programming and code

May 2020		Showing human-friendly dates in JavaScript
Apr 2020		Exploring an unknown SQL server
Dec 2019		This YAML file will self-destruct in five seconds!
Dec 2019		Some useful spreadsheet functions: FORMULATEXT, MATCH, CONCATENATE and INDIRECT
May 2019		Falsehoods programmers believe about Unix time
Apr 2019		Getting a transcript of a talk from YouTube
Dec 2018		A script for backing up Tumblr posts and likes
Aug 2018		Avoiding the automatic redirect on Tumblr posts
Jul 2018		A robot leaked my SSH keys
Jul 2017		Backing up full-page archives from Pinboard
Jul 2017		Backing up content from SoundCloud
Feb 2017		A script for backing up your Instapaper bookmarks
Feb 2017		A script for backing up your Goodreads reviews
Dec 2016		A tool for backing up your message history from Slack
Jun 2016		Reading web pages on my Kindle
Apr 2016		Hiding the YouTube search bar
Apr 2016		Treat regular expressions as code, not magic
Nov 2015		Backups and Docker
Aug 2015		Finding even more untagged posts on Tumblr
May 2015		Cloning GitHub’s Contributions chart
May 2015		Previewing notes from nvALT in Marked
Mar 2015		Pygmentizr
Feb 2015		Adding checkboxes to lists
Feb 2015		Swift 1.2 improves the “let” keyword, and other improvements
Dec 2014		A script for exporting from iMessage
Nov 2014		Unpacking sets and ranges from a single string
Oct 2014		Notes on Tumblr
Aug 2014		Updates to my site for finding untagged Tumblr posts
Aug 2014		A TextExpander snippet for Amazon affiliate links
Aug 2014		A quick Alfred workflow for opening recent screenshots
Jul 2014		Getting plaintext LaTeX from Wolfram Alpha
Jun 2014		Finding untagged posts on Tumblr, redux
Aug 2013		Cleaning up Google Maps
Aug 2013		Finding untagged posts on Tumblr

Python

May 2020		Downloading the AO3 fics that I’ve saved in Pinboard
May 2020		Taking tuple unpacking to terrible places
Apr 2020		A snippet for downloading files with Python
Mar 2020		Creating striped flag wallpapers with Pillow
Dec 2019		November 2019 scripts: downloading podcasts, retrying flaky errors, Azure and AWS
Nov 2019		Saving a copy of a tweet by typing ;twurl
Oct 2019		Adventures in Python with concurrent.futures
Oct 2019		The rough edges of filecmp
Sep 2019		Experiment: GitHub code search with de-duplication
Sep 2019		Drawing with triangular coordinates in SVG
Aug 2019		Getting a tint colour from an image with Python and k-means
Aug 2019		Removing the DRM from my Kindle books
Jul 2019		Finding divisors of a number with Python
Jul 2019		Creating preview thumbnails of PDF documents
Jun 2019		A script for getting cover images from mobi ebooks
Apr 2019		Reversing a t.co URL to the original tweet
Mar 2019		Atomic, cross-filesystem moves in Python
Dec 2018		Notes on reading a UTF-8 encoded CSV in Python
Dec 2018		Iterating in fixed-size chunks in Python
May 2018		Drawing ASCII bar charts
May 2018		Beware of logged errors from subprocess
Oct 2017		Using hooks for custom behaviour in requests
Oct 2017		Using pip-tools to manage my Python dependencies
Sep 2017		A Python module for lazy reading of file objects
Mar 2017		A few examples of extensions in Python-Markdown
Jan 2017		A Python interface to AO3
Jan 2017		Experiments with AO3 and Python
Nov 2016		Use keyring to store your credentials
Oct 2016		Creating low contrast wallpapers with Pillow
Oct 2016		Tiling the plane with Pillow
Oct 2016		Why I use py.test
Aug 2016		Python snippet: dealing with query strings in URLs
Aug 2016		Python snippets: Is a URL from a Tumblr post?
Aug 2016		Python snippets: Cleaning up empty/nearly empty directories
Jul 2016		Python snippets: Chasing redirects and URL shorteners
May 2016		A Python smtplib wrapper for FastMail
Mar 2016		Exclusively create a file in Python 3
Nov 2015		Python and the BBC micro:bit
Jun 2015		Persistent IPython notebooks in Windows
Jun 2015		Safer file copying in Python
Mar 2015		Adding Python to the OS X firewall
Feb 2015		A Flask app for taking notes

Scala

Apr 2020		Comparing JSON strings when testing in Scala
Sep 2019		Iterating over the entries of a compressed archive (tar.gz) in Scala
May 2019		Creating a locking service in a Scala type class
Oct 2018		Custom 404 responses in Finatra

Shell scripting

Talks

Oct 2019		Sans I/O programming: what, why and how (PyCon UK talk)
Sep 2019		Slides for PyCon UK 2019 “Sans I/O programming”
Jan 2019		Monki Gras 2019: The Curb Cut Effect
Sep 2018		Assume worst intent (designing against the abusive ex)
Sep 2018		Building trust in an age of suspicious minds
Apr 2018		(Anti) Social Media
Nov 2017		Using privilege to improve inclusion
Oct 2017		PyCon UK 2017 resources
Sep 2017		Ode to docopt
Jun 2016		Introduction to property-based testing

Terraform

Working with macOS

Uncategorised

May 2020		The Sachsenhausen concentration camp
May 2020		Social media as a growth culture for opinions
May 2020		Make it safe to admit mistakes
May 2020		Give your audience time to react
Apr 2020		Thinking about your gender
Apr 2020		Complex systems have complex failures
Apr 2020		Look out for survivor’s guilt
Apr 2020		Access to information is a privilege
Mar 2020		Rich enough to make bad choices
Feb 2020		Adjusting the dominant colour of an image
Nov 2019		How I scan and organise my paperwork
Apr 2019		Some tips for conferences
Apr 2019		How I back up my computing devices, 2019 edition
Jan 2019		Notes from You Got This 2019
Jan 2019		How much sunlight affects my mood levels
Jan 2019		Thoughts on privacy and Oyster cards
Jan 2019		A delightful store for speciality spreads: Paul Rothe & Sons
Nov 2018		Keeping track of my book recommendations
Oct 2018		How do you hide a coin for 400 years?
Oct 2018		How to set the clock on a Horstmann Electronic 7 water heater
Aug 2018		Do Not Distract while driving
Jul 2018		Moving my calendars from iCloud to FastMail
Jul 2018		A tip for travel instructions
Jul 2018		My favourite iMac accessory
May 2018		A brief thought on Google Duplex
Apr 2018		24 hours or bust
Mar 2018		Keep an overnight bag in the office
Feb 2018		A working from home experiment
Jan 2018		IP and DNS addresses for documentation
Dec 2017		Armed police officers don’t make me feel safer
Nov 2017		My favourite WITCH story
Nov 2017		Don’t tap the mic, and other tips for speakers
Oct 2017		Displaying tweets in Keynote
Oct 2017		Control Centre: one step forward, two steps back
Dec 2016		Another example of why strings are terrible
Nov 2016		Some low-tech ways to get more ideas
Oct 2016		The A stands for Asexual
Sep 2016		My travelling tech bag
Sep 2016		aspell, a command-line spell checker
Jun 2016		A subscription for my toothbrush
Mar 2016		Backup paranoia
Feb 2016		Saved by the Prompt
Jan 2016		The Harry Potter Collector’s iPod
Jan 2016		The Skeletor clip loop, 2015 edition
Jan 2016		A cautionary tale about Fusion Drive repairs
Dec 2015		Simpler syndication, by Dr. Drang
Nov 2015		Email with a purpose
Sep 2015		What does “Spotlight Suggestions” turn off?
Sep 2015		Apple quietly adopts HTTP/2
Sep 2015		Review: Effective Python
Mar 2015		Some exam advice
Feb 2015		Tidying up my 1Password
Dec 2014		Kitchen sink security
Dec 2014		Acronyms
Dec 2014		Skeletors All the Way Down
Dec 2014		Lukas Mathis on iOS CarPlay and Android Auto
Oct 2014		“Missing argument at index 2” in fish
Sep 2014		My new standing desk
Jul 2014		Thoughts on Overcast
Jun 2014		Skeletor!
Jun 2014		Some site updates
May 2014		Some Part IA exam advice
May 2014		Brief advice for Part II
Apr 2014		Pulling back the veil
Nov 2013		TextMate 2 and Quick Look
May 2013		Podcast feeds on Tumblr
Mar 2013		Automatic Pinboard backups
Mar 2013		Strange clock bug in OS X
Mar 2013		Candybar and icon recommendations
Feb 2013		Darwin, pancakes and birthdays
Jan 2013		Zero
Dec 2012		Hypercritical