Software History

One morning, I was making my way to a Starbucks in Edinburgh. It was early in the morning. I was looking forward to enjoying a coffee in peace before bustle enveloped the city. I headed to the Quartermile, where there is a Starbucks (and also a speciality coffee shop from which I have had a great cup of tea in the past). As I was walking, it started to rain. Heavier and heavier. As I got close to the Starbucks, water was starting to soak through my trainers. My trousers were drenched. I stopped in the rain.

When I consumed more speciality coffee, I had an idea for an application that would let you take a photo (or photos) of a label on a bag of coffee and create a personal library of coffees you had consumed. The only input would be a photo, providing a relatively low friction method through which one could catalog the coffees they had consumed. Back when I first had this idea, I was limited by my knowledge of high-quality open source OCR models out there.

TL;DR: I now have a search engine on my blog at search.jamesg.blog. Check it out!

The Drip is one of a few police box cafes in Edinburgh, an idea which has intrigued me since I first found out about police box cafes. The Drip has locations in Morningside and Tollcross and serves espresso-based drinks to-go. I wanted to learn a bit more about the business so I reached out to The Drip on Instagram, who kindly responded to a few of my questions. Our chat is below. I hope you enjoy!

Written by Durian Sukegawa, Sweet Bean Paste is a book I struggled to put down, filled with twists and moments that made me ponder isolation, being a member of society, and pursuing an interest despite the challenges ahead. The book starts by setting the scene, where Sentaro, a man who makes dorayaki, a sweet pancake made with sweet bean paste, sees an old woman staring at the shop where he works, Doraharu. Over time, Sentaro engages with this woman, finding out that she was a confectioner capable of making sweet bean paste.

I have installed Plan 9 on my Raspberry Pi. I am excited to start using it. I can't use Plan 9 yet because I need a new keyboard and mouse to use with my Pi. So, this evening I decided to peruse the online Plan 9 manual pages. I am excited and have been eagerly trying a few commands on my Mac to see what commands are also on my Mac.

I often make use of Slack's

I sometimes get an impulse to jump and see if I can reach a branch high up on a tree. I start lower down, then set myself a goal I could never achieve, then turn back to a lower branch. Yesterday, on a walk, I saw a branch I wanted to touch and jumped as high as I could to reach the leaves. The purpose? To fulfill the sense of excitement I had at the prospect of touching the leaves. I touched it, then failed to reach the next one. There is something joyful about trying to touch branches, paricularly when one's ability to estimate height is poor: you never know what is just high enough up that you cannot touch. At least, until you try!

I looked up from my desk to see the outline of a castle.

I am writing a blog post every day from December 1st to December 24th, 2021, about a blogger whose writing or site I follow. My aim for this series is to help you discover new blogs and to help get the word out about content creators whose blogs I appreciate. You can read more about this series in the inaugural Day 1 post.

My website has been hosted on many platforms in the past, from Vercel, back when I had a website running Next.js, to DigitalOcean and Netlify. I stuck with DigitalOcean for a long while back when I decided that I wanted to have a static website. While DigitalOcean did cost money to use, I needed a server for some of the experiments I was running. Back when I got started with the IndieWeb, there were some Python scripts I wanted to run that required a server.

I am writing a blog post every day from December 1st to December 24th, 2021, about a blogger whose writing or site I follow. My aim for this series is to help you discover new blogs and to help get the word out about content creators whose blogs I appreciate. You can read more about this series in the inaugural Day 1 post.

I rode a cable car on my trip to San Francisco earlier this year. The cable car may be the closest I have been to a rollercoaster in terms of the uneasiness of the journey. We went up a big hill, then went down. I rode the full cable car on the Powell / Hyde journey. One experience from the journey that I recall vividly, aside from the beautiful views and excitement I felt on the journey, is one passenger trying to figure out how to buy a digital ticket on the cable car journey.

A few years ago, I actively prepared a

While reading the newspaper on Sunday, I found myself stopping to take note of numerous words. On the one hand, I finished my reading with a plethora of new words to feature on this series; on the other, I kept taking my phone out so I could note down the words for later reference. I should perhaps start carrying a pen and paper so I can note interesting words I encounter.

I used to be good at tending to open tabs, closing tabs when they are not needed or moving them into a folder when not in use for later reference. I am now out of practice with this habit. In looking through my open tabs, I found three new words that I want to feature in this series. You keep notes of words to include in this series in browser tabs? Sometimes!

Over the last few years, my musical habits have consistently obeyed the following pattern. I find a song or a few songs from an artist I like. I go to explore new songs from that artist one album at a time. Sometimes, I enjoy many more songs by the artist. I listen to the same songs on repeat, joyfully. As the days pass, different songs get stuck in my head. Recently, I have found myself humming tunes every so often. On one occasion, I was walking with my headphones in and I wanted to do nothing but sing Taylor Swift music out loud. I didn't, but I did hum the tune to one of her songs lightly.

I have been writing my own new tab extension for Firefox. I thought I was done yesterday but I decided to make a few enhancements. I didn't end up implementing any of the

I am a technical writer, and have been for around four years. I work at Roboflow, where I help people learn about computer vision and document various open source software projects we maintain (supervision, Autodistill, Inference, and more).

I was reading a post on Veronique’s blog ^1 about television show couples, which inspired me to reflect on the subject matter. I primarily watch comedy shows, which is to say that my list errs heavily towards couples in comedies.

I am writing a blog post every day from December 1st to December 24th, 2021, about a blogger whose writing or site I follow. My aim for this series is to help you discover new blogs and to help get the word out about content creators whose blogs I appreciate. You can read more about this series in the inaugural Day 1 post.

I didn't know the song was called Heart and Soul at the time. The tune was stuck in my mind. I cannot express the sensation in my mind when I think Heart and Soul in the written word. I see Niles and Daphne, characters in Frasier singing the song (I am rewatching the television series at present). I hear the piano playing. I remember the song is foundational to my interest in playing music.

Obadiah Coffee, based in Edinburgh, roasts a range of excellent single origin coffees, including some unique coffees that are rare to find. I have bought coffee from Obadiah in the past and I had a few questions about their work. I reached out to Danny, the head of coffee at Obadiah, who took some time to answer my questions. Read out chat below.

While perusing the IndieWeb wiki, I stumbled upon a quote from a blog post written on adactio.com. The quote was:

One of my favourite parts of travelling to a destination by plane -- and indeed train -- is to play an available piano. I find playing piano relaxing, a way for me to take a break from thinking about all of the details of my journey. With that said, there are many airports without pianos, and many more that have one piano in a single terminal but no pianos in other terminals. I was speaking with a few people about how we could help place pianos in airports where one is not available, providing travellers with the ability to have the same experience I and many other travellers have: a moment to sit back and make music between legs of a journey.

I gazed out at the sunset. The sun had not yet passed the horizon so I had to aim my gaze in such a way where I was able to appreciate the colours on the horizon while not staring at the sun. In the foreground, I noticed illuminated flies above the trees. They had a warm colour, as if the light was from the yellow colours in the sky onto the flies. They danced.

I like to reflect on moments of joy on this blog: the tiny moments throughout your day that make you feel happy, joyful, or alive. Many of these moments are what I observe; the serendipitious little things that happen as I go about my day. I wanted to try something new in this series: summarize a few little moments of joy in one post, the ones that may not make their way into a longer feature post.

We spoke every week or two. You were behind the coffee bar, I was a patron. One day, you casually mentioned that you were moving on to a new career. I was excited, although in hindsight I am not sure to what extent my excitement is visible and interpretable. Part of me entered a contemplative mood. An acquaintance who brought warmth to an environment moved on to something new. Fresh horizons, a new opportunity to shine. Will the environment be the same?

For the last year and a half, I have been co-hosting Homebrew Website Club London / Europe, a meetup where people interested in personal websites come together to chat, ask questions, and share on what they are working. I co-host the meetup with Mark.

A day or two ago, a fellow IndieWebber [^1] recommended that I contribute to the IndieWeb wiki. The IndieWeb wiki is at the heart of the community. It is a live and growing repository of information about all things IndieWeb.