Software History

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 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.

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.

A few years ago, I actively prepared a

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 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!

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 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 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 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.

I was just skimming the W3C

The primary ways in which I discover new music are: (i) by looking for other songs written by artists who have written songs I like; (ii) looking for artists who have done collaborations with artists whose music I love and; (iii) using Spotify to look for songs that might interest me. Spotify shines when it plays a random song next. I tend to just scroll through lists of songs in playlists but when Spotify plays a song automatically I tend to find something new. This does not always work, but thus far I have found so many great songs by listening to Spotify. This list is not exhaustive but indicative of my primary ways of finding new songs and artists.

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.

Every so often I get an urge to write some Lisp code. I do not have much experience with Lisp. I need to think of a project I can take on that would excite me! Here are some activation functions I wrote in Lisp earlier:

NB: The espresso pictured above was absolutely delicious. It is for illustrative purposes only.

I am presently sitting with nothing else to do. I enjoy writing so here I am again, back for another (short) blog post.

I have become more attuned to new words since starting my Fun with Words series ^1. I was listening to an episode of This Week in Tech yesterday and I heard an interesting word. I stopped to note down the word for future reference, perhaps for inclusion in a future edition of this series. Today, I have four words for you that I have gathered from the depths of digital media after extensive reading and evaluation, specially curated for your edification. (I was going for the verbosity associated with an episode in Stephen Colbert's Meanwhile series in that last sentence ^2. Colbert really does a great job at the humorous run on sentence in that series.)

Note: I wrote this blog post before Christmas 2020 and never got around to publishing it at the time.

The holiday season is quickly coming upon us. I spend a fair amount of my free time reading and I thought it would be nice to write lists of the places I go to read about coffee. When I started writing my first post, I realised that I could not fit every blog that I've read a few posts from this year in one post. To avoid trying to squeeze too much detail into one post, I decided to write a second post, which is the one you are reading right now.

I have been a fan of Coffee People, a digital and print zine about the world of speciality coffee, for months. I first read one of their magazines last year and the content intrigued me. A mix between poetry, photographs, drawings, writing, and other creative media, Coffee People explores a theme through the lens of coffee in each edition. The work I have seen in the editions I have read has been creative and engaging, which is what led me to submit an entry myself.

The Coffee Life, authored by Jass Goodman, was one of, if not the first, coffee blogs I encountered online. This blog was what got me thinking about writing posts on coffee.