This afternoon, I went to a charity shop in search of books. I was hoping to find an old encyclopedia, for I am curious to learn more about printed encyclopedias of past times. In my search of the shelves of books, with my head angled so I could read every book title, I found som … | Continue reading
Every so often, I pass a library where, written in stone atop the tall building are the words "Free Library." Every time I see these words, Free Library, I stop to think about what that means. A space where it is literally set in stone that this is a place for books. This is a pl … | Continue reading
Last year, there was a moment where I was walking on a pavement with my eyes closed. I was exhausted, having not been sleeping to a good schedule and pushing myself beyond my limits. My life felt difficult. I was seduced by making progress and creating new things, unable to accep … | Continue reading
Content warning: This post discusses mental health. It is Mental Health Awareness Week here in the UK, and Mental Health Awareness Month in the US. Raising awareness for mental health is close to my heart. I suffer from anxiety. I know the pain of what seems seemingly easy -- lea … | Continue reading
I woke up this morning feeling particularly tired. I went to sleep at 1am, after spending the evening with many wonderful friends. I let myself sleep past my alarm a little bit. The moments where I can sleep in for 15 minutes are precious. Moments where I know the new day is here … | Continue reading
I have blogged in the past about how my website is the product of incremental improvements: tiny changes I make as I learn more about the web. For example, how I display the blockquote HTML element has changed as I have learned more about content presentation. This got me thinkin … | Continue reading
I have two problems when it comes to sifting through research papers, particularly on Arxiv. Problem #1: Discovering new information in established fields The first is wading through significant amounts of research on a topic in which I am actively involved. For me, this is the f … | Continue reading
The previous owner of the flat in which I live left a plant pot. A blue plant plot with patterns on its sides. I was left with no information about the plant. There was no message about what I could expect from the plant -- what type it was. I wondered: what would grow, if anythi … | Continue reading
The leaves are growing through the blossom on the two trees near my flat. As I gaze out the window, I see the occasional petal fall. On the ground, there are many petals. The ground is a sea of pink, interspersed with the dark green of the grass on which the petals lay. The fall … | Continue reading
Perhaps I have some kind of imposter syndrome when it comes to believing that I can have interesting (to me) ideas. I often think that someone else will come up with a better idea for something -- for example, a new topic to write about, or a new project to work on. I can hear a … | Continue reading
My posts begin with a hashtag, then another hashtag (##). This is the markdown indicator for a second-level heading. Then, I like to write a title. The title helps ground me. I wrote the title of my last post as "My first cup of coffee", with the intent to write about my first cu … | Continue reading
I distinctly remember my first cup of coffee. It was served in a small cup, with milk. I was young, although I am not sure what age I was -- perhaps around nine or 10 -- when, after being curious about coffee for a while, my dad finally brewed me a cup. This was a time before I k … | Continue reading
I have been writing down moments that bring me joy in my notes recently. All of these have notes started in my main TODO list, which includes every note I take. I enjoy having my notes of joy on my TODO list: I may be working on something then smile because I read something that … | Continue reading
As soon as I wrote that title, I started singing the title track in my head. You left your typewriter at my apartment. Straight from the tortured poets department. It is a catchy song. I started listening to The Tortured Poets Department before work on the day of its release, but … | Continue reading
I have been on my feet for much of the last three weeks, occupied by travel, work, and conversation. I am a bit tired right now: my body is telling me that I need rest in such a way that my mind is more blank than usual. I do not have any ideas for upcoming projects, but I hold t … | Continue reading
Last week, I attended a fascinating technology conference. After the event, I was tired; I had been "on" all day and was ready to be with my own company. With that said, the event ended before dinner time. I was not yet ready for dinner, so I turned to one place that had been on … | Continue reading
Herein, a poem about email and spam email. digital letters, flying through cyberspace with every note, we can talk about our space: what we like, what we dream, what's on our bookcase email: in words and sentiments, grace. occasionally, in a sea of exchanges, we find spam a speci … | Continue reading
There are two cherry blossom trees near my flat. I remember one of them painting the view outside with pink last year. Surrounded by green trees, this pink one stood on its own. I do not know enough about blossom to know why that tree blossoms and the others do not. This is one o … | Continue reading
For a while, I have been pondering "what could a James' Coffee Blog mascot look like?" I thought about an anime character in the "moe" style, which the Fandom aesthetics wiki defines as "a Japanese term describing the subgenre of anime and manga visuals focused on cuteness and in … | Continue reading
For a while, I have been taking photos of new mugs I buy. I used to keep an up-to-date list on my mugs page but as with many things that seldom need updated, the list became out of date. This got me thinking about new ways I could present the mugs I own; methods that could be a b … | Continue reading
Earlier today, I wrote a program that generates a trading card for a web site. The program downloads a web page, retrieves meta information about it, and formats the information into a trading card style. The way I made the program was less elegant than I conceived in my head. I … | Continue reading
When I was young, I learned that P.S. was used to attach an additional message at the end of a letter or email. I vaguely remember hearing it on the television. But, I was never taught what P.S. meant. It all started with a blog post, as it often does. I was thinking about whethe … | Continue reading
My meal arrived on the plane. I like airline food. I was served a chicken and pasta meal, coleslaw, an apple and custard crunch dessert, bread, and water. I should note that the proportions of chicken to pasta were heavily favoured toward pasta, but that was okay. For the best pa … | Continue reading
Next time you make a cup of coffee, take a moment to reflect on the experience. Do you start drinking the coffee when it is a bit too hot? Do you wait until the temperature is just right? Do you forget about the coffee but drink it anyway? How does the cup feel against your lips? … | Continue reading
Travel is a between space: the thing on which you want to focus is the future, but there are logistics in the moment that one must consider. I enjoy this liminality and the surprise moments of peace between the bustle. This morning, I woke up early -- before 5am -- and sprung to … | Continue reading
One of the joys and the promise of developing programming languages is that you can develop your own way to interface with a computer. I have seen two opportunities to explore programming language design to fill gaps I have seen. I built an abstract language for computer vision t … | Continue reading
Today, sitting on a comfortable bed in a hotel room, I have been reading and watching videos about philosophy: existentialism, (optimistic) nihilism; Satre, Camus. Also, I have been watching videos on computer science. I was hoping to find a coding project on which to work, an ac … | Continue reading
I have been coding since I was eight or nine years old. I started with drag-and-drop programming, trying to figure out how to make a game in a tool called Microsoft TouchDevelop. I recall making one or two things, but I mostly tinkered with what was made by the community; there w … | Continue reading
When I was young, in the mid 2000s, I used computers to navigate four websites: the BBC kids games, the PBS kids games, and, later, the NASA Hubble Telescope photographs and Club Penguin. The BBC, PBS, and Club Penguin websites were about entertainment. I could sit on the family … | Continue reading
One of my graphic communication teachers in high school had an exercise that they would use, I think, to spark ideas: put your pen on the page, then start drawing. Go in circles. Let the pen flow. Pay no regard to trying to make anything in particular, instead embracing the rando … | Continue reading
One of the things I love about poetry is you can set out with a theme in mind and, through the limitations of rhyme, end up on a completely different -- but equally delightful -- track than you expected. I thought to myself "I would love to have a poem to end my web pages!" so I … | Continue reading
One of my favourite pastimes is clicking around the blogosphere, exploring and reading personal websites. I especially love encountering blogrolls or link lists, wherein a site owner links to other websites that may be of interest. I have maintained a blogroll listing some of the … | Continue reading
I sometimes think about the vast expanse of space. What it would be like to see something for the first time. A star. A planet. Then I looked around where I am. To the daffodils, the cherry blossoms on a particular tree, the leaves on a single tree on a familiar path. If I look c … | Continue reading
Before the bus leaves, there is a moment of stillness. The rain is coming down, lightly, but the sun peeks through the clouds. Meanwhile, I ponder: an adventure is afoot. There are memories to be made. There will be new opportunities to make people smile; to bring joy. The engine … | Continue reading
This is the third interview in Technical Writing Chats, a series where I speak with technical writers about their day-to-day role and how they got started in their career. Today's interview is with Sabrina Lim, a Senior Associate Technical Writer at Workday. I sincerely hope you … | Continue reading
When I write poetry, the text I write is (mostly) plain text. To publish poetry on my website, I need to add a bit of HTML. This HTML ensures that stanzas are properly formatted; otherwise, my plain text poetry may wrap or get smooshed together. (You can bet that this is the firs … | Continue reading
commuting in the evening: a liminal space a time that necessitates a new pace around are stories of people from yonder: kids playing, people working, interspersed with those who ponder. on the train, I have time to think; to be i think about everything from programming to poetry … | Continue reading
oh, this web we weave where we can share any idea of which we can conceive knowledge is free for one and all with plenty to inspire and enthrall serendipitious interactions around reveberating, with a delightful sound matters important, niche or sundry an hour spent: sweet like h … | Continue reading
(Not to be confused with Rubenerd and Clara's PenguinCoffee.) I have been experimenting with using my personal knowledge graph to write poetry this week. Using KGL, my knowledge graph query language, I can look up a concept, or a concept connected to another concept. I explored v … | Continue reading
eyes heavy i stayed up too late for: the internet! exciting as it is brilliant ideas(?) of vast varities: math, computing, humour. what i need right now the magic elixir java, joe, mud the caffeine, my driver my eyes are no longer heavy i now see the day ignited by a spark, I ask … | Continue reading
A radio station was playing through the speakers when I was standing in line in Greggs to buy my lunch. A familiar song played. It took me a moment to figure out what it was. One of those tiny moments where you say to yourself wait, then you light up a second later when you know … | Continue reading
A (brief) introduction to random boolean networks Random boolean networks follow a set of predefined rules. A network has: An initial state of N nodes, whose values may be set at random or loaded from a seed, and; A dictionary that connects each node to other nodes, and; A set of … | Continue reading
The last few days have been unseasonably rainy, interspersed with fog. This has me thinking about what feelings different weather patterns evoke. In the fog of the morning, I looked out the window with curiosity. What is out there? Really? I know the buildings. What stories are t … | Continue reading
discussions exchanged over Zoom in which ideas about the web do bloom our minds are focused on what we can make better the web, the most brilliant typesetter this is homebrew website club at which you can never except a snub for all web wanderers are welcome, young and old charac … | Continue reading
This is the second interview in Technical Writing Chats, a series where I speak with technical writers about their day-to-day role and how they got started in their career. Today's interview is with Nathan Driver, a Technical Writer for the UK Government Digital Services team. I … | Continue reading
to whom I gave a name my feline friend in our house, you laid claim (even if you, occasionally drove us around the bend) shy, at first, we all were then, over time: the precipice of a superbloom always, we took delight in your purr it was impossible for us to show gloom the wine … | Continue reading
discussions exchanged over Zoom in which ideas about the web do bloom our minds are focused on what we can make better the web, the most brilliant typesetter this is homebrew website club at which you can never except a snub for all web wanderers are welcome, young and old charac … | Continue reading
i (mostly) love the discussions about: movies we watched and the details we cannot remember and how we laugh about the missing details. i (absolutely) love the moments when: our personaliities superbloom and we realise we can be ourselves truly ourselves. the homecooked meals and … | Continue reading