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Older writing

Since 2011. Some of it has aged well.

2024

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    Certifiable!

    Certification: is it really worth it? With enough time on my hands, it was time to find out.

2022

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    Improving Our Recycling

    One simple change at a time, we have reduced our use of non-recyclable products around the home. Here's how we did it and what we have planned next.

2021

2020

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    Redux is Not a Hammer

    With a tool like Redux in your hand, everything can look like a nail.

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    Up to 11ty

    Without too much pain, I am now solely using Node.js to build this blog, and improve it along the way.

2019

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    Coding Consistently with VS Code

    It's fast, lightweight, widely-adopted and ludicrously-customisable. Better yet, you can easily share extensions and settings between VS Code projects.

2018

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    Talking Software and Security

    I recently achieved a personal goal of delivering a rather nerve-wracking but rewarding talk at another excellent ESRM conference in London. Take a look at the slides!

2017

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    Offering Code Interview Advice

    Code interviews are generally a pain for everyone, but are great when well executed. I've had the (mis)fortune to experience several different styles, and have some advice on how to improve your tests and, ultimately, the type of candidate you hope to hire!

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    Encrypting All the Things

    Four years ago, I tried to take back our digital content. How did it go, and what are we doing now?

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    Tackling HackerRank with F#

    I've had a personal goal of learning F# for some time, and HackerRank provided the perfect platform to test the language. Both are highly recommended!

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    Evolving with Jekyll

    Finally: a personal blog that I completely love, generated and optimised from OSS to be simple, fast and secure.

2016

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    Talking Tech

    I gave a talk at the awesome Greenwood Campbell, entitled Hacking a Career in Technology. I was excited, nervous, mildly terrified, and hopeful it would be a success. So why do it, and what counts as a success?!

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    Celebrating 2015, Anticipating 2016

    Last year was the most challenging but rewarding of my life. Here's what happened, and a couple of goals for the new year.

2015

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    Amazed by Our Two-Year-Old Dude

    I'm sure every parent is the same, but I am constantly amazed by our little boy. I wish I had written down more of our conversations, but I had to share this beauty from yesterday evening.

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    Late Reflecting on re:develop 2015

    Here are my ridiculously-late notes from an ever-improving re:develop conference. In short: it was excellent. It was interesting to see software mimicking real life, such as pipelines and containers. It was even better to see more women presenting and in attendance, too.

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    Switching to Squarespace

    After nearly five years of running a self-hosted WordPress blog, I recently migrated it to Squarespace. It took a while to reach the decision, but I'm very happy and am looking forward to writing more frequently. But why move?

2014

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    Building Responsive Treemaps

    Charts help us to visualise data, but not only do different types of chart suit different types of data, the space available for them also affects the choice.

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    Disabling Toast Notifications

    Software and social networking changed our lives a long time ago. Ever felt chained to them, though? Or, maybe worse, don't know that you are?

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    Moving to Bitbucket from GitHub

    Git is great. I've explained why version control is so useful before, and loved how easy it was to get started with GitHub. Now, however, having used Atlassian products as part of my daily workflow, I'm migrating to Bitbucket, its Git hosting solution. Why?

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    Married!

    That's it! Fifteen months of planning, a house move and baby later: we're married. And what a day it was!

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    Leaving London

    After 5.5 years of working in London, I'm relocating with my family; hopefully for many years, and probably forever, or until we retire and globe trot.

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    Starting Strong

    You might have noticed that the new home of my blog looks very different, and hopefully agree it's a big improvement. That's because I made a big mistake last time: I didn't start strong.

2013

2012

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    Starting a Theme

    Websites are easy to develop, right? Host a bit of HTML and anyone can access it from anywhere using practically anything. Not quite.

2011

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    Trying to Work, Play, and Maybe Blog?!

    I started the year with the ambition of creating a site to showcase what I can do. As you can see from the date of my first (and previous) post, that hasn't happened yet!