Software History

I have been experimenting with OpenAI's GPT 3.5 Turbo API for the last week or so. The result of my experimentation is James Bot, an AI bot that is built to answer questions where the answers can be provided with reference to my blog, wiki, and GitHub READMEs. My goal with this project was to explore building an information retrieval system where a user can ask a natural language query and receive a cohesive answer with reference to relevant source materials to substantiate claims.

This post was written on Saturday, April 15th and published today, April 17th.

One week ago, I announced that I had set myself a challenge to use my phone in grayscale mode for a week. I had been procrastinating more than I would have liked on my phone, and I saw enabling grayscale mode as a potential way to reduce the time I spent engaged. Fewer colours -- particularly the red colour associated with notifications -- would be less distracting.

I want to talk about a project I undertook yesterday. I set up my Raspberry Pi with a new SD card. I do not presently have the energy to think of a more interesting topic. These last few days have been tough. It happens sometimes. We all have days when we are not quite ourselves. This is a blog, not my journal, so I don't want to get bogged down in the details of reality. Here, I write about technology and coffee. To the story!

While Ecuador is not traditionally known for its speciality coffee, I am building more conviction in the potential of this region. Altos De Saragullas, roasted by Redemption Roasters, is the second Ecuadoran coffee I have tasted lately, providing a delicious cup that kept me going this Sunday morning.

A coffee crawl is a planned journey where you visit multiple eateries and drink coffees in various establishments, commonly undertaken when a coffee lover visits a new city or area and wants to explore the local coffee scene.

I would contest that we have already invented time travel. In fact, I think we have invented it twice. The first is through air travel, which enables you to wake up in one country and go to sleep in a country across the globe on the same day. The second is through the combination of photography and memory, which takes us back to a moment and allows us to see something resembling the memory in our head; a place. A time.

Today I have curated a number of interesting words for your edification and review. I have found a lot of inspiration in reading both the Guardian, as well as listening to The Allusionist podcast, a recommendation from a friend. The Allusionist is a podcast about words and language, a blissful combination for an amateur lexicographer such as myself.

A few weeks ago, awaiting the arrival of a train, I stopped to play piano. While playing, someone left a hand-written note on top of the piano. I didn't get to look at them was I was immersed in the music. Thus, I shall perhaps never know who left the note. The note contained a quote:

After a brief hiatus, we're back for another edition of Fun with Words. As I prepared to write this post, I realised that my reading newspapers is a great boon to this series. I usually find a few words in the paper that I can include in an edition of Fun with Words. I haven't read a paper in almost two weeks, though. I have instead traversed the depths of my mind, Merriam Webster, and words I have read in the last day to procure the finest words for today's edition.

I'll have a pumpkin spice latte to go, please. No cream.

Based in Stirling, HBW Coffee is a speciality coffee shop offering coffee, donuts, and vegan and vegetarian food. Their owner, Conor, has worked tirelessly to design a food and drinks menu that meets the needs of his customers. In this interview, I chat with Conor about his role as owner of HBW Coffee, what his typical day at work looks like, and how he designed the HBW food and drink offering. I hope you enjoy our chat.

Every so often, my mind recalls two memories of grammar from early primary school: how to spell the word favourite (

Earlier this week I watched Alex Chan's Sans I/O programming talk. In the talk, Alex argues the importance of separating I/O and program logic, with reference to a situation where his team was unable to use already-available parsing libraries for BagIt data because said libraries depended on local access to a file. This talk resonated with me because it made me realise I tend to couple I/O and logic in my code without realising it. I'd highly recommend watching the talk in full, or at least reading Alex's accompanying summary on their blog.

Manifesto Coffee, based in Perthshire, Scotland, have been working hard for months on a problem that many speciality coffee companies face: how to package their coffee in a sustainable way. After extensive research, the Manifesto Coffee team came up with the idea of packaging their coffee in cans, a form of material that is widely and easily recycled.

Manifesto Coffee is a values-driven company, focused on transparency, quality, fairness, and environmental consciousness. I wanted to learn more about Manifesto's work so I reached out to one of their founders, Alex. He responded to a few questions I had about how Manifesto roasts coffee and what it's like to pursue a career in the coffee industry. Our chat is below.

Update (September 29, 2021): Untitled Oats is no longer operating. With that said, this interview does contain some great insights into the oat milk industry and is worth a read.

It is Friday evening. From the window, I can see a pale lavender colour in the sky. Ever since hearing the song Lavender Haze by Taylor Swift, I have both had the song at the top of my head on many days and become more attuned to the lavender colours in the sky. An intriguing combination!

As I was preparing for bed, I started thinking about the moments that spark joy in every day life. These are the unexpected but beautiful things that happen in one's environment. One recent moment that brought me joy was when I was out walking and I heard birds chirping through my AirPods in a particular location in my neighbourhood. I have come to learn that lots of birds tend to be there and chirp. I took my AirPods out to listen to them. Their song was wonderful.

Of late, I have been writing about little moments of joy on a relatively frequent cadence. Little moments of joy are the small things -- referred to as the

When I am writing an introduction to a technical guide, I usually follow a format like this:

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

In technical writing and communication, every word matters; context, examples, literary devices all come together to help you convey a concept to a reader.

@boffosocko.com mentioned a 2021 New Years' Eve commitment page on the IndieWeb wiki in the community chat a few days ago. The goal of the page is to commit to doing something on your website and then to do it before the end of 2021. I found out about this challenge a few weeks ago but did not have any ideas on what I could commit to. Then, the very sameboffosocko.com mentioned an idea that I could add to my site: person tags.

I am continuing my foray into learning more about Linux and Unix. Over the last few days, I have learned about some shortcuts on the terminal that have made me think:

A few years ago, I started watching clips of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, a

I recently came across plainlanguage.gov, a website maintained by a working group of US federal govenrment employees. The site is maintained by people across agencies with a specific purpose: help government officials and departments use plain language in communications. I have enjoyed clicking through the website, finding guidance. The working group has prepared a list of plain language guidelines that acts as a de facto style guide.

I have set myself a little challenge. I want to learn how to use all of the major coffee brewers by the end of 2020. I have a list in my mind of those I want to learn. I started the year learning the Kalita Wave, then I moved onto the V60. My next choice to try out was the Chemex, the world-famous coffee maker designed by Dr. Peter Schlumbaum, a German inventor who moved to the U.S. due to their favourable patent laws. The Chemex is known for its iconic and clever design, so much so that the device is stored in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

A few months ago, I stopped actively working on my blog where I spoke about programming and technology. I felt it was time for a break and I did not want to push myself into writing when I was not comfortable doing so; the best writing is that which comes from the heart, produced by passion.

IndieWeb Search has been intentionally designed to be open. The source code for the project is open. From the early days, there was a basic API that let you retrieve content and featured snippets from search results. I often chat about the search engine and how it is designed. The project is well documented. Another way in which the search engine is open is that all search result pages come with feeds. I hope to see more search engines do this too.