kate

kate, 2 days ago (edited 2 days ago) to random

I had a lovely morning reading The Living Mountain while a wren sang on our balcony. Described by the Guardian as “the finest book ever written on nature and landscape in Britain”, it details Nan Shepherd’s lifelong relationship with the Cairngorms and her philosophy of life:

“So, simply to look on anything, such as a mountain, with the love that penetrates to its essence, is to widen the domain of being in the vastness of non-being. Man has no other reason for his existence.”

kate, 15 days ago to random

Glen Sligachan, Skye:

kate, 8 days ago to random

I finally went to see the memorial to the patron saint of queer programmers, Alan Turing:

kate, 8 days ago to random

I get that this door hanger is meant to be playful, but some of these are downright creepy — I suspect most room service staff have had sleazy guys say some variant on “Care to join us?”

kate, 11 days ago to random

A stranger called me “stylish” today, which I feel vindicates my refusal to dress appropriately for the weather and ground conditions

kate, 22 days ago to random

British transphobia has now reached the stage of coercing young people into detransitioning using the threat of referrals to social services if they access treatment through private providers. The Good Law Project is crowdfunding for a possible legal challenge: https://goodlawproject.org/crowdfunder/nhs-cyp-guidance/

kate, 24 days ago (edited 24 days ago) to random

Bristol came so close to having the first Green majority on a upper-tier English council.

Edit: Here’s what the results imply for the Bristol Central constituency in the upcoming general election: https://iamkate.com/data/bristol-central/

kate, 5 months ago to random

I’m playing this first-person open-world game called ‘Life’, and it’s so hard it’s almost unplayable. The character classes are really unbalanced, and you don’t even get to choose one: it’s just assigned when you start playing. They introduced some assists to make things easier (if you can find them buried in the menus), but the elite players complained and they’re being patched out again. Accessibility features for those with disabilities are severely lacking. And it only has permadeath mode.

kate, 26 days ago to random

If you’re designing a programming language, please consider allowing hyphens in identifiers. Hyphen-separated text (kebab-case) is more readable than camelCase, and doesn’t require use of the shift key like camelCase and snake_case. There’s no ambiguity with subtraction if you require spaces around binary operators (which every style guide I’ve ever used requires anyway).

rooster, 28 days ago to random

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kate, 29 days ago to random

On 7th June 2020 anti-racism protestors tore down a statue of slave-trader Edward Colston and threw it into Bristol harbour. The statue that once looked down on the people of Bristol now lies, graffiti-covered and surrounded by placards from the protest, in the M Shed museum. I found the exhibition to be a moving reminder of that brief period when it seemed Britain might finally start to acknowledge and address the legacy of its history of racism.

A placard reading “Colston must fall”
Various placards, including one reading “BLM means gay + trans Black lives matter”
Various placards, including one reading “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”

kate, 1 month ago to random

Brits ask “A penny for your thoughts?” and Americans respond with “Just my two cents”. At current exchange rates ($1.00 = £0.80) this means Brits are receiving 1.6p of American thoughts for just 1p. In this paper we propose an alternative asset pricing model for the marketplace of ideas, considering—

kate, 1 month ago to random

The mnemonic I use to remember Markdown link syntax is that the square brackets look a bit like a button and then the round brackets mention the URL as a note afterwards:

button

kate, 4 months ago to random

Whenever I see a news article with an isometric illustration my first reaction is “I’d love to play that game”. In this case I’m imagining rushing to apply surreal repairs (plasters, rubber bands, duct tape) to a miniaturised rail network while the trains are still running on it.

kate, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago) to random

I’ve updated my historical (1751 to 2024) UK price conversion calculator with 2023’s inflation rate. Prices have doubled since 2005 and tripled since 1991: https://iamkate.com/data/uk-inflation/

kate, 3 months ago to random

#Introduction (January 2024 edition)

Hi, I’m Kate. I’m a 40-year-old software developer based in the south-west of England. I created my first website in 1998, and I’m best known for my National Grid: Live site at https://grid.iamkate.com. In my day job I’m the Development Director at https://itseeze.com, where in 2007 I created a content management system that’s now used by thousands of sites for organisations across the UK and Ireland.

kate, 1 month ago to random

Last night I discovered my christening candle in a box of childhood items my parents gave me. This morning the bathroom lightbulb died while I was having a shower. So now, for the second time in my life, I’m getting washed by the light of a christening candle.

kate, 1 month ago to random

I love it when @Clare makes garam masala — it looks so pretty in the pan

kate, 1 month ago to random

My wife and I went to a mermaid-painting watercolour workshop today. The other attendee, a retired woman, asked us “Are you two related, or just friends?”. Anyway, here’s my first attempt at painting since primary school 30 years ago:

kate, 1 month ago to random

I often see people here discussing the importance of forgiving our past selves for taking so long to realise who we really are. But forgiveness implies blame — that there’s something to forgive.

I believe gratitude is more powerful, and more cathartic, than forgiveness. I say to my past self:

Thank you for all you endured for so many years to keep me safe. Thank you for sacrificing yourself so that I could exist. I’ll make it worth it. I’ll make you proud.

kate, 2 months ago to random

We spend a lot of time asking ourselves “What do I want to do?”, but I think it’s vital to occasionally stop and ask instead “Who do I want to be?” and, once you have your answer, “How do I become that person?”