BuildStream and host tools
It’s been a while since I had to build a whole operating system from source. I’ve mostly been working on compilers so far this year at Codethink in fact, but my new project is to bring up some odd...
View ArticleGUADEC 2017 by numbers
I’m finally getting around to doing a bit of a post-mortem for the 2017 edition of GUADEC that we held in Manchester this year. Let’s start with some statistics! GUADEC 2017 had… 264 registrations (up...
View ArticleGUADEC 2017: timeline
After the statistics perhaps you are interested in reading a timeline of GUADEC 2017! In particular you can compare it to the burn down chart from the GUADEC HowTo and see how that interacts with...
View ArticleManchester transport consulation
Manchester council is running a transport survey at the moment. There’s nothing I like more than ranting into pointless online forms, and here’s an extract from my response: Manchester is not the worst...
View ArticleUsing BuildStream through Docker
BuildStream isn’t packaged in any distributions yet, and it’s not entirely trivial to install it yourself from source. BuildStream itself is just Python, but it depends on a modern version of OSTree...
View Article2017 in review
I began this year in a hedge in Mexico City and immediately had to set off on a 2 day aeroplane trek back to Manchester to make a very tired return to work on the 3rd January. From there things …...
View ArticleHow BuildStream uses OSTree
Note: In version 1.2, BuildStream stopped using OSTree to cache artifacts. It now uses a generic “Content Addressable Storage” system, implemented internally but designed to be compatible with Bazel...
View ArticleTagcloud
The way we organize content on computers hasn’t really evolved since the arrival of navigational file managers in late 1980s. We have been organizing files into directories for decades. Perhaps the...
View ArticleGUADEC 2018 Videos: Help Wanted
At this year’s GUADEC in Almería we had a team of volunteers recording the talks in the second room. This was organized very last minute as initially the University were going to do this, but thanks to...
View ArticleNatural Language Processing
This month I have been thinking about good English sentence and paragraph structure. Non-native English speakers who are learning write in English will often think of what they want to say in their...
View ArticleGUADEC 2018 Videos: All Done
All the editing & uploading for the GUADEC videos is now finished. The videos were all uploaded to YouTube some time ago, and they are all now available on http://videos.guadec.org/2018 as well....
View ArticleWriting well
We rely on written language to develop software. I used to joke that I worked as a professional email writer rather than a computer programmer (and it wasn’t really a joke). So if you want to be a...
View ArticleHow Tracker is tested in 2019
I became interested in the Tracker project in 2011. I was looking at media file scanning and was happy to discover an active project that was focused on the same thing. I wanted to contribute, but I...
View ArticlePaying money for things
Sometimes it’s hard to make money from software. How do you make money from something that can be copied infinitely? Right now there are 3 software tools that I pay for. Each one is supplied by a small...
View ArticleInspire me, Nautilus!
When I have some free time I like to be creative but sometimes I need a push of inspiration to take me in the right direction. Interior designers and people who are about to get married like to create...
View ArticleThe Lesson Planalyzer
I’ve now been working as a teacher for 8 months. There are a lot of things I like about the job. One thing I like is that every day brings a new deadline. That sounds bad right? It’s not: one …...
View ArticleTools I like for creating web apps
I used to dislike creating websites. CSS confused me and JavaScript annoyed me. In the last year I’ve grown to like web development again! The developer tools available in the web browsers of 2019 are...
View ArticleTwitter without Infinite Scroll
I like reading stuff on twitter.com because a lot of interesting people write things there which they don’t write anywhere else. But Twitter is designed to be addictive, and a key mechanism they use is...
View ArticleBlog about what you do!
Am I the first to blog from GUADEC 2019? It has been a great conference: huge respect to the organization team for volunteering significant time and energy to make it all run smoothly. The most...
View ArticleTracker developer experience improvements
There have been lots of blog posts since I suggested we write more blog posts. Great! I’m going to write about what I’ve done this month. I’m excited that work started on Tracker 3.0, after we talked...
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