Henry Coles

Apply for the New Writers Awards Applications for the New Writers Awards are now open!

Applications for the New Writers Awards 2026 are now OPEN! ✍

The New Writers Awards is an annual awards programme supporting individuals from across Scotland committed to developing their writing.

Find out more and apply 👇

Blitzers at the Edinburgh Book Festival! Alastair Chisholm will be at the Edinburgh Book Festival with his new book BLITZERS for an interactive event on 9th August 2025

For anyone looking for a kids event at the book festival, @alastairc.com is running the Battle Of The Blitzers this weekend.

#edbookfest

alastairc.com/events/20250...

If you want a weird but true fact to talk about:

Dexter Holland, lead singer of The Offspring, was instrumental in this. His doctorial thesis in molecular biology was sequencing mRNA in HIV. The paper was also heavily cited in creating the COVID-19 vaccine.

Thanks. I'll likely live.

Wheelchair Access, Wheelchair Accessible Toilets, Audio Enhancement System, Captioning

Fringe tip for anyone in Edinburgh. My partner and out eldest very much enjoyed Golden Time.

#edfringe

www.edfringe.com/tickets/what...

Release 1.20.1 · hcoles/pitest #1417 Update dependencies #1418 Filter build messages with the same content #1419 Prevent re-evaluation of suite classes

Starting the week with a small pitest release

github.com/hcoles/pites...

#java

Henley & Partners’ wealth migration reports have been reported all over the world, both to prove both that there's a massive exodus of wealth from the UK and that there isn't.

Our forensic review finds the data riddled with anomalies - and in key places looks fabricated:

If you were alive in the 1980s, this is among the most wonderful & truly incredible things you have ever witnessed in your lifetime.

Dear Open Source Developer,

For reasons that are not entirely clear, I am writing to you to say that your code ought to use an api that did not exist until 5 years after you wrote it.

To add some more context, Orville Wright piloted both of these aircraft.

Good point. My typo game is strong today.

Talking to a friend reminded me that not everyone knows the wonders of power over Ethernet.

It works *much* better than wifi-extenders, and the kit is cheap on e-bay.

It's unlikely to give you the advertised speeds, but likely to be more than fast enough normal use.

Search for "AV600"

That is the worst/best cover I've ever seen for it.

I've had an idea for my next book which is making it hard to concentrate on the book that I'm meant to be editing even though I know I would make absolutely no progress on the new one if I were to allow myself to concentrate on that.

Perhaps the answer is to randomly make another tool instead?

The front cover of the special centenary edition comic by Beano. Showing the Bash Street Kids bursting out of the front of the National Library of Scotland.

🎉 It’s our official birthday on Thursday 7 August!

On the day, visit us at George IV Bridge, Edinburgh or Kelvin Hall, Glasgow to get your own copy of a special edition centenary comic created by Beano, especially for this occasion!

#Beano #NLS100 #LoveLibraries #LibrariesAloud

Retro Electro Jumble — The National Museum of Computing We will have a fantastic selection of  1980s Retro PCs & Equipment  on offer, featuring iconic brands like  Amstrad, Commodore, and Dragon . If you're looking to complete your colle...

Retro jumble sale at bletchley tomorrow

www.tnmoc.org/events/2025/...

I'm guessing Simon Jenkins has never visited "Brontë Country". I grew 20 minutes walk away from Haworth, we've had wind turbines since the 90s.

They were a change, but they didn't destroy the landscape. I quite liked some of them.

I'd forgotten that I'd written this entirely true software engineering story, apparently still live on the NCR Edinburgh blog, although NCR Edinburgh itself is no more.

medium.com/ncr-edinburg...

Young Scots Writer o the Year Award We’re on the lookout for talented young folk aged 11–18 writing and creating in Scots.

One week left to enter the Young Scots Writer o the Year Award 2025! 🗓️

Are you someone with stories to share? Or a teacher working with young writers we should know about? Then there is still time to enter:

Making Mutation Testing Faster Making mutation testing faster

Just published a short blog post on how to use some new features in pitest and arcmutate to tune your build.

blog.arcmutate.com/faster-mutat...

#java

There's another way??

I think that makes more sense although, given the prevalence of speeding, what it would most likely be recording is the areas where people are available/care enough to report it rather than the areas where it is most problematic.

Although I'd like there to be some accountability for people speeding through my neighbourhood, I'm not sure an "AI" app that can produce false positives is helpful. For real false positives it is unjust. For speeders it provides a way to cast doubt. I assume speed cameras have rigorous requirements

I keep being followed by outfits where the deal seems to be "pay us money and we'll list your book on our site". 3 or 4 in the last month.

If you are about to give money to one ask yourself "when did I last go to that site for a recommendation for something to read?".

I'm guessing, never.

A friend has explicit performance goals of "using AI", and has to justify themselves when they complete tasks without it.

When I next get some work done I'm going to demand that a hammer is used for each task and require an explanation for anything done without it.

Small knife with wooden handle and cylindrical blade flattened at the end.

I'm meant to be doing structural edits, so of course I spent the evening making a knife out of a nail.

It's surprisingly easy to do.

I'm not very good at sharpening things, but have got it cutting slightly better than the exacto style knife it's designed to replace.

Undiscovered Voices is open for submissions.

It made a real difference for me. It was the one of the early dominoes in a chain the resulted in me finding my agent and secret writing news. Without it, I'd probably still be in the query trenches.

So, I'd definitely recommend entering if you can.

If you create something original, no. If you regurgitate someone else's code from memory, possibly (it's complicated).

If you were to switch from writing code to fiction, and download terabytes of pirated e-books to train yourself on, the violation takes place before you write a single word.

It was ok if you respected the licence the author had published it under. If the code was AGPL, then it almost certainly was not ok.

If an AI regurgitates code it was trained on, the licence is stripped along with the identity of the author and their right to control how their work is used.