James Holwell

In other, unrelated news, the Oxford Word of the Year 2025 is rage bait

corp.oup.com/news/the-oxf...

Picard management tip: Give the most interesting assignments to other crew members, not yourself. That's how people stay engaged.

In the Future All Food Will Be Cooked in a Microwave, and if You Can’t Deal With That Then You Need to Get Out of the Kitchen Update 8/8/2025 – I wrote this the day before a certain post by a popular developer services company. I’ve seen some comments this is a rebuttal – it wasn’t meant to be! But…

Ha! This is brilliant :-)

"One of my chefs mentioned that if they could cook the steak on the grill they could get it right the first time. This is not an acceptable attitude in the microwave era."

www.colincornaby.me/2025/08/in-t...

Is “Slashdot effect” still a thing people say?

The Advent of Code Day 1 countdown showing 23:46:29 remaining until the first puzzle unlocks.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Christmas Lightning Talks, Tue, Dec 9, 2025, 6:45 PM | Meetup This is our Christmas event, where our amazing sponsors Corriculo (https://corriculo.co.uk) bring lots of Christmasy things like mulled wine, minced pies, etc 🎄🍷 (on top

For those near Oxford (UK) - we have our December @dotnetoxford.com lighting talk event on the 9th... www.meetup.com/dotnetoxford... #dotnet

Fifteen Years

i’m not crying you’re crying

xkcd: Fifteen Years

Former Netflix chief talent officer: The No. 1 red flag that signals a 'disastrous' hire "How'd they treat you?" Former Netflix chief talent officer Jessica Neal asked the receptionist this question about every candidate after they interviewed.

I actually like this a lot. Don’t hire jerks. (I’ll save you a click: she asks the receptionist whether the candidates treated them well. I agree that it speaks volumes.) www.cnbc.com/2025/11/05/f...

ChatGPT’s signature writing style is everywhere now, and I hate it. It reminds me of when we tried mixing all the beverages at the soda fountain in middle school. We didn’t actually create the perfect drink, we just made a cloying monstrosity that lost everything good about its constituent parts.

I made a joke in my main Discord server about DOOM E1M1 being in a major key and @abigbagofkeys.sickonedude.com actually made it. Jesus fucking Christ listen to this hahahaha

Tropico (2001)

i would rather have a machine that can solve a problem in a way where it is possible to verify the result. as opposed to a machine that can have anxiety and depression

Mozilla deployed an AI bot that overwrote 20 years of volunteer Japanese translations, without consultation. JP community leader resigned, and the offer from Mozilla is to "hop on a quick call to understand why they're struggling". FFS.
HN discussion: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4583...

Perfect timing, leaving just before it got exciting…

about half of the internet seems to be down right now, could be related

A lot of professional services companies' expertise seems to essentially boil down to "We read the instructions".

I’ve been too chicken to try Mac Source Ports so far… worth it for Half Life though, clearly (now if I can only find a disc drive for my original CD)

Parallels? Or black magic?

Consider the possibility that, in software development, communication and feedback is the work, and coding is the interruption.

this is vg www.ft.com/content/94e0...

Picard management tip: Refusing to decide is the worst decision you can make.

Updating my LEGO White House

West Wing s1e03

“It's bad, I know.

- That's it?
- What'll you do?

Bring him in for questioning,
pending charges.

Why be in power if you can't
haul your enemies in?

We're not gonna do anything?

Yeah, we need to arrest people
for being mean.

There is no law, no decency.

He's just getting that”

Exeter College front quad

Welcome to Exeter College! 🎓

It's fantastic to see the College buzzing with life again as we welcome all our new and returning students for 0th Week.

We're excited for the year ahead. ✨

#ExeterCollegeOxford #FloreatExon #OxfordWelcome

This is a great video: very accessible for seeing how much simple chips can do without needing microprocessors

New! Cassetteboy vs Keir Starmer.

This took absolutely ages, so if you'd like to buy us a coffee at ko-fi.com/cassetteboy we'd really appreciate it. Thanks!

Earlier this evening: Royal Albert Hall, last night of the tour.

Wow… what a show.

The new tracks went down really well (Leymelli was the standout for me) and the new arrangements of old favourites were just magical: such a special atmosphere.

In early 2025, beaver activity in the Brdy Protected Landscape Area, Czech Republic, contributed to the restoration of a wetland ecosystem. A family of beavers constructed a series of dams that coincidentally accomplished environmental goals of the Czech government, which had delayed its proposed project since 2018 for bureaucratic and financial reasons. The beaver-built dams saved the Czech government approximately US$1.2 million,

imagine if a family of beavers randomly showed up right now and finished whatever thing you've been putting off

Creating a Pencil Effect in SVG Dragons Abound  produces maps in SVG, which is a vector graphics format.  Vector graphics have a lot of features (such as lossless zoom) tha...

This pencil effect for SVGs is beautiful.

heredragonsabound.blogspot.com/2020/02/crea...

the cast of Hackers (1995) posing in a series of adjacent phone booths

Today is the 30th anniversary of Hackers