Derek Graham

Indiana was the name of the dog not the Dr :) Surely they should cycle through Fluffy, Spike, Killer, Rex, Lassie, Fido, Mr Chuckles …

Alan Turing’s blue plaque in St Leonards reads: Alan Turing 1912 - 1954 Founder of computer science and cryptographer, whose work was key to breaking the wartime Enigma code, spent his childhood here.

Portrait of Turing smiling rather frutily.

Today is the anniversary of Alan Turing’s suicide, in 1954.
Turing was the father of modern computing. His codebreaking helped the Allies to win WWII.
Arrested for being gay, he chose chemical castration over a prison sentence. He lost his security clearance, as all homosexuals were deemed a risk.

Border terrier standing on an old tree stump smiling at the camera

The perfect pair

How can an *Equality* and *Human Rights* Commissioner say with a straight face trans people have to accept reduced rights, whether perceived or actual?

A mug of tea with a lilac blossom pattern on it, alongside lilac and Terry Pratchett pin badges.

Happy Glorious 25th of May! GNU Sir Terry Pratchett. How do they rise up?
#Glorious25th #Discworld #TruthJusticeFreedomReasonablyPricedLove #Speakhisname

how do they rise up

happy glorious twenty-fifth of May, let us all wear the lilac in memory of Sir Terry

The future is already here!

'Agentic' means making the suffix of your bash script '.ai' instead of '.sh', and piping through a non-deterministic LLM rather than sed.

You've got this.

Picture of an old 5” black and white crt tv displaying a raspberry pi’s desktop and terminal window.

New vibe coding setup

The Stegasaurus Who Came to Tea? I would read that

Similarly, we don’t reward peeps who ship well-tested code with no bugs, we reward those that stay up all night fighting a production bug and make a show of how hard it was

YouTube video by coneyislandgirl930 Jill Sobule - "Don't Let Us Get Sick" (Warren Zevon)

youtu.be/g1aoA5f8O9g

I'm running my Keeping It Simple masterclass a few times at conferences over the next few months:

Codecamp, Bucharest, 6-7 May
codecamp.ro/masterclasse...

SDD, London, 12 May
sddconf.com/agenda

GOTO Copenhagen, 30 September
gotocph.com/2025/masterc...

paging @eon-next.bsky.social

Javascript call stack showing meter reading page exception.

Unexpected (aren't they all?) @kevlin.bsky.social while trying to submit a meter reading

Complexity Theory predicts that organisational outcomes are more likely to be determined not by individuals, but by the interactions between individuals & groups of individuals.

Any approach to improving effectiveness that focuses on individual performance is likely to fail.

Debugging an ancient odbc problem today with a younger dev and describing the windows .ini file format feels like teaching ancient Mesopotamian languages to The Jetsons

YouTube video by Varietopia with Paul F. Tompkins My Old School - Paul F Tompkins & Aimee Mann

The great Aimee Mann and also me and also a full band presenting the STEELIEST of Dans

Copilot response to me catching a bug in generated code: "You're right! My apologies for the oversight. The date variable should indeed capture the entire date part, not just the year. Let's correct that:"

I keep getting the spooky feeling that the generative AI is testing us more than we are testing it

Presentation: Help! I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up Presentation: Help! I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up - Download as a PDF or view online for free

If anyone wants the slides they are here: www.slideshare.net/slideshow/pr... #dddNorth

Fantastic day as usual @dddnorth.bsky.social 2025. #dddNorth

Apropos of nothing, here's a splendid old, orangey pig standing proudly on his wall. A wall that separates him from all those bad hombres in the farmyard.

Discworld QOTD, from Guards! Guards!

It would have made it harder to slice to be sure

Alright, a zero-th Law:

A robot must determine how many bridges and/or bicycles are shown in a series of nine pictures

Maybe we need a fourth law?

Had my talk “Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” selected for @dddnorth.bsky.social in February!

Screenshot of the DDD North agenda as it stands at midday on the 24th January 2025 - 3 slots still to confirm. Full agenda available at https://www.dddnorth.co.uk/schedule

Registration now open for @DDDNorth 2025! The agenda has been published (just one or two slots left to fill...
t.co/8qrDeR8IxK

Oh hey Kevin! How nice to see you again :)

Writers, musicians, actors & other creators strongly oppose upending copyright law to favour AI companies, as suggested in the UK's AI Opportunities Action Plan.

As Kate Mosse says, seeking economic growth "cannot be on the basis of theft of our work".

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...