James Darling

A version of the GOV.UK logo with the dot replaced with a heart emoji

I've made a browser extension that replaces _that_ dot with a random emoji.

github.com/symroe/GOV.U...

A wiring diagram created by ChatGPT that is not correct.

Unfortunately, "vibe electronics" doesn't appear to be an option yet. Like humans, chatgpt struggles with how many fingers a transistor has.

I think a career doing Test Driven Development is unhelpful when you're doing electronics. Creating a failing test has cost me £60.

Did you know that putting 12v through the 3.3v rail on a Raspberry Pi would break it? I mean, I did, but electricity is invisible, so I don't know how I'm supposed to know where it's going.

I love getting to think and communicate in prototype code alongside designers, so this was a dream project to work on.

Would anyone be interested in joining this software engineer at a policy event? I'm too scared of all the PPEs to go by myself. We can sort linked lists in the back if it's too much. www.resolutionfoundation.org/events/sprin...

Connections – London Create custom puzzles based on the game popularized by New York Times

Are you sick of American references in NYT Connections? I made a quick London-themed one: connections.swellgarfo.com/game/-OL9EiI...

I would have been convinced that Remar charity shops used generative AI for product development if they hadn’t been running since the 90s.

It feels weird, but is it bad? The reduction of external dependencies and build complexity feels like it's worth it?

Committing a 65MB database file to version control still feels weird though.

Appreciated Mohamed Hassan's talk at @brightonruby.com and @simonwillison.net's datasette work for getting me to take SQLite more seriously.

Talk: brightonruby.com/2024/litesta...
Also <3 Simon's excellent work in the open that helped me debug my spatialite docker img: github.com/simonw/datas...

I've repeatedly come across the need to find intersecting polygons for a location from a read-only source, but usually end knee-deep in PostGIS. Once I got it working, SQLLite with Spacialite is a lot more suited for this. The whole thing contained in a read-only docker image.

GitHub - james/IMD_API Contribute to james/IMD_API development by creating an account on GitHub.

For a couple of work projects I've wanted an easy way to find out the English Indices of Deprivation for a location. This data is Open Government Licensed, but only available as a big download

I put the data into an sqlite database and wrapped a micro-api around it: https://github.com/james/IMD_API

I've been a Spotify user since it was invite only in 2008, and contemplating trying the switchover to Apple Music.

I thought they'd have honed the switching process, but had to pay for a 3rd party app to transfer playlists, and still Apple Music thinks I want David Guetta & Harry Styles.

great piece by @abscond.org on making Co-op membership matter more. In the same 2017ish era my take was: detach membership from Co-op-customer transactions and federate it www.holdfastprojects.com/radical-co-o...

The £4m fight for Bethnal Green Working Men's Club An in-depth London Centric investigation. Plus: A discounted penthouse flat at St Pancras; the person dragged by an Overground train with their fingers stuck in the door.

www.londoncentric.media/p/drag-queen...

A proposed membership card design, tied to a local store.

7 years ago I was asked by The Co-op to reimagine co-operative membership for the internet age. I think I had some nice ideas. I've published them in a blog post. abscond.org/2024/11/26/a...

I think it’s a very good view of your work, but more of a wistful view of a younger, more hopeful self.

I’ve used traintimes.org.uk for at least the last decade. There was a time I hoped it was the future, but now it… feels a bit hipster?

But a key thing to note: no matter how prodigious you are in your personal data production, it’s not close enough to being useful for training or tweaking a generative model with. You’ll be looking at prompt augmentation.

Add my Apple reminders to the input · james/ducky@e2a589a Using the reminders-cli to input my current todo list into the prompt for the questions.

I have plonked my Apple reminders into my morning journal prompts, but haven’t had much of an effect yet. Needs more tweaking maybe: github.com/james/ducky/...

I'm very tempted to pay £85.50 to have an expert install these staples and see what happens.

Mildly triggering wordle

Studio life is good life

Claude Computet Use was very easy to get running, but out of the box it gets stuck on the Google cookie consent modal. I think because it requires scrolling? Suddenly we’re caring about the fold again?

A note, 1 week after the last note? What is this called?

abscond.org/2024/10/20/n...

on.ft.com/3NpZNo3

I’m assuming private equity will shut down the Silvertown factory and I want to be the first to put in a bid to buy the huge tin of syrup.

Trying to host a small non-HTTP service somewhere was proving surprisingly difficult. I was staring down the barrel of old-school VMs or Kubernetes.

But then I found you can just the [http_service] block from your @fly.io config toml.

@fly.io is not a heroku replacement. It's better.

For those software developers worried that LLMs will make their programming language trivia worthless: I have some IE6 box model CSS hack trivia for you.