When I am anxious, little moments of joy can help distract me from what is on my mind and bring me back to thinking more positively. In those (more) anxious times, the smile I show after hearing the birds chirp outside can be the difference between my ruminating and my feeling a … | Continue reading
Sometimes, the routine you need is not new, but one you had in the past and, for some reason, stopped. For the last few months, I have been reflecting on how I am less regimented than I once was. I am perhaps striving for equilibrium. My high school self was stricter than I ever … | Continue reading
For a while, I have been thinking about writing a post on reasons why you should write. Today, I reframed this idea into documenting the reasons why I write on this personal website. This newfound framing alleviated the mental block I had around this topic, giving way to my makin … | Continue reading
This is part two of a recurring series on programming language design, starting with my experiences building VisionScript, an abstract programming language for computer vision. With VisionScript, you can classify images, detect objects in images, do those things on camera feeds, … | Continue reading
Part of what I love about blogging is the tiny glimpses into others' lives. Sometimes, I read the writing of someone else and think "I do that, too!" or "I like that as well!" and feel a bit less lonely. Blogging, as Rebecca Toh says connects us to our shared humanity: I don’t kn … | Continue reading
Last year, I worked on a programming language called VisionScript. VisionScript is an abstract programming language for use in building computer vision applications. VisionScript is no longer in active development, but the spirit of the project -- abstracting computer vision into … | Continue reading
Sometimes, I wish I knew more about insert topic de jour. When I take a step back to think about this feeling, I realise that there is a bias at play: those that make something impressive did so with consistent practice and learning. No matter where you are -- treading grounds of … | Continue reading
On Mastodon, Katherine (side note: whose work on poetic programming is incredibly inspiring) asked: what's something that you're especially proud of on your personal website? it can be small or big To which I responded: I am proud that it feels like my own. This website is the pr … | Continue reading
This post is about anxiety and mental health. The sun is about to set over the hills, after a long day of rain. I hear birdsong. I smiled earlier at a few rap songs sent to me by a fellow blogger; the music seemed to fit the moment well. The deviation in genres of music to which … | Continue reading
I am working on a query languge for knowledge graphs: Knowledge Graph Language (KGL). My goal is to provide a concise way to retrieve information about specific items in a knowledge graph, explore the connections between nodes in the graph, and analyze properties of a graph such … | Continue reading
For most of my programming life, I have worked with the abstractions made by others. I have used tools that use well-researched and clearly defined data structures to solve problems, rather than learning about them myself. Indeed, abstraction lets me stand on the shoulders of gia … | Continue reading
I have been thinking about knowledge graphs as a way to model relationships between things. With a knowledge graph, you have a subject (i.e. James) which can have one or more predicates (i.e. "likes") that connect them to an object (i.e. "coffee"). You could have a knowledge grap … | Continue reading
This evening, I had a delightful conversation with Tantek and Joe about markup and programming languages. The crux of the discussion was complexity. We arrived at the topic of why HTML -- and more broadly the web -- won. Why HTML, at a time when the exact markup of the web was in … | Continue reading
Under the soft fairy lights and the winter blanket with delicate music in my ears, and echoes of the delightful conversations of the day. my mind: blank. new perspectives. I look up with wonder like a child playing with Lego bricks. How does this work? What could I make? How do t … | Continue reading
on the precipice of the new season transitions abound I look with glee and wonder at all that is around. | Continue reading
During adolescence, I had few routines around breakfast. Indeed, I would often skip breakfast, or not eat enough. As I started to grow up, however, having a good breakfast was at the forefront of my mind. I realised that I feel better when I have had a nutritious breakfast; one t … | Continue reading
This is day four of my Seven Days of New Things challenge. On each day for the duration of the challenge, I want to try one new thing; small or big. Read the first post in the series to learn more about the challenge. When I go on my daily walk, I like to listen to music or a pod … | Continue reading
My knowledge of programming has been largely self-directed. When I get excited about an idea, I research what I need to do to solve that problem. For example, when I was interested in how search engines work, I learned about the computational efficiency of sets. I discovered the … | Continue reading
I have a newfound enthusiasm for cooking, an activity that, in the past, has caused me great frustration. I have boiled a few good eggs lately after years of not using an oven hob. With my excitement for cooking, I went online to find recipes that I could cook. What is a good rec … | Continue reading
Mutters the "It's been a long time coming." Taylor Swift lyric. If you know, you know. | Continue reading
How many words do you know that rhyme with "shoals"? Or "hose"? Or "joy"? This is the essence of rhymer.day. | Continue reading
I was reading through my social reader earlier today and saw Ruben's latest blog post on his Christmas tree. We are on the same wavelength this year, for I, too have caffeine-related tree decorations. I have Starbucks cup, a teapot, and tea caddy decorations. | Continue reading
Have you ever wondered "where can I find myself raccoon themed Lorem Ipsum text for use as a placeholder?" Sure you have! You're thinking about raccoon Lorem Ipsum text right now. Thus is the nature of reading. | Continue reading
This is the sixteenth post in the Advent of Technical Writing series, wherein I will share something I have learned from my experience as a technical writer. My experience is primarily in software technical writing, but what you read may apply to different fields, too. View all p … | Continue reading
This is the third post in the Advent of Technical Writing series, wherein I will share something I have learned from my experience as a technical writer. My experience is primarily in software technical writing, but what you read may apply to different fields, too. View all posts … | Continue reading
This post was going to begin with "Last year, I wrote 24 blog posts about bloggers whose content I followed." Until a voice in the back of my head said "wait, maybe I did that the year before." It turns out that is the case: my Advent of Bloggers series, where I wrote about blogs … | Continue reading
This is the second post in the Advent of Technical Writing series, wherein I will share something I have learned from my experience as a technical writer. My experience is primarily in software technical writing, but what you read may apply to different fields, too. View all post … | Continue reading
I recall moments during summer when I thought to myself "winter is still months away," for winter felt somewhat scary. When all of the trees are green, when the weather is warm -- but not too warm -- and when the flowers are in full bloom, the world feels different. Summer is the … | Continue reading
I gazed up at the Empire State Building from a few blocks away. The building was illuminated with red, white, and blue, in celebration of Veterans Day. Tall buildings fill me with wonder, and this one arguably more so than others. The Empire State Building was constructed in appr … | Continue reading
"Pink croissant" were the first two words that came to mind, as I racked my brain to figure out what food stuff had been on the table. It was a guava croissant. A delightful snack. The coffee? That wasn't so good. I ordered a "special drip coffee" and I think "special" may have m … | Continue reading
This week, I have been tinkering with Natural Language Processing (NLP) to build an index for my personal website. While I was creating this project, I explored various techniques to help me find words relevant enough to be featured in the index. | Continue reading
At Homebrew Website Club this week, we discussed book indexes (with the Chicago Manual of Style nearby as a reference, of course!). This got me thinking about what a web index may look like for a blog: a page formatted like a book index where you can see articles that mention uni … | Continue reading
There is something blissful about awaking naturally before your alarm is scheduled to go off for the day. I woke up on my own terms, joyfully surprised given my propensity to depend on multiple alarms in the morning. | Continue reading
As I write, I am sitting in a cafe, watching people walk by from a window seat. Through the power of Spotify, Taylor Swift is singing through my ear. the last great american dynasty. I have finished up improvements to bsky.link and mf2.link, my services that make it easy to embed … | Continue reading
There is a special feeling when the sun shines through the window near which you are situated. It is delightful when the sun is not so bright as to cause strain on your eyes, but bright enough to illuminate your space. I am seated next to a green plant; the sunlight makes the pla … | Continue reading
Note: This post discusses loneliness. I'm okay. Let me say that again. I'm okay. I feel more connected than I have in a long time. With that said, if it weren't for my friends being open about their experiences with loneliness -- and the encouragement I received to talk about my … | Continue reading
One of the main reasons I wanted a Macbook was to build applications for iOS. In 2014, I watched many lectures from Stanford University's Developing iOS 7 Apps series ^1. The series covered Object-Oriented Objective-C. I was 11-12 at the time when I was watching the course. I can … | Continue reading
It is Friday evening. From the window, I can see a pale lavender colour in the sky. Ever since hearing the song Lavender Haze by Taylor Swift, I have both had the song at the top of my head on many days and become more attuned to the lavender colours in the sky. An intriguing com … | Continue reading
At a Homebrew Website Club meeting a few weeks ago, we discussed the tea culture in the UK. Mark and I, the co-hosts, live in the UK, so we spent some time talking about tea. A pattern emerged. We collectively named some times at which drinking tea was common after the hour of th … | Continue reading
I have been experimenting with OpenAI's GPT 3.5 Turbo API for the last week or so. The result of my experimentation is James Bot, an AI bot that is built to answer questions where the answers can be provided with reference to my blog, wiki, and GitHub READMEs. My goal with this p … | Continue reading
Every so often, I procrastinate on my phone more than usual. I check sites that I know I have just checked to see if there is anything new, such as Hacker News and The Guardian. I check my notifications without hearing a sound indicative of a notification (I have disabled notific … | Continue reading