All 64 PostsWeekend Hack: Degrading QR Codes — November 15, 2020
My friends (Siwei and Hugo) and I were recently discussing some of the possible limitations of QR Codes. This re-animated an idea I'd had many years ago which relied on deliberately degrading QR Codes. One of the aspects was varying the bg/fg colors…
Playout 1.0, a Game for COVID times — November 01, 2020
TLDR: I've made a game: Playout . Please DM any feedback or feature requests! The germ of this idea came from teams moving around at Skyscanner. Eva is an office manager there and often had to manually work out where to place teams when there…
Map Maker: Ups and Downs — April 25, 2020
Ups and downs this week, ups: The talented King Carmen of Carmenland created a small Garibaldi Biscuit logo for me. This is even though she despises anything associated with squidgyness. Thank you for suffering through this Carmen. Downs: This…
Map Maker: Spiking on Plus Codes and Mapbox Turf — April 19, 2020
In the current version of Garibaldi I have a thing called the "Reticule" which is the central area of the Map that is split apart into streets. This is defined as being some percentage reduction of the browser viewport size, so it is entirely…
The Journey to Map Maker (aka The Coronavirus Diaries) — April 11, 2020
My current WIP in the Biscuits Project ( Garibaldi ) is now at parity with my previous iteration on the things I care about: being able to segment a map based on the structure of its streets. Except that it is all now being done client-side. It's…
Edinburgh Film Festival 2019 (Shortlist of Films, Updated for availability) — June 16, 2019
Definitely want to see Memory: The Origins of Alien The Art of Self-defense The Dead Don't Die Never Look Away (Werk ohne Autor) Extreme Job (Geukhan jikeop) date: Thu 27th Sakawa date: Sat 29th Ever After (Endzeit) date: Fri 28th Abracadabra Maybe…
A look back at FOSDEM 2019 — February 09, 2019
This year I am continuing my plan to do a mix of conferences. Last year it was GraphQL Europe and PyData Berlin. I'm starting 2019 with FOSDEM 2019 . It's now just over a week since I was there, so it's time to reflect before I forget it all. First…
About time for a (site) change — January 04, 2019
Now that Tumblr is showing signs of being on it's way to death I am wary of leaving my content on there. This angst is not reduced by the behaviour of other companies like Flickr, deciding maybe it wouldn't be keeping all those photos for you…
When backend is frontend, and back again — August 08, 2017
If you're building a mostly-frontend dynamic site, but want to make it share-able on Facebook/Twitter with a nice preview image, then here's one new (slightly weird) way to do it. I was playing around with a Sham Tartan generator because, well…
Tautona: Visualising similarities between Slack channels — August 18, 2016
I hadn't done any lo-fi text analysis for ages, and since we've been using Slack at my job for a little while now, it was time to get munging! My MVP was really simplistic, but actually surprisingly good. I didn't record the output of the…
The (lack of) relationship between price and value — September 20, 2015
In Vienna I had an espresso-fueled discussion with Dimo and Georgi about how the price of goods relates to their value. We got through quite a few different ways in which they are indirectly connected, so I thought I’d write them all down, even if…
The Global Minotaur: a review — September 07, 2015
I occasionally read books on economics, and they uniformly scare me. As a parent, you look back to your own chlld-hood and realise your parents did not know what they were doing. Not because they did something bad, but because you know now that you…
Looking for Bobby but found Paris instead — August 06, 2015
Go to any local attraction and you'll see people taking selfies with statues, towers, all sorts of sights. Once, walking past tourists taking pictures of Greyfriars Bobby in Edinburgh, I reckoned that some of those will be posted on Twitter. I…
Drone Futures — May 31, 2015
According to BusinessWeek , long-haul trucks in America could be the first beneficiaries of self-driving technology. As far as safety and productivity goes, this should be a win. However: self-driving cars are already arguably safer than people in…
The Microservices Elephant — February 08, 2015
The term “microservices” is going through a phase where everybody has their own conceptions of it, so as soon as you start talking about it in any detail you quickly realise you all mean something slightly different, and you start questioning the…
Cost of Delay vs Cost of Failure: a balance of forces — December 21, 2014
This article presents my understanding of how the Cost of Delay model, in combination with Cost of Failure, can be used to choose between and decompose alternatives. TLDR: A DevOps team can get long-term rewards of minimising Cost of Delay by…
Sharing applied to Healthcare — May 23, 2014
The idea of sharing unused insurance has a lot of assumptions baked in, and to be frank, I am no expert on emerging economies (referenced in a later tweet ). However, let's unpack this. Let's start with our goal. Can we assume, for the sake of…
Naked only please — January 03, 2014
Navigating a newly-discovered German swimming baths is a bit like an episode of the Crystal Maze . For those younger than me: this involved a series of rooms with dastardly puzzles which you needed to solve to get to the prize. Except the 'prize…
Looking back on my 5:2 diet — January 02, 2014
So, a year on, how's my 5:2 diet going? The good news is that, looking at the data , I've lost a whole, umm, 2kg over the past year ... hmm, wait. Ok, maybe not so good. The full graph tells a bigger story: I reached my lowest weight of 86kg first…
Spikes vs Tests: Brothers not Enemies — December 26, 2013
I write this post with a certain amount of guilt. If you look at my public coding persona ( https://github.com/mikemoraned ) it’s not unusual to see code with minimal tests, and a wide variety of styles and libraries. Compare that to my ‘at work…
Playing music when someone is typing — December 22, 2013
It all started when Carmen asked me (something like): "couldn't you play that music from Murder She Wrote at work whenever you're typing?" Given I was on a plane at the time, with nothing much else to do, why not think about it? Requirement: Play…
Pair Programming, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly — December 21, 2013
Reading http://phinze.github.io/2013/12/08/pairing-vs-code-review.html has made me consider again what I think of as "pair programming". It’s a phrase that is misinterpreted, so let me clarify what it means to me. I’ve worked on different teams…
Playing around with Verlet JS — December 08, 2013
I'm considering using Verlet.JS as a minimal Physics engine for another project of mine. I tried it out by porting over my little LSystems Crochet project to use it. You can see the results here: http://mikemoraned.github.io/lSystemsCrochet…
min(weight) = 90.0kg! (gotta work on avg(weight)) — March 24, 2013
I've been doing the 5:2 diet now for around three months now, and just this week my min weight hit 90.0kg! As you can see from above there is a lot of volatility in my measurements; I measure myself every weekday at around the same time, but there is…
BrowserStack: thumbs up on first minimal try-out. — January 22, 2013
I just tried out http://www.browserstack.com/ for testing my minimal IE8/IE9 changes for Nice to have . It's actually really quite handy. Take my review below with a pinch of salt though, as I only used it for 30 mins. I did a free registration…
Brickman Experiment 1 — January 21, 2013
I had some fun making snow bricks at the weekend. Technically, Nils was present but it would be unfair to say I was playing with him; "directing", perhaps. So, anyway, obviously you should try to use snow bricks to make a Lego man. Obviously. It…
Reading the Tea Leaves — December 30, 2012
When I was at Amazon I looked at a lot of graphs. Graphs of hits, graphs of cpu, graphs of all sorts of shit. Graphs are great, I loves them. However, the problem is that if you aren't in a habit of looking at the relevant graphs every day, and then…
"Nice to have" v0.0000001 — December 29, 2012
Ugh. Enough holiday hacking for now. I had an idea for an app a few weeks ago, and finally had some time between xmas celebrations to hack up a first version. Here it is: http://nicetohave.houseofmoran.com/ (source: https://github.com/mikemoraned…
Resources for a designer transitioning from print to the web? — December 29, 2012
A friend of mine who has a background in print design (copy, layout, some photography) is wanting to move his skills over into web design. I am most definitely on the other-side of this divide, so I asked another web designer friend what resources…
Heed! — July 31, 2012
And so, the saga continues, baldie once again. Interestingly, this time, I was very conscious of when it started happening. It may just be my imagination, but soon after I got a few midgy (or Mücken ) bites in Germany, I noticed my head was a bit…
Truth is more depressing than fiction? — July 20, 2012
This holiday, I finally finished "The City & The City" by China Miéville . My paper version of the Miéville book was a gift. Its hugeness makes it hard to carry, so I never got round to reading it. I bought it again for my Kindle (I wonder how…
Boomeranging returns — May 13, 2012
Yesterday, I went out with Nils and threw my boomerangs for the first time in 10 years. It was really cool, not least because Nils decided to go get them for me, unbidden! On a windy day like that it makes a big difference having someone fetching…
LEDs in the rain — April 30, 2012
The NVA Speed of Light practice session was the best time I've spent in the rain for a while! However, I am sooooo glad I bought myself a proper thermal top and rain jacket. Not cheap, but worth it. I really enjoyed myself tonight. I would love to…
The hair, eet ees back ... — April 12, 2012
... sort-of. As I had expected might happen, my Alopecia has receded and the patches that were bald before are now white. I'm gonna give it a go, as I'm happy having a bald head but to be honest I'd be happier not having to shave it every other day…
La Grand Weekend, Gromit — April 08, 2012
On Friday, I had the opportunity to see La Grand Illusion at the Filmhouse, I can totally see why this film was so hated by the Nazis, because it portrays war as ultimately pointless. There is no great 'enemy' within these prison camps, on either…
You've never had it so good — March 24, 2012
What's the opposite of Nostalgia? Nowadays, I can think of an idea, code it up and have it on heroku in minutes. Working at a start-up in 2001--2004 was somewhat different. Back then, the first task was to decide which of the many (over-priced…
Beach Facts — March 17, 2012
Some things established today on the beach: The statutory countdown sequence for throwing stones is "3, 2, 1, < throw>", and not "10, 9, ... 1, 0" which is reserved for Rockets. It is surprisingly hard to guide water pools to the sea. Nils didn't do…
Normal service will resume ... — March 12, 2012
You may have noticed some blog posts are missing. This is because I am migrating them across gradually from my old blogging system to Tumblr. Also, the RSS feed for tumblr (which I use on the main site) takes a super-long time to update; may have…
Note to self: do not invent time machine — February 16, 2012
If I did have a time machine, I'd be spending a lot of my life getting slapped in the face by my future self. Last week I spent far too long debugging why Heroku was refusing to accept my rails app when I did a " git push heroku master ". I had all…
Getting in the holiday mood — December 26, 2011
Got in the holiday mood last night by watching the film of The Road . This is right up there with "Grave of the Fireflies" on the brilliant-but-sad scale (see 2008-03-22 ).
That's it, all gone! — November 20, 2011
Those of you who've seen me around recently will have noticed a gradual disappearance of hair on my left side. This was accompanied by a gradual increase in attempts to make a comb-over look like a real haircut. No more. About a year ago I started…
Frazzled — August 28, 2011
Totally frazzled. Between work, festival, and home-life, I've been burning the candle at three ends. It's been good though. Hopefully, when I regain some energy, I'll write-up what I saw that's worth shouting about. However, for now, I hereby declare…
EIFF top picks — July 10, 2011
Despite overly expensive films and the usual EIFF website broken-ness, I managed to see a few films this year. There were five shorts in Mapping the Extraordinary . All were good, but these three make me we want to see more from the directors…
Taking R for a drive — July 04, 2011
I've been playing with data from the Project365 group I am a member of. I would usually do this analysis using some combination of perl, ruby, and unix shell (sort, uniq etc). This time I thought I'd stretch myself a bit. These are the two books I…
No Java, no Eclipse — January 07, 2011
This is the first time I've been on holiday in Germany and not launched Eclipse. Also: not a single line of Java. It's refreshing. I now know I can write incredibly slow Ruby, albeit for a good cause ( "The Diagonal Method vs. The Rule of Thirds…
Aim Low — January 01, 2011
The key to achieving a New Years resolution seems to be to aim low and then forget about it. Wired magazine has always been high on style and low on content. This didn't stop me from buying it once every few months. Not only that, but reading about…
Waterstones is a Charity — October 17, 2010
Waterstones: £18.99. Amazon: £11.89, free delivery. This is one of the books I flipped through whilst sitting in the Starbucks. I may never buy this book, but if I do, I'm not paying an extra 7 quid out of the goodness of my heart. I feel a little…
Today, I accidentally ran 10k — October 09, 2010
It started as a 5k run for burma in Inverleith park. After a frantic ride on my bike to make registration, I started at 11. We looped round a couple of times and I passed the steward, who said "go right if you've seen me twice". I couldn't remember…
Who was in Tron and Babylon 5? — October 04, 2010
More specifically, how can I find this out using freebase? Turns out the steps you should take are: Find the film you want to use as a constraint . Slap the film id and type as constraints into the query editor, using " * ": null to get all…
"How can I tell which of these damn tabs is making a sound?" — August 18, 2010
Hmm, I'm out two for two on random summer holiday projects. First, the hadoop quickstart example doesn't reduce . Now, my idea to list what tabs in Chrome are making a noise is also a non-starter. Seems I'm not alone in wanting this . It's pretty…
Segway tour of Berlin — August 09, 2010
The Segway has always intrigued me. Even after the overblown hype of 2001 died away. Given I was in Berlin, I took the chance to look like a dork and try out a Segway tour of the area . How do you they drive them? Simple answer, to go forward…
Festival goers + Bike = ... — August 07, 2010
Day six of Carmen and Nils being way and I've started talking to myself. The day after she left I went to work and realised, "shit, I've not talked to anyone for over twelve hours". In other time-based news, in one day I have gone from avoiding…
Back on the road again ... — April 24, 2010
And so, another german holiday ends. As always, there are regrets; I didn't get to wander around Berlin for long, I missed some nice german bread by staying in bed too long, etc. On the plus side, I got a regular (wonderful) lie-in, and made some…
LSystem Sunday — March 08, 2010
It's LSystem Sunday! I was curious about investigating an assertion that I'd made the other day: that the dragon curve loops back and traces over itself. Turns out, I was talking nonsense: The above shows the dragon curve at it's 7th expansion, with…
LSystem Sunday: Does Dragon Curve trace over itself? — March 08, 2010
It's LSystem Sunday! I was curious about investigating an assertion that I'd made the other day: that the dragon curve loops back and traces over itself. Turns out, I was talking nonsense: The above shows the dragon curve at it's 7th expansion, with…
LSystem Distractions — February 28, 2010
LSystems have once-again distracted me, this time from German homework:
LSystems distractions — February 28, 2010
LSystems have once-again distracted me, this time from German homework:
More arsing around with Scala — July 07, 2009
More arsing around with Scala. This time, trying to reimplement lesscss . This is about two hours worth of hacking: Output: It does variables and the beginnings of mixins. It's actually quite lame e.g. it throws away whitespace. Hohum, time to learn…
LSystem Explorations — June 27, 2009
So, another summer holiday is at an end, and another programming interval. This time I was using my LSystem Explorations as a way to get more practice with Scala and Android. Random aside : I find it hard to get excited about non-JVM languages…
Is Scala mature enough as a main programming language? — June 27, 2009
So, another summer holiday is at an end, and another programming interval. This time I was using my LSystem Explorations as a way to get more practice with Scala and Android. Random aside : I find it hard to get excited about non-JVM languages…
How the hell do I do this basic thing? — June 17, 2009
I've been programming Scala here and there and every so often get stuck in a "how the hell do I do this basic thing?" moment. So, I'm gradually working my way through "Programming in Scala" , as I thought I should finally get more of an idea of this…
Grave of the Fireflies — March 22, 2008
Grave of the Fireflies is not a film I'd recommend be seen by anyone with children. After we had Nils, I imagined myself being affected by all the schmaltzy Speilberg movies featuring children in trouble . Thankfully, that never happened…