Recently updated blogs

I've been helping some teams at Shopify improve page load performance, and the issue of 'videos with an alpha channel' kept coming up, where videos of UI mocks needed to be composited on top of inconsistent backgrounds, such as larger CSS backgrounds. Often a good solution here is to create the animation using web technologies, but sometimes video is a better solution for consistent frame rates, and allows for effects …

"Get or create" is a very common operation for syncing data in the database, but implementing it correctly may be trickier than you may expect. If you ever had to implement it in a real system with real-life load, you may have overlooked potential race conditions, concurrency issues and even bloat! In this article I explore ways to "get ot create" in PostgresSQL. Illustration by Abstrakt Design Table of Contents …

“Public.work is a search engine for public domain content.” The site claims to have over 100,000 public domain images. This in and of itself is not that special, but the interface is. It’s gorgeous, a fun and engaging discovery layer where every search becomes a URL that can be shared [example] and the page of images endlessly scrolls up, down, and even sideways. Of course, the endless scroll is a …

photo by Milton GreeneLike so many summer days in Los Angeles, this one began as a balmy and sunlit morning. It would grow warmer and sunnier, but the languid summertime mood was shattered by news of a shocking event in one of the city’s most elite enclaves. It was Sunday, August 5, 1962, the day Marilyn Monroe was found dead in her West Los Angeles home, an empty pill bottle …

The long-awaited day has arrived! It's been a while since we've had a Release Day celebration for a new Furrowed Middlebrow title, but as of today Eleanor Farjeon's delightful Miss Granby's Secret is officially out in the world, and doesn't it look lovely added to my shelf?Thank you to all who pre-ordered. Hope you enjoy it as much as I have!

I had a call this morning from a mystery number, with a voice purporting to be “Sarah Wilson from the Housing Repair Team”. It was obviously a bot, and as always a simple tangential question throws the limited and archaic technology they are deploying (e.g. ask a question like “What’s 1+1?” and listen to the gears grinding as it struggles to reroute. Three thoughts occur to me though. Firstly, much …

I just finished my 1984 movie marathon (following 1967, 1968, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, and 1993), and it does feel like the proper end of something. The first of these year-based movie marathons I’ve been doing was for movies from the year 1985, that I did in 2017, and I’ve now completed the 80s — after I finished 1989, on …

I recently ordered a Comma.ai kit to add semi-autonomous driving capabilities to my 2018 Mazda CX-5. It took some trial and error (and help from the Comma.ai community on Discord) to get it working properly, but I highly recommend it as I’ll explain later. I’m sharing the steps I took in case it’s helpful for others looking to install the Comma 3X on the same or a similar vehicle. It’s …

Makauwahi Cave and Sinkhole as it is todayI learned to my great surprise that Hawai'i has a few (very few, really) limestone caves. In part one I talked about the odd origin of Makauwahi Cave on the island of Kauai. In that post we learned that the limestone formed from limestone sand dunes that formed near Poipo Beach. The sand was lithified (glued together), and fresh water dissolved the limestone, …

The eBook edition of the first Difficult Dukes book, A Duke in Shining Armor, is available for a short time for $1.99. Sometimes these deals go on for weeks. Sometimes it’s only a few days. This came up on Bookperk, a HarperCollins daily newsletter.* You might want to subscribe, to get daily news about deals, new books, giveaways, etc. For instance, if you, like me, are a Terry Pratchett fan, …

Welcome back readers. It was very painful this week to hear of Game Informer’s sudden shuttering, layoff-ing, and off-lining, as such a long-running publication that has continued to publish good work for nearly as long as I have been alive. These folks deserve far greater dignity than an unceremonious blindside by their parent company. It feels timely yet also evergreen to remind folks that independent games crit–not subject to the …

August's pylon comes from France and was sent by a fan of the blog. who tells me it is to be found near Gargilesse Dampierre. A bit of research tells me that Gargilesse Dampierre is officially one of the most beautiful villages in France so that promotes this pylon to near the top of my 'must visit' list especially as it is also quite close to the Eguzon dam and …

On his blog, Brent writes about NetNewsWire and Conditional GET issues.

I've just picked up the new tea towels. There's this one of the Wiltshire white horses, and a map of the Kennet and Avon canal, like this I'm very pleased with the quality of the printing; all the fine details are there, clear as you like. (The images here are low-res, because I'm out in the wilds of the Vale of Pewsey at the moment, and the internet is rubbish.)They're …