James B

James B

@jarofgreen.co.uk

Developer in Scotland https://www.jamesbaster.co.uk/

37 followers36 following213 posts

James B
@jarofgreen.co.uk

FILM PITCH: Jurassic park, but it goes fine. But then Cretaceous park starts up, and points out that some of the famous dinosaurs like T-Rex and Triceratops really belong to them.

James B
@jarofgreen.co.uk

The film covers the bickering, pedantry, snide social media shit posts, over the top publicity stunts, sarcastic late night chat show appearances and general angst as the 2 parks duke it out.

James B
@jarofgreen.co.uk

Does this sign mean you should keep the dog on a lead or the small bags of poop on a lead? Silly example that illustrates something I try and do in my technical writing: every time I use the word "it" I stop and check if it would be clearer to explain what "it" is. Usually, it is.

James B
@jarofgreen.co.uk

I'm standing at my local train station and I just heard a "New ScotRail official app has arrived" announcement. Err, I'm guessing no-one thought to maybe turn those off for now then.

James B
@jarofgreen.co.uk

Piss off. Scotland has tons of tech people who could do a launch or migration smoothly. Don't paint us all with the failure brush because ScotRail screwed this one up. (2/2)

James B
@jarofgreen.co.uk

SCOTRAIL: You need to pay a £10 minimum fare if you don't buy a ticket before boarding the train. If your station doesn't have a ticket machine, you can use our app. A FEW WEEKS LATER: We have scrapped our app. So old! Get our new app! It doesn't work on launch day! Still have a tenner policy tho.

James B
@jarofgreen.co.uk

Scotrail should really put the £10 minimum policy on hold for a few weeks till the app is sorted. Or better yet, scrap it if you board at a station without a working ticket machine. Having a smart phone and their app should not be a requirement to travel at a fair price.

James B
@jarofgreen.co.uk

Follow up: Apparently ScotRail do allow exceptions to the £10 minimum fare! www.scotrail.co.uk/about-scotra... Ok, but that's not what they were announcing at my local ticket machine-less station so they really need to work on comms. Thanks to person who pointed this out.

scotrail.co.ukScotRail to tackle ticketless travel with new minimum fareScotRail is set to introduce a new minimum fare in a bid to educate and reduce the number of passengers who choose to travel without first buying a ticket.Fare evasion is estimated to cost Scotland’s ...
James B
@jarofgreen.co.uk

SCOTRAIL: You need to pay a £10 minimum fare if you don't buy a ticket before boarding the train. If your station doesn't have a ticket machine, you can use our app. A FEW WEEKS LATER: We have scrapped our app. So old! Get our new app! It doesn't work on launch day! Still have a tenner policy tho.

James B
@jarofgreen.co.uk

Scotrail should really put the £10 minimum policy on hold for a few weeks till the app is sorted. Or better yet, scrap it if you board at a station without a working ticket machine. Having a smart phone and their app should not be a requirement to travel at a fair price.

James B
@jarofgreen.co.uk

Relatedly, a friend recently told me off because she mentioned a tech thing, I immediately said a way feature could be abused. No, I replied, this is just what good tech should be doing, considering downsides. There is so much criticism of tech being introduced without thinking about consequences.

James B
@jarofgreen.co.uk

Working on our second little web game. Lots to do on graphics and UI but we think we have the game rules sorted and we're showing it to people to play test. If I see you around do ask to see it!

James B
@jarofgreen.co.uk

Happy February! (Coming soon, depending on your time zone) We just released the monthly challenge for our game Second Guessing, give it a try: www.secondguessing.net #SecondGuessing (Game now with TypeScript behind the scenes to help ensure everything works correctly)

secondguessing.netWelcome - Second GuessingA simple game where you are asked to count a certain number of seconds. Play normal levels, Zen levels for calmness, or the monthly challenge. Completely free!
James B
@jarofgreen.co.uk

"PyInfra: Because Your Infrastructure Deserves Real Code in Python, Not YAML Soup" at #FOSDEM I've never seen so many Rowan Atkinson images in a talk. I feel like it should have come with a quiz round of what film/tv each was afterwards. Good talk too, I'll have another look at PyInfra.

James B
@jarofgreen.co.uk

So wait, CodeBerg/Forgejo supports sha256 git hash format but GitHub doesn't? So if you have a repo you want to put online but don't want anyone to put on GitHub you should use sha256? #FOSDEM #Git

James B
@jarofgreen.co.uk

Morning, it's #FOSDEM weekend. I'll be watching along virtually. I made a schedule viewer that lets you browse in any time zone: virtuallyattend.teacaketech.scot/fosdem/2026/ I'll be updating that and bug fixing over the weekend too I'm sure 🙂 Let me know if you use it & what you think of it!

virtuallyattend.teacaketech.scotWelcome - Virtually Attend FOSDEM 2026Did you know you can attend FOSDEM virtually? We help you make a schedule, whatever timezone you are in.
James B
@jarofgreen.co.uk

Well that is the first set of features and bug fixes (whoops) deployed while listening to opening keynote. Now to settle down to learn about the future of git. #FOSDEM

James B reposted

Pedal on Parliament #pop26
@pedalonparliament.org

We’re back - Save the Date! In 2026 we Pedal on Parliament for a cycle-friendly Scotland, on Sat 30th May at 11.30am - Middle Meadow Walk to Holyrood, Edinburgh on closed roads. #ThisMachineFightsClimateChange #pop26

James B
@jarofgreen.co.uk

Just converted a site to my own static site builder and again found it really useful that the builder checked the output after it had built it. In this case, checking no internal links were broken highlighted a few errors. We test / lint our code with automated tools, why not our static sites too?

James B
@jarofgreen.co.uk

Something I've thought for years - so I'm annoyed at past me that I'm still having issues here - is when you're making a thing, take and save lots of screenshots of it. Cos later, the thing won't be accessible any more but you'll want the screenshots for something.

James B
@jarofgreen.co.uk

re Last repost, reminded me I haven't said this news here yet: I've just left the worker's co-op I've been at for almost 8 years; thanks to everyone there who made it a great place to work and for all the interesting projects to work on.

James B
@jarofgreen.co.uk

Happy New Year! We've just released a new monthly challenge for our game, #SecondGuessing We're proud of this one - our play tester's first comment was "woooooooow this is a bastard of a level i love it". www.secondguessing.net New art in this level, again by the great @patchworkbear.bsky.social

secondguessing.netWelcome - Second GuessingA simple game where you are asked to count a certain number of seconds. Play normal levels, Zen levels for calmness, or the monthly challenge. Completely free!
James B
@jarofgreen.co.uk

@histoftech.bsky.social Hello, hope you're doing well! I'm trying to get a project started and it seems like something you might approve of? Any chance of a boost if so? bsky.app/profile/open...

Open Tech Calendar@opentechcalendar.co.uk

We list virtual #tech events that include community participation: opentechcalendar.co.uk Whatever your reason for preferring virtual tech events - public health, children, care duties or remote location - check us out. If you know of any good virtual tech events let us know!

opentechcalendar.co.ukWelcomeWe list virtual tech events that include community participation.
James B
@jarofgreen.co.uk

Yesterday in tech: Boosting Django/Apache VM server. Add mod_cache to Apache & cache-control/vary headers to Django & Apache's static files. Load testing shows server handles multiples more simultaneous traffic than before. Users browsers now cache assets, for snappy page loads as move around site.

James B
@jarofgreen.co.uk

Setting up prometheus.io for server, app and website monitoring today. Nice to see it progressing - when I first set it up if you wanted basic auth / SSL you had to proxy traffic throught something, now there are options built in: ruan.dev/blog/2021/10...

prometheus.ioPrometheus - Monitoring system & time series databaseAn open-source monitoring system with a dimensional data model, flexible query language, efficient time series database and modern alerting approach.