Ed Johnson-Williams' microblog

Ran two races

Sun, 21 Jul 2024 06:03:20 GMT

I ran my first 10k ever last Saturday. An organised race up and down a hill from Stanhope in Weardale.

Then - in a turn of events that makes me feel very ridiculous - I ran my second 10k ever on Thursday! Again an organised race in Durham where I live.

Definitely still felt the first one in my legs while running the second one but pretty happy with it all really. Training for this coming out of abdominal surgery a few months ago helped me to get going again after the operation for sure.

30 plants a week

Sun, 12 May 2024 15:07:12 GMT

Some food scientists are encouraging us to eat 30 different plants a week. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has this list of 200 plants we can choose from. Some of them I've never heard of but good to have a list to help with not just eating the same thing again and again

Everyday fruit bowl Apples, pears, plums, bananas/plantains, grapes, cherries

Brassica sprouts Calabrese broccoli, purple sprouting broccoli, cauliflower, tenderstem broccoli romanesco

Citrus fruits Lemons, oranges, clementines, easy peelers, limes, grapefruit

Roots Carrots, beetroot, parsnips, celeriac, swede, turnips, Jerusalem artichokes, kohlrabi, radishes, potatoes

Summer berries Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, blackcurrants/ redcurrants/white currants, gooseberries, rhubarb

Alliums Onions, red onions, spring onions, garlic, leeks, chives, wild garlic

Mediterranean/exotic fruit bowl Peaches, nectarines, melon, watermelon, apricots, figs, kiwi fruit, mango, pomegranate, papaya, passion fruit, pineapple

Crunchy stems and leaves Celery, fennel, asparagus, chicory, radicchio, globe artichokes

Soft salad leaves Lettuces, baby spinach, rocket, oriental greens, pea shoots, sorrel

Nuts Peanuts, hazelnuts, walnuts, almonds, pecans, Brazil nuts, pine nuts, cashews, chestnuts, pistachios

Green beans and peas (summer only) Green (French) beans, runner beans, mangetout, broad beans

Handy frozen veg Peas, sweetcorn, spinach, edamame beans, broad beans

Tinned pulses Butter beans, chickpeas, cannellini beans, flageolet beans, black beans, red kidney beans, borlotti beans, pinto beans, carlin peas, black-eyed beans, mung beans, aduki beans (and any other beans)

Cucurbits and aubergines Cucumber, courgettes, pumpkin and squash, aubergines

Tomatoes Fresh, tinned, passata, sun-dried

Dried pulses Red lentils, puy lentils, green lentils, brown lentils, yellow split peas

Avocados Avocado

Whole grains (plus grain flours, bread and pasta) Wheat, oats, barley, spelt, rye, brown rice, quinoa, cornmeal (polenta), buckwheat, bulgar wheat

Peppers and chillies Green, red and yellow peppers, romano (long), peppers, chillies (red and green)

Seeds Sunflower, pumpkin, sesame (and tahini), poppy, flax, chia, hemp

Mushrooms Flat, button, chestnut, portobello, oyster, shiitake, king oyster, wild mushrooms, dried porcini

Preserved veg (in vinegar or oil) Olives, capers, gherkins, pickled onions, pickled beetroot, artichoke hearts

Spices Black pepper, cumin, coriander, caraway, chilli flakes (with seeds), paprika, fennel seeds, nutmeg, allspice, cardamom, cinnamon, turmeric (including fresh), ginger (including fresh), mustard (seeds, and jars of ready-made)

Leafy, salady herbs Parsley, mint, chives, coriander, basil, rocket, nasturtiums (leaves/flowers), dill, tarragon

Unrefined oils (extra virgin/cold-pressed) Olive, rapeseed, coconut, sunflower, sesame (toasted), walnut, hemp

Pungent herbs Rosemary, thyme, bay leaves, oregano/marjoram, sage

Seaweed and shore veg Nori sheets, sea lettuce, dulse, kelp, seaweed, samphire

Stimulants Coffee, black tea, green tea, dark/raw chocolate, cacao/cocoa/chocolate

Do trigger warnings help or harm?

Tue, 07 May 2024 08:43:15 GMT

the pain actually is real…it's just the thing we're calling a seatbelt isn't a seatbelt.”

Interesting and pretty convincing podcast about the research on the effectiveness of trigger warnings. As the quote above suggests, the answer is that they do not appear to be effective and may do more harm than good.

https://castro.fm/episode/2Hj35x

UK immigration changes

Wed, 06 Dec 2023 07:55:53 GMT

I'm very angry about the UK government increasing the amount UK citizens need to earn before their partner from another country can live here. It was £18,600 when my wife applied for her first visa and I only just scraped it at the time. The new minimum is going to be £38,700. They are both wrong but the higher amount will affect even more people. It's very personal politics for me.

This BBC article makes the cruelty of the Conservatives clear.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67630258

Chess 960 Generator

Mon, 20 Nov 2023 19:22:51 GMT

Made a little generator for starting positions for Chess 960

https://chess-960-generator.edjohnsonwilliams.co.uk

Kensington museums

Fri, 03 Nov 2023 19:44:57 GMT

Went to the Science Museum and Natural History Museum today.

The laptop and mug of the woman who designed the Oxford Covid vaccine actually made me cry.

Natural History Museum is massive. Massive. And great. As long as you slightly suspend thinking about how it all got there.

https://github.com/edjw/microblog-cms/assets/6547979/c418bd42-3f5f-4f81-b433-e91a76f8d45f

Cable car

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 15:47:57 GMT

Did a full day of London transport yesterday. Train, overground, underground, boat, and cable car. Cable car makes zero sense unless you're a tourist mind.

The Rocket at Locomotion

Mon, 23 Oct 2023 19:14:10 GMT

Locomotion at Shildon has the original Rocket and another train called Sans Pareil.

The Rocket is pretty famous. Sans Pareil is not but I find it almost more interesting. It competed against the Rocket in early train trials but had mechanical issues. It's a kind of what-if history.

A trail race

Sun, 22 Oct 2023 13:25:52 GMT

Did a 8km trail race this morning near Stanley and Beamish in County Durham. Had a great time. Somehow had a ~2min gap in front and behind me for the second half of the race so it was a bit lonely at times! It was my longest ever run and some pretty steep downhill sections meant it included my fastest ever KM and Mile too.

They gave me a souvenir slate coaster

And some photos of the course from yesterday screenshotted from Derwentside Athletics Club's Facebook event

Detecting a MacOS web app with Javascript

Fri, 13 Oct 2023 08:25:56 GMT

MacOS lets you install websites to your computer as standalone web apps as of MacOS Sonoma.

After some experimentation, here's how you can detect with javascript if your site is in a web app. standalone isn't a standard property of the navigator object so Typescript will shout at you if you don't put add the interface.

interface Navigator {
    standalone?: boolean;
}

// Your existing code
if (navigator.standalone) {
    // macOS Sonoma web app
} else if (navigator.standalone === false) {
    // Safari on macOS or iOS
} else {
    // Another browser
}

Things to remember later

Tue, 03 Oct 2023 19:33:48 GMT

Just realised that because I added search to this microblog, I can post things I want to remember later to this site and then I can find them later and others can too. Could be good

asdf cheatsheet for nodejs

Tue, 03 Oct 2023 19:11:29 GMT

This is for my future reference really but might be handy 🤷‍♂️

Add the nodejs plugin

asdf plugin add nodejs https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf-nodejs.git

Install lts

asdf install nodejs $(asdf nodejs resolve lts --latest-available)

Install latest/current

asdf install nodejs latest

Use latest/current for all users

asdf global nodejs $(asdf nodejs resolve latest)

Use lts for all users

asdf global nodejs $(asdf nodejs resolve lts --latest-available)

And use local instead of global to use a different version for that directory

Github issues as a CMS update

Sat, 02 Sep 2023 17:23:38 GMT

Using GitHub issues as a CMS for this site still going ok.

GitHub made it so you have to be logged in to access images and videos uploaded to an Issue. So hotlinking to the images isn't doable any more.

Now there's some complicated markdown parsing that looks for links to images and videos and uses Cloudinary's Node SDK to upload those assets to Cloudinary.

I also noticed that the images were making the site slow to load so using Cloudinary to make the images smaller now and now the Lighthouse scores are good again.

Around Gateshead

Sat, 02 Sep 2023 17:14:33 GMT

Good day around Gateshead today. Went to Saltwell Park which was great and very big. Kind of don't know how we hadn't come across it before. Really good coffee there too.

Also Angel of the North which is always good

Graffiti squirrel

Tue, 29 Aug 2023 15:27:42 GMT

Hiking in Teesdale

Sun, 20 Aug 2023 21:47:49 GMT

Spotted some very remote benches in Teesdale

No it's a book

Sat, 19 Aug 2023 11:13:22 GMT

First 5k race

Sat, 15 Jul 2023 08:22:27 GMT

I did my first organised running race last night. It was around Durham where I live. It rained pretty heavily the entire time including the 20-30mins standing around before the start. It was otherwise fun. I sprinted for a good bit at the end which was nice. Would have liked to go faster but the idea was just to find out what an organised race is like.

Paula Radcliffe gave me my medal at the end. Hello woman who had the marathon world record for a decade or something yes please give me a medal for running 5000m slowly.

Steve Cram was one of the marshalls on the course - just standing, hood up, shouting encouragement at people.

Backspace for caps lock

Sun, 02 Jul 2023 07:49:23 GMT

A weird thing I do that I love...

I make pressing the Caps Lock key act as a Backspace. It's on the home row of the keyboard and I make typos! I use it all the time.

I've seen some people remap Caps Lock to a 'Cmd+Option+Shift+Control' key and then use that as another layer of keyboard shortcuts. They call this the Hyper key. But I make typos way more often than I want keyboard shortcuts that aren't already available to me so I think Backspace is better.

Karabiner Elements is the app for this on Macs. Gnome Tweaks will do this for you on Debian/Ubuntu. SharpKeys on Windows.

A gym thing

Wed, 28 Jun 2023 08:11:33 GMT

A gym thing that I wish I'd worked out earlier. No-one knows what training plan you're on. Going slowly or lifting light? It could be a recovery day. No-one can judge what you're doing as your 'best'.

Still running

Sun, 18 Jun 2023 09:35:18 GMT

I'm still running! Which is nice. I'm not injured. I'm getting fitter and losing weight too. I'm doing an organised run round Durham at the end of July. Kind of nervous about it but just trying to treat it as a fun new thing and remember that I can just have fun and I don't have to be good at it (though I know I will have a time I'm aiming for).

SwiftUI

Sat, 27 May 2023 21:11:17 GMT

Tried a bit of SwiftUI today. Not done any coding that's not JavaScript for a long time. Didn't hate it...?

Charlie and the chocolate factory

Tue, 09 May 2023 21:26:48 GMT

I'm having a great time reading Charlie and the Chocolate factory to my son at bedtime at the moment. He was given it by someone for a recent birthday. He loves it and I love it (which can't be said for all stories for young children).

This evening I remembered that there had been a lot of discourse recently about rewording Roald Dahl books for inclusiveness or whatever and loads of people thought rewording his books was somewhere on the scale of 'a bit unnecessary' through to to 'an attack on freedom of expression'. I couldn't quite see what the problem was at the time.

So I checked the frontmatter and sure enough this is the 2023 reworded version. I read the book multiple times as a child. I've seen the original movie multiple times. We're over halfway through and I honestly had no idea this wasn't the original text just from reading the book. It's still great. Kids (or at least one of my kids) still love it.

There's still assumptions in there about business, labour, and intellectual property that a Marxist would take issue with I'm sure. But any concerns that editing the original would make the story unenjoyable are way off.

Trail running

Sat, 06 May 2023 11:39:43 GMT

Been getting into trail running a bit recently and having a great time of it. I've been carrying too much weight for a long time so this combined with the super low-fat diet I'm on to avoid needing painkillers because of my gallstones will hopefully help me change that up.

Trying to move house

Wed, 03 May 2023 06:53:27 GMT

Moving house is a massive pain. We're moving from the north-east to the south coast this summer. So much life admin done. So much left to do. So much uncertainty. Fun times!

Pencil museum at Keswick

Sun, 16 Apr 2023 14:57:28 GMT

Big fan of niche museums. I don't know if the limited remit makes them work harder to make them good?

Here's a few photos for the pencil museum in Keswick where they used to make pencils.

The old factory isn't used anymore but fresh art deco paint and typography still there

One of the two oldest pencils in existence. From before 1837

They had a few of these pencils where the lead had been sculpted by an artist.

They also had fun stories like the guy who inspired the Q character on James Bond commissioning them to make a pencil that could hide a map in it. Also the biggest pencil in the world. It was a good time!

NHS

Tue, 11 Apr 2023 17:54:37 GMT

I woke up with really bad abdominal pain last night and it hadn't changed by late this morning. I'm on holiday and spent the rest of the day being seen, tested and diagnosed by various departments of two different hospitals I'd never been to before.

No charges. No insurance paperwork. No stress other than getting my pain sorted out. I'll have surgery in a few months. Same again there. Junior doctors are ok strike today but I didn't feel affected as I was an emergency.

Thanks NHS.

Aussie rules football

Sat, 08 Apr 2023 21:02:12 GMT

Also getting into Aussie rules football. Can't quite see how I'll ever play or see a game live but you never know. Firmly in 'I have no idea who anyone is or where any of these places are' territory

Disc golf highlights

Sat, 08 Apr 2023 20:26:59 GMT

Getting back into watching disc golf highlights on YouTube. I've played a couple of times and it is hard! The commentators are also players and it's cool how the sport is small enough that it can have this DIY feel.

NZ data protection

Fri, 07 Apr 2023 07:11:52 GMT

Big fan of this quote from New Zealand's data protection authority

There is no place for a “she’ll be right” attitude to privacy and cyber security.

https://www.privacy.org.nz/publications/statements-media-releases/new-zealands-biggest-data-breach-shows-retention-is-the-sleeping-giant-of-data-security

New car

Sat, 01 Apr 2023 20:45:54 GMT

We bought a used car today. How do people get confident at this making this purchasing decision? Seems so hard to get the information you need to be confident you're not putting a fairly large amount of money into something that's not going to be scrap soon.

Christian Harmony singing

Tue, 21 Mar 2023 15:26:22 GMT

My wife and I hosted a Christian Harmony singing at Ushaw College near our house at the weekend. 70ish people came from all over the UK, and a few from Ireland and Germany too. Here's a little clip of the first song of the day

More childcare provision

Tue, 14 Mar 2023 22:42:53 GMT

The devil will be in the detail but it looks like the UK government will actually start funding toddler childcare properly soon according to the Guardian.

The plan would provide an extra 30 hours a week to parents of one- and two-year olds

[and] increase the hourly rate paid to childcare providers by the government to deliver their existing 30 hours weekly entitlement

It's too late for my family. But it'll make the world of difference to parents like my brother and sister-in-law who were looking at £1k a month in London. For the government, it should pay for itself with increased tax revenue by allowing more people to work when they've got toddlers.

🤞

Better Last.fm data

Tue, 07 Mar 2023 22:40:23 GMT

I just reworked my CLI to get data from LastFM about what I've been listening to lately. That last post is much better than the previous one of giving a sense of what I've been listening to.

I listen to albums mainly rather than playlists. So I've switched to getting the album data for the last 30 days that have had more than 10 plays. I think the play count is counting number of times a track from the album was played.

The CLI is written with Deno. It fetches the data from Last.fm, creates some markdown, and writes that markdown to a new GitHub issue which is the CMS for this blog.

My top albums for the last month

Tue, 07 Mar 2023 22:31:24 GMT

My Top Albums for the last month

Measured using my last.fm account.

Artist: Dylan Denney
Album: 150th Anniversay Chattahoochee Scared Harp Singing Convention Day 2, Vol. 1 (feat. Sacred Harp Singers)
Plays: 43
LastFM Link to the album

Artist: Radiohead
Album: KID A MNESIA
Plays: 18
LastFM Link to the album

Artist: Caribou
Album: Suddenly
Plays: 12
LastFM Link to the album

Artist: Holy Fuck
Album: Latin
Plays: 12
LastFM Link to the album

Artist: The Beatles
Album: Let It Be... Naked
Plays: 12
LastFM Link to the album

Artist: 65daysofstatic
Album: No Man's Sky: Music for an Infinite Universe
Plays: 11
LastFM Link to the album

Artist: Public Service Broadcasting
Album: Bright Magic
Plays: 11
LastFM Link to the album

Shiny button

Thu, 02 Mar 2023 18:06:57 GMT

I just saw someone posting about this demo of a button on a website the looks like it's reflective. It shows a slightly blurred version of whatever your camera can see inside the button. Very cool

https://shiny-button.vercel.app

Little Lego castle

Sun, 26 Feb 2023 10:33:01 GMT

My sons have really got into Lego recently. Here's a little castle we built this morning.

The Needles on the Isle of Wight

Wed, 22 Feb 2023 16:29:34 GMT

Visited the Isle of Wight yesterday including the Needles on the western tip of the island. They're stacks of chalk and more impressive than my photo suggests! Stuff like this make me want a camera with optical zoom for sure.

Next book - Foghorns

Sat, 18 Feb 2023 09:53:08 GMT

I shared a couple of photos of our visit to the Souter Lighthouse at South Shields last weekend with colleagues.

A colleague who also lives near the coast mentioned they don't her foghorns anymore.

Another colleague recommended a book about foghorns which talks about why they're not a sound you hear anymore. Turns out the author's obsession with foghorns started at Souter Lighthouse.

So I'm going to read this book next:

The Foghorn's Lament: The Disappearing Music of the Coast

Posting LastFM summaries and this CMS

Fri, 17 Feb 2023 23:04:25 GMT

Not surely weekly track charts is the right data here. Maybe weekly album charts would work. The album image isn't right for at least one of the albums here too.

It's really nice to have a CMS with a write API. I can see this being fun.

My Last.fm Weekly Tracks Chart

Fri, 17 Feb 2023 22:53:12 GMT

My Last.fm Weekly Tracks Chart

Playing around with programmatically creating a blogpost from my last.fm data. This below is the output of a script I'm working on. Album art isn't 100% accurate

Artist: Bicep
Track: Aura
Album: Aura
Plays: 1

Artist: Bicep
Track: Ayr
Album: Isles
Plays: 1

Artist: Bicep
Track: Glue
Album: Glue
Plays: 1

Artist: Bicep
Track: Kites
Album: Isles
Plays: 1

Artist: Bicep
Track: Opal
Album: Opal (Four Tet Remix)
Plays: 1

Artist: Bicep
Track: Orca
Album: Isles
Plays: 1

Artist: Bicep
Track: Rain
Album: Rain
Plays: 1

Artist: Bicep
Track: Vale
Album: Vale
Plays: 1

Artist: Explosions in the Sky
Track: First Breath After Coma
Album: Drifter
Plays: 1

Artist: Explosions in the Sky
Track: Memorial
Album: The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place
Plays: 1

Artist: Explosions in the Sky
Track: Six Days at the Bottom of the Ocean
Album: Six Days (On The Run)
Plays: 1

Artist: Explosions in the Sky
Track: The Only Moment We Were Alone
Album: All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone
Plays: 1

Holy Fuck's music

Fri, 17 Feb 2023 20:38:36 GMT

Getting back into the band Holy Fuck

This is the description they get on streaming services and it is exactly what I love.

...dance music without modern electronic equipment, instead preferring to use standard rock instrumentation as well as unconventional devices and machines.

All the albums are good, including Latin

So quick!

Thu, 16 Feb 2023 23:23:53 GMT

This is quick.

(Update: this video is me using an iOS Shortcut on my phone to open the Github app right at the spot to create a new issue. That issue is then a post on this blog.)

Websites are nicer to publish than native apps

Thu, 16 Feb 2023 23:11:09 GMT

I built a macOS app with Tauri recently. It's called Draft One and it's for sale on the Mac App Store. Got really stuck trying to get it on the Windows store.

Looked into packaging with Electron instead. Sure it's a massive app this way but surely it's easier to publish? Right??...Can't get Apple to accept it onto the App Store.

One of the main reasons I made this microblog was to get back to websites and how good the publishing experience is here.

Lighthouse

Thu, 16 Feb 2023 22:23:24 GMT

Had a fun time at Souter lighthouse at South Shields last weekend. World's first electric lighthouse. Massive foghorn! What's not to love?

First post

Thu, 16 Feb 2023 19:24:32 GMT

Hi! This is my first post on this little microblog!