My beef with Google+
I’ve been a member of Google+ since day 1, but I’ve not really taken to it in a big way. Initially I thought this was because none of my friends were on there, but no… now lots of my friends and other people of interest are on Google+ and (reasonably) active. So I thought to myself what it is about the user experience on Google+ that’s holding me back. I love the idea of putting all my contacts into so-called circles. It’s great to be able to make the distinction between friends, acquaintances, famous people I’m following, etc. and being asked to choose each time I share a new item. Facebook and Twitter both have lists for incoming data but Google+ has made it easy to do this for outgoing data. Except it hasn’t. When I...
iTerm invisible cursor
I’m a big fan of the popular Mac OS X terminal application iTerm, but for the first year or so of using it I was irked by a serious problem: my cursor was invisible! [Figure 1] I scoured high and low on the web and found other people reporting this problem but no one offering a solution. I finally found the answer by accident a few months back and thought it was important to get it on the web somewhere so people can find it! If you want to see your cursor in iTerm, for reasons completely unknown to me, you need to set its colours in reverse (that is, set the text colour to the background and the background colour to the foreground)! [Figure 2] That’s all I wanted to say. I’ve never had any problems since. Happy iTerming! Update: My good friend...
Agile Manifesto poster
As a software engineer & manager, I’m a massive fan of the principles of Agile software development, as embodied in the Agile Manifesto. I really believe software development and the interaction between software development companies and their customers would be radically different if more people adopted these four basic values and twelve basic principles. But, somewhere in recent history, the word Agile has been hijacked by big companies and transformed into a synonym for iterative development. Now, while I’m a great believer in iterative development, it only works if it’s accompanied by the other principles of Agile development. Principles that are often ignored by big-business management include: Build projects around motivated...
Leeds-based non-binary nerd and sewist. I won't break my streak on Duolingo for anyone. 
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