Personal Featured

I can stand!

I've been recovering from a severe injury to my left ankle. I've been completely off my feet for over 190 days. I stood for the first time since the accident this weekend and I couldn't be happier.

MtG Featured

My first deck, and everything is an otter!

I made my first Deck in Magic: The Gathering, where I turned all creatures into otters for some creative gameplay. It’s a lighthearted take on how otter-themed enchantments and synergies can lead to a winning strategy. Check it out if you’re into MtG or just love otters!

Tech Featured

Some thoughts about product, leadership, and teams

Leadership in tech: Foster open communication, embrace diverse viewpoints, and make purposeful products. Balance strategic thinking with quick decision-making. Cultivate empathy, encourage speaking up, and support your team. Remember: AI is a tool, not the solution. Lead with humility and respect.

Food

Pizza Sauce recipe

I had some friends over for dinner and drinks last weekend and they asked me to share how I made my pizza sauce, so here it is.

Life Featured

A Decade in Japan: From Six Months to Forever

Ten years ago, I moved to Japan for what I thought would be a brief stay. Instead, it became a life-changing journey. From struggles with roach-infested apartments to finding love in Tokyo, this post recounts my evolution from newcomer to long-term resident, sharing a decade of experiences in Japan.

Projects Featured

Bringing back the pizza calculator

Bringing new life to an old project is always good fun. In this post, I talk about How Many Pizzas and how I brought it into 2024 with a modern technology stack.

Barkeeper Featured

Barkeeper has its own blog

Barkeeper is a fantastic tool that helps venues mange their online presence and drive new customers.

Food

My pea and ham soup recipe

I'm not really a food blogger, but I was asked about this recipe by a friend of mine - so here it is for all to enjoy. One New Year, I was craving pea and ham soup but had to make some adjustments to how I normally would

Barkeeper

Introducing Vector: Peace of Mind for your venue

Vector serves as a purpose-built communication tool exclusively designed for bars and clubs to securely exchange vital information. It handles lost and found items and cloakroom management, while also helps to combat antisocial behavior and improve loss prevention.

Using AI to calculate a fair review score for a venue

In this post, we explain how we use some AI and old-fashioned content scraping to generate a fair review score for a venue. We call this "FairScore" and it makes up part of our product, Barkeeper

Projects

Designing a static / dynamic website builder hybrid

This is part of a series about the technology behind one of my projects, Barkeeper. In this post, I'll give a rough background about what Barkeeper is and how I approached its website build system.

Politics Featured

My thoughts about the UK Supreme Court ruling on Indyref2

The historic judgement by the UK Supreme Court on Wednesday, November 23rd 2022 was as disappointing as it was unsurprising. The Court has ruled that the Scottish Parliament does not have the power to hold an Independence referendum. This post is about what I think about that.

LGBT

Transphobes over Scotland

Right at the start of the "Yes Scotland" movement, there was a blog that provided great content on the various things happening on the campaign trail. It was called Wings Over Scotland. Now, the blog is a hub of awful transphobic frothing.

Let's get it right this time

The First Minister of Scotland and her Government have fired the starting pistol for the next independence referendum. Scotland will be going to the polls in October 2023 to decide if it should become an independent country. You can find out more details about the Scottish Government's plans

LGBT

Gay life in Japan

Japan has a reputation around for world for doing things a little differently than everywhere else. The Gay Scene there is no different.

Politics

Let’s get our eyes back on the goal

Right now, when Brexit is set to throw us back into an economic downturn that will hurt for 30 years we should be more determined than ever to make sure that an Independent Scotland happens.

Tech

The tale of the invisible man - a conference story

Ruby Kaigi is a Japanese technology conference for Japanese people that does great work to make sure that their talks are available in both English and Japanese.

Personal

Goodbye, Mathie

Goodbye Graeme. Thank you for your long and valued friendship. You’ll be missed, but never forgotten.

Activism Featured

Homophobia is more rife than assault rifles in the USA

When elected politicians actively stir up hatred against the LGBT community, it legitimises that hatred and makes bigots more comfortable in that hate.

Tech

Re-introducing prawn-graph - it's back! Simple graphing for PDF and Ruby

There might be a slight sense of déjà vu about this topic, since a few years ago on my old blog I wrote a similar thing. That time it was an attempt to motivate me to actually make an update to prawn-graph. This time, it actually is updated. Over 6

Politics

On 'internet piracy' and 'copyright infringement'

Peoples' usage patterns change, as more and more people are connected to the internet and the speed and quality of those connections increases the more people will be looking for instant gratification from the entertainment industry.

Tech

Your code of conduct is not enough if your guests are illegal

But what if the country the conference is in has it’s own strict laws about what is acceptable or not? What if the law of the land makes it clear that certain groups are not welcome and indeed such people are breaking the law by existing and deserve the most strict punishment?

Personal

Goodbye, Sir Terry

This magical place that was a close satire of ours was enjoyable to me as a kid, and then re-reading the books as an adult, became almost profound in the subtly of his wit and criticism of the world we all inhabit.

Japan

Changing your UK Driving license into a Japanese one

This post is about how I was able to use my own full UK Driving License to obtain a Japanese Driving License. The procedure is for Tokyo, but should be similar throughout Japan.

Tech

Ruby / Rails the 'Enterprise' and how software works in the 'real world'

In this post, I draw upon my own work and personal experience to discuss both these topics and try to see where Ruby and Rails sit in the ‘real world’ as it pertains to me, and within the ‘enterprise’.