Damian’s notes

UK advice and regulations are still all over the place when it comes to wearing masks in public. Here’s the argument for doing it all the time you are out of the house.

I have been internationalizing the software that powers ooble.uk. As a result, if you happen to have your browser set up to prefer Esperanto text to English, then you will see some sketchily machine-translated Esperanto text on the site.

A runtime for TypeScript or JavaScript programs that is positioned as a single-executable alternative to TypeScript + Babel + Node + NPM + ESLint + Prettier + Webpack. Modules are imported from URLs (same system as ES6 modules running in browsers), and asynchronous APIs use promises rather than those old-fashioned callbacks (so not a drop-in replacement for Node). Implemented in Rust, and aiming to be secure-by-default by restricting access to files and networks unless explicitly allowed.

Apple’s photos app does machine-learning-powered analysis of all your photos and stores the result sin SQLite files that can reveal a wealth of information if you know how.

Time lapse of the process of hand-stenciling the swag for the 2015 Brand New Conference.

Word lists for testing typeface designs developed by Hoefler & Co.

A special from-their-bedrooms performance by 40 artists of music from Cowboy Bebop to benefit COVID-19 Relief.

An exercise in film making when you can’t go out to film: light painting and parallax displacement create the illusion of 3 motion in a series of still photographs captured after nightfall.

HTTPretty is a Python package for writing tests for code that interacts with remote web services. You write expectations for requests the test code should make and the responses, and the tests run without accessing real networks at all. Works particularly nicely with JSON-based protocols.