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Kate Gregory

@gregcons.bsky.social
1.4K followers 684 following 1K posts

I advise, develop, mentor, write, and speak. C++ mostly. One of the Carbon leads. Limited availability; you can ask. Want me to speak? gregcons.com/SpeakerKit.aspx She/her.

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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Meeting C++ schedule is complete! meetingcpp.com/mcpp/schedule/ My keynote is Friday
Screenshot of a schedule. Picture of me. Title "Center Keynote - Brains And Belonging". Kate Gregory,  10:30
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Sunset, moon, beach fire. September is the best month of summer.
View over a lake. In the foreground is a small campfire in a rock circle,  on a beach. The water is orange from the sunset. Pines on the far shore contrast with the sky. It's very peaceful.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
This seems completely unambiguous:
Wikipedia excerpt:
"In 2021, Alomar was banned from baseball by MLB following an 
independent investigation into an allegation of sexual misconduct, dating back to 2014.[6][7] In April 2021, the Blue Jays also announced that Alomar would be removed from the Level of Excellence and his retired number banner would be taken down at Rogers Centre.[8] The Blue Jays have reactivated the uniform number 12, and it has been used by Jordan Hicks in 2023. Alomar remains the only player to currently be a member of both the Baseball Hall of Fame and MLB's permanently-ineligible list simultaneously."
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Post the last photo of the sky from your camera roll. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wutai_S...
Looking up at a  enormous statue of a seated happy man. Wikipedia says it is "a stone sculpture of Maitreya measuring 13 metres (43 ft) tall and weighing over 700 tonnes". There are steps up to the statue and in the foreground,  flowers, a small elephant statue, and a sidewalk. It is a glorious summer day and the sky is bright blue with puffy clouds.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Come on. I bought some rope. Don't be so thirsty @canadiantirecorp.bsky.social . If you want consulting i can provide my rates.
An email begging me to review rope.

"How are you finding the product?
Hi Kate Gregory,
 
Thank you for shopping with us! We hope you'll write about your Ben-Mor Nylon Twisted Rope, Abrasion Resistance, Strong and Flexible, 3/8-in x 50-ft while it's still fresh on your mind. Click the stars to get started:"
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Passed my boat license, please clap. (Also do not ask me about bouys or how far from shore various things are allowed.)
Screenshot of a Transport Canada page that reads:
---------------------------------
Pleasure Craft Operator Card
Your Online Boating Safety Test Result
Congratulations Katherine Gregory, you Passed!

Final Mark 96%
 
Click this link to open your printable temporary Pleasure Craft Operator Card (PCOC)
------------------------
Followed by my personal information.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
I spoke at @sddconf.bsky.social at the Barbican in May 2022 and lunch in the conservatory was a lovely part of the experience. Go if you're close enough to.
A view out across a conservatory. In the foreground is a lunch, sitting on a railing. Among the plants and pathways are people sitting and lunching. Plants spill from balconies and the whole thing is glass roofed.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
"Kate, you're just weird for finding "back" and "forward" ambiguous when talking about days, everyone knows what it means, there's no opportunity for confusion." Uh huh. Just say Earlier and Later; it isn't even hard.
A facebook post from a municipal politician. The politician has reminded us that "Waste and Recycling is moved back a day" (with really strange capitalization, but that's not the point here) and shared an image of the municipal waste calendar whose legend explains that collection "moves forward one day". I have circled the words Back and Forward in red.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Today's exploring includes the whistler trainwreck en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheakam...
A crumpled freight car, thickly graffitied in bright colours among thick pines. Judging from their width they are younger than the wreck, which happened 70 years ago
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Current status
Security line for Canada Switzerland world cup game
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
10 years ago. Shocked by the Brexit result I posted something sympathetic on FB along with a hammock picture. The resulting conversation with a friend... (Spoiler: he didn't move to the US)
Kate Gregory: I may not live there, but I was born there and have family there and I felt the shock of it too.
[friend]: Heartbroken Kate Gregory
Kate Gregory: May today be the worst of it for you, and it be at least a little better tomorrow.
[friend]: Prob will head back to the US
Kate Gregory: Out of the frying pan my friend. Who knows what November will bring there? Bunch of people saying they never dreamed that voting for him might mean he would win?
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
This financial institution seriously misreading our relationship and what I think about them even having a website at all, never mind the importance of their plans to change that website some day soon.
An email from a company with the name partly redacted, it ends Financial. The subject of the email is "Our new website is almost here!" and the preview starts "With our upcoming website refresh," as if anybody would care even once the refresh was live, much less in advance like this.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
Speaking is HARD work. My talk was 4:20 to 5:20. Can you see it on the graph? After that I walked (pulling a heavy suitcase and with a heavy backpack) to the train. Then I could relax on the train.
Graph of my heart rate through the day, low until about 8am when i went down to the conference from my room, variable through the next 8 hours as I attended sessions etc, then spiking well above 125 for the hour in which i delivered a keynote.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
That's a wrap for #ndctoronto Thank you so much everyone for coming and for the kind reception for my closing keynote. @ndcconferences.com sure know how to run a show! See you all next year I hope!
People waiting on a GO train platform at Union Station Toronto.  A train track dominates the foreground.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Been excited about this one since I saw the submission come in. So pleased the #ndctoronto program committee accepted it. @darcylussier.bsky.social bring it!
Truth and Reconciliation: the State of Indigenous Tech
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
That's right, two Carbon talks at ##ndctoronto. @chandlerc.blog is up again with some performance numbers
Benchmarking and optimizing the Carbon compiler
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Plenty to think about in this talk by @nikpayuk.bsky.social at #ndctoronto
Once types are introduced into a programming language, they allow us to distinguish between timescopes, in particular between compile time and run time
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Next: @chandlerc.blog with the Carbon update at #ndctoronto
Carbon: graduating from the experiment
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Valid point from @scott.hanselman.com to kick off NDC Toronto. I have seen all these, it's true.
Slide describing panics of earlier eras about IDE'S,  Stack Overflow,  AI
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
This graph makes it clear. If your infant isn't sleeping, eating etc as they "should" you get desparate and will listen to anyone who sounds confident, even when what they confidently suggest could be fatal. Protecting parents would be wise.
Graph of unexplained infant deaths in England and Wales, 1979 to 2024. The early bars are around 1000 or more deaths a year, nearly 1500 some years. Later bars are the low hundreds. There's a dramatic and sudden drop in the early 90s and a caption labels that year as "Back to Sleep campaign launched."

Fine print sources the graph as using numbers from the Office for National Statistics, defines an infant as under one year old, and points out 2023 and 2024 numbers are incomplete. There is also a BBC logo.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
A side note in a study on cancer vaccines. I had checkpoint inhibitors and I think 9 Covid shots so far. Coming up on 10 years since my stage 4 metastatic melanoma was confirmed. Unheard of result just 11 years ago.
A recent illustration of the “universal vaccine” approach came in a study led by Drs. Adam Grippin and Steven Lin of MD Anderson Cancer Center. They reviewed records of more than a thousand cancer patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors and found that getting an mRNA-based Covid vaccine was linked to a significantly better response to cancer drugs.

Patients with small cell lung cancer who had gotten a Covid shot within 100 days of starting treatment lived nearly twice as long as those who hadn’t. For those with melanoma, researchers couldn’t calculate the difference in survival time because so many of the patients who had gotten a Covid vaccine were still alive.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
Apr 30th @klmuseumarchives.ca is hosting an exhibit launch for "approximately sixty Inuit carvings, sculptures, and materials collected from 1900 to 1970" visiting from Cobourg. Good chance to learn more about these artifacts than one normally would. www.klmuseumarchives.ca/events/exhib...
A small shiny statue of a bird (ptarmigan? it is black on the bottom half, white on the top half, with red feet and beak and a black cap) with statues of whales behind it. They all sit on a shiny surface in which they are reflected. There is a map in the background behind them all.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
Here's a peek at the NDC Toronto lanyards! @ndcconferences.com chose a design with no metal hook, that little notch keeps the badge attached. Can't wait to wear mine! If you don't have your ticket yet, there's still time ndctoronto.com/agenda
Lanyards for the NDC Toronto conference. They are blue, with a red maple leaf and white text "NDC {Toronto} 2026 on each half.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
In Canada "a roti" means the bread wrapped around a curry filling. Period. (Example from a roti place nearish to me)
A post from a restaurant titled "HOT CHICKEN ROTI" showing a thin bread wrapper around a yellow curry with chickpeas, potatoes, and chicken visible in the filling.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
I like this one, the web site seems to have gone away though. They key is give them a number but tie it to something it is worse than, like "getting this tattoo" or "transition during labour" never just give a number.
a pain scale from 0 pain free through mild, minor, uncomfortable, moderate, distracting, distressing, severe, intense, excruciating to 10 unspeakable. A sentence adds more details for each.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
Ontario business website, down all weekend for "maintenance", comes back up today, makes me enter stuff it already knows, then... An Error Is Occurred. Why do I never get way too much money to do an atrocious job? I can be atrocious at half the price of your current vendor!
A browser page that proclaims in large letters "An Error is occurred" and offers only a Back to Home link. (Spoiler: following the link will lead back here to the error page.)
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
Honestly @toronto.ca this is shameful. Bloor street. Hardly a backwater. Over a week and nothing done?
A bike lane completely neglected and full of snow. Paths across it worn by feet. Sidewalk and road are clear. Looking down Manning to Bloor, snow piles in the street,  nearly car height. Sidewalks unusable for pedestrians
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
New candidate for counter-productive email: (as far as I can recall I didn't make any posts, so this is very good performance, but still) 9/8
Email with the subject line "Kate, last week your posts reached 6 people" that continues enthusiastically to let me know my posts made an impact and my audience showed up.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
Forbidden City (my picture Nov 2018) same vibe
An elephant in the style of a lion, by someone apparently not burdened with having actually met one. (The front legs are bending utterly the wrong way)
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 17/01/2026
This chocolate. And gladost. And a number of very yummy flavours of chips that don't exist here.
A bag of Minde Mork chocolate - mint, mocha, and sea salt flavours.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 29/11/2025
I remember liking these as a small child...
A package of 16 "skippers pipes" with a lot of old-style nautical imagery (many sailed ship, lighthouse on what appear to be an iceberg, a ships's wheel, seabirds) on the box. The pipes themselves are made of black licorice with little red candy dots clustered to represent glowing embers at the top of the pipe bowl.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
🎵 Swimming in the snow, just Swimming in the snow 🎵
Blue swimming spa water in the foreground with snowy trees just outside it. Thick snow covers most surfaces and plenty of large flaked snow is falling still.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 15/11/2025
This should be illegal. Left turn indicator is an arrow pointing right and vice versa. Later it signaled left and it gave real cognitive dissonance.
View of a mini Cooper from behind with brake lights on. Each is an arrow pointing in towards the centre of the car. Confusing.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
Decisions, Decisions. Go Jays go! (These were all bought contemporaneously. In 1993 we didn't buy shirts I guess.)
Tshirts. All star the Toronto Blue Jays. Left to right 1985 AL Champions, 1992 AL Champions,  1992 World Series  Champions (featuring the trophy),  1992 World Series Champions (featuring a lot of Canadian flags.)
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 17/10/2025
Wow cursed title or what? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of...
The title was created for the eighth time for Prince Andrew, second son of Queen Elizabeth II. As of 2022, the only legitimate offspring are his two daughters from his marriage to Sarah, Duchess of York. Thus, if he has no future (legitimate) sons, the title will again become extinct—reverting to the Crown—upon his death.

Aside from the first creation, every time the Dukedom of York has been created it has had only one occupant, that person either inheriting the throne or dying without male heirs.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
Enjoyed this talk on expressive code by @tinaul.bsky.social at #NDCTechtown
Opening slide of a presentation. /* The Code is Documentation Enough */. (The punctuation makes it a comment in C++, which many developers use to document code. The talk is by Tina Ulbrich.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
Popcorn container at #NDCTechtown has been listening to John Oliver
A small cardboard container with a few pieces of popcorn in it. On one side is written "make" and on another, "me"
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
Physically resetting the projector at #NDCTechtown go @tartanllama.xyz go!
A person holding a long thin stick over their head to poke a button on a ceiling-mounted projector. It worked!
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
Cippi is here in Kongsberg for a special not-in-Oslo version of the Oslo C++ Meetup #cippi #ALS
A podium and a speaker (Klaus Iglberger) on stage. Behind Klaus is the NDC logo. To one side is a small table and on that a little cloth doll. She represents Rainer Grimm who can no longer travel to conferences.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
One last breakfast in this grand old railway hotel (literally opens onto the platform) accompanied this morning by a soft tinkly piano instrumental of Every Breath You Take. Farewell Voss!
View from a restaurant table through arched windows. There's an umbrella'd terrace and beyond that a lake. The room is wood-panelled and old fashioned.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 19/09/2025
Things I wish they had on GO Transit (who should be on here, sigh). This on a low level train between Myrdal and Bergen in Norway.
A vending machine that sells coffee. Sorry the picture is rotated 90 degrees. Taken on a moving train.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
Today's purchase, at the Bergen train station: Norwegian Love Hearts and of course liquorice Mentos
Two rolls of candy. The love hearts, labelled Bestevenn, have been opened. The liquorice mentos have not.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 12/09/2025
And how about today? Today, since everybody drives from A to B or from A to B to C, I drove to A. Well, technically A-with-a-dot-over-it but I don't know how to type that. Bridges! Like you can't believe these bridges! Tunnels! Mountains! Adorable fishing villages! I can't even tell you.
A delicately arching bridge over a fjord with hulking mountains below it.A fishing village on a tiny bit of flat land with jagged mountains rising up behind it. Most of the buildings are white or red. There are fishing boats, too.A beautiful collonaded - I don't know what Norwegians call this, in Canada it's a "snow shed" to prevent avalanches and rockslides from landing on the road. It's not a tunnel, because the side away from the cliff is open. These are the most beautiful snow sheds I have ever seen. Above them is mountain that might go on forever and to the left is water. In the foreground is a road and the very near foreground a car's dash and a glimpse of a navigation screen.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 11/09/2025
Where is Kate today? Roughly 70 N latitude. Heading slightly south for a few days
Sewer access cover (with reindeer) in Tromso,  Norway Tromso Harbour and the Arctic Cathedral
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 07/09/2025
This morning's random thought - how many people dot their j's? When I'm writing a note to myself, I don't, even though I dot i's. Who else?
An image headed CURSIVE ALPHABET shows the letters Aa Bb and so on through Zz. They are written on triplet horizontal lines to help show the proportions. Both the i and the j have dots above them.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 30/08/2025
Where is Kate today? Definitely Alberta. Had a terrific tour (you cannot drive a car to Moraine Lake and you wouldn't enjoy driving to Lake Louise either.) Fantastic day.
Moraine Lake is an exquisite shade of blue. It's surrounded by pine trees and rocky mountains. Also by hundreds of people who (with a good deal of effort from me) are not in this picture.Lake Louise is an iconic shade of pale green. It too is surrounded by mountains, with a glacier on one of them. The flanks of the mountains are thick with pine trees. There are canoes on the lake and the banks of the lake are thick with tourists who I have managed to exclude from the picture.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
C++ warning. Think we're in Alberta now.
Road sign saying "const ahead" with some impressive mountains in the background.
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
Yesterday afternoon
A glacial stream near Nairn Falls in British Columbia. The water is pale green and moving fast. There are trees in the foreground and on the other side of the stream. It is definitely a forest stream and probably memory safe
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 20/08/2025
Victoria last night. I deliberately take pictures of lamp poles when they are good
The base of a red lamp pole in Victoria BC's Chinatown. It has yellow (gold) scrolling. In the background across the street you can see the top of a similar pole A banner  stretched across a street in Victoria BC's Chinatown. Featuring golden dragons,  it claims to be Canada's Oldest Chinatown. The lamp pole in the foreground is highly decorated and the buildings are generally old fashioned
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Kate Gregory @gregcons.bsky.social · 04/08/2025
Time to share this lovely image of the silk painting I had commissioned by swift-rivers-studio.ca -- we're completely delighted with it and the collaboration with Dianne was wonderful. If you would like some art of you own do check her out, you won't regret it.
A painting on silk hangs in a woodlined staircase. It's 7 feet long and 2 feet wide. In the foreground, white pines extend up out of the frame and a pair of loons are in the water. In the distance is a spectacular sunrise over the water with a green hill on the horizon. The branches of the pine are rimmed with copper.
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