iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

James B @jarofgreen.co.uk · 30/07/2026

SCOTRAIL: You need to pay a £10 minimum fare if you don't buy a ticket before boarding the train. If your station doesn't have a ticket machine, you can use our app. A FEW WEEKS LATER: We have scrapped our app. So old! Get our new app! It doesn't work on launch day! Still have a tenner policy tho.

James B @jarofgreen.co.uk · 26/07/2026

Librarians should politely tell you if you're taking out a book you've taken out before. Asking for me. Tho it is interesting to see how many pages in you get before realising. (Paging @tomgauld.bsky.social )

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James B @jarofgreen.co.uk · 18/05/2026

Working on our second little web game. Lots to do on graphics and UI but we think we have the game rules sorted and we're showing it to people to play test. If I see you around do ask to see it!

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James B @jarofgreen.co.uk · 01/05/2026

Happy May! Our monthly second guessing challenge is up - after last months one maybe went a bit to challenging hopefully this one is just right. www.secondguessing.net

A simple game where you are asked to count a certain number of seconds. Play normal levels, Zen levels for calmness, or the monthly challenge. Completely free!

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James B @jarofgreen.co.uk · 02/04/2026

Hope you had a good April Fools day! I'm not fooling when I say this months Second Guessing challenge is the hardest yet. I hate it. Our tester hated it. We may have gone to far. Try the free web game .... can you count seconds? www.secondguessing.net

A simple game where you are asked to count a certain number of seconds. Play normal levels, Zen levels for calmness, or the monthly challenge. Completely free!

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James B @jarofgreen.co.uk · 03/02/2026

@thisisgelb.bsky.social Hey, I'm trying to email you but getting "550 5.1.1 The email account that you tried to reach does not exist." errors?

James B @jarofgreen.co.uk · 01/02/2026

"The v4 tape in the Unix history repo" from Diomidis Spinellis at #FOSDEM Fun to see "Hello World" written on a 50 year old operating system. unixv4.dev And UNIX used to have a Spider Interface? Why did we scrap that?!

unixv4.dev

UNIX v4 (1973) - Live Terminal | Experience Vintage UNIX

UNIX v4 (1973) live in your browser. Original binaries recently recovered from archival sources once thought lost. PDP-11/45 emulator with Thompson shell and early C compiler.

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Happy February! (Coming soon, depending on your time zone) We just released the monthly challenge for our game Second Guessing, give it a try: www.secondguessing.net #SecondGuessing (Game now with TypeScript behind the scenes to help ensure everything works correctly)

A simple game where you are asked to count a certain number of seconds. Play normal levels, Zen levels for calmness, or the monthly challenge. Completely free!

virtuallyattend.teacaketech.scot

That's day 1 of #FOSDEM remote viewing wrapping up. Thanks again to the speakers & volunteers who stream things so well and keep things to good time, makes it easy to hop round between rooms and talks.

Welcome - Virtually Attend FOSDEM 2026

Did you know you can attend FOSDEM virtually? We help you make a schedule, whatever timezone you are in.

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"PyInfra: Because Your Infrastructure Deserves Real Code in Python, Not YAML Soup" at #FOSDEM I've never seen so many Rowan Atkinson images in a talk. I feel like it should have come with a quiz round of what film/tv each was afterwards. Good talk too, I'll have another look at PyInfra.

So wait, CodeBerg/Forgejo supports sha256 git hash format but GitHub doesn't? So if you have a repo you want to put online but don't want anyone to put on GitHub you should use sha256? #FOSDEM #Git

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virtuallyattend.teacaketech.scot

Morning, it's #FOSDEM weekend. I'll be watching along virtually. I made a schedule viewer that lets you browse in any time zone: virtuallyattend.teacaketech.scot/fosdem/2026/ I'll be updating that and bug fixing over the weekend too I'm sure 🙂 Let me know if you use it & what you think of it!

Welcome - Virtually Attend FOSDEM 2026

Did you know you can attend FOSDEM virtually? We help you make a schedule, whatever timezone you are in.

Pedal on Parliament #pop26 @pedalonparliament.org · 23/01/2026

Reposted by James B

We’re back - Save the Date! In 2026 we Pedal on Parliament for a cycle-friendly Scotland, on Sat 30th May at 11.30am - Middle Meadow Walk to Holyrood, Edinburgh on closed roads. #ThisMachineFightsClimateChange #pop26

A large group of people, including children, on bikes of all sizes cycle through a green space. The text reads: Pedal on Parliament - Save the date: 30th May 2026, 11.30am - #PoP26 - Meadows to Holyrood on closed roads,
for a cycle-friendly Scotland

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Reposted by James B

Open Tech Calendar @opentechcalendar.co.uk · 22/01/2026

Last night we talked at a virtual tech event about our relaunch - thanks to the attendees for a great discussion afterwards. We've written up our talk here: blog.opentechcalendar.co.uk/2026/01/23/t... Happy to hear feedback from people!

blog.opentechcalendar.co.uk

Talk about our relaunch at Teacake Tech Virtual Event - Open Tech Calendar Blog

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James B @jarofgreen.co.uk · 18/01/2026

Just converted a site to my own static site builder and again found it really useful that the builder checked the output after it had built it. In this case, checking no internal links were broken highlighted a few errors. We test / lint our code with automated tools, why not our static sites too?

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James B @jarofgreen.co.uk · 16/01/2026

Tried to find where I can recycle bike inner tubes & found a website that lists places. First 2 places near me have closed permanently & there's no way for me to easily report that to the site. Community data projects are hard - reposting blog I wrote years ago: www.teacaketech.scot/blogs/2020-0...

teacaketech.scot

How to run a useful community data project - Teacake Tech

How to run a useful community data project

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James B @jarofgreen.co.uk · 16/01/2026

Released a new version of my static site generator I use on a lot of projects. Now has better versioning of assets (Images, CSS, JS, etc) to support in-browser caching: docs.staticpipes.teacaketech.scot/stable/

docs.staticpipes.teacaketech.scot

Welcome - StaticPipes Documentation

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James B @jarofgreen.co.uk · 07/01/2026

re Last repost, reminded me I haven't said this news here yet: I've just left the worker's co-op I've been at for almost 8 years; thanks to everyone there who made it a great place to work and for all the interesting projects to work on.

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Reposted by James B

Anil Dash @anildash.com · 05/01/2026

The number one thing I've been hearing from people in tech lately is, basically, "How the hell am I supposed to work in this industry anymore?" Though most folks are kind of afraid to say it out loud. So I wrote about how to think about it: www.anildash.com/2026/01/05/a...

anildash.com

How the hell are you supposed to have a career in tech in 2026? - Anil Dash

A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

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James B @jarofgreen.co.uk · 04/01/2026

Having a look at Rust out of curiosity #rustlang Reading the book: doc.rust-lang.org/book/ Just did the first advent of code puzzle in Rust #adventofcode But just seen recommendation for rustlings.rust-lang.org which looks interesting too.

doc.rust-lang.org

The Rust Programming Language - The Rust Programming Language

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James B @jarofgreen.co.uk · 31/12/2025

Happy New Year! We've just released a new monthly challenge for our game, #SecondGuessing We're proud of this one - our play tester's first comment was "woooooooow this is a bastard of a level i love it". www.secondguessing.net New art in this level, again by the great @patchworkbear.bsky.social

A simple game where you are asked to count a certain number of seconds. Play normal levels, Zen levels for calmness, or the monthly challenge. Completely free!

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James B @jarofgreen.co.uk · 28/12/2025

Today I threw together a web tool for people who want to attend FOSDEM virtually - the official site doesn't let you browse in your local timezone, which always seemed odd. So here's my first go: virtuallyattend.teacaketech.scot/fosdem/2026/ Comments welcome!

virtuallyattend.teacaketech.scot

Welcome - Virtually Attend FOSDEM 2026

Did you know you can attend FOSDEM virtually? We help you make a schedule, whatever timezone you are in.

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James B @jarofgreen.co.uk · 27/12/2025

@histoftech.bsky.social Hello, hope you're doing well! I'm trying to get a project started and it seems like something you might approve of? Any chance of a boost if so? bsky.app/profile/open...

James B @jarofgreen.co.uk · 24/12/2025

Yesterday in tech: Boosting Django/Apache VM server. Add mod_cache to Apache & cache-control/vary headers to Django & Apache's static files. Load testing shows server handles multiples more simultaneous traffic than before. Users browsers now cache assets, for snappy page loads as move around site.

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James B @jarofgreen.co.uk · 22/12/2025

Setting up prometheus.io for server, app and website monitoring today. Nice to see it progressing - when I first set it up if you wanted basic auth / SSL you had to proxy traffic throught something, now there are options built in: ruan.dev/blog/2021/10...

prometheus.io

Prometheus - Monitoring system & time series database

An open-source monitoring system with a dimensional data model, flexible query language, efficient time series database and modern alerting approach.

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James B @jarofgreen.co.uk · 12/12/2025

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Why is a flatbed lorry called a flatbed lorry? Does anyone ring up and go "I need a lorry but it has to have a wavy bed, don't send me any of that stinking flatbed type, had one last week, put things on it and they rolled right off"

James B @jarofgreen.co.uk · 07/12/2025

👀Sneak peak of what I'm working on, do comment and add good virtual tech events! I'm looking forwards to launching properly after the holidays.

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James B @jarofgreen.co.uk · 01/12/2025

Also released a version of DataTig, my open source tool for people crowd sourcing data in a git repository: www.datatig.com This is to support launching my next big project, which uses DataTig

datatig.com

Welcome - DataTig

James B @jarofgreen.co.uk · 09/11/2025

What I'm working on: I've got Open Tech Calendar back, and I'm going to relaunch it to list virtual tech events that include community participation. Follow @opentechcalendar.co.uk now, tho I'm sure I'll mention it a few times when it launches.

James B @jarofgreen.co.uk · 02/11/2025

For me "Person waiting for a friend to finish tying their shoes" is the clear winner

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James B @jarofgreen.co.uk · 25/10/2025

If I saw this on some map data I was working on I'd be worried something had gone wrong. But no, I recently learnt that River Test, Test Road, Test Mews, Test Way, Test Valley and more are all actually real places. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_T...

en.wikipedia.org

River Test - Wikipedia

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James B @jarofgreen.co.uk · 20/10/2025

Put our game on Itch yesterday: teacaketech.itch.io/second-guess... Interesting to see the tools they have and how it all works.

teacaketech.itch.io

Second Guessing by Teacake Tech

Press the button to start, count to however many seconds we tell you then push the stop button.

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James B @jarofgreen.co.uk · 18/10/2025

My fav bit of this is when they ask James Cameron (sorry, anonymous expert witness) a single question and he goes on for 2 and a half pages until: CAMERON: And then we -- if I'm going into too much detail, stop me. THEM: No. No, sir. It's great. (Link to full transcript in comments to quoted post)

James B @jarofgreen.co.uk · 12/10/2025

Been making good progress on my next project. I won't be ready to release it for a month or two as I have some other stuff to sort out first. But if anyone sees me (in-person or virtually) please do ask, I'd like to show people and get feedback.

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James B @jarofgreen.co.uk · 06/10/2025

Got a lot of coding on my own stuff done this weekend - looking forward to unveiling this! Used Django's multiple database support for the first time - the flexible routing options are pretty nice docs.djangoproject.com/en/5.2/topic... Also getting back into Ansible after years working in salt.

docs.djangoproject.com

Multiple databases | Django documentation

The web framework for perfectionists with deadlines.

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James B @jarofgreen.co.uk · 02/10/2025

It's October! (Yesterday, oops) We released a new monthly challenge for our completely free web game ... all you have to do is count seconds. #SecondGuessing www.secondguessing.net This one is a challenge tho, so try the normal levels first!