March 2025: Siblings, Software, and Sock Repairs
Happy March! Spring has definitely arrived for me, along with an onslaught of pollen. The sun is shining, the trees on my road are lined with blossom, and my eyes are streaming. I've had to double my anti-allergy medication because the plants are Just. So. Raunchy.
The highlight of this month was a trip to the Netherlands. My brother is spending a year studying in Leiden, and my sister and I went to visit him. We had a lovely weekend together, and I feel very lucky that the three of us are as close as we are. It's rare for the three of us to be in the same place, and I'm glad we could make it work with our diaries.
We took a day trip to Utrecht, which is easily my favourite of the Dutch cities I've visited. We heard a church tower playing some surprisingly fast-paced music with their bells; we went to a museum of mechanical music machines, including a mechanical violin; we saw a museum full of Dutch trains. It felt like a very calm, relaxed, artsy city, and I'd love to go back.
(And despite three visits to the Netherlands in the last year, I still haven't had a hot stroopwaffle! Maybe on trip number four?)
I also spent two days at Monki Gras, a conference about the intersection of tech and craft which is one of my favourite events. This year’s theme was “sustaining software development craft” and I came away with a lot of new ideas. I’ve been going through my notes today, and I’m struck by the breadth of conversations I had – volunteering for roller derby, record-keeping in the US immigration system, how rail fares are tracked in London. It’s such a chill, friendly vibe, and everybody there was lovely.
Monki Gras was just before Trans Day of Visibility, which was a nice coincidence. As in previous years, everybody I met was incredibly chill with the fact that I’m trans, and it was a complete non-issue for two days. It was so nice to feel like I was the right shape, to be comfortable, to feel welcomed and respected. I hope I never stop appreciating that sort of space.
The rest of the month has been fairly busy – hanging out with friends, assembling their furniture, and trying to squeeze in some work! I completely collapsed this weekend just past, and spent most of it in bed – it’s fun to do stuff, but I need to be careful to pace myself.
What have I been writing?
Most of my writing time this month went towards my Monki Gras talk, What I’ve learned by building to last. I’ve inadvertently made a career working on long-lasting projects, telecoms and networking to libraries and museums. I distilled a few lessons about what I’ve learnt – looking for patterns in what lasts, the importance of people skills, and the value of weeding.
My other reflective post was We all lose when art is anonymised. I wrote about some of the challenges I’ve had finding the original artist behind my favourite images and videos, and how the Internet’s casual attitude towards attribution makes art worse for all of us.
I also wrote a trilogy of posts about problems that sound easy on paper, but I found more difficult. I wrote notes because they’re problems I'm likely to encounter again.
Creating static map images with OpenStreetMap, Web Mercator, and Pillow is about laying out points on a map. Imagine getting an atlas and making dots with a coloured pen, but with a computer.
I got an unexpected lesson in CSS stacking contexts when I tried to add a “new” banner to some of my blog posts. I got a basic version working, but the banners disappeared in dark mode, and I did a CSS deep dive to understand what I was doing wrong.
Fast and random sampling in SQLite can be done in several ways. My naive approach was too slow to be usable, so I compared several alternatives.
I also had a pair of posts about GitHub Actions. First I wrote a script to find out what third-party actions I'm using, and then I wrote some notes on installing exiftool in GitHub Actions.
What’s making me smile?
🧦 I went to an exhibition by Celia Pym about caring for and repairing socks, which had hundreds of socks darned in bright colours. I had fun admiring the creative repairs and trying to find the funkiest pair.
👨🏾💼 I really enjoyed the final few episodes of Severance, and I got to watch the season 2 finale with my brother. There was lots of great stuff in this season, but my personal highlight was Tramel Tillman (spoilers!), who made me feel such a wide range of emotions for Mr Milchick. He brings so much depth and subtlety to that character.
🛬 Xyla Foxlin made a video about how the FAA grounded her for using birth control, because seeking mental health support gets your pilots’ licence revoked. Xyla makes a compelling case against the culture of silence, and talks about a campaign to change the FAA rules.
(Love and hugs to all my friends in the US and anybody feeling the sharp edge of the Trump administration right now. This issue is actually long-standing and not a recent change, but that doesn't make it better.)
🍬 Federico Viticci wrote an article about the iPad’s “Sweet” Solution, arguing that Apple's neglect of the iPad software means web apps are often preferable to iPad-native apps. I felt a lot of resonance with my push to do more and more with static websites.
🎷 Finally, this month's saw cast recordings for both Why Am I So Single? and Maybe Happy Ending, two musicals I adore. I spent a lot of time dancing around my kitchen with the songs cranked up loud, and it’s everybody’s loss that nobody else was around as witness.
It's been a busy few months, and my diary is considerably quieter in April. I'm looking forward to some quiet weekends at home. May we all have time to rest, unwind, and appreciate the changing of the seasons.
With love,
~ Alex