Useful Stuff

Latest — Sep 22, 2026

1983 - After School

I left Ash Green School at 16. I did OK in my exams - getting all the results I expected and all the passes I wanted - apart from in Geography. I liked Geography. I understood it, was interested in it, and generally did very well in tests, mocks etc.. My Geography

More issues

1983 - First Computer

We had a 16k Sinclair Spectrum at home - I think it was my brother's birthday present - but that would mean we got it almost a year after they were launched - which seems a long time. I remember we upgraded it to 48k at some point. I learned to

Rails Scopes On Associations

I'm working on a legacy Rails application at the moment (legacy meaning it's over 10 years old - but it's recently had a revival in development activity.) I regularly come across, what appears to be, strange ways of doing things. At first I put it

Other people's code

I'm currently working on a 10+ year old code base and often come across some code that I am initially baffled by. def using_custom_theme? !custom_theme_id.nil? end My first thoughts were - why ? This is the sort of logic kungfu that really hurts my brain.

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