Tag: reflection
Better Than Sex, 30 Years Later: Revisiting the Book That Broke My Brain
07:39. I’m in my lounge chair drinking black coffee, the morning still soft around the edges. For my morning read today, I’ve been revisiting Hunter S. Thompson, starting with the book that began my literary love affair with his work: Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie. There’s something about Hunter that still gets...
On Word Counts, or How Tigers Can't Count
It has been 11 years since I published my first short story. I remember clearly the euphoria I had while drafting, and even more so the sense of cringe I felt when I read it a couple days later to start editing. But that’s a story for another day. It was a measly 900~ words, not so dissimilar to the first story I posted under this account (1.5k). Sure, I did have some experience in the sense that I had read tons of furry fics (and mainstream novels) beforehand, but oh boy, did I struggle when it...
#oneaday Day 732: Quiet contemplation is not always ideal
Today was our visit to the "Aqua Sana" spa here at Center Parcs, and before the events of last week happened, we were both greatly looking forward to having a day of relaxation and pampering. We did manage that for the most part, but we also found that when you get into a situation where...
After Cook
Apple's CEO transition — cautiously optimistic about what a hardware-focused leader might mean for the ecosystem.
Peeking into Go struct tags
A quick tour of Go struct tags: how different libraries use them, how you read them at runtime with reflection, and how other tools read them at build time instead.
What I didn't know I was navigating as a Junior Engineer
Lately I've been feeling like I'm doing a lot, but also not sure what I'm becoming yet. Some days I'm deep in frontend technical trivia (typography, interactions, pagination or virtual scrolling). Other days I zoom out and think :"Wait, what problem are we even solving for users? Is it worth solving?" Also, I'm reading about training pipelines, datasets, reward models… wondering how all of this fits together. It feels messy.
To Continue with Hope
Writing about the state of the world as a cusp Millennial/Gen Z that grew up in the optimistic Obama era, contrasting that with what today holds for us.
Wrapping Up 2025 - The Year Of MCP
Year-in-review piece on a 2025 spent largely on Model Context Protocol work, covering spec milestones, ecosystem shifts, and what's likely next.
Giving Up on Rust — A Post-Mortem
After five Rustlings sessions and countless compiler battles, called it — Rust isn't the right tool for the projects being built.
On Voters Turnout
The Netherlands is amidst a turbulent election, where a progressive party and a far-right party are headed to have the same amount of seats in the parliament. And this is with around 17% of the votes each, it's not even a big majority. Nevertheless, I want to focus on voter turnout.
When the Clock Lies: On Time, Perception, and Why Nothing's Really Happening in Order
The thing about time is that we're all absolutely convinced it's real. Proper, linear, ticking forward like a metronome. You wake up, have breakfast, go through your day, and then sleep. Tomorrow follows today follows yesterday, neat as you like. Except... what if that's bollocks?
I Don't Really Care If Bluesky Dies (As Long As AT Protocol Survives)
There's a thought that's been rattling around my head for a while now, one that feels almost heretical to admit in certain circles: I don't actually care if Bluesky as a company survives. Not really. What I care about – what I'm genuinely invested in – is whether the AT Protocol itself makes it.
Hashtags Walked So Custom Feeds Could Run: Why Discovery on Bluesky Feels Different
I’ve been on Bluesky for a year and a half now, watching the platform evolve from its early invite-only days into something genuinely different from the social media landscape we’ve grown accustomed to. And in that time, I’ve witnessed something I didn’t expect: the slow, quiet death of the hashtag.
How Greek and Celtic Myth (and a Kids’ Show) Shaped My Voice
I’m sitting here trying to write this blog post while feeling like I’ve got the worst hangover imaginable, even though I haven’t had a drop of alcohol. Sick as a dog with a cold, energy sapped, nose red, and body aching, I’m still trying to channel coherent thoughts into words. Maybe that slightly foggy, strained state is appropriate; this post traces the threads that have shaped how I see the world, the way I write, and how I feel about difference.
Link Rot and Eight Iterations of ewancroft.uk
Eight versions of the website, each leaving dead URLs — the Hugo years, the SvelteKit migration, and building a slug mapping system to fix it.
Howling Through Time and Space: Doctor Who’s Post-2005 Lycanthropic Legacy
Since Doctor Who’s triumphant return in 2005, the show has maintained its tradition of weaving lycanthropic themes into the fabric of time and space. From alien werewolves terrorising Victorian Scotland to the recurring motif of the “Bad Wolf,” the series has shown a particular fondness for lupine mythology that goes well beyond your standard monster-of-the-week formula.
Picking Sides in the Protocol Wars
Having spent the better part of two years bouncing between various social protocols, I thought I’d share my thoughts on the big three contenders for the future of social media: AT Protocol, ActivityPub, and Nostr. Spoiler alert: I have opinions, and they’re probably not what the crypto evangelists want to hear.
Why I Stick with SvelteKit: A Personal Reflection on My Web Development Stack
I’ve been reflecting lately on why I continue to use SvelteKit with TailwindCSS and TypeScript for my website and templates, particularly when it seems like the entire web development world has moved to React. It’s a question that pops up occasionally—usually when I’m scrolling through job listings or reading yet another “React vs Everything Else” debate—but the answer has become increasingly clear to me.
The Linguistic Archaeology of English: How Latin and Greek Built Our Modern Vocabulary
English, my native language, has always struck me as a bit of a magpie. It's got this uncanny knack for picking up vocabulary from just about every language it brushes up against—a sort of linguistic collector, pocketing curious words like shiny trinkets. Yet, amidst this eclectic jumble, no influences have left quite so deep a mark as Latin and Greek.
The Case for Multiple Methods
As one may know, most Atmosphere accounts use the Public Ledger of Credentials (née Placeholder) Decentralised Identifier (did:plc) method. This is all well and good for basic usage, but the problem here is that you can't change what method your account is tied to. In effect, this means that, if Bluesky goes and dies or "becomes evil," your account is potentially unrecoverable in event of catastrophic failure, such as a PDS dying without any backups.
Saying Hello to Mastodon Again
Mastodon is one of those other Twitter/X alternative social media platforms, my beloved Bluesky being amongst them in that case. I've used it before, back when I was still searching for my post-Twitter home. I used it before Bluesky even existed, actually, but it initially felt... pointy? The community had this edge to it that seemed to sharpen exponentially as time went on. There was an underlying tension, a sort of gatekeeping energy that made interactions feel more like navigating a minefield than having casual conversations. So I took flight in the Atmosphere and have thoroughly enjoyed it! That is, however, with small caveats.
Why I Chose My Own Domain: A Personal Reflection
One of the primary reasons I purchased ewancroft.uk as my domain was rather straightforward—I simply couldn't think of any suitable alternatives that weren't tied to an online persona I'd created eight years ago. Sometimes the simplest solutions are the most sensible.
Struggles Adapting to the AT Protocol
Early experiences with the AT Protocol SDK — confusing docs, Python and TypeScript friction, and the learning curve of a new API paradigm.
5 Years and 153 Poems
This is something insane for me to admit, but it has been five years since I started my anthology. It currently stands at 153 poems, and has more or less documented my growth as a person. I was 14 when I started writing poetry on the 9th of February 2020, and as you know, there has been a lot of stuff happening in the meantime.