Notices by Kate Morley (kate@fosstodon.org)

In spite of everything, there’s still beauty to be found in this world, so I’ve started added some of my photos to a new ‘art’ section on my website: https://iamkate.com/art/

CSS advice required:

It’s easy to create a grid that contains the maximum number of columns subject to a minimum width:

grid-template-columns: repeat(auto-fit, minmax(400px, 1fr));

But how do you achieve the opposite: a grid that contains the minimum number of columns subject to a maximum width? This is invalid CSS:

grid-template-columns: repeat(auto-fit, minmax(1fr, 400px));

The use case is a gallery of images, where I want them as big as possible without exceeding a specific maximum.

Having recently been introduced to the tabletop role-playing game Deadlands, I’ve analysed its unique mechanic of exploding dice: https://iamkate.com/data/exploding-dice/

(This was the first time I’ve calculated expected values of random variables or the sum of a geometric series since I finished my A-level exams 23 years ago.)

My wife’s cousin’s kid asked me to make a vehicle out of this Lego octopus. After I finished, he calmly declared “Safety Octopus only knows how to kill”.

The etymology and shift in meaning of the word ‘virago’ tell you everything you need to know about society’s attitude to strong women:

I hope this e-mail… doesn’t find you.

I hope you escaped the corporate life.

I hope you bought that hectare of land.

I hope your crops are thriving.

I hope your crafts bring joy.

I hope you found peace between the deep blue sea and high blue sky.

I hope at night a million stars blanket your slumber, and every dawn reveals new wonders.

I hope.

Interviewer: Can you give an example of a guard statement?

Candidate: “I used to be a developer like you. Then I took an arrow function in the knee.”

Later today Britain’s last remaining coal-fired power station will shut down, bringing to a close 142 years of power generation that began when the world’s first coal-fired power station, at 57 Holborn Viaduct in London, started operation on 12th January 1882.

When I created https://grid.iamkate.com in 2012, coal accounted for 40% of Britain’s power generation. It was overtaken by gas in 2015, nuclear and wind in 2016, and solar in 2019. As I write this, wind is producing 40% of Britain’s power.

I was chatting with one of our junior web developers this morning and discovered he had never heard of Flash. This both makes logical sense (it’s 14 years since Steve Jobs’ Thoughts On Flash open letter) and makes me feel very old.

#Introduction (July 2024 edition)

Hi, I’m Kate. I’m a 41-year-old software developer based in the south-west of England. I created my first website in 1998, and I’m best known for my National Grid: Live site at https://grid.iamkate.com. In my day job I’m the Development Director at https://itseeze.com, where in 2007 I created a content management system that’s now used by thousands of sites for organisations across the UK and Ireland.

Does anyone know the algorithm used for laying out labels like this? The aim is to minimise the vertical distance of labels from their points while preventing them from overlapping. With two labels you can just move them equally far from their common centre if they would overlap, but with more labels this could then introduce new overlaps, so it’s not so trivial. I tried searching but all I could find were algorithms for two-dimensional placement of labels on maps.

I’ve been told to stop referring to the git commit history as “the public chronicle of our errors”

In the same way most of us say “goodbye” without realising it derives from “god be with ye”, maybe one day people will end conversations with “likensubscribe”

Just passed my favourite road sign 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Glen Sligachan, Skye:

Brits ask “A penny for your thoughts?” and Americans respond with “Just my two cents”. At current exchange rates ($1.00 = £0.80) this means Brits are receiving 1.6p of American thoughts for just 1p. In this paper we propose an alternative asset pricing model for the marketplace of ideas, considering—

It will be a few days before we get official confirmation from the National Grid, but I’m calling it now: 2023 was the year renewables overtook fossil fuels as the largest contributor to British electricity generation. In the 12 years I’ve been running National Grid: Live at https://grid.iamkate.com electricity generation from fossil fuels has fallen from an average of 25.1GW to 10.2GW, while renewables have risen from 2.5GW to 10.8GW.

Attention retro-computing people: I’m giving away my Amiga 1200. It was a Christmas gift from my parents in 1993 and after 30 years it’s still in working order (if a little discoloured). It’s still in its original Desktop Dynamite box with Workbench, Deluxe Paint, Wordworth, and the special Amiga Format issues. It’s been upgraded with a 400MB hard disk. If anyone’s interested and can preferably collect it from south Devon (or potentially from my father-in-law north of Manchester), let me know.

British wind turbines produced a record 21.81GW of power between 9:00am and 9:30am this morning. Over the past 24 hours wind turbines have supplied 61.7% of our electricity needs. Live data can be seen on my site at https://grid.iamkate.com.

If you’re wondering how things are going in the UK at the moment, someone’s just been jailed for six months for walking down a road slowly: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/15/just-stop-oil-activist-is-first-to-be-jailed-under-new-uk-protest-law