Reads, takes and links. Posted here, before I forget them.

  • The wagtail project template I wish existed

    As of December 28th, 2024, this website visible at rtl.chrisadams.me.uk, is a WordPress blog. I ended up using it out of convenience after wasting too much of my life faffing around with building static site generators, and abortive attempts at hand-built CMSs. I’ve tried using Wagtail a few times to build these CMS’s too, but…

  • A helpful way to think about how text editors are designed

    As I understand it, this model, the Block Top / Text top Model by Erin Casali, was originally created to help people think about rich text editing in WordPress, but I think its’s also a helpful for thinking about editors in the wider sense now, like the kind you see in notebook interfaces like Marimo…

  • You should try Pad Kra Pao

    Earlier this year, I went to Thailand for my brother’s wedding, and for the first time in my life, I has Pad Kra Pao, which I understand to be one of national dishes of the country. It’s quickly become one of my fave meals, and after spending way too much time struggling with Instagram’s abysmal…

  • Some notes from reading about the UK’s plan for clean power by 2030

    For me at least, one of the most politically exciting things that happened this year was seeing the UK finally get rid of a conservative government and elect one that had to extremely ambitious climate promises in its manifesto. More specifically the goal to reach clean power by 2030 really caught my attention, and coincidentally…

  • How much of their energy do various countries use on datacentres?

    I’m posting this here becuase I’m realise that posting things to Linkedin means finding them again is a real pain, and having a link on my own domain is helpful for coming back to. European datacentre usage This chart is from pae 27 of the Energy Consumption in Data Centres and Broadband Communication Networks in…

  • TIL: Using consul-template to test local rendering of template files before using them in Nomad jobs

    I’ve been using Nomad for a while, as an alternative scheduler to Kubernetes. It’s good, and I generally think I’m in good company when using it. I learned a handy trick with consul-template today and I think it’s useful enough to share here for others, and my future self.

  • TIL: Searching shell history in Atuin

    I’ve been using Atuin recently to manage shell history. I really like it though it does take a bit of getting used to when it takes over the up arrow key in a terminal by default. Fortunately you can switch the default to make the up arrow filter commands to ones run in the current…

  • Revisiting H2-powered datacentres

    This is a follow-on post from an earlier post I dashed out – Hydrogen datacentres – is this legit? – where a podcast interview caught my attention about one approach being sold to address demands on the grid caused by new datacentres. This post will make more sense if you have read it. Basically ECL…

  • Is the UK using loads of gas on the grid or not?

    This was a thing that had me scratching my head when prepping a few stories for a newsletter this weekend, and I figured it might be of use to others too. In the UK, if you follow the decarbonisation of the grid, you’ll likely have noticed that the UK succeeded in getting coal off the…

  • Why talk about monopoly in the context of climate change?

    This came up in a recent conversation about sustainability in the digital sector, because the answer isn’t immediately obvious. To understand it, I think you need to understand why we have antitrust or competition laws in the first place. When they were first brought about bout in the first half of the 20th century, there…

Got any book recommendations?