Skip to Content Skip to Navigation
Profile image for Jamie Matthews

Jamie Matthews

@jamie@mtth.org

Sussex, UK. Web engineer. Python, Django, etc. Dynamic language and boutique fuzz pedal enthusiast. Dabbling in energy-oriented home automation, personal decarbonisation and no-dig gardening 🌿

27 Posts Posts & Replies 52 Following 57 Followers Search
Jamie Matthews boosted

oblique strategies for programmers:

hardcode everything

do repeat yourself

you probably don’t need that

optimise early, it’s fun

try a new language feature

maybe you can do this entirely with tags and filters

try turning your program inside out

restate the problem

the naïve algorithm is probably fast enough

it is easier to ask forgiveness than permission

it is easier to correct a wrong program than to write a correct program

create a new programming language for this

Edited 59d ago

Slow worms mating in my compost bin!

Lewes District Council goes from 19 Tory councillors to zero 🎉

Tomatoes are in the greenhouse bed I built last year out of old roof rafters. Four different varieties. The plants are probably too small really, but I ran out of pots. First a layer of comfrey and nettles for nutrition, then a thin layer of compost. String anchored under the root ball and tied in to wires at the top of the greenhouse for them to climb up. 🤞🏻 🍅

Jamie Matthews boosted

I wrote a blog post, as an assignment for part of my OU module:

Amazon doesn’t care how you heat swimming pools: ICT and ecosocialism

doubleloop.net/2023/04/21/amaz

A django-readers idea for discussion, feedback most welcome: github.com/dabapps/django-read

Jamie Matthews boosted

Month 3 of trying out EVs. First Renault Zoe, then VW ID3, now Hyundai Kona. They’ve all been great so far, I’m totally convinced. Kona looks smaller in real life than in pictures.

==> Installing graphviz dependency fribidi
==> Installing graphviz dependency harfbuzz
==> Installing graphviz dependency pango
==> Installing graphviz dependency libomp

these can't really be the real names of real things.

fribidi. fribidi. harfbuzz pango!

Jamie Matthews boosted

We did it! 🎉 Django 4.2 the latest and greatest LTS release is out 🔥 Many thanks to everyone who devoted their time and effort to make this possible 💚 🌟

www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2

Wired up a Raspberry Pi Pico running MicroPython, with two temperature sensors, to my boiler, to report flow and return temperatures to my home monitoring & control system. Going to keep an eye on it over the next year to make sure we’re heat pump ready.

@carlton thank you for everything, you have made a huge difference. Enjoy doing other things! 💚

Good morning from fixing UTC -> BST transition bugs in my home control system.

Idle thought: maybe DRF Serializers should have been called "Normalizers" 🤔

Jamie Matthews boosted

Maybe it's time for the "net" in Net Zero to go. Direct air capture (of CO2 from the atmosphere) of 10 gigatonnes of CO2 per year (IPCC aim by 2050), has a *theoretical minimum* energy cost of 10% of the world's current energy consumption. And in practice it currently takes 5-7 times more than that, so >HALF our entire electricity supply. That energy would be far better spent decarbonising, until that task is complete. The aim has to be **zero** carbon, not net anything.

I asked ChatGPT-4 to write a haiku about solar panels:

Sun's rays from above,
Silent power on rooftops,
Green energy thrives.

Jamie Matthews boosted

every python packaging / virtualenv thread in the world:

"python packaging / virtualenv sucks"

"Why?"

"well when I do CONDA this or POETRY that"

See those words? THAT's always the problem.

People have no idea what "venv" does. Editing a requirements file? no way, CONDA this POETRY that, then complain

This is the lowest I’ve seen it by a long way (since I’ve been paying attention)

£20bn funding to “cut carbon emissions” says the headline. But it seems like a lot of this will be going to carbon capture projects.. which are just fossil fuel industry subsidies. Just don’t emit the carbon in the first place! Spend it on lots more wind, solar, battery storage, heating decarbonisation and

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/20

Veg bed prep

Today is the day. No more diesel!

Today I picked up a thousand litres of organic peat-free compost and now I’m reading up on ideal seed sowing dates. After dabbling with lettuce, courgettes and a few tomato plants last year, this year I’m going to give it a proper go.

My ISP is on the Fediverse social.aa.net.uk/users/aaisp/s

Jamie Matthews boosted

The idea of a company / official presence on the is a tricky one, I know. But it is also a really powerful feature on twitter for interacting with customers, and even being publicly called out for something by customers. Working with companies is the main reason I still use twitter.

So we are feeling our way on this, and trying to do it right. It is not for any sort of "advertising". It is for helping customers.

Comments and feedback always welcome.

^RevK, director. @revk

Edited 112d ago

A few weeks ago I open sourced a tiny library I’ve been noodling on for a while: github.com/j4mie/hotmetal

It’s for generating HTML from basic Python data structures. It’s a bit weird and most people will probably hate it (which is fine). But I’ve now built a moderately complicated web app with it and I’m never going back to string-based templates!

Oh, and it runs quite happily under MicroPython on a ~£4 microcontroller, which is fun.

Edited 114d ago

lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/pyt

Such a good post. Embrace dynamic behaviour.

Aside: the new spec-to-serializer stuff I just added to django-readers is all about dynamic creation of serializer classes github.com/dabapps/django-read