Chris Hannah

Apple have announced the long rumoured foldable iPhone, the iPhone Duo. It's expensive, and it's more than just a phone. I think I'm going to get one. I'm not going to go into a big list of reasons why I want it, and the exact benefits it will give me. But I wanted to share my early impressions. Admittedly, it's only just been announced, but it's already cleared up a few questions I had, and it's now got me thinking up more. For starters, when I first saw the leaked images, the design didn't…

Miniroll, the blogroll platform I've been building has come quite a way since it's first inception. You can create and manage blogrolls, embed them on your site, create aggregated rss feeds, fetch your blogrolls via a JSON API, view a global feed of all public blogrolls, and a lot more. But for a long time, the UI was a very simple, blocky, and overused monospace fonts for every UI element. I decided that it was time for a revamp, so I first went over a bunch of small details, like rounded…

I've managed to convince my work to let me swap my 16" M4 Pro MBP to a 14" model[1], which means I've now got the tedious task of migrating all my data, applications, and configurations, to my new machine. But it's also an oppurtinity to have a forced rethink of what I should install and set up on this new computer. We use Java for most our services, so that basically means IntelliJ is the IDE that everyone uses. However, like most other software engineers, we are making use of AI more and more…

Last year I wrote a short post highlighting where I write on the internet. One of those places was a new blog called "Code and Culture", where I explained it was "a place where I can put my more serious writing". I remember thinking back then, in an ideal world I'd start writing longer pieces quite regularly, and it would be my way of writing more essays. Instead, with a family, and a busy job, that didn't happen. However, I have now published three pieces on the blog, so I felt it was about…

I've been at my current company for just over 9 years. It seems a long time to be in a single place, but when I think about it, it hasn't really been the same job. And I think that's why I've managed to stay there for so long. I started as an iOS Developer, then I was dabbling in some SpringBoot services, and also a bit of Terraform. That was about 2 to 3 years. Then the company was acquired, so we had a year of picking up a new bespoke tech stack, middleware, and ways of working. It started…

I'm in bed, I have the windows wide open, and the fan on full blast, and I'm actually starting to feel cold. I'm very glad we're finally reaching the end of this heatwave.

I came across a rather interesting idea (via Intial Charge): I added a widget to every page here that lets anyone in the world immediately send me a notification. Type a message, hit send, and it’ll pop up on my phone, watch, and computer near instantly. Is this a good idea? No. But it’s a funny idea, and that’s all that counts these days. Scroll to the bottom of this page if you want to give it a try. I liked the idea so much, I decided to implement it here on this blog! So at the bottom of a…

Fountain pens aren't new to me. I used them in school when learning how to write, and then I later used them to write multiple page essays. But for whatever reason[1], when I left school, I didn't use one again. Until very recently, when I purchased a Lamy Safari Fountain Pen [2]. I chose this pen because I wanted a reasonably priced fountain pen, that I could use in my daily life at work and at home. Whether it was taking notes during a meeting, sketching out a few writing ideas, or simply to…

I'm not someone that is good with picking favourites. But around two years ago I realised that Paramore are my favourite band of all time[1]. And I think All We Know Is Falling is in good contention...

I forget how key iTunes was to my music listening experience. The whole experience of buying music, whether physical or digital, and then managing your own music library felt great. And then having...

Sam Henri Gold: There is a certain kind of computer review that is really a permission slip. It tells you what you’re allowed to want. It locates you in a taxonomy — student, creative, professional,...