Thursday 28 Aug at 4pm – draw a (testing) chart, tell a (testing) story in this week's Workroom PlayTIme. www.workroom-productions.com/workroom-pla...

If there are directions to the lost city, is it really lost?

This is a generated summary of a 90-minute conversation about ephemeral testing environments. Sharing because it made me laugh, I needed a laugh, and maybe you do too.

@suw.bsky.social you didn’t film ‘Fieldwork’, did you? It’s just that I saw your recent tweet and found the pictures *in my head*. The rational part of me is sure I only read the script. The remembering part sees people looking up that tree, and they all have different expressions…

Tomorrow’s Workroom PlayTime www.workroom-productions.com/workroom-pla...

It's unlike me to post a Swifty. And I imagine (from the source: PA via www.bbc.com/news/article... ) that it's *not* generated. But the left hand, and the eyes? I wonder if it makes you too feel the need to recalibrate the characteristics of a 'real' image. Again.

Found a bug

Info: Next Workroom PlayTime on 14 August www.workroom-productions.com/no-workroom-...

Today's most pointless graph. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

This is where I post from...

Here's a bookmarklet to bring some control to your LinkedIn feed. Born out of frustration (and enabled by easy access to LLMs). www.workroom-productions.com/clear-up-you...

No menu bar. Nothing to quit. But apps are working. I may be about to be aware of how bad a day I’ve been having.

...and with the arrival of @nomansbsky.bsky.social here, I don't see myself back on {twitter} for the foreseeable.

Who thinks this UI works?

The Eva Quartet are glorious. They’re in London on Saturday 7 June. Details in video (and I’ll post in a comment shortly)

Systems are օԁɗ. The unexpected isn't naturally revealed by hewing to expectations.

For me, @fastmail.com vanished for about 20 minutes this evening. That's the _first_ time in five years I've noticed any downtime. I reckon you should avoid free mail services. Fastmail's great.

How and when did terms like 'addictive' and 'addicting' become ways to praise something? More importantly, why? #ShoutingIntoTheAbyss

Save yourselves. The interest rate is exceptional.

If you need an LLM to generate ideas, then your idea-making thing may be starved. Feed it by playing. By making. By experimenting. By taking an idea for a walk. By taking a walk. By reading. By talking with people. By listening. By being bored. But feed it. Imagination is excellent.

In this week's Workroom PlayTime, we're playing with Puzzle 33. Come play if you're a subscriber. Ping me to play if not. www.workroom-productions.com/playtime-014...

Found this in my own instructions to an LLM. Not a deliberate mistake. Play with three versions of the software that resulted (reader, it ignored me) exercises.workroomprds.com/comparing_ge...

In this week's Workroom PlayTime, we're Playing with Sort. 3pm London time, Thursday 3rd. www.workroom-productions.com/playtime-011...

Pleasantly spooky, with the threat of a proper chill.

Tickle your fancy…

Today's Workroom PlayTime is at 3pm London time. We're Imagining Questions. www.workroom-productions.com/playtime-008...

aider.chat 's LLM leaderboards describe how well 30+ LLMs do on a benchmark for writing !and editing! code, and how much they cost to do so. Go look at the very wide ranges for success, for accuracy, and for cost. aider.chat/docs/leaderb...

Looklooklooklooklook! Wahey!! See you all in Potsdam. Bring kit... (having an excellent time working with EZ on this)

Today's Workroom PlayTime is at 3:30 London time, and comes from a bench in Kew Gardens. All subscribers welcome. www.workroom-productions.com/playtime-007...

Putting a cloud IDE and server access into all workshop participants' browsers. Short post, linking to a github w/ Ansible scripts. www.workroom-productions.com/browser-base...

Do you see the central spot? It's a galaxy, half a billion light years away. Do you see the ring? That's another galaxy, 4Bly away. It would be a spot, lost behind the first, but the /gravity/ of the less-distant galaxy is acting as a lens. www.esa.int/Science_Expl... www.aanda.org/articles/aa/...

From Marina Hyde «the capitalism of the school bake sale – someone else buys all the ingredients and does most of the cooking, and the kids then claim they have turned a profit for the good of humanity.» www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I've missed it again. Don't be like me: Put it in your diaries for next week.

This week's Workroom PlayTime is Puzzle 31. It is open to all WPL subscribers. 4pm Friday 31, Zoom / Miro. See you there! www.workroom-productions.com/playtime-004...

Found this, by chance, from Aider. aider.chat/docs/leaderb... It's a page outlining the results of an ongoing comparison of LLMs on coding exercises (did it "work"? did it integrate?) and is a gateway to a set of interesting experiments.

This week's Workroom PlayTime is "Following Up with your Audience" from SpeakerPrep. Friday 24th, 17:30 London time: www.workroom-productions.com/playtime-003...

Ghost is, indeed, lovely. My site is on Ghost – it's neat for writing in, seems reliable for visitors, backstage works well. Winner for me: I can use as much JS / CSS / HTML as I like.

Made me laugh. From the excellent time.is

Here are diff tool exercises: www.workroom-productions.com/playtime-001... Paying subscribers get to play with them, with me! Tomorrow's is 1pm London time on Zoom. I'll run 50 x 15mins interactive sessions over 2025. Annual sub is £55, or a fiver a month.

Um. Here's a new BlackBox Puzzle. Used Claude to build it. Took 10 mins. Half that time was playing with Claude. The other half, playing with the puzzle. Is it good code? Dunno. Is it a nice puzzle? Er, yeah? Maybe? Was too easy with 3 buttons. 4's a bit too hard. claude.site/artifacts/40...

I’m in Test Valley. It’s near Andover, if you’re wondering.

<rant> LinkedIn today - got stuck; showing me the same posts over and over on scroll - when I clicked "new posts", showed me the post I'd been reading, some way down the line </rant> I must stop reading LinkedIn. There's nothing novel.

@paradith.bsky.social – I can't DM you on LinkedIn. Aaargh! We’re meeting on Zoom at 13:30 London time on Tuesday 10th. us02web.zoom.us/j/6091908428... Materials are at www.workroom-productions.com/ai-vs-tdd-in... – you’ll find Zoom and Miro links there. See you tomorrow!

Want to write tests? Want to get an LLM to write code that passes your tests? Want to explore and judge what it's built? I'm running my/Bart's AIvsTDD workshop tomorrow. Free, 3-4 spots left, contact me with your email (or subscribe to my site) www.workroom-productions.com/ai-vs-tdd-on...

<rant> I left LinkedIn open at a useful thing. I badgered the kids into bed and read them a book I returned to find that LinkedIn momentarily showed me the interesting thing, then inserted >30 feet of content above it and scrolled to the top. Most of the new stuff was >1 week old. </rant>

ShellCheck was very handy for me, coming back (after years) to writing shell for that AIvsTDD workshop at #AgileTD. Double the learning power using ShellCheck (to point stuff out) + Claude (to tell me why). www.workroom-productions.com/learning-wit...

I tried GitPod, which set up an AWS server. I took care to bin it when I stopped GitPod. It's taken me 4 hours, over two months, to /find/ and finally delete GitPod's AWS CloudFormation thingy. A $130 bill. I'm an AWS ignoramus; I've had some instances for years. Aaargh.

Dogs can't take cross-sectional X-rays to make three dimensional medical images. Cats can.

I've just built a little tool that finds the shortest, fewest-stops, and quickest routes from A-B (given a map of sorts). I iterated the checks, Anthropic's Claude iterated (and polished) the code. Come to our workshop at #AgileTD on Weds. agiletestingdays.com/2024/session...

TIL: In the Finder, press Command+Shift+. to show hidden files & folders. OMG. Too easy. Too obscure. apple.stackexchange.com/a/402026 Props to Fernando Gonzalez Sanchez, who posted the answer.