Alex Chan

@alexwlchan.bsky.social

Posts

I wrote a bit about how Google has labelled dozens of re-elected MPs as “former Member of Parliament”, days after the general election is over: alexwlchan.net/2024/googles... This feels… not great? 😬 (Although for once I don’t think this inaccuracy is caused by AI)

Google is showing outdated results from the UK’s electionalexwlchan.net Dozens of MPs who were re-elected to their seats are still labelled “former Member of Parliament”, days after the election results.

Doodling with the Mac’s command icon: alexwlchan.net/2024/command... I’ve been wondering what ⌘ would look like with more loops, or bigger loops, or smaller squares, and I got carried away. 😅 This was a fun little generative art project.

Doodling with the Mac’s command iconalexwlchan.net Rotating a looped hook around a central point creates a surprising variety of shapes.

I’ve been writing some Rust scripts again, this time to clean up empty directories. 🧹 As well as a detailed walkthrough of the key parts of the code, I wrote a coda about why I write these detailed walkthroughs, and how they make me a better programmer: alexwlchan.net/2024/emptydir/

emptydir: look for (nearly) empty directories and delete themalexwlchan.net I've been writing tools in Rust again.

I’ve been writing about some work stuff! I wrote about flickr-url-parser, a small library that can understand many different forms of Flickr URL, powered by the excellent Hyperlink library: www.flickr.org/the-surprisi... (1/2)

The surprising utility of a Flickr URL parser - Flickr Foundationwww.flickr.org We’ve made a library that knows how to read lots of different forms of Flickr.com URL.

Like all sysadmins, I get nervous when I fiddle with DNS. To give me more confidence and a better safety net, I wrote some scripts that can save my DNS records in a plaintext file. This allows me to add comments and track changes in Git. More here: alexwlchan.net/2024/documen...

Documenting my DNS recordsalexwlchan.net Exporting my DNS records as YAML gives me a plaintext file where I can track changes, add comments, and feel more confident about managing my DNS.

Preserving pixels in Paris: alexwlchan.net/2024/preserv... Last month I went to France for a conference about archiving the web, and I’ve posted some of my thoughts and photos.

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