When I run the Artemis codebase, one of the first things it does is look for an environment variable that indicates what “environment” the application is running in. There are two modes: development and production. If no mode is specified, development mode is set by default.Whether or not the application is in...

Earlier this week a reader pointed out that posts listed on my date archive pages were linking to the wrong URLs. For example, the link for /2026/01/25/kind-software would instead be /2026-01-25-kind-software.md. This was caused by my static site generator using the markdown file name instead of the post slug when...

Artemis, the calm web reader I maintain, runs as a systemd process. When I want to update the software, I deploy the new code to the server and then restart the systemd process. This has a significant downside: while the Artemis process is restarting, the software is unavailable to users. During this period – which...

A few weeks ago I did a day-long training Carbon Literacy Project training course through my university. When I was taking the course and considering ways I can reduce my carbon footprint, I started thinking about technology. I don’t know much about calculating emissions from technology (and as I understand this is...

A while ago, I purchased an Aranet 4 indoor CO2 monitor. The device has sat on my desk ever since. I started thinking about the Aranet monitor this week because I noticed that, for the first time, the battery was low and needed to be changed.The Aranet is a useful device. When the number is high on the device, it...

For the last few weeks I have been thinking about the intersection of calendars and web readers.Author's note: You can skip the next paragraph if you're not interested in the technical aside.What started this thinking was a technical interest. With h-feed, you can publish a list of h-events. This allows you to mark...

Last year, one of my goals was to learn more about design. I wanted to apply what I learned to making web pages. The Non-Designer’s Design Book was an influential resource toward the end of the year. While not specifically about web design, the principles within the book – contrast, repetition, alignment, and...

The Autumn/Winter 2025 edition of the good internet magazine is out! I contributed a piece, Build the web you want to see, in which I reflect on the last five years of James' Coffee Blog and some of what I have learned in that time.I have been thinking about the question "how do we make the web better?" for the last...

On Wednesday, February 11th at 7pm - 8:30pm UK time I am hosting an event I’m calling the “Software Design Meetup” online.This meetup is for anyone interested in the design of software and technology. In particular, if you are fascinated by the question "How do we design better software?", this meetup is for...

I am hosting the IndieWeb Book Club for this month, in which everyone interested is invited to read and write a blog post about The Art of Explanation: How to Communicate with Clarity and Confidence [Goodreads link]. The book was authored by Ros Atkins, a BBC journalist whose career has spanned radio on the BBC...

Zachary kindly invited me to answer a few questions about hosting the IndieWeb Carnival. Running for three years now, the IndieWeb Carnival has been the source of endless inspiration for me, sparking both long periods of thinking as well as writing blog posts. Even when I have not written an entry for a given month,...

At EdinburghJS this week, Colin mentioned the idea of “kind software.” This got me thinking. What would make software kind? As I write, I notice the word “kind” reminds me of the term “user friendly,” which has associations with software being simple to use in the context of completing a given task or set of tasks.I...