Tamlyn

You know there’s something seriously wrong when your payslip is three pages long and comes with a two page explanatory leaflet. Payslips are often pretty cryptic but the one I received today was so bad it took me over half an hour to work it out. All I really care about is how much have I earned, how much am I getting and, most importantly, where did the rest go?

The only way I could decipher this mess was to draw a kind of bar chart and fill in the numbers. Once I finished I realised that I had inadvertently created a hugely more readable representation of the information contained in the payslip. So here’s a copy of the original payslip and my effort at an improved version.

I needed to convert some comma-separated data into JSON for a JavaScript project I’m working on. Surprisingly I couldn’t find anything online to do it so I knocked up this script. Hope someone finds it useful.

I made the @trendingtopics Twitter bot to keep me and others up to date on the (often) interesting topics that are being discussed most across the Twitterverse. This is a slightly technical explanation of how it all works.

I’ve just discovered that my laptop touch pad has multitouch, it just needed to be enabled! There are two parts to this process and it will take a few minutes but it’s well worth it in my opinion.

This mix starts off a bit electropop then veers off into indie and other good stuff.

I just wrote a letter to my MP and thought it would be worth sharing here.

I’ve got a problem and I need some help. I’m building a semantic webby type thing where the web page you are viewing will be augmented with a menu showing other relevant info gathered from elsewhere using a clever algorithm which is already built. 

I’m sitting in a bungalow near a babbling creek surrounded by lush, green fields lined with evergreen oaks and nestled amongst rolling, tree-covered hills. This is California and I love it!

At least, this is part of California at a particularly wet time of year. I’m told that for most of the year the creek dries up, the grass dies back and there’s dust everywhere. But right now, where I’m staying in Dry Creek about 10 miles north of Santa Rosa, it’s really beautiful.

Four days of presentations, workshops & chats have drawn to a close. I’ve had a great time, learned a lot, met interesting people and leave full of ideas and enthusiasm. Full videos of every session will be posted up on the site in due course but in the meantime, here are some of my highlights.

This is mainly a 50s mix with a few tracks bleeding over into the adjacent decades. When I listen to this music I can’t help but bounce around with a grin on my face while my worries melt away. Try it – it’s better than prozac.