James' Coffee Blog
James' Coffee Blog
James
Hello! Привіт! I'm James (/d͡ʒeɪmz/) (also capjamesg). My pronouns are he/him/his. I live in Scotland. This is my blog.
Latest Posts
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
This has been a busy week!Earlier in the week, I attended my first EdinburghJS Meetup, at which I met many wonderful people. As always, I am a bit nervous before going to events. What if I can’t find the location? What will I say? Those...
Yesterday I attended a Code Jam event organised by the EdinburghJS community. During the event, I met many wonderful people. At one point, someone asked me to share my LinkedIn, to which I responded that I’ll share my website instead. I...
Artemis, the calm web reader I maintain, offers three methods of authentication: IndieAuth, email and password, and passkeys. IndieAuth is offered as a sign-in method because I want Artemis to allow people to use their domain names as...
Most of the websites I follow in my web reader are personal sites like blogs. With that said, recently I subscribed to my local council’s news web page. On that page, they publish various updates – events coming to the region, draft...
Some web feeds, especially those published on news websites, are updated several times a day with new entries. Websites that publish so regularly can be distracting in your web reader when you want to skim your feed for new posts from...
Sometimes things just click. Then when you reflect you realise that the thing clicked because of many things all coming together – that as much as you wanted to advance an idea in the past, it needed time.I had one of these moments...
When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is get out of bed and turn on my fairy lights. I read for a little while under the warm glow of the lights while the sun is not yet visible in the winter morning. I am reading a book...
I wanted to start this blog post with a quote. I started flicking through Walden, which I have just finished reading, for one that would be appropriate. But then I realised any choice would be arbitrary, for the wisdom is so deep within...
I start my degree in art history at the Open University in under two weeks. Just after the holidays, I got access to the materials for my first year, which is made up of two modules: “Discovering the arts and humanities” and “Cultures”....
While I was writing “Publishing my citation preferences”, I consciously decided that the blog post should include a screenshot of the website feature described in the post – the new “Reference this post” section on my blog pages. I knew...