Chris Lowis

The summer holidays flew by in something of a blur.

Brighton Ruby was really good.

I enjoyed a day out in Cambridge with my Go Free Range colleagues on Wednesday.

I went to Piehouse in Deptford on Thursday for an event about music co-operatives organised by academics from Goldsmith, Leeds and Huddersfield Universities.

A busy few weeks We had a good, relaxing holiday over half-term.

On Saturday at the last minute I decided to go to The Sheephaven Bay in Camden to watch the Rochdale vs York title decider.

We took N- and F- down to Great Ormond Street Hopsital for their regular but infrequent (once every couple of years) screening for the genetic heart condition they may have inherited from me.

We had a good long-weekend in Hastings over Easter.

I missed a couple of these so here’s some edited (by my poor memory) highlights of the last few weeks.

I’ve been waiting for the plum tree in our garden to bloom since we moved in last year.

I spent Thursday lunchtime doing some phone banking to help get the (Green) vote out in the Gorton and Denton by-election.

Sprinkles of good news (the arrest of “Prince” Andrew, the sort-of-overturning of the palestine action proscription) this week to compliment the improving weather and early signs of spring.

For the first time in ages I went for lunch and came out feeling well-fed and not ripped off.

I was completely wiped out on Tuesday and Wednesday, having contracted whatever lurgy F- had had the previous Friday.

A- arrived home safely.

A- was away all week, so there’s been even more routine (getting kids to school, home, doing chores) than usual.

A- left for Colombia on Wednesday evening.

Moving Moving house took up a good chunk of the first half of 2025.

Dear David, Ruby has brought me immense joy during my life and I’ve made many close friends thanks to a shared love of the language.

A bunch of single-page Web Audio examples A collection of single-page web audio examples of drum synthesis, sampling, buffer manipulation, envelopes, audio worklets and more.

No Exceptions Excellent advice to keep on top of exceptions in production: I have absolutely no tolerance for exceptions in production.

Quoting Jason Gorman Most managers see teams as vehicles for delivering software.

Emacs Lisp Elements The fun part is how you go about writing the code.

Photographs of Old Japan These pictures, the work of several different photographers,1 were assembled by a pair of collectors named Henry and Nancy Rosin.

The composer still making music four years after his death Under a magnifying lens sit two white blobs, like a tiny pair of jellyfish.

CSS Naked Day The idea behind CSS Naked Day is to promote web standards.

Comradery - co-op run Patreon alternative Comradery is a digital platform where creators can receive monthly payments from supporters, and optionally give those supporters exclusive access to posts and media.

Against the Cozy Web The latter annoys me: the assumption that the internet is a terrible place, a dark forest where all the good people and spirits have left the public sphere and are now hiding in private, cozy spaces.

Automated Visual Regression Testing With Playwright Now that we have a better idea of the requirements, it’s time for internal CSS refactoring … However … I needed something to guard against visual regressions while refactoring.

DIY Synths Database Curated collection of 75 DIY-friendly hardware synthesizers and related standalone musical equipment.

For Christmas 2023 I bought A- some more rollerskating lessons.

Dealing with my heart condition (obstructive hypotrophic cardiomyopathy) has been a big part of my year.

We had a good Easter weekend visiting my parents.

I spent most of the day on Monday at Royal Brompton hospital receiving my first dose of a new medicine/placebo.

I started a new work project properly this week.

A fairly quiet week at work as we wait for a large, new project to start.

We needed a “quick” prototype to test with some research participants this week.

I travelled to Glasgow this week for a gathering of the Co-operative Technologists network.

This week’s Song Exploder podcast about Different Trains by Steve Reich was wonderful.

The war in Ukraine continues to depress and morbidly grip me in equal measure.

Things have been broadly uneventful for a bit, and to be honest, it can continue for a while.

A fairly quiet week work-wise, which was helpful given that N-‘s after-school club is still closed.

It’s fair to say that adjusting back to life in London this week has been pretty hard.

We arrived home.

We’ve travelled to Barranquilla for a few days by the sea.

We spent Christmas week in Villa de Leyva a beautiful old town about 3 hours drive from Bogotá.

Altitude sickness hit me harder than it has done in the past this week.

We arrived in Colombia for a family visit.

We went on a suprisingly smooth Sunday train ride to Chertsey today to meet some friends for a “mini Christmas” before we (hopefully) travel to Colombia for Christmas next weekend.

N- finished his second full week at his new school.