Hi, I’m Alex. Welcome to my website!
I’m a software developer, writer, and a hand crafter, and I live in the UK. In my day job I build software for digital preservation, and I think a lot about archiving and long-term systems.
This website is where I share stuff I find interesting or fun. That includes notes on technical problems I’ve solved, personal reflections or thoughts, and fun toys that I’ve built.
I’m queer and trans, and my pronouns are “they” or “she”.
I hope you like it!
My writing
My life
My archives
Recent articles
gobench: a tool for comparing Go benchmark runs across branches
I wrote a tool that makes it quick and easy to measure the performance impact of a proposed change.
Verifying my web archives with Playwright
I check my local web archive is self-contained by opening each page in Playwright, and checking the list of outgoing requests.
Positive alerts in Prometheus
When we create an exception to an alert, we can use a second alert to tell us when the exception no longer applies.
Organising my cross-stitch patterns
A local static website lets me keep all my patterns in one place, so I’ll never lose a pattern again.
Parametrised tests in Rust with named parameters
I wrote a macro that lets me define test cases with labelled inputs and outputs, so I can reduce repetition without affecting readability.