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!
Favourite articles
Here are some of my favourite things that I’ve written:
The Good, the Bad, and the Gutters
A step-by-step guide to a movie poster grid that uses CSS Grid, text-wrap balanced titles, and dynamic hover states.
Wellcome Collection’s approach to digital verification
How we ensure the safety, security and integrity of the files in Wellcome’s digital collections.
Drawing inner/outer strokes in SVG (clips and masks)
Showing how clips and masks work, and how they can be used to draw inner and outer strokes of a shape.
Building Wellcome Collection’s new archival storage service
How we built the new cloud-based storage system for holding an ever-growing digital archive.
My favourite books from 2022
Romance and rust, gender and grief, horror and the House – what I enjoyed reading this year.
Writing a Mac app to review my photos
Dipping my toes into SwiftUI to make a tool for reviewing my photos with just the keyboard.
Here are some of the topics I write about:
- aws
- aws:amazon s3
- blogging about blogging
- conferences
- css
- datetime shenanigans
- digital preservation
- drawing things
- flickr
- fun stuff
- git
- images
- inclusion
- javascript
- macos
- personal
- python
- rust
- shell scripting
- sqlite
- swift
- talks
- tumblr
- web development
- wellcome collection
If you want to stay up-to-date with what I’m doing, you can subscribe to my monthly newsletter:
I’ll send you one email a month, telling you what I’ve been up to, links to stuff I’ve written, and a list of things I’ve enjoyed recently. Check out the archives to see what you’ll be getting.
I won’t spam you, I won’t sell your email address, and you can unsubscribe whenever you like.