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Distilling the complicated into the simple. And sometimes general wonderings. Follow me on twitter

  1. January 01, 2022

    Reflections on 2021 2021 was one of the best years of my life for my career. It really allowed me to grow as a developer as I spent most of…

  2. May 28, 2020

    As I write this in my flat in Taipei on the day of my 30th birthday, I thought I’d have a think about all thes things I’ve learnt over the…

  3. January 01, 2020

    2019 started off in Thailand. Myself and my girlfriend went to Thailand with some friends. I went to India for the first time and did…

  4. August 20, 2019

    I’ve been working remotely for almost 6 years now and I have been an avid cafe goer for most of that time. There was an excitement to going…

  5. January 20, 2019

    I started working on ENS in June 2017. It was just a small project I managed to pick up off of Ethlance. Through a little bit of friendly…

  6. December 31, 2018

    This year was the first year I spent half the time in the west and half the time in the East. From January til June i was in Asia, and July…

  7. September 23, 2018

    ENS is a decentralised naming system. I like to compare it to a global decentralised phone book where most of the time you want to associate…

  8. August 26, 2018

    I met Makoto online over 2 years ago and we spent a few months learning Ethereum together. During that time Makoto wanted to build something…

  9. April 20, 2018

    Progress on current goals So it’s been about 3 months since the new year and I’ve been working towards my 5 major goals this year. Here’s a…

  10. March 30, 2018

    I’ve been recently introduced to the world of GraphQL and I’m loving it. The thing I like most about it is that it is a self documenting. So…

  11. March 16, 2018

    Resolve Functions - little routers Could be from any database on another API. This hides backend complexity graphql handles multiple queries…

  12. March 08, 2018

    The first thing you need to understand for creating a GraphQL API is your schema. Your schema defines the interface to your data, so you…

  13. March 02, 2018

    The Concept implemented My last blog post was about the idea that GraphQL could be used more in the front-end. Since then I’ve made a proof…

  14. February 23, 2018

    I’ve been exploring GraphQL for the last few weeks first through building my blog using Gatsby and now through Apollo. Both great frameworks…

  15. February 09, 2018

    I spent a few days last week rebuilding my blog with Gatsby. My last blog was built on Ghost, but the upgrade process was such a pain that I…

  16. February 03, 2018

    This is the last week I will be teaching at bloc.io. It’s been over 3 years since I’ve been at Bloc and it feels like the end of an era. I…

  17. January 03, 2018

    Here are my 5 new years resolutions for 2018. Become a better computer scientist Get more work in the blockchain space Build an open source…

  18. May 13, 2017

    Buying Ether in the UK is a little difficult. There are a few exchanges that do let you deposit GBP, but because they aren’t based in the UK…

  19. April 26, 2017

    In an effect to get myself back into blogging again, I’m going to do a short post on my goals for 2017. Climb a V10 route on the moonboard…

  20. July 06, 2016

    ##Write once, run everywhere doesn’t work I’ve been an advocate of Javascript Applications for native for a long time. Writing an app once…

  21. June 05, 2016

    About two years ago I heard about Meteor. As a front-end developer it taught me a lot about how to be a full-stack developer, but from a…

  22. May 13, 2016

    Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. I recently had a speaking engagement cancelled. It was one of…

  23. May 06, 2016

    Why do we listen to the radio in the car? Because the act of driving requires hand eye coordination, but not our hearing. The act of driving…

  24. April 25, 2016

    Consistency is key. As an avid learner, I’ve realised that consistency of said activity is more important than the intensity. Obviously, if…

  25. April 17, 2016

    A good friend of mine is a Lisp convert, he codes mainly in Clojurescript, a flavour of Clojure that compiles into Javascript, allowing you…

  26. March 23, 2016

    Ethereum is a decentralised, distributed platform that allows you to run ‘smart contracts’ on its network. In essence it is a decentralised…

  27. September 19, 2014

    13th September 2013. The day I left the UK. 370 days I haven’t been back to my home town of London. It’s been an incredible journey so far…

  28. March 29, 2014

    I’m back in Singapore from Taiwan, and I’ve got some pretty big news. I’m starting a company in Singapore. I originally decided I was going…

  29. March 12, 2014

    Independent coffee shops are becoming more and more popular for those that work remotely or those in the creative industry. They’re…

  30. February 26, 2014

    I’ll be returning to Taiwan on Tuesday from a 3 week period travelling Malaysia and Singapore. I saw relatives who I haven’t seen in years…

  31. February 17, 2014

    I’ve been travelling around Malaysia for around 2 weeks with my Taiwanese girlfriend. During this time I’ve been seeing family I haven’t…

  32. February 10, 2014

    When I say get into language learning. I don’t mean just start learning the language, I also I mean get into the language learning scene and…

  33. February 03, 2014

    It’s been almost 5 months now since I’ve left London. I’ve been to Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and most recently Taiwan. I’ve…

  34. January 27, 2014

    Note: The photo for this post is my Taiwanese family (not by blood) that I’ve lived with for the last 3 months. It’s meeting people like…

  35. January 20, 2014

    I’ve been teaching recently in a couple of different ways. The first one has been ‘how to learn a language’, which I’ve been teaching…

  36. January 13, 2014

    I’ve been learning Mandarin quite intensely for the past year or so and I’d like to share with you a quick guide to learning a new language…

  37. January 05, 2014

    “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” Mark Twain Note: Image above is the park gym that is near my house where I do…

  38. December 01, 2013

    Note: This applies mostly to intermediate language learners and above. As a beginner I believe your passive vocabulary should be your active…

  39. November 18, 2013

    I’ve been staying at my host family’s house for a day now and I just a super long conversation with them about the religion they practise…

  40. November 11, 2013

    I just spent part of my day earlier this week helping my friend with his application for his dream to be a pilot. He’s spent the last few…

  41. October 28, 2013

    First of all. Yes that is a ceiling fan hanging by a hanger on a light bulb. That’s a mistake waiting to happen, and no that’s not what I’m…

  42. October 20, 2013

    It’s been over a month since I’ve started my travels around Asia and I’m currently in Hong Kong. I’ve had a lot of fun so far and learnt a…

  43. October 13, 2013

    Why travelling is a good thing. Travelling on your own is completely different from going on holiday. If you backpack or travel for an…

  44. August 30, 2013

    After about two years of my old site being up, I woke up a couple days ago and thought “I’m sick of this - what was I thinking?”, so I’ve…

  45. May 08, 2013

    About a month ago I did a talk at my work about learning Mandarin and learning languages in general. I try to make it as general as possible…

  46. March 21, 2013

    Tech, Design & Development .NET (print periodical and web magazine) http://www.netmagazine.com/ .NET I’ve been reading since before I could…

  47. January 12, 2013

    After reading this blog post by a guy also trying to learning Chinese. http://mychinesenotebook.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/how-to-say-hello-in…

  48. January 08, 2013

    2012 in review 2012 was a good year for me in terms of my career. I landed my first agency job with Mr Gareth Thompson at Codepotato. And…

  49. December 12, 2012

    New words are sometimes difficult to learn without context and sometimes even with context they are hard to remember when they are on their…

  50. December 06, 2012

    This review is long overdue as I bought this app almost a year ago after one of my failed Mandarin learning sprints. Mindsnacks is a company…

  51. November 25, 2012

    This week I’ve been keeping up my Chinese. I even had a short lesson during my lunch break at work so my progress is steady. I think I’ve…

  52. November 19, 2012

    I’ve been trying to learn Chinese for 7 years. I’m 22 years old right now and I started when I was 15. I’m Chinese by blood and I was born…

  53. August 02, 2012

    I’ve been trying to build and launch my personal website for over 6 months now, and most people experience - building your personal site…