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James Kemp

@themself@mastodon.scot

mastodon 4.7.2

I'm a dad (they/them), geek (roleplaying, wargames, boardgames, technology), writer, history, science fiction and fantasy. Explorer Scout leader. Formerly on Twitter as @greencoatboy
Lives in Forfar, works mostly from home and Glasgow

302 Followers

451 Following

22 Posts

Joined November 04, 2022

Blog:

https://www.themself.org/

Crisis Point (novella):

http://mybook.to/CrisisPoint

Themself (non-fiction):

http://mybook.to/Themself

James Kemp @themself@mastodon.scot

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@Vive_Levant@masto.bike @xkcd@mastodon.com.br there's probably some error messages floating around that I posted when I first found usenet about 31 years ago. Thankfully I no longer use Novell NetWare, so I would be surprised if it was the same error!

James Kemp @themself@mastodon.scot

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@gabrielesvelto there's an argument that it's sub-prime MBAs underlying the sub-prime computing!

James Kemp @themself@mastodon.scot

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@cptbutton@dice.camp @Vive_Levant@masto.bike @xkcd@mastodon.com.br I used to be pretty good about posting the solutions to the error messages back in the day when I was a sysadmin. Later I had an internal wiki and blog to help the people that came after me understand why we'd made the decisions to build the services the way we did. These days it's someone else's problem from my perspective, but I still bang on about open records to the people in my work area.

James Kemp @themself@mastodon.scot

· 10mo ago

Replying to

@gull@squawk.social @cstross@wandering.shop it was over 25 years ago. That means more than half the people doing before then are gone. I just joined a new team and when giving them my background they didn't know about Y2K, even the oldies had sort of forgotten about it until my explanation reminded them. The dotcom bubble will be the same for most people.

James Kemp @themself@mastodon.scot

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@rusty @argv_minus_one @tj and that's the same design pattern that shows be a 400 pixel wide column of text in the middle fifth of my 4k wide-screen. We had responsive screen layout in the early 2010s when I was doing digital services, and we made it render to use 90% of screen width depending on device resolution. What happened?

James Kemp @themself@mastodon.scot

· 5mo ago

Another 751 words written this morning on the train to Edinburgh. That's me up to approx 3,750/90,000 words into a second fantasy novel in the same world as Fierce.

#AmWritingSFF

mastodon.scot

James Kemp @themself@mastodon.scot

· 5mo ago

Wrote a few hundred more words on the train to Glasgow this morning. Don't have an exact word count because I filled in some gaps in two different scenes. Also named two of the characters that just had placeholders, Sigrun and Kara are the two spooks in Dry Hook that are setting Yngvild back on the path and linking her up with Rolf Wolfson who is an 'Opener of the Ways'...

James Kemp @themself@mastodon.scot

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@jmax @ascii158 @cstross you could cycle through the cities in the time zones North to South to automagically rearrange them

James Kemp @themself@mastodon.scot

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@4censord@unfug.social I am very good at making patterns and resizing them, but my wife does all the sewing on the sewing machine. So my input is all at design and patterning with sometimes some cutting. She can do all of the things though.

James Kemp @themself@mastodon.scot

· 10mo ago

Replying to

@gull@squawk.social @cstross@wandering.shop that would have been interesting to see. I was working in a government department on their HR and payroll system. I was pretty confident it was going to be fine, but I still accepted the on call money and stayed sober until 00:01 when everything else still looked like it was working!

James Kemp @themself@mastodon.scot

· 10mo ago

Replying to

@BashStKid@mastodon.online @cstross@wandering.shop more marketing lies! Been burnt there a couple of times early in my career. Thought we were buying COTS. Turned out we were funding development. You get the worst of both worlds that way.

James Kemp @themself@mastodon.scot

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@jmax @ascii158 @cstross you could of course colour code hands on the timezones on the same face, but have local language sorting per time zone with appropriate colour coded labelling on the dial.

James Kemp @themself@mastodon.scot

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@rivetgeek @cybergoths @cstross I am expecting a similar package, although not attempted any scrying for its location yet...

James Kemp @themself@mastodon.scot

· 10mo ago

Replying to

@FeralRobots@mastodon.social @cstross@wandering.shop yeah, that's my experience too. I was lucky enough to be doing it in the public sector so we weren't rushed by having to generate revenue and the seniors wanted it to work properly before using it live. The demos were more for UX and getting the love so we'd get funding to continue

James Kemp @themself@mastodon.scot

· 9mo ago

Replying to

@anathema@girlcock.club @WeeGem@mastodon.scot @cstross@wandering.shop I first heard it in UK govt when before the 2010 election, although I think it came from Bill Crothers who had been a partner in Accenture before being recruited into the civil service. Certainly been used for our digital work in the early 2010s when I was doing stuff with GDS.

James Kemp @themself@mastodon.scot

· 10mo ago

Replying to

@fdr @koantig @cstross my best computer performance of all time (when I was a paid sysadmin) was keeping a w95 box up for 31 days!

James Kemp @themself@mastodon.scot

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@elricofmelnibone @cstross worked for my west coast language too. I thought I'd read it as a teenager, but I must have been in my early 20s and already living in London based on the publication date. I suspect it was a Christmas present and I read in my teenage bedroom back in Old Kilpatrick (which got referenced in Espedair Street)

James Kemp @themself@mastodon.scot

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@hischeekiness it definitely does. If I do this every time I need to go to the office I'll have a novel by Christmas...

James Kemp @themself@mastodon.scot

· 9mo ago

Replying to

@bodil @jsbarretto @cstross in a manual ICE you don't use the break to regulate speed, just for stopping or significant slowing. Mostly you use the accelerator/gas pedal and where it sits dictates the revs, which combined with gearing controls speed. With good awareness you can go a long way without braking, especially extra urban driving.

James Kemp @themself@mastodon.scot

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@nesce @cstross I upgraded to V3 on Ubuntu. It was much harder work than it should be. It looks a bit nicer, and I'm sure there are some features I didn't have in 1.9, but if you don't have to then it's probably not worth the effort.

James Kemp @themself@mastodon.scot

· 11mo ago

Replying to

@Mactonex@toot.community @me@jaehanley.social it's been a long while since the UK routinely did handwritten passports. I worked with a few people that did that early in their careers. Last ones out the door were c.1989, I got my first one about then, and it was machine generated.

James Kemp @themself@mastodon.scot

· 11mo ago

Replying to

@Mactonex@toot.community @me@jaehanley.social I worked for them in the early 2000s, and again 2007-15.