Also got to stand next to a very cool scribble.

Just saw a Switch 2 in person (in the Nintendo museum in Kyoto) - very impressive console, and much bigger than I expected. Might have to buy one on day one after all.

It's a very sad day.

Surprisingly hard work! I've been doing an experiment this week and it's amazing with agent mode in vs code, but requires a lot of baby sitting. It's going to get so good in the next few years, but it's still a bit frustrating playing whack a mole.

Awesome haul of Lego for my birthday! Going to be busy for a few days on these.

It was my 18th wedding anniversary last week, my birthday today, and now my age ends in a zero again. I wonder what the next decade holds for me?

Final sunset of 2024. I hope everyone had a great 2024, and all the best for whatever your goals and dreams for 2025 are.

Here's our dog Yoshi doing one last beach run.

Wish I could be there - such fond memories, and it's where my career truly started.

Trying out bluesky. You can find me over there at @jonathangiles.net

First PCB revision just arrived. Blink app runs fine, from both USB-C port, as well as when 12v is delivered over the network jack. Next revision is already ready to order with a few nice revisions. Such fun.

Finally, I'm fairly certain maintaining multiple versions of a third-party library is more work (build, testing, release, messaging) for third parties, compared to maintaining one version that can span Java 8+.

Am I misunderstanding something? Thanks!

Also: "If you want the latest features of our library, you need to pull your application up to the latest version of Java. If you want it and can't do that, it's not my problem."

Over the past week I've filled my spare time with a new custom circuit board project, for a popular kind of spa pool controller. I even worked out how to generate a 3D model for a case / lid for it. And I even wrote a blog post about it here: https://t.co/LTJDqvuElQ

I've spent the past week or so in heads-down engineer mode, and it has been delightful. It's great to have the backing of my manager to 'go dark' every now and then to push the boundaries, and I'm excited about what I'm developing.

My week ahead is going to be a little more Kotlin focused than usual. Heading into that, I'd love to hear from people their impressions of using Kotlin libraries from Java, including any impedance mismatches they might encounter, and any protips.

Latest pcb arrived today. Designed using @kicad_pcb, and put together by @JLCPCB (including them pick and placing the components). Then I just drop in an ESP32 Dev Board and a level shifter component, and in theory it all just works (in practice, I'm prepping for magic smoke)

I figure in the future, if I decide to put it all on-chip, I might retain the websocket layer indirection, as I can then switch between two different server implementations, depending on if I'm deploying or prototyping.

The websocket server maintains the global state, and the ESP32 just sends updates from sensors, and listens to state changes from the server, before outputting appropriate values over the GPIO pins.

And, yes, you really should be on a newer version of Java... But we bend over backwards to support down to Java 8, and with as many different libraries as possible. We are dropping our dependencies in our next gen core libraries to zero!

The @AzureSDK team identified an issue in TLS in Java 8. After backporting fixes from more recent versions of Java, we now a see 30x performance improvement. This speaks to our commitment to offer the best developer experience, with the highest performance, across all clouds. https://t.co/SgfskP63lT

Very excited - got second-row tickets to hear @thomyorke perform a solo show in Christchurch in October. Can't wait!

And you better not end up sitting on the fence like me!

My wife and I can't decide if we should stay in our current house, or move to another one down the road. I'm sitting on the fence as there are pros and cons, and therefore I am asking the internet to decide for me. Decision may or may not be binding.

It's circular as there are eight terminals on the board, with five pins each, that run out to external sensors and led strip lighting. I'm enjoying writing code on my ESP32 dev boards, using level shifter chips, and sourcing power supplies and other components from AliExpress.

It feels good to be in San Francisco, even if it is just SFO on my way up to Seattle. It's been a while! SFO has been the gateway to many wonderful experiences and memories.

Heading over to Seattle on Sunday for the first time since 2019 or so. Will be visiting for just the week. Looking forward to seeing work mates, and anyone else in the Seattle area who is keen to catch up.

Essential reading for any modern Java developer .... Apparently twitter.com/acmeducation/status/1777...

Finally relented and bought myself a PlayStation 5 this week, first stop is replaying Final Fantasy VII Remake, and then on to Rebirth. This might impact my 'read more books' plan a little bit, but I have a pretty healthy backlog still to read:

This tweet asks an interesting question: what is your career endgoal? I went from software engineer to tech lead to architect, entirely 'by accident', because opportunities opened up around me, but I've never focused on an endgoal. Do you have a goal? https://t.co/d8syWBk4yu

At the start of the year I wrote about some of my goals for this year. It was nothing spectacular or ground breaking, but I wanted to keep myself honest. As we wrap the first three months of the year, I've posted a quick update on my progress here: https://t.co/TPLkYXfsHe