James Darling

@simonwillison.net is this…?

london/db/data at main · james/london Contribute to james/london development by creating an account on GitHub.

Also each of the geojson files are here: github.com/james/london...

anti-london

Click on the card that has the score and look at the map and you’ll see where I (slightly arbitrarily) drew the boundary

Does it have a postcode though?

Most places inside the ancient wall. (Try Bank of England from the homepage). But I did consider if it was funnier if nowhere was.

I spent quite a bit of time trying to find the old 0181 and 0171 (020 no longer distinguishes between inner and outer) telephone exchange areas, but no luck.

Where does London begin and end? Some say you're in London if you're within the M25, others say London ends at Zone 2. These arbitrary lines are too simple. My Londometer uses data to create a much more complicated %. I'm sure this will settle things and not enrage anyone. london.abscond.org

a tidy GeoJSON file is a map not only of the earth, but of the soul

My partner is out for the evening. This is what happens.

Methodist churches tend to have terrible websites, but for my very particular needs, they win a lot of points from me for having a clean, public geojson file of their districts on their website. Frustratingly rare for a civic institution.

www.methodist.org.uk/_churchfinde...

I thought it would be a nice 30-minute Sunday morning activity to update this little API to use the new 2025 IMD data.

The new geography data is also much higher resolution (nice!), but that means the SQLite file is now 500MB, so this little hack has broken (boo!)

I have other things I need to do

Nice to learn the history of the place I went drinking as a teenager from @jim.londoncentric.media

A version of the GOV.UK logo with the dot replaced with a heart emoji

I've made a browser extension that replaces _that_ dot with a random emoji.

github.com/symroe/GOV.U...

A wiring diagram created by ChatGPT that is not correct.

Unfortunately, "vibe electronics" doesn't appear to be an option yet. Like humans, chatgpt struggles with how many fingers a transistor has.

I think a career doing Test Driven Development is unhelpful when you're doing electronics. Creating a failing test has cost me £60.

Did you know that putting 12v through the 3.3v rail on a Raspberry Pi would break it? I mean, I did, but electricity is invisible, so I don't know how I'm supposed to know where it's going.

I love getting to think and communicate in prototype code alongside designers, so this was a dream project to work on.

Would anyone be interested in joining this software engineer at a policy event? I'm too scared of all the PPEs to go by myself. We can sort linked lists in the back if it's too much. www.resolutionfoundation.org/events/sprin...

Connections – London Create custom puzzles based on the game popularized by New York Times

Are you sick of American references in NYT Connections? I made a quick London-themed one: connections.swellgarfo.com/game/-OL9EiI...

I would have been convinced that Remar charity shops used generative AI for product development if they hadn’t been running since the 90s.

It feels weird, but is it bad? The reduction of external dependencies and build complexity feels like it's worth it?

Committing a 65MB database file to version control still feels weird though.

Appreciated Mohamed Hassan's talk at @brightonruby.com and @simonwillison.net's datasette work for getting me to take SQLite more seriously.

Talk: brightonruby.com/2024/litesta...
Also <3 Simon's excellent work in the open that helped me debug my spatialite docker img: github.com/simonw/datas...

I've repeatedly come across the need to find intersecting polygons for a location from a read-only source, but usually end knee-deep in PostGIS. Once I got it working, SQLLite with Spacialite is a lot more suited for this. The whole thing contained in a read-only docker image.

GitHub - james/IMD_API Contribute to james/IMD_API development by creating an account on GitHub.

For a couple of work projects I've wanted an easy way to find out the English Indices of Deprivation for a location. This data is Open Government Licensed, but only available as a big download

I put the data into an sqlite database and wrapped a micro-api around it: https://github.com/james/IMD_API

I've been a Spotify user since it was invite only in 2008, and contemplating trying the switchover to Apple Music.

I thought they'd have honed the switching process, but had to pay for a 3rd party app to transfer playlists, and still Apple Music thinks I want David Guetta & Harry Styles.

great piece by @abscond.org on making Co-op membership matter more. In the same 2017ish era my take was: detach membership from Co-op-customer transactions and federate it www.holdfastprojects.com/radical-co-o...

The £4m fight for Bethnal Green Working Men's Club An in-depth London Centric investigation. Plus: A discounted penthouse flat at St Pancras; the person dragged by an Overground train with their fingers stuck in the door.

www.londoncentric.media/p/drag-queen...

A proposed membership card design, tied to a local store.

7 years ago I was asked by The Co-op to reimagine co-operative membership for the internet age. I think I had some nice ideas. I've published them in a blog post. abscond.org/2024/11/26/a...