Reuben Thomas

I maintain a bunch of free software, mostly in the area of build systems and text processing. Please support my work! github.com/sponsors/rrtho…

Got to be happy with a job where I can dash off a quick email asking "please can I have a version of that image BUT WITH BADGERS?".

@BenJackson10304 @life_yorks69441 @FergusMason25 @Helen11965327 @RedLipRiots Because they worked for our army.

@life_yorks69441 @FergusMason25 @Helen11965327 @RedLipRiots Yes we should have. Why does that mean we home then and others don’t?

They lost control of the data so now they’re flying in thousands. £850 million. Secret flights. No vote. No debate. All because a Ministry of Defence official leaked the personal data of nearly 19,000 Afghans and it took them a year and a Facebook group to even notice. Now, under the banner of “honour” and “protection,” they’ve launched a covert scheme to resettle thousands, not based on loyalty but on liability. This is damage control. And as always you’ll pay the bill. You’ll house them. You’ll feed them. You’ll watch your own veterans sleep on benches while they spend £850 million fixing their own mistake behind your back. Not one vote. Not one apology. Not one ounce of accountability. A nation that relocates strangers while abandoning its own isn’t a nation. It’s an open wallet. Follow me. The reckoning has begun.

I have questions about the design of coffee table books: definitely book design (not graphic design), but with relatively little text (on most pages) and images dominant. (The actual texts are art lectures). Good authorities to consult?

@thomas_law4805 @SamuelSage77 @ryanssking1 @MostlyMonkey That's exactly what's happened in my city: in the last 30 years, all through routes barred to private traffic 'cept taxis, and park & ride heavily encouraged. Traffic calming measures e.g. one-way roads means my city-centre apartment is quieter than the village I used to live in.

All of urbanist twitter is just 20somethings without children failing to understand the choices of 40somethings with children. Over and over and over.

@jaytheanglo @lotte_hughes @ZoeJardiniere Exactly, asylum seekers should be allowed to work and pay tax like the rest of us.

Mainstream radio presenters like Vanessa Feltz are perfectly happy to contribute, in their own small way, to the rise of the extreme far right. Her interview with me on LBC just now was chock full of lies. Calls herself a journalist. Really wonder how they sleep at night.

@pringles_crisps @Seanchuckle I don't really understand this. I think most people act honestly whether or not they are being checked up on.

@Seanchuckle You can't be serious If that was the system, everyone would claim. Free money!

@d00dlerz @Seanchuckle No. But I imagine there is evidence from other areas and/or the past when there was less scrutiny.

@Seanchuckle Can you imagine how many people would apply if they just paid up, no questions? 😂

@WhftOwner @JamCreamBun @SandyofSuffolk @coldasice58 @petesteven I have a fridge without a freezer compartment. Many freezer compartments are tiny and rubbish.

@JamCreamBun @SandyofSuffolk @coldasice58 @petesteven It's not often you're right and guess what - your wrong again.

A loaf of white bread in Aldi is 50p. A tin of baked beans or spaghetti hoops is 27p. Breakfast for a kid for a week.

I wrote a rocks-and-diamonds game in 1990, and now you can play it on today computers: rrthomas.github.io/wincoll Now with 10 new levels. Still available for RISC OS (and also Windows, macOS and GNU/Linux).

@sentantiq Good advice. There may be a translation that resonates with you particularly; for example, I'm a big Pope fan, and his translation (OK, the translation he project-managed!) was a blast.

4.Try out different translations. I teach with Lombardo, Wilson works great. Fagles and Lattimore are getting harder to teach with, but that depends on the dialect and reading experience of the audience. If one doesn’t work, try another

#odyssey discourse whirling around, but reading epic is not easy because it is a little weird 1. I think almost no one in antiquity ‘read’ Homeric epic from beginning to end.

Just heard for the first time an announcement that passengers should alight from the rear N coaches at a certain station (rather than the common front N). When is that done?

@DrEugeniaCheng That escalated slowly!

Latest escalation: apparently I make my own energy bars now. These are calibrated to exactly what I seem to need halfway through 2 hours of tennis. The good things about cooking for myself is that I can make it exactly to my needs and tastes and nobody else has to like it!

@LeaVerou @GingerSoul_Co @Adobe (at least, this is what I've found with my own books, but I'm no expert, just following others' recommendations…and as a big fan of Adobe Caslon, I'm following this thread with interest!)

@LeaVerou @GingerSoul_Co @Adobe One's more likely to need a limited range of sizes for a printed book? Going by the range of recommended sizes for a multiple masters font, one might get away with a single size.

Attn, designer friends! Is anyone aware of an old style serif typeface with the same quality of craftmanship as @Adobe Caslon Pro that is also a variable font? Use case is body text in a book. Happy to pay for it (a reasonable amount).

@A_petretzikis I enjoy your recipes, but when I try to download the machine-readable to my recipe app, your web site refuses permission. Is this intentional?

@fivemack @carolemadge The photo suggests it's a typo—looks like 2m would be enough what's shown underwater.

@carolemadge Twenty metres of sea level change in ten years is either a typo or geology rather than climate change - it’s a volcanic area. Five miles of sea wall is quite a lot to ask a Ministry of Antiquities to pay for …

"Delos is condemned to disappear in around 50 years". search.app/oD2rYC5ncC2EPk…

@AlisonMLees @fivemack I also know that—I often cycle between Cambridge and North Herts, and it's quite the evolution.

Cycling into town took 60 minutes and 39% of a battery. After pumping the tires from 20psi to 60psi, cycling back took 54 minutes and 25% of a battery! Truly, friction is our eternal foe

@Floop56273753 @david_pickworth @implausibleblog That's showing population density, not number of people.

@david_pickworth @implausibleblog So you’ve proved the capital city has a lot of people in it 👍

Jim Ratcliffe, "Brexit sort of unfortunately didn't umm.. It didn't turn out as people anticipated" "It was about immigration.. People fed up with the influx.. A small island like the UK can't cope with vast numbers of people.. It overburdens the NHS, traffic, the police" "The country is designed for 55 or 60 million people, now we've got 70 million and all the services break down" Man who left the UK to be an immigrant in Monaco to avoid UK tax, is complaining about immigrants coming to the UK who are paying UK taxes 🤷‍♂️ By moving to Monaco Ratcliffe avoided £4 billion in tax. So I put it to you, the reason services are underfunded is not because of immigrants who come to the UK and pay their fair share of tax. It's because of people like Ratcliffe who avoid paying their share of UK tax and so starve public services. And Brexit turned out exactly how many predicted, and arguably it's worse than many predicted. Warnings were dismissed as project fear, and of course people like Ratcliffe won't be impacted by the extend of Brexit. When you're worth over £12 billion, a 50% increase in your food shopping bill isn't even noticable

Some thought about my happy experiences of rewriting Vala into C such that users don't notice: vala.dev/blog/c-off-ram…