← Feed

Posts

• Post #4517559

  We had 4mm of rain overnight, which I listened to through our open bedroom window. It will take a lot more to end the drought, but the world felt fresher this morning, and smelt amazing.

• Post #4500840

  I frequently receive messages from people saying that watching the rise of renewables on https://grid.iamkate.com makes them feel optimistic about tackling the climate crisis. While I’m happy to help give people hope, I don’t want to encourage complacency about how far we still have to go, so I’ve added colour-coding to the emissions figure (and graph) based on the government’s Clean Power 2030 Action Plan target of 50g/kWh. In the 5,337 days (almost 15 years) the site has been running, we’ve...

• Post #4160282

  Don’t mock Count Binface, or you’ll have to deal with his mother:

• Post #4064625

  Calling my D&D druid character Dove so that every time she casts scrying I can say “this is what it sounds like, when Dove scries”

• Post #4057304

  I’ve added sparklines (miniature line graphs) to National Grid: Live at https://grid.iamkate.com

• Post #3969396

  Redesigned the top of my National Grid: Live site (https://grid.iamkate.com)

• Post #3554797

  From backlit leaves to sand through water, and from ‘green’ traffic lights to the plumage of 500 species of bird, Ryan Moulton tells us “Where to Find the Colors Your Screen Can’t Show You”: https://moultano.wordpress.com/2026/06/19/where-to-find-the-colors-your-screen-cant-show-you/

• Post #3507179

  This year I set myself a target of reading a book a week, and at the halfway point I’m right on schedule with 26 books in 26 weeks. 16 were non-fiction, 14 were by women, 6 were translated, and 4 were over 1,000 years old (The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon is in all four categories). The complete list: 1. The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Richmond Lattimore 2. Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones 3. Holloway by Robert Macfarlane, Stanley Donwood, and Dan Richards 4. Now Go by Karl Thomas S...

• Post #3434431

  We got up just after 5am this morning to walk down to the sea while the air was still relatively cool. @clareburgess@hachyderm.io had a swim while I read on the promenade, and later Clare joined me in reading while she dried off. An old lady came up to us and said “Excuse me, I’d just like to say that it’s so nice to see to see you both here reading when so many other people are always staring at machines”.

• Post #3335313

  One thing I love about reading ancient poetry is unexpectedly coming across antecedents of contemporary clichés. Here, over 3,000 years ago, is Gilgamesh telling the sun god “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”: Said Gilgamesh to him, to the hero Shamash: “After roaming, wandering all through the wild When I enter the Netherworld will rest be scarce? I shall lie there sleeping all down the years!”

• Post #3316098

  #Introduction (June 2026 edition) Hi, I’m Kate. I’m 43 years old, trans, and live in the south-west of England with my wife @clareburgess@hachyderm.io. I’m best known for my National Grid: Live site at https://grid.iamkate.com. I’m a director at https://itseeze.com, where I created the Lightning platform that’s been used to build thousands of sites for organisations across the UK and Ireland since 2007. I’m a member of the board of trustees for https://www.proud2be.org.uk, a queer-led charity...

• Post #1923725

  I had a rough idea of the plot of The Iliad before I started reading it, but I hadn’t expected this 2,500-year-old description of androids: “Hephaistos’ maids ran to help their master. They are made of gold, looking like living girls: they have intelligent minds, and speech too and strength, and have learnt their handiwork from the immortal gods.”

• Post #1882271

  Any sufficiently advanced project management platform is indistinguishable from chaos

• Post #1849390

  One of my employees just decided to explain the XZ Utils backdoor to me while I repeatedly told him that I had read all about it at the time it was discovered. While we were having this ‘conversation’, this book was sitting in full view on my desk:

• Post #1815987

  I’m shortly going to start on a project to migrate a legacy platform from MyISAM to InnoDB — just over 100,000 tables across 4,000 databases, all on a single server. Does anyone have any advice on things to watch out for? (I’m aware of the basics like keeping primary keys small in InnoDB. At this stage we’re not yet looking to take advantage of InnoDB features such as transactions and foreign keys, but we do need to maintain performance.)

• Post #1160157

  I designed the 12-bit rainbow palette for use on https://grid.iamkate.com. It consists of twelve colours chosen with consideration for how we perceive luminance, chroma, and hue. The palette uses a 12-bit colour depth, so each colour requires only four characters when specified as a hexadecimal colour code in a CSS or SVG file. For more details, see https://iamkate.com/data/12-bit-rainbow/

• Post #1017559

  I love this tree because it’s a reminder that you can still live a full life after a disaster:

• Post #1017558

  My confidence has risen during my transition mostly in line with how passing I’ve felt, but takes a hit when I’m worried a stranger has clocked me (which can be triggered as easily as someone looking at me for slightly too long). I know this is something I need to work on, so today I embraced visibility and marched with a trans flag at Pride for the first time. Later on, while I was queuing at one of the food stalls, a middle-aged woman came up to me and said “You look really cute”. While I wa...

• Post #1017557

  I’m a bit squinty in this photo (I’m standing in a glazed stairwell), but I hope the gender euphoria still comes across. Our MP visited the office yesterday, and afterwards we treated the staff to drinks and tapas at a bar by the harbour, before some of us hit the local venues until midnight. I’ve had my eye on this dress since I saw Munroe Bergdorf wearing it, but I didn’t think I could justify the price for something that might only look good on a literal model. However, last weekend it was...

• Post #1017556

  Does anyone here use a hosted, UK/EU/Switzerland-based alternative to Dropbox in a business setting? We tried out Proton Drive, but its sharing and permissions model is too basic for us — every folder has a single owner who is the only person who can share anything within it. We need to be able to do things like saying “this folder can be read by anyone in the design department and written to by design managers, and anyone with read access can also create links to share files within it”. We’re n...

• Post #1017555

  It was my birthday a little while back, and in the run-up @clareburgess was a little frustrated that every time she asked what I wanted I said all I needed was her. I woke up on the morning to find an e-mail she’d scheduled for delivery at midnight. It contained this beautiful drabble (100-word story) about the time I was paddling around Loch Portree and came back to shore to find her cooking for us on her wood-fired stove 🥹

• Post #1017554

  We went down to the sea early this morning: @clareburgess had a swim while I sat on the promenade steps reading about pebbles, and afterwards we had vegan hot chocolate and a cinnamon roll from the shipping container café on the promenade

• Post #1017553

  Listen, it’s very simple: In Britain we use the metric system, except for beer and milk, which come in pints. But not plant milk — that comes in litres. Oh, and distances are in miles. But only if they’re too far to walk — if you can walk it it’s in metres. If you’re driving then your fuel efficiency is in miles-per-gallon, but petrol is sold in litres. Oh, and your height is in feet and inches. If you don’t care much about your weight it’s in stone (but not pounds — no-one can remember how ma...

• Post #1017552

  In Other Waters (Windows, macOS, Switch) is a strange and beautiful game: part biological survey, part mystery novel, and unlike anything else I’ve played. You take on the role of an AI that awakens in a dive suit with no memory of its origins. The suit has been discovered by Ellery Vas, a xenobiologist answering a distress call sent from the ocean planet of Gliese 677Cc by Minae Nomura. Minae, her former colleague and former lover, disappeared years previously with technology she stole from Ba...

• Post #1017551

  Shop assistant: Is there something in particular you’re looking for today? Me: I’m delivering the keynote at my company’s conference, so I’m looking for something luxurious but also understated. The dress I ended up buying after eventually deciding that yes, I am now confident and dramatic enough to wear it:

• Post #1017550

  #SilentSunday

• Post #1017549

  I’m finally playing the Assassin’s Creed Odyssey DLC, and good god it’s gorgeous: Elysium (the ancient Greek afterlife) really does look like paradise

• Post #1017548

  The weather was so nice this morning I got off the train a stop early and walked into the city along the canal. The trees are coming into leaf and there’s so much birdsong. A lovely start to a workday.

• Post #770188

  The sun is shining, the wind is blowing a gale, and just 2.4% of British electricity is coming from fossil fuels. See the live data at https://grid.iamkate.com.

• Post #505404

  The first UK opinion poll conducted following the Green Party’s win in the Gorton And Denton by-election is quite something: Reform: 23% (-1) Green: 21% (+4) Labour: 16% (-2) Conservative: 16% (-2) Lib Dem: 14% (=) “The Greens are now the most popular party in all age categories under 50. Some 49% of 18-24 year olds would back the Greens, as well as 27% of 25 to 49-year-olds.” Source: YouGov poll for Sky News: https://news.sky.com/story/greens-overtake-labour-in-sensational-poll-13514420