There was some discussion on the Growstuff IRC channel last night, while I was asleep, about the term “spike”. I use it a bit on the Growstuff project but I don’t think everyone knows what I’m getting at, possibly because I picked it up by osmosis from the Extreme Programming community over a decade ago, and the term’s fallen out of favour since then. So here’s a quick definition as I use it: A spike is experimental. It’s for writing something you’ve never written before, Continue reading → Ravelry API – Wait, what? How did I miss this. Ravelry has an API now, and they’ve been using it internally since Feb 2012, so it isn’t just an unloved add-on. (You probably can’t follow the link, which is to the Rav API forum, unless you’re a member. But anyone who might be interested in this probably is already, so…) Our real first gay president – Newsweek says Obama’s the US’s “first gay president”, ignoring James Buchanan, who was openly gay in the 19th century. Continue reading → It’s about time we went beyond “hey, knitting patterns are kind of like code” and looked more deeply at the kinds of technical skills that really make knitting like programming. Continue reading →