My Blog

Assorted thoughts on agility, tech, and existing in this world

  1. technical
    Header

    2025-05-21

    Steven Waterman

    Authenticating JavaScript WebSockets

    When a WebSocket fails to connect, you receive no information about why. This makes renewable authentication an absolute nightmare, unless you do in-band authentication.
  2. technical
    Header

    2024-10-21

    Steven Waterman

    Prevent Mistakes with NOMERGE Comments in CI/CD Pipelines

    I added support for NOMERGE comments to our codebase, which the CI pipeline uses to prevent temporary, unfinished, or debug code from being released accidentally.
  3. life
    Header

    2023-09-20

    Steven Waterman

    The burden of deliberate choice

    Recently I've been thinking about how complex the world is, and how all that complexity makes everyday life feel draining. I don't have the answers, but in the spirit of radical vulnerability, I wanted to share my feelings.

All Posts

  1. technical
    Header

    2025-05-21

    Steven Waterman

    Authenticating JavaScript WebSockets

    Renewable authentication for WebSockets is awful in JavaScript, but you can work around it
  2. technical
    Header

    2024-10-21

    Steven Waterman

    Prevent Mistakes with NOMERGE Comments in CI/CD Pipelines

    A cool tip that helps you remember to fix things before releasing your code
  3. life
    Header

    2023-09-20

    Steven Waterman

    The burden of deliberate choice

    The world is unimaginably complex, and that means we have to make some difficult choices.
  4. life
    Header

    2023-08-24

    Steven Waterman

    Luckily I got hit by a car

    I have a strange view on lucky and unlucky events, and it feels really peaceful.
  5. coaching
    Header

    2023-08-10

    Steven Waterman

    Supercharge your Teaching with Metaphors

    Metaphors can be an amazing tool to communicate quickly with others, but they're not all equal.
  6. life
    Header

    2022-10-31

    Steven Waterman

    Onboarding at a Radical Enterprise

    TalkJS has some radical ideas about company culture. Let's discuss the things that stood out to me during onboarding.
  7. coaching
    Header

    2022-07-23

    Steven Waterman

    Don't Worry, it's Rocket Science

    When encouraging someone to try a new task, never underestimate the difficulty - exaggerate it instead.
  8. projects
    Header

    2022-07-03

    Steven Waterman

    Decorate your Blog with AI

    I create art for every blog post using AI. In this post, I explain my workflow and how you can do it too!
  9. projects
    Header

    2022-07-01

    Steven Waterman

    My Balance Box

    It's about time we started to accept that humans have emotion, so I built a box that tells everyone how I feel, live!
  10. coaching
    Header

    2022-06-23

    Steven Waterman

    Kind and True

    The world is full of thoughts that are both kind and true, but don't need saying. What would happen if we said them anyway?
  11. life
    Header

    2022-06-13

    Steven Waterman

    A New Trajectory

    I used to be a developer, and now I'm a Technical Coach. Let's discuss what it means, and how I got here.
  12. life
    Header

    2022-06-12

    Steven Waterman

    Opening Up About Burnout

    Last year, I suffered from some pretty severe burnout. It's time we started talking about this stuff.
  13. coaching
    Header

    2022-04-08

    Steven Waterman

    We Need to Talk (if you want)

    I've always been open to chat with people, but now it's official. You can book a slot in my diary to chat about anything.
  14. coaching
    Header

    2022-04-04

    Steven Waterman

    You can learn to Speak Confidently

    Do the words 'public speaking' strike fear into your heart? I used to be the same. Used to.
  15. technical
    Header

    2022-02-28

    Steven Waterman

    5 things you don't need Javascript for

    Javascript can do a lot, but it's really over-used. Here's my top 5 things you don't need Javascript for.
  16. technical
    Header

    2022-02-16

    Steven Waterman

    Database sync like magic, with Svelte + Firestore

    Svelte and Firestore are a match made in heaven, making it easy to sync data between the browser and the database.
  17. projects
    Header

    2022-01-04

    Steven Waterman

    Lexoral is open-source so you can punish us

    Anyone can read the code for Lexoral and use it in their own projects. That means you can punish us.
  18. projects
    Header

    2020-10-09

    Steven Waterman

    Down the ergonomic keyboard rabbit hole

    Over the past few months I've had an ergonomic keyboard obsession.
  19. technical
    Header

    2020-10-01

    Steven Waterman

    Better Redux Reducers with TypeScript Builders

    You can improve Redux Reducers by using the Builder pattern in TypeScript.
  20. technical
    Header

    2020-09-16

    Steven Waterman

    TypeScript Builders: Improving your types one step at a time

    You can use the builder pattern to implement complex type constraints.
  21. technical
    Header

    2020-07-24

    Steven Waterman

    Svelte and TypeScript - Together at last!

    Svelte is great, and now it's even better - it supports TypeScript.
  22. technical
    Header

    2020-03-27

    Steven Waterman

    Optimise your Micro:Bit code with Chrome DevTools

    Some might say I pushed the Micro:Bit too far. This post is not for those people.
  23. technical
    Header

    2020-03-10

    Steven Waterman

    How to Write a Ray Tracer Intuitively

    Ray tracing seems complicated at first, but together we can make it simple.
  24. technical
    Header

    2020-03-03

    Steven Waterman

    3D Rendering on a Children's Toy

    The BBC Micro:Bit is designed to do a lot of things, but 3D rendering isn't one of them.
  25. technical
    Header

    2020-02-24

    Steven Waterman

    GitHub is a free CI/CD/Hosting solution

    Introducing a free GitHub Actions workflow which builds your front-end and deploys it.
  26. media
    Header

    2020-02-21

    Steven Waterman

    Stevie W and the Quest for 60 FPS

    I gave a tech talk about optimising my Svelte app from 1 to 60 FPS.
  27. technical
    Header

    2020-02-17

    Steven Waterman

    Slow Code HATES him! From 1 to 60fps

    After hearing about Svelte, I set off on a journey of iterative performance improvement.
  28. projects
    Header

    2020-02-10

    Steven Waterman

    Embrace your Obsessions!

    For the past 3 months, I have been a bit obsessed with Minesweeper. That's a good thing.
  29. technical
    Header

    2020-01-29

    Steven Waterman

    Typescript Pick 'n' Mix

    In TypeScript, we can just Pick the good bits of an interface, so let's do that.
  30. media
    Header

    2020-01-17

    Steven Waterman

    How to solve Minesweeper in 3 minutes

    In my first ever tech talk, I explained how to algorithmically solve minesweeper
  31. technical
    Header

    2020-01-16

    Steven Waterman

    Planning 56 sprints per second with SAT4J

    SAT solvers are surprisingly fast and probably under-used, but can they plan our sprints?
  32. media
    Header

    2020-01-13

    Steven Waterman

    Solving Minesweeper in Polynomial Time

    I gave a talk on solving minesweeper at NE:Tech. Things got weird!
  33. technical
    Header

    2020-01-03

    Steven Waterman

    Rethinking the Java DTO

    Can we utilise static type-checking and integration with modern IDEs to write a better DTO?
  34. projects
    Header

    2019-07-22

    Steven Waterman

    Introducing SharpShot

    SharpShot is an esoteric visual programming language, made for Durhack 2018