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In March 2023 I ran the Cambridge Half Marathon. It was my first half marathon. I wanted to do something worthwhile and that was bigger than myself. I raised almost £1000 for Mind in the process, and also improved my mental health by having a non-work goal to strive for. I’m still firmly middle-to-back of the pack when it comes to racing, but I did beat my own goal by achieving a time of 1 hour, 47 minutes, and 48 seconds (my target was to beat 1:55:00). ...

Our kitchen is almost 10 years old now. When we first had it designed and installed, I totally underestimated how important good task lighting was, but thankfully the designer knew better and included a set of under-cabinet lights to illuminate the work surfaces. The lamps in these faded, were replaced and the replacements starting failing, so now it’s time to take on installing some nice smart lighting to make things even more functional. ...

Investigating Google Sign-In led me down a rabbit hole of trying to understand authentication with Google, how it fits with standards such as OpenID Connect (OIDC) and OAuth 2.0, and how best to integrate it into a web app that has a JavaScript frontend and backend API. This article is the result of that research. On the face of it, integrating with Google Sign-In is trivial: there’s a Google page that tells you how to do it. But I believe in understanding the tools you’re using rather than just pasting code from random websites, especially when it comes to security-related functions. I wanted to understand what was happening under the hood and be sure that I wasn’t inadvertently introducing security holes into my app. So I created a simple sample app that has just enough function to demonstrate how to safely integrate sign-in to your app. ...

Having just got back from a holiday in Switzerland (which was awesome) we got home to a slightly chilly house, and so turned the heating back on. Although I’ve not posted here for a while, work has continued over on the Github repository for Boiler.io and there are a few new features that I’ve added that are worth mentioning. I’ve also replaced the crusty jQuery-based UI with a nice React application. It’d be great to hear from you if you’re interested in running open source heating software. ...