Alex McRoberts
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alex.mcroberts.me
Alex McRoberts
@alex.mcroberts.me
1.6K followers 820 following 1.8K posts
Director, AI Engineering at Hootsuite. Previously Damon Motorcycles, Intel, Recon Instruments.

Living in Vancouver. From Belfast

http://alex.mcroberts.me/
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alex.mcroberts.me
Currently reading: @sebastianraschka.com’s book on building an LLM from scratch!

Back to Appendix A for me to brush up on PyTorch!

I didn’t take Calculus in High School, so I’ll have some background learning to do there too.
Cover of the book “Build A Large Language Model from scratch”, published by Manning. The cover shows a woman in a large grand dress with fur lining at the bottom, holding a hat
November 10, 2025 at 8:18 PM
alex.mcroberts.me
Saw this newspaper open in the local coffee shop on the weekend, and it sparked an idea…

@bmann.ca how about a Wild Goose Chase (aka Treasure Hunt) around UBC during #ATmosphereConf …
An article in the Vancouver Sun from Saturday November 5th titled “Wild Goose Chase” outlines a story about how Canadian Geese are now heavily populated in urban areas and how they’ve seen a resurgence in numbers over the last few years
November 10, 2025 at 8:13 PM
alex.mcroberts.me
If it helps to debug; here’s a recording and a link to the post I interacted with.

bsky.app/profile/canu...
November 10, 2025 at 4:29 AM
alex.mcroberts.me
Easter Egg Alert!

Google Maps and Ford Bronco teamed up to map the TransAmerica Trail – all 5,900 miles of it.

When you visit the 4 Street View scenes link in the article...there's a person dressed in camouflage in frame in 2 of them!

blog.google/products/map...
A Google Maps Streetview of a sandy desert trail with shrubs either side of the trail. There is what appears to be a person in a full camouflage standing in the bush as the 3 Ford vehicles pass by. A Google Maps Streetview of a forest trail with woods, and a gravel path. There is what appears to be a person in a full camouflage standing in the trees as the 3 Ford vehicles pass by.
November 5, 2025 at 5:29 PM
alex.mcroberts.me
For a while I’ve been using Cursor to help find Accessibility issues in frontend codebases.

It’s been great for identifying issues, and then remediating them too, for the most part.

Of course, no ARIA labels are better than bad ARIA labels, so it’s worth investing in learning about what works too.
Screenshot from Apple Notes titled “Finding Accessibility Issues”. Here's the prompt I used with Cursor to review a React codebase for Accessibility issues: Let's analyze this code base. There are likely to be a series of Accessibility Issues that arise from this code base, including keyboard traps, a lack of aria labels, poor use of semantic HTML etc. This codebase relies heavily on React and TypeScript and imports from libraries, so it may not be entirely possible to catch or fix all the issues. That's OK. Please highlight as many issues as you come across. Once you've collected the issues, write them to a markdown file, showing the filename, the line number, a reference to the WAG Success Criteria, and a brief description of the potential issue. We're targeting against WCAG 2.2 AA Success Criteria. Screenshot of Apple Notes titled “Finding Accessibility Issues” Once the markdown file is created with the list of issues, I used a 2nd prompt. Using this file (use the at tagging @filename.md) as a reference check list, let's go through each file one at a time, and make the necessary changes. Pause after each file change to let me review the changes.
October 31, 2025 at 5:26 PM
alex.mcroberts.me
Has a late in the season visitor to the house this evening.

This bear is a chunky boy!
A very well fed black bear walking on the road past our house.
October 27, 2025 at 2:58 AM
alex.mcroberts.me
Why is The Colonel at the World Series?
The seats behind home plate at Roger’s Centre, with the LA Dodgers batting
October 26, 2025 at 2:45 AM
alex.mcroberts.me
Who are the monsters from Big Sourdough that don’t recognize those among us with regular size toasters?
Our 2 slice toaster with the ends of the sourdough popping out the top, while the toaster is toasting!
October 22, 2025 at 5:46 PM
alex.mcroberts.me
You kids!
Screenshot from https://pdsls.dev showing when my account was created: 2023-03-01 00:11:19 Identity created
October 22, 2025 at 5:25 AM
alex.mcroberts.me
Yeah books are cool, but have you ever bought a copy of a book signed by the person that invented the World Wide Web?! @timbl.bsky.social
The cover of “This is for everyone”, by Tim Berners-Lee. The blue cover, has a circle made up of dots coloured red, orange, yellow and blue. In the centre it says “Tim Berners-Lee, The Inventor of the World Wide Web” On the left page About the Author Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989. CERN in Switzerland. Since then, through his work with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the Open Data Institute (ODI), the World Wide Web Foundation, the development of the Solid protocol and now as CTO and cofounder of Inrupt, he has been a tireless advocate for shared standards, open web access for all and the empowerment of individuals on the web. A firm believer in the positive power of technology, he was named in Time magazine's list of the most important people of the twentieth century. He has been the recipient of several awards, including the Seoul Peace Prize and the Turing Prize, widely recog nized as the Nobel Prize for Computing. He was knighted in 2004 and later appointed to the Order of Merit by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. On the right page “Signed by the author”, followed by the signature of Tim Berners-Lee, and the publishers name, Macmillan
October 5, 2025 at 8:20 PM
alex.mcroberts.me
Bristol Airport has helicopters made of clouds!
A blue sky above the Bristol airport airfield, with a white wall of cloud. There’s a dark grey cloud in the shape of a helicopter! The same helicopter cloud less cropped. Also pictured is an easyjet plane, and several rental cars parked at the car rental location
October 5, 2025 at 5:42 PM
alex.mcroberts.me
You can sort a table in Google Docs!
September 25, 2025 at 4:00 PM
alex.mcroberts.me
@iame.li @natalie.sh spotted this UI in the settings panel earlier
Settings panel for the stream place iOS app. The webhooks UI looks a little compressed!
September 23, 2025 at 4:10 AM
alex.mcroberts.me
WatchOS 26 and they still haven’t fixed this one simple rotation
Apple Watch on the charging screen. The watch is on its charger, laying on its side. The screen which displays the battery charging level hasn’t rotated, as the text is turned 90 degrees anti clockwise. Battery charge is 98%, airplane mode symbol is showing and the time is 12.16pm
September 15, 2025 at 7:19 PM
alex.mcroberts.me
The new gondola at Bluesky is super cool! Aiming to go on this soon!
September 4, 2025 at 11:21 PM
alex.mcroberts.me
Sunday Bluesky with a hot air balloon!
A hot air balloon with pixelated rainbow pattern
September 1, 2025 at 12:20 AM
alex.mcroberts.me
Bluesky Friday. Reminds me of the old Bluesky icon!
Bluesky with white and light grey clouds, with the sun shining behind
August 29, 2025 at 4:26 PM
alex.mcroberts.me
Only appropriate to share a Moth here first!
A Large Yellow Underwing Moth.This photo doesn’t capture the yellow underwing, just the brown woody wing
August 22, 2025 at 5:03 AM
alex.mcroberts.me
Airshow was cool last weekend! The F35 was loud!
F35 with trails on the wingtips!
August 17, 2025 at 12:50 AM
alex.mcroberts.me
On web that takes me to home feed.

If I try bsky.app/settings/account on web I don’t see any option…
List of options under Settings Account on Bluesky. Email, Update email, Birthday, Password, Handle, Export my data, Deactivate account, Delete account
July 19, 2025 at 12:52 AM
alex.mcroberts.me
Here it is!
App Store list showing Top Paid Apps 1 Shadowrocket 2 LandTracker Pro 3 Necrometer 4 Wipr 2 5 Just Press Record 6 Goblin Tools 7 AT Toolbox 8 iVerify Basic
July 11, 2025 at 6:26 PM
alex.mcroberts.me
A head scratcher: getKnownFollowers call has a limit of 30, and only returns 26 profiles.

I guess it's a limit, not an exact quantity?

I'm seeing similar behaviour when I loop over getKnownFollows in code.

I currently follow 642 profiles, but only 634 profiles are returned.

/cc @bnewbold.net
Chrome Dev Tools showing the Payload for getFollowers. actor – my DID limit – set to 30 cursor – set to a string value Chrome Dev Tools showing the response of the getFollowers call. The followers array contains 26 objects – 0 through 25. So I have 5 missing compared to the limit
July 10, 2025 at 5:36 AM
alex.mcroberts.me
Fleet week in Vancouver!
On the left is HMCS Vancouver, on the right is HMCS Regina. Two Halifax class Frigates used for submarine hunting and long range patrols. Their photo shows the ships from the front, each with a Canada flag flying in the breeze. In the background is downtown Vancouver skyline A more side on view of HMCS Regina, and the pier in North Vancouver at Lonsdale Quay Front on of the ARM Benito Juárez, a Mexican frigate. In the background is the downtown Vancouver skyline A side profile from the port (left) side of the Juarez. In the background are the two Canadian frigates - HMCS Vancouver and HMCS Regina. The Juarez has long sweeping sharp edges, compared to the softer edges of the Canadian ships
July 5, 2025 at 5:34 PM
alex.mcroberts.me
TIL bees have pockets! Pollen pockets!!

www.adirondackalmanack.com/2010/07/a-cl...
A bee landed on the purple lavender in my back garden. There is an orange bulge called a pollen pocket, visible on its left knee. It’s gathering pollen from the flower Front view all be it, the bee appears upside down here. It’s possible to see the orange pollen pocket on both sides of the bee Another view of the bee on the lavender. The orange pollen pocket on the right knee is visible here.
July 5, 2025 at 1:44 AM
alex.mcroberts.me
North Shore Rescue looks busy today.

Hoping everyone is safe.
Flightradar24 screenshot of Metro Vancouver. The flight path of CGTVV is shown. This helicopter often supports North Shore Rescue. Flight path from YVR to Capliano Dam where North Shore Rescue has an outpost, to Cypress, crossing in the Cap Dam to Mount Seymour and criss crossing a few times.
July 1, 2025 at 11:02 PM