Dale Lane's Avatar

Dale Lane

@dalelane.co.uk

Developer for IBM. Kafka. Kubernetes. AI. ML. Gadgets. Mobiles. Gaming. Coffee. Creator of Machine Learning for Kids. https://dalelane.co.uk

844
Followers
1,329
Following
895
Posts
08.09.2023
Joined
Posts Following

Latest posts by Dale Lane @dalelane.co.uk

Bridge of Spies
Ghost In The Shell (the 1997 anime, and the 2017 remake)
Bombshell

Bridge of Spies Ghost In The Shell (the 1997 anime, and the 2017 remake) Bombshell

technically broke my New Year's Resolution (to not rewatch films) with Ghost In The Shell

I hadn't watched it for over 25yrs, and wanted to remind myself before watching the remake, so I'm giving myself a pass

Watching them on consecutive days was interesting!

#LetterboxdFriday #LastFourWatched

06.03.2026 13:56 πŸ‘ 16 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
The Holy Gosh Darn (2024) The Holy Gosh Darn is a narrative adventure with a time-travelling twist. Time travel to jump between the past and present across Heaven, Hell, Earth and Helheim. Uncover information in one timeline t...

Finished playing The Holy Gosh Darn : a comedy puzzle game where you can time-travel. I loved it - it works so much better than I expected

05.03.2026 23:08 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Enabling pointer compression for Node.js

This looks promising - a lot of Machine Learning for Kids is Node.js containers running in (effectively) k8s, so the prospect of halving my memory footprint is super appealing

05.03.2026 15:20 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
C2I 2025 Young Innovator winner: AI-driven cancer diagnosis - testing image analysis software - The Engineer Image analysis software uses machine learning to identify cancer and leukaemia cells.

I'm repeatedly (positively!) surprised to see the sorts of projects that students make with Machine Learning for Kids.

This project by some year 9 students in Herts, England is a lovely exploration into using image classifiers to identify cancer cells

04.03.2026 20:40 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
IBM Event Registration

creating #Kafka and #Flink demos for TechCon 2026 - our virtual event later this month

TechCon is about live and in-depth technical sessions on integration, automation, messaging, and event driven architectures - we can't get away with just slides! ;-)

www.ibm.com/events/reg/f...

04.03.2026 13:58 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Netflix - 13 films
Prime Video - 12 films
iPlayer - 6 films
Tubi - 4 films
Channel 4 - 2 films
itvx - 2 films
Cinema - 1 film
YouTube - 1 film

Netflix - 13 films Prime Video - 12 films iPlayer - 6 films Tubi - 4 films Channel 4 - 2 films itvx - 2 films Cinema - 1 film YouTube - 1 film

I've been tagging the movies I've watched this year with where I watched them - I was curious where I watch most stuff.

Netflix seems to be winning so far, but it's close.

letterboxd.com/dale_lane/ta...

03.03.2026 19:29 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Video thumbnail

🚨 It looks like the UK government is gearing up to upend copyright law in favour of AI companies, legalising the theft of their work.

This is despite creatives' huge protests, and despite previous proposals being roundly rejected by the public.

Please spread the word.

🧡 1/4

02.03.2026 15:43 πŸ‘ 2893 πŸ” 2418 πŸ’¬ 93 πŸ“Œ 468
Preview
Deep Blue We coined a new term on the Oxide and Friends podcast last month (primary credit to Adam Leventhal) covering the sense of psychological ennui leading into existential dread that many …

I'm excited about the future that AI holds, but even I've had the odd moment of disquiet about what it means for being a coder.

"Deep Blue" is a delightful term for it! 🀷

02.03.2026 19:46 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

exciting step forward in #Kafka this morning, with community agreement to pursue object storage as the backend for a new type of "diskless" topic

looking forward to seeing the next level of detail evolve!

lists.apache.org/thread/xc91h...

02.03.2026 14:22 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Prompt caching: 10x cheaper LLM tokens, but how? | ngrok blog A far more detailed explanation of prompt caching than anyone asked for.

I've idly wondered before about how prompt caching works, as my implicit naive assumption was that it relied on multiple users asking the same prompts.

This helped me to think about it properly and make it clear

01.03.2026 12:59 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

out in Southampton for F's 18th - sushi (her favourite) at Sakura's then Legally Blonde at the Mayflower πŸŽ‰

28.02.2026 18:29 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Faith is 18 today, which means our kids are now both (technically) adults!

It's a weird milestone - exciting but just a little bit sad.

28.02.2026 11:27 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead
I Swear
One Life
Marshall

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead I Swear One Life Marshall

Three out of #LastFourWatched were true stories for my #LetterboxdFriday this week.

I Swear was amazing, and my first movie in a cinema this year

letterboxd.com/dale_lane/

27.02.2026 14:19 πŸ‘ 15 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Call of Beauty Every piece brings you closer to perfection!

"Call Of Beauty". Oh, Nintendo 🀦

Although as much as the never-ending tidal wave of eSlop always makes me sigh, I do appreciate the name a little 🀷

26.02.2026 18:05 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

a theory for why LLM's like to use em-dashes so much - not sure if this is true, but it's a fun read
www.seangoedecke.com/em-dashes/

26.02.2026 14:30 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

last day in Amsterdam - this trip feels like it was too short, I like this place

26.02.2026 06:39 πŸ‘ 4 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
How AI shapes your feed: An explainable social media simulator for the classroom - Raspberry Pi Foundation Learn about Somekone, a research-informed tool to help teachers explain how AI shapes social media data profiling and recommendations.

A demo that shows what happens under the covers with an algorithmic social media feed. You can see what data is collected and how it is used. This sounds like a great idea for a classroom activity!

25.02.2026 14:53 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 4 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Making The Right Choice: Flink Or Kafka Streams? | Xebia Flink vs Kafka Streams: Which real-time stream processing engine is best for your data pipeline? Explore key differences in architecture, state management, performance, and scalability.

#Flink has largely replaced #Kafka Streams for me.

I do miss Streams... maybe I'm getting old and prone to nostalgia, or maybe I'm sad to move on because of the amount of time I spent learning Streams' quirks!

This is a better intro to how they compare than my gut gives :)

25.02.2026 08:00 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
photo of Artemis, by Andy Weir - the bit of the book where the character Dale is introduced

photo of Artemis, by Andy Weir - the bit of the book where the character Dale is introduced

Why are fictional Dales always assholes? ☹️

(at least there is Dale from Chip n Dale, who is of course awesome)

www.goodreads.com/book/show/34...

24.02.2026 11:04 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

going to Amsterdam for work

The benefit of flying from Southampton is that I got from my front door to the gate ready to fly in 25 minutes. The down side is that I'm on a tiny bouncy toy plane that feels like a minibus with wings. 😬

24.02.2026 08:33 πŸ‘ 4 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
photo of frogs on a tarmac footpath

photo of frogs on a tarmac footpath

photo of frogs on a tarmac footpath

photo of frogs on a tarmac footpath

photo of a frog on a tarmac footpath

photo of a frog on a tarmac footpath

I have to be very careful where I step on my way home from work because there's a mile-long stretch where *dozens* of frogs have started hanging out! 🐸

23.02.2026 19:24 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
β€ŽGemini - direct access to Google AI Created with Gemini

Google Gemini does music generation now. Services like this have been around for a while, but most normal people haven't heard of Suno or Udio, so this feels like a big step.

This is Gemini generating a pop song about spreadsheets
gemini.google.com/share/95b579...
blog.google/innovation-a...

23.02.2026 18:32 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Processing JSON with Kafka Connect In this post, I'll share examples of how to process JSON data in a Kafka Connect pipeline, and explain the schema format that Kafka uses to describe JSON events.Β  Using sink connectors Kafka Connect...

One of the updates in #Kafka 4.2 this month was to make it easier to work with JSON data in Kafka Connect.

I've put together a quick example to show what is possible.

23.02.2026 10:57 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Back in the office after a mostly-offline vacation week. It was good to forget work for a little bit... I was tempted to have a second week!

23.02.2026 08:40 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
Django Unchained
Children of Men
Inglourious Basterds
Thirteen Days

Django Unchained Children of Men Inglourious Basterds Thirteen Days

Great week for movies.

F is reading Children of Men for college at the moment, so it felt timely... but apparently the movie isn't super close to the book. I might steal the book from her when she's done.

Plus I'm nearly caught up on my Tarantino

#LetterboxdFriday #LastFourWatched

13.02.2026 15:04 πŸ‘ 9 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
photo of the CPR training dummy we were learning with

photo of the CPR training dummy we were learning with

CPR training in the office this afternoon (thanks to @hiowaa.bsky.social )

As much as the chance to practice on the training dummy, it was a useful nudge to think about what I'd do and where I'd find the nearest defibrillator at work and at home.

11.02.2026 15:22 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
gradient.horse Draw a horse, watch it run!

omg everybody go draw a horse this is what the internet was made for

gradient.horse

09.02.2026 23:11 πŸ‘ 7008 πŸ” 3609 πŸ’¬ 35 πŸ“Œ 154
Video thumbnail

Shotgun Cop Man is a fun action game, with a clever movement mechanic based on the recoil from your guns.

It's also delightfully bonkers, a lot like My Friend Pedro by the same dev.

(I think this is a *lot* more fun than Pedro, but sadly somehow more overlooked)

08.02.2026 14:39 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Learn about upcoming changes to Gmailify & POP in Gmail - Gmail Help Gmail will start removing support for the following features: Gmailify: This feature allows you to get special features like spam protection or inbox organization applied to your third-party email

Another Google service bites the dust.

This one is gonna sting me... I've been using this forever. Last time I was this affected by Google getting bored of something was probably Reader. πŸ₯Ί

08.02.2026 12:40 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

How have I never noticed that the clock faces on Big Ben use an "F" instead of an "X" to represent 10???

overcast.fm/+AALJPBkuRWI...

06.02.2026 20:21 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0