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Alex McRoberts

@alex.mcroberts.me

1.6K followers 780 following 1.7K 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 @alex.mcroberts.me · Apr 29

A while ago I put together a Google Sheet for helping leaders reflect on their strengths and weaknesses.

It uses heuristics from The Complete Leader, and Google’s Project Oxygen.

Ratings are from 1 (low) to 10 (high) and the result is a nice pair of diagrams to identify things to improve.

A spider diagram of results from scoring against heuristics from Google’s Project Oxygen

A spider diagram of results from scoring against heuristics from The Complete Leader

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Alex McRoberts @alex.mcroberts.me · 7h

It's a lot lighter lift than it sounds. More info here: docs.docker.com/build/cache/...

Optimize cache usage in builds

An overview on how to optimize cache utilization in Docker builds.

docs.docker.com

Alex McRoberts @alex.mcroberts.me · 8h

I'd learned about the `-p` flag before mkdir.

TIL: you can provide multiple args for multiple directories, *and* multiple child directories!

Examples

1. mkdir -p dir1 dir2
2. mkdir -p dir1 dir2 dir3/{child1,child2,child3}

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Alex McRoberts @alex.mcroberts.me · 1d

Have you ever considered caching artifacts for the build?

I did this for a go container, and the build time dropped dramatically, as it didn’t have to fetch dependencies every time.

Of course, it’s useful to keep a clear cache / build without cache option too!

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Reposted by Alex McRoberts

Doc Revan @docrevan.bsky.social · 1d

Did not expect one of the best paragraphs I’d read about baseball would come from an Irish newspaper

www.irishexaminer.com/sport-column...

And in that pause between pitch and contact - longer than logic, shorter than hope - we remembered why baseball existed long before we judged a sport's value by viral moments and betting apps. It is the romance of failure. The mortal beauty of trying and missing seven times out of 10 and still being considered great. It is the only sport where patience is a weapon, and panic the surest death. You cannot simply run out the clock in baseball; you must face it, pitch by terrifying pitch, until it finally releases you.

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Alex McRoberts @alex.mcroberts.me · 1d

Sounds like 16 hours of The Sound of Silence, by Disturbed on repeat to me!

Alex McRoberts @alex.mcroberts.me · 1d

The pendants look dope.

Alex McRoberts @alex.mcroberts.me · 1d

That’s a 5 star hackathon team! Good luck folks!

Alex McRoberts @alex.mcroberts.me · 3d

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.

Reposted by Alex McRoberts

Aaron Rodericks @aaron.bsky.team · 3d

We just crossed it. Yay! Congrats everyone and Happy Halloween!

Visual showing 40M + 1 users with little confetti on the screen

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Reposted by Alex McRoberts

Graze Social @graze.social · 3d

40 million strong! Congrats to @bsky.app!

https://bcounter.nat.vg/ crossing 40 million accounts!

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Alex McRoberts @alex.mcroberts.me · 4d

Meh. Mid.

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Alex McRoberts @alex.mcroberts.me · 4d

Do you think TiVo stopping making TiVo devices will impact The Movie Database, and by extension Callsheet?

Or are they very separate entities within their business?

Reposted by Alex McRoberts

Riccardo Margiotta @riccardomargiotta.co.uk · 4d

Just like web performance work, accessibility winds up being less expensive the earlier you implement it. Build accessibility in from the start, rather than bolting it on - make it part of the process.

@marcysutton.com #webperf #PerfNow #a11y

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Alex McRoberts @alex.mcroberts.me · 4d

What size is that when gzipped for HTTP transfer?

Alex McRoberts @alex.mcroberts.me · 5d

Underrated post!

Alex McRoberts @alex.mcroberts.me · 5d

On vacation recently a person told me they’ve all in on AI for ages.

However, they meant *All Inclusive*, and being in tech it didn’t quite make sense to me until they explained!

Frank Cvetkovic @gofrankgo.bsky.social · 5d

Back in my day, AI used to stand for Adobe Illustrator! And we hated that, too!

Alex McRoberts @alex.mcroberts.me · 6d

Well that’s the first half of tonight’s game over. When does the second half start?

Go Jays Go!

Alex McRoberts @alex.mcroberts.me · 6d

This umpire is loud

STRIKE

Reposted by Alex McRoberts

Steve Krouse @stevekrouse.com · 6d

i'm hiring a 'growth engineer' to work side-by-side with me at val.town in brooklyn

we're a small team on a mission to spread the joy of programming

we're looking for someone self-directed, loves talking to users, write english & typescript, and own projects end-to-end

if this is you, reach out!!

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Reposted by Alex McRoberts

not an art thief @famousartthief.bsky.social · 6d

genius plan by the blue jays to run the game so long ohtani is tired tomorrow. four dimensional chess.

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Reposted by Alex McRoberts

Razzball @razzball.bsky.social · 6d

When this game started, this was Vlad Jr.

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Reposted by Alex McRoberts

Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social · 7d

Fun fact the time between now and the beginning of this game is the same as between the beginning of this game and the construction of the pyramids

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Alex McRoberts @alex.mcroberts.me · 7d

At this point in the World Series Game 3, more innings have been played *without* alcohol being served, than have been played *with* alcohol being served.

Alex McRoberts @alex.mcroberts.me · 8d

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.

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Alex McRoberts @alex.mcroberts.me · 8d

Is this like LINQ?

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