Alex McRoberts
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alex.mcroberts.me
Alex McRoberts
@alex.mcroberts.me
1.6K followers 840 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
Fortunately I still have the tabs open from earlier, and Dev Tools shows some logs.

I couldn’t screenshot fast enough to capture the error toast at the top right (I believe it said “Failed to Publish”?)
The pipup.social homepage showing nothing published Chrome Dev Tools open showing the article editor of pipup.social. Some errors in the Console!
November 15, 2025 at 2:01 AM
alex.mcroberts.me
I've always found the OAuth auth flow sequence diagram to be useful to understand how what gets passed where and when.

Here's the AT Protocol OAuth Authorization flow as a mermaid diagram.

Is this useful for anyone else? tangled.org/strings/alex...

If something's not accurate, let me know!
This is long! The AT Protocol OAuth Auth Flow Actors: Client App: Requests access User/Browser: Authorizes access Authorization Server: PDS or Entryway granting permission Resource Server: PDS holding user data Flow Steps Phase 1: Identity Resolution 1. Client starts with handle, DID, or server URL. 2. Client resolves handle to DID using DNS or HTTPS. 3. Client gets DID document. 4. Client fetches authorization server metadata. Phase 2: Authorization Request (PAR) 5. Client generates PKCE code verifier and challenge. 6. Client generates DPoP keypair and state token. 7. Client POSTs to authorization server with code challenge, scopes, redirect URI, login hint, and client assertion. 8. Server responds with DPoP nonce required error. 9. Client retries with DPoP nonce. 10. Server returns request URI. Phase 3: User Authorization 11. Client redirects user to authorization endpoint with request URI. 12. User authenticates and approves. 13. Server redirects to client with code, state, and issuer. Phase 4: Token Request 14. Browser returns callback to client with code. 15. Client verifies state matches. 16. Client POSTs for tokens with code, code verifier, DPoP proof, and client assertion. 17. Server returns access token, refresh token, and sub with DID. 18. Client verifies sub DID matches expected account. Phase 5: Resource Access 19. Client requests resource with DPoP proof and access token. 20. Resource server responds with DPoP nonce required error. 21. Client retries with DPoP nonce. 22. Server returns resource. Phase 6: Token Refresh 23. Client sends refresh request with refresh token, DPoP proof, and client assertion. 24. Server returns new tokens. Security Features PKCE: Prevents code interception attacks. DPoP: Binds tokens to cryptographic keys. PAR: Sends auth parameters directly to server. Client Assertion: Confidential clients prove identity. DID Verification: Prevents account confusion attacks. State tokens prevent CSRF. Nonces prevent replay attacks.
November 14, 2025 at 11:33 PM
alex.mcroberts.me
Faint #aurora in North Vancouver
Mostly a greenish-grey tinge due to cloud cover, but some tinges of pink sky breaking through too. In the foreground are trees around my yard Mostly green-grey cloud cover, there are two pink spikes in the sky indicating aurora activity. There are trees in the foreground around my yard
November 12, 2025 at 3:36 AM
alex.mcroberts.me
Every time I charge my Apple Watch and put it into Night Stand mode, laying it sideways...I always think of that meme of applying for a dream job just to fix one bug ...
The display on the Apple Watch reads 1:06pm with today’s date: Tuesday 11 (November) The watch is laying sideways on my cork desk, and the display is in Landscape Mode - I can read the text without twisting my head! Same Apple Watch, except the display is now in *Portrait Mode* so now I have to twist my head to read the text correctly! Display reads 1:06pm, Airplane Mode. Battery charged to 59%
November 11, 2025 at 9:11 PM
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