Blog
My developer life and the story of how I'm improving and many other things
Project
Wee Bergen
Flying to see the mother in Norway!
Alan Reid
03/02/2026 - 3 min read
Project
Accuracy is pretty spot on
Sometimes you get on the grind and it's all you can think about. This was one
Alan Reid
01/02/2026 - 6 min read
Project
Hopefully images are helping
I'm actually not sure if adding images are helping but I sure hope it is!
Alan Reid
26/01/2026 - 3 min read
Development
Three weeks going strong
I actually thought it was a month but tbh, it's less than 3 weeks
Alan Reid
25/01/2026 - 5 min read
Project
A picture says a thousand words
Picture says a thousand words and a lot more. Learnt that the hard way
Alan Reid
24/01/2026 - 3 min read
Project
Variants fixed! Thank goodness for LLMs
Variants have always been annoying to deal with. This sorts out a big chunk of that issue
Alan Reid
24/01/2026 - 5 min read
Project
A bug when finding new links was found
Prompt enginnering can be very annoying. Be nice if the LLM talked
Alan Reid
23/01/2026 - 3 min read
Project
Productsbolt is nearly ready
I'm starting to think Productsbolt is nearly ready. That's a cool thought
Alan Reid
23/01/2026 - 3 min read
Project
The long load times from the sitemap are fixed
The logic to constantly look at sitemaps were damning for the API. So I fixed that!
Alan Reid
22/01/2026 - 6 min read
Project
Speed Optimisations and tests
Added more tests because of course I had to!
Alan Reid
20/01/2026 - 4 min read
Project
Productsbolt mental model revamp
Motivation is key when building something. Kind of needed time to figure out Productsbolt properly
Alan Reid
19/01/2026 - 2 min read
Development
Laptop time. Time to work from a few places
The move to laptop shouldn't be much but in my head, it kinda does
Alan Reid
15/01/2026 - 5 min read
Project
Stick to the point and not the details
Sometimes I think about getting the stuff I really don't care about done. I just want this done!
Alan Reid
13/01/2026 - 3 min read
Development
Wee update now since the start of the year
All code and no play makes a dull boy sit on the bay. That doesn't make sense
Alan Reid
13/01/2026 - 6 min read
Project
Adding new products with shops are fixed!
Had to relearn a lot of my own code. Annoying things fixed at last
Alan Reid
13/01/2026 - 2 min read
Project
LLMs can be tricky to ground down
Trying to get LLMs to pass all tests all the time can be really annoying
Alan Reid
12/01/2026 - 4 min read
Project
Fixing more things for Productsbolt
Sometimes you gotta roll up the sleeves and get in the dirt
Alan Reid
10/01/2026 - 4 min read
Project
More rigour and speed
Tests are good but what you're testing on is the question. Something didn't settle well with me!
Alan Reid
10/01/2026 - 4 min read
Project
Productsbolt tests have been added. Good stuff
Thought adding tests would be problematic and it was for a day. Sleep helped and it helped a lot!
Alan Reid
08/01/2026 - 7 min read
Development
Okay, I have a plan
Didn't take long to figure out what to do, but I've got a small plan I'll get sorted!
Alan Reid
06/01/2026 - 6 min read
Project
Productsbolt needs tests
I have absolutely no idea what the best model is for my constraints. Let's test that
Alan Reid
06/01/2026 - 3 min read
Development
2026. Times Flies
It would be an understatement to say things have changed. I'd like to talk about it
Alan Reid
05/01/2026 - 5 min read
Development
The worker microservice is made!
After a good bit of effort and head-banging, the worker works as intended. WOO HOO
Alan Reid
23/07/2023 - 3 min read
Development
Factsbolt has been started!
We've got a wee start. Now it's about to get it working as soon as possible!
Alan Reid
21/07/2023 - 3 min read
Development
Factsbolt, a site which takes a video and gives us facts!
I'm getting bored of having to second guess Youtube shorts/videos. Let's make something for this!
Alan Reid
20/07/2023 - 3 min read
Learning
From Slovenia to Croatia
I said I would and I did it. I returned back to Croatia and it was proper fantastic
Alan Reid
08/07/2023 - 3 min read
Development
I'm at Eindhoven for JS Eindhoven
One year ago, I didn't think this would be the craic but here we are. Good hot chocolate here.
Alan Reid
18/01/2023 - 4 min read
Development
Two months at Shockbyte
It's crazy how fast two months go. I'm surprised it's already been this long at Shockbyte
Alan Reid
03/12/2022 - 5 min read
Development
I got a job! Cheers Shockbyte
I've always wanted to call some place my workplace as a developer and I got it. Shockbyte has given me a chance to prove myself.
Alan Reid
29/10/2022 - 9 min read
Learning
I'm changing to a new person
I've becoming a different person, which is the first time in many of many of years. It's weird
Alan Reid
01/10/2022 - 5 min read
Project
Skyscanner Plus has dynamic scaling
One of the harder things to do, I eventually got Skyscanner Plus to play nicely with scaling
Alan Reid
15/09/2022 - 4 min read
Project
Skyscanner Plus is on AWS
I got Skyscanner Plus to work on AWS and it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be!
Alan Reid
28/08/2022 - 3 min read
Development
Making a choice, which direction to go
It's weird how one day, you think you've made the right plan but the next, it seems so daft.
Alan Reid
25/08/2022 - 6 min read
Development
I needed a small break
As much as I want to keep grinding when it comes to development, I had to take a break.
Alan Reid
24/08/2022 - 1 min read
Development
Micro Posts added!
I wanted a quick way to add micro blog posts to this site, so I added a test!
Alan Reid
19/08/2022 - 1 min read
Learning
It's Typescript time. Love you JS
It's a little mountain to climb but slowly and surely, I do see the utility in Typescript.
Alan Reid
18/08/2022 - 3 min read
Development
Adding Tests to the site!
A wee test here and there keeps the wee bugs at bay. It's certainly made sure the builds are a lot more trustworthy.
Alan Reid
16/08/2022 - 2 min read
Development
Typescript and Project Section Update
It's Typescript time. By the end of the week, this website will be fully Typescript ready. We've also added a project section.
Alan Reid
15/08/2022 - 3 min read
Learning
GitHub Issues: Project Manager
I'm either going to have to learn either JIRA or GitHub Issues: Project Manager. So I decided to go with GitHub Issues!
Alan Reid
10/08/2022 - 2 min read
Learning
AWS Time
It's too good a Cloud Infrastructure not utilise upon. So let's beat the beast.
Alan Reid
09/08/2022 - 2 min read
Development
Let use this as my blogging platform
I tried to blog on hashnode, Medium and Dev and I just thought, why not blog on my own blog, so that's what I'm going to do!
Alan Reid
06/08/2022 - 4 min read
Project
Betting bot for esports
With the growth of esports, betting has become a major player. As betting optimisation is being built on, I feel there's a small chance to play the odds.
Alan Reid
05/03/2022 - 4 min read
Learning
Fed up with not knowing NodeJS so I'm learning it
I've known about NodeJS since probably 2014. Eight years later, I'm only getting started with it. Better late than never.
Alan Reid
23/02/2022 - 3 min read
Learning
Learning about webscrapping
NextJS is awesome but I wanted to learn something for the backend. Web scrapping seemed interested so I'm going to give that a go.
Alan Reid
16/02/2022 - 2 min read
Development
The site is coming together nicely
I've added a couple of pages to the site but at this point, the site is ready to be used!
Alan Reid
13/02/2022 - 2 min readFollow my updates per month
Once per month, I'll post an update on this website which I'll talk about what exactly I've done for the month, how I've improved and how you can do that yourself.