Phil Sturgeon

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Phil Sturgeon

Phil Sturgeon

Software Engineer gone ferril. Digital nomad since 2018 (bike/van). Now dedicated to woodland creation and restoration, as co-founder of UK climate chairty Protect Earth.

Checking Extensions on Laravel Sail and Vapor

One of the Protect Earth API volunteers was looking into using Laravel Excel to add "Download CSV" functionality to Protect Earth's amazing new Laravel Nova-powered backend to finally replace Airtable, and they said "It needs the GD extension, which I don't think Sail

OpenAPI v3.1 Resources for Tooling Developers

OpenAPI v3.1.0 has a bunch of great changes, solving problems like the subtle differences between JSON Schema objects and OpenAPI Schema objects, and adds support for Webhooks. Upgrading tooling can be tricky, but this should be a lot easier than the jump from v2 to v3.0. To

Going bike nomad (and nearly dying repeatedly) fixed my burnout!

Going bike nomad (and nearly dying repeatedly) fixed my burnout!

In the middle of 2018 in NYC I was going through some rough burnout. I’d been working my ass off at a corporation I’d panicked into after two startups prior had gone bankrupt. I was refactoring a huge API ecosystem which was a house of cards, built on

Ultralight Bikepacking with a Laptop

Ultralight Bikepacking with a Laptop

If you try searching for advice on bikepacking with a laptop, you're generally going to get a few responses: 1. Backpack - Gives you a sweaty back and aches like hell after a while. 2. Panier - A panier needs a rack, and racks can weigh 500g just

Climate Action in Tech - Design, Code, and Hack the Environment Better

Climate Action in Tech - Design, Code, and Hack the Environment Better

As the science-denial perpetrated omnishambles of 2020 continues, COVID-19 rages on whilst Europe gets hit by deadly storms and flash floods, wildfires are big enough to be called "gigafires", the Arctic refuses to freeze for the first time on record, thousands are displaced by flooding in Vietnam, and

Fixing Gatsby oEmbed Instagram Failures

I use gatsby-remark-oembed by Benedicte Raae, because it makes embedding Tweets, Instagram posts, YouTube videos, etc in Phil.Tech and Phil.Bike as simple as pasting in the URL. If it's hot, sit under a tree. If it's cold, put your jacket on. If it'

One Day on the Atlas Mountain Race

One Day on the Atlas Mountain Race

I cycled from Bristol to Morocco, and back at the end of 2019 and early 2020. Why? After my stupid achilles injury that took up most of autumn 2019, I did a few little trips, like taking a bike I'd auctioned for the reforestation fundraiser from Bristol to