Alex McRoberts

@alex

Director, AI Engineering. Previously Damon Motorcycles, Intel, Recon Instruments. Living in Vancouver. From Belfast

1.181 Folgt1.923 Follower3.305 Posts

YouTube Bluesky

Ist das dein Profil?Übernimm es — dann gehört dir alex.dirty.social.Profil übernehmen

Alex McRoberts@alex· 7d

That captures it fairly well. Wildfire smoke over North Vancouver. Smoky clouds and an orange hue of the sun. Not much of a smoky “taste” in the air yet, thankfully. Time to close the doors and windows.

Orange smoky clouds and the orange glow of the sun peeking out behind a Japanese Maple tree, and several evergreen trees.

Alex McRoberts@alex· 22d

Cracking day for a bike ride

Hollow tree with my bike parked in the centre of it. You ride through this tree as part of a route.

This is Circuit 8 Trail

Same tree, looking up at the crown shyness of the surrounding trees

The mountain ridge looking at the west side of Mount Seymour Provincial Park. I believe the “gap” is between Mount Elsay and Runner’s Peak

Looking up at Coliseum Mountain if Strava Maps are to be believed. Would love to hike it someday.

Alex McRoberts@alex· 22d

Yes we went in September last year. Had dinner in his pub, and stayed in the nearby village. Beautiful little spot - all kinds of quaint. The hotel we stayed in - the last photo is over 400 years old! 🤯

Where else do you find a 136 year old bakery and cafe?!

The old stone brick and slate roof buildings

It’s a very English pastel blue sky with wispy clouds over the sandstone building and its slate roof

This hotel is over 400 years old. It’s made of sandstone and has a black and white striped upper outer wall. The misshapen roof looks crooked

Alex McRoberts@alex· 26d

Licenses as AT Proto records?

The Anakin Padme meme.

Anakin says “we’ve got a trademark and we’ll license it”

Padme asks “licenses will also be AT Proto records, right?”.

Then, in classic Anakin Padme meme fashion, Anakin stares and Padme repeats the question.

Alex McRoberts@alex· Jul 8

Snuck in a last minute Quarterfinal ticket for Switzerland vs Colombia. Managed to get seats in the Colombia end. This is my “whoops, wrong colours to sit here, but it’s OK, red for Canada” face. Turned into a Colombian fan for the day, their fans were great. We even learnt a chant or two!

BC Place with the Swiss flag in the foreground of the pitch, and the Colombia flag on the far end of the pitch. The FIFA emblem covers the centre circle.

So many Colombia fans at the stadium today - there is a sea of yellow!

A selfie. I’m wearing a red Canada shirt and a plain red cap. Pictured are a couple of Colombian fans behind me in yellow!

We didn’t know we were in the Colombia section!

Alex McRoberts@alex· Jul 2

Looks like it happened again!

Danny Murphy, Former England midfielder on BBC website

A post titled "We did get him back' - Murphy on Bob the cat"

Body of the post reads:

Surprisingly there was a lot of interest... we did get him back six or seven weeks later. Unfortunately he had gone feral and we couldn't re-intergrate him in the home and he ended up living with my friend's parents in Preston.

That was the life he had and now he has passed away, unfortunately. Thanks for all the concern those who have been messaging us.

Alex McRoberts@alex· Jun 30

Did somebody leave their laptop open ... www.bbc.com/sport/footba...

Danny Murphy, Former England midfielder on BBC One, made a post on BBC Sport coverage of the Ivory Coast vs Norway game.

"I used to have a cat called Bob and he jumped in the back of a Royal Mail van and he lost him."

Alex McRoberts@alex· Jun 26

Pretty lucky to get to 3 World Cup games in Vancouver: 1. Canada 6 - 0 Qatar 2. New Zealand 1 - 3 Egypt 3. Switzerland 2 - 1 Canada

Alex McRoberts@alex· Jun 24

Go Canada Go!

Smokie? A selfie surrounded by red flare smoke

BC Place with Canada on the field warming up closest to the camera

Alex McRoberts@alex· Jun 22

What a cracking game - New Zealand vs Egypt in the World Cup at BC Place, Vancouver, Canada.

Alex McRoberts@alex· Jun 20

This happened maybe a few seconds before I walked past the lavender in our back yard. A flower crab spider caught a poor bee. Look at the markings in the last photo on the spiders back - it looks like 2 eyes and a mouth!

A lavender flower stalk with a bee landed on it. Above is the white, flower crab spider which has attacked and killed the bee.

A closer view of rhe lavender flower stalk with a bee landed on it. Above is the white, flower crab spider which has attacked and killed the bee.

The closest view of the bee. There’s a fascinating marking on the spiders back, it look like a human face with 2 eyes and a mouth

Alex McRoberts@alex· Jun 18

Let’s go!

BC Place, Vancouver, Vancouver. Upper bowl. The white roof is closed. The turf is real grass. A sea of red and white surround the pitch. The Qatari fans are dressed in white in the far corner.

Alex McRoberts@alex· Jun 15

You think that’s bad? I was eyeballed by a cat this morning and The Guilt™️ was real

There is a ginger cat outside the back door of our house. The cat is framed behind a 9 framed window in the door

It IS a ginger and white cat. LOOK AT IT.

In the background is some patio furniture

Alex McRoberts@alex· Jun 12

. @jcsalterego.bsky.social is that you?

iPhone Call Filter screen

A call from Ohio. iOS asks the caller to leave their name and reason for calling.

The person identifies as Jerry.

iOS then asks the person to stay on the line, and offers the phone owner a slide to answer UI option to answer the call.

Alex McRoberts@alex· Jun 3

There is a USAF Stratotanker flying around Lower Mainland / Squamish at the minute!

Flight radar 24 showing the flight path of K35R a US airforce stratotanker.

It flew in from Spokane and has been doing laps above Whiterock, Surrey, North Vancouver, Squamish for the past 90+ minutes

Alex McRoberts@alex· Jun 2

@samuel.fm on iOS 26.5, App Version v1.122.0, iPhone 13. There’s an erratic screen width bug. * View an image * Turn phone to landscape * Slide image around/zoom in/out * Turn phone to portrait * Text in other posts now no longer wrapped. I’ve seen it with replies and timeline. Hard to repro

6 posts from different posters in a thread. After viewing an image and following the steps in my post, the text from these other posters replying in a thread is no longer text wrapped to the width of the screen, and it seems to run of the right edge of the screen.

Unfortunately it’s erratic and seemingly hard to reproduce

Alex McRoberts@alex· May 30

Can’t touch real grass? Touch grass-inspired astro turf instead.

Apple News app with The Washington Post

Can't do a European vacation?
Visit these 10 European-inspired U.S. cities.

These towns can transport you to lands where windmills spin, tulips bloom, hefeweizen flows and bilingual signs welcome - and välkommen or willkommen or witamy.

May 30 at 6:00 AM 2026

People walk along the shops and restaurants of Saint George Street in the historic district of St. Augustine, Florida. (iStock)

Alex McRoberts@alex· May 28

I see your idle threat, and raise you ....

Google search "they sent me to bring you down"

Google's AI Overview response:

You'll have to do a lot better than that. It sounds like you were expecting me to crack or back down, but I'm not going anywhere. Whatever they are paying you, it's not enough to break this stride.

Tell them to try again.

Now, let's get back to what we were doing before you were so dramatically interrupted. What did you actually want to talk about?

Alex McRoberts@alex· May 28

@dame.is check out this Fall Webworm! Furry little chap.

White winged fall webworm. Has small wings, and a black eyes, with brown upper front legs. Wings are flapping for take off!

Fall webworm is standing on a black plastic bag. The wings are very fine like silk. The torso is furry. The legs look a bit like drum sticks, with 3-4 little black bands at the tip of each leg

Alex McRoberts@alex· May 25

I should really probably join Google's Product Marketing team. They might have changed the icon, but they forgot to rename the product. Fixed it for you /cc @developers.google.com

A cropped portion of Google Meet loading screen. The hamburger loading menu is beside the icon, and "Google Meet", with links to Meetings and Calls tabs.

The Google Meet icon has been changed, and is yellow (Top Top: read the next image caption!)

Same cropped portion of Google Meet loading screen. I changed the title to "Google Duck"

The new Google Meet icon looks like a duck. It is a yellow square-circle "squircle" with an orange trapezoid to the right.

Alex McRoberts@alex· May 20

@dame.is look at this! Best moth I’ve ever actively noticed!! Perched on my car door earlier. I thought it was dead, so I picked it up, it flipped itself over and then flew away!

Dargida procinctus, the olive green cutworm or girdler moth sitting wings folded on my car door.

Its pattern looks like a 3d printed effect, with dark browns and creams.

Alex McRoberts@alex· May 16

I’ve been building an app for me I call Just Write. It lets you…Just Write, and I’ll bury the lede here for why it works the way it does. Now today, I’ve built a PWA for Mobile so I can Just Write on the go. It’s got some nice features such as syncing and search.

Alex McRoberts@alex· May 14

Get good

Mino mobi - i drew a triangle with 95% accuracy

Mino mobi - i drew a circle with 95% accuracy

Mino mobi - i drew a quadrilateral (square) with 94% accuracy

Alex McRoberts@alex· May 10

Woah. Thank you – this is great. I did have an all italics version too?

4 variants of the phrase "Techniques > Tools".

All text is using a serif font, and all words are italicized.

Variant 1: Teal text on white background.
Variant 2: Orange text on white background.
Variant 3: Teal text on black background.
Variant 4: Orange text on white background.

Alex McRoberts@alex· May 9

Friends, do we have a preference for the design here? This phrase has become my go-to over the past few weeks at work, as I'm leading AI Enablement across our developers at work.

4 variants of the phrase "Techniques > Tools".

All text is using a serif font.

Variant 1: Teal text on white background.
Variant 2: Orange text on white background.
Variant 3: Teal text on black background.
Variant 4: Orange text on white background.

4 variants of the phrase "Techniques > Tools".

All text is using a serif font, and the word "Techniques" is italicized.

Variant 1: Teal text on white background.
Variant 2: Orange text on white background.
Variant 3: Teal text on black background.
Variant 4: Orange text on white background.

Alex McRoberts@alex· May 1

If you don’t post a photo of a blue sky when you’re travelling, have you even travelled?

The Luxembourg airport terminal building is copper brown and glass. In front is the wing and tail of a propellor engine Bombardier Q400 plane

Alex McRoberts@alex· May 1

Luxembourg is nice! Time to get home!

The Pont Grande-Duchesse Charlotte is a distinctively red batter post style bridge. Its spans a valley. Beneath the bridge is a railway, and series of cars, buildings and a road

The Archeological Crypt is a beautiful hillside with stepped gardens. There are vines, and wildflowers. There are caves in the hillside that were used to store gunpowder and ammunition many years ago!

The view of the river at Pont du Grund. The water is slow running and smooth; with building either side, and a blue sky

The Palais Grand-Ducal, is home to the grand Duke of Luxembourg. It’s a beautiful sand stone coloured building with several high spires along the roof top. There are two guard posts outside the front of the palace

Alex McRoberts@alex· Apr 25

Two posts about 12 posts apart in my feed this morning. What a niche reference to mention twice in quick succession. Ironically, if I hadn’t seen the meme first, the second one would have made no sense to me!

Ian Boudreau .com reposted fuzz wolf dot b sky dot social.

Ian comments: Gibson actually calls this out in the introduction to the 2004 edition of Neuromancer: "a whopping anachronism, right at the very start of my career in the imaginary future." It's a thoughtful reflection on the book's 20th anniversary

Fuzzy wolf posts: Saw this meme and I did it. Opening line to Neuromancer: “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”

Below, the meme has 3 city skylines. The background changes for each one:

1985 the background is a phosphorus grey like a static TV

2005 is a solid blue digital TV colour

2025 is a collection of streaming platform logos including Hulu Netflix etc.

lore and or dure dot com posts: “Beautiful day today. Sky the colour of a TV tuned to a dead channel.”

The photo included in their post is a field in the countryside with hedgerow and trees. Above is blue sky with hardly a single wispy cloud.

Alex McRoberts@alex· Apr 24

Well, here's a demo! /cc @aka.dad @byarielm.fyi bsky.app/profile/aka....

Alex McRoberts@alex· Apr 11

Adding to the discourse… Yahoo! called it a “Yahoo! ID” We could always just do “Atmosphere ID” (Side note: this screenshot is older than @knotbin.com 🫠)