02 Apr 2025
Welcome to Gopher Rodeo! This is my website and blog. I should probably introduce myself somewhat. I'm Dan, I'm a nerd from London and I've been working in IT for over 16 years. I've been a tinkerer for much longer than that. I'm neurodivergent and over the years I have had a huge amount of projects I have picked up and then dropped. I am trying not to beat myself up about that!
Most recently I have bought a domain for myself and finally decided to actually create a website and blog. Rather than make things easy for myself and use a content management system or something user-friendly to create my website I wanted to investigate static site generators. I think they're a really interesting technology and wanted an excuse to investigate them.
I initially wanted to use Hugo, but I just found it too restrictive. It seemed to be very geared towards blogs and not much else. After that I settled on using Zola. I did use a Hugo theme called Coder for the basis of the theme I created. With Zola I had to create the theme from scratch but luckily my amazing partner has a Masters in website design so was able to give me lots of help in that area.
So far my experience has been pretty good, I'm still learning everything that's possible with the templates but at least for now this seems to work pretty well!
05 Aug 2024
About
The following are a collection of colour palettes intended to be used by developers to help them choose theme colours that are distinguishable for colour blind users. Generally they will also make themes easier to read for all users. Please note that even though these palettes have been specifically designed for excellent legibility the designer still needs to check the contrast ratios between colours and use tools to check themes for suitability with different sorts of colour blindness. The best suggestion would be to check how the theme looks in greyscale, and ensure that no data is lost when doing that.
I have created a tool called the Fabio Crameri Palette Generator. It comes with a bunch of different palettes for different uses and is now my go-to when trying to find CVD-friendly colour combinations.
There is also this Viridis Color Palette Generator. The palettes here are only for categorical charts, so bear that in mind.
Categorical Palettes
Okabe-Ito Palette
Source
| Colour | Colour Name | RGB | Hex Code |
|---|
 | Blue | 0, 114, 178 | #0072b2 |
 | Light Blue | 86, 180, 233 | #56b4e9 |
 | Purple | 204, 121, 167 | #cc79a7 |
 | Green | 0, 158, 115 | #009e73 |
 | Red | 213, 94, 0 | #d55e00 |
 | Orange | 230, 159, 0 | #e69f00 |
 | Yellow | 240, 228, 66 | #f0e542 |
Muth Palette
Source
| Colour | Colour Name | RGB | Hex Code |
|---|
 | Blue | 25, 60, 188 | #193cbc |
 | Light Blue | 81, 165, 219 | #51a5db |
 | Purple | 188, 99, 150 | #bc6396 |
 | Green | 28, 143, 97 | #1c8f61 |
 | Red | 196, 75, 36 | #c44b24 |
 | Orange | 221, 141, 43 | #dd8d2b |
 | Yellow | 237, 225, 67 | #ede143 |
ONS-AF (Categorical) Palette
Source
| Colour | Colour Name | RGB | Hex Code |
|---|
 | Dark Blue | 18, 67, 109 | #12436d |
 | Turqoise | 40, 161, 151 | #28a197 |
 | Dark Pink | 128, 22, 80 | #801650 |
 | Orange | 244, 106, 37 | #f46a25 |
 | Dark Grey | 61, 61, 61 | #3d3d3d |
 | Light Purple | 162, 133, 209 | #a285d1 |
Tol (Bright) Palette
Source
| Colour | Colour Name | RGB | Hex Code |
|---|
 | Blue | 68, 119, 170 | #4477aa |
 | Cyan | 102, 204, 238 | #66ccee |
 | Green | 34, 136, 51 | #228833 |
 | Yellow | 204, 187, 68 | #ccbb44 |
 | Red | 238, 102, 119 | #ee6677 |
 | Purple | 170, 51, 119 | #aa3377 |
 | Grey | 187, 187, 187 | #bbbbbb |
Tol (High Contrast) Palette
Source
| Colour | Colour Name | RGB | Hex Code |
|---|
 | White | 255, 255, 255 | #ffffff |
 | Yellow | 221, 170, 51 | #ddaa33 |
 | Red | 187, 85, 102 | #bb5566 |
 | Blue | 0, 68, 136 | #004488 |
 | Black | 0, 0, 0 | #000000 |
Sequential Palettes
ONS-AF (Sequential) Palette
Source
| Colour | Colour Name | RGB | Hex Code |
|---|
| Dark Blue | 18, 67, 109 | #12436d |
 | Mid Blue | 32, 115, 188 | #2073bc |
 | Light Blue | 107, 172, 230 | #6bace6 |
Tol (YlOrBr) Palette
Source
| Colour | Colour Name | RGB | Hex Code |
|---|
 | Very Pale Yellow | 255, 255, 229 | #ffffe5 |
 | Pale Yellow | 255, 247, 188 | #fff7bc |
 | Very Pale Orange | 254, 227, 145 | #fee391 |
 | Pale Orange | 254, 196, 79 | #fec44f |
 | Orange | 251, 154, 41 | #fb9a29 |
 | Dark Orange | 236, 112, 20 | #ec7014 |
 | Very Dark Orange | 204, 76, 2 | #cc4c02 |
 | Mid Brown | 153, 52, 4 | #993404 |
 | Dark Brown | 102, 37, 6 | #662506 |
Tol (Smooth Rainbow) Palette
Source
| Colour | Colour Name | RGB | Hex Code |
|---|
 | N/A | 232, 236, 251 | #e8ecfb |
 | N/A | 221, 216, 239 | #ddd8ef |
 | N/A | 209, 193, 225 | #d1c1e1 |
 | N/A | 195, 168, 209 | #c3a8d1 |
 | N/A | 181, 143, 194 | #b58fc2 |
 | N/A | 167, 120, 180 | #a778b4 |
 | N/A | 155, 98, 167 | #9b62a7 |
 | N/A | 140, 78, 153 | #8c4e99 |
 | N/A | 111, 76, 155 | #6f4c9b |
 | N/A | 96, 89, 169 | #6059a9 |
 | N/A | 85, 104, 184 | #5568b8 |
 | N/A | 78, 121, 197 | #4e79c5 |
 | N/A | 77, 138, 198 | #4e96bc |
| N/A | 78, 150, 188 | #4e96bc |
20 Jun 2024
This might be a strange concept for citizens of others countries but in the UK, resources from your local library are not seen as
exclusively for the tax payers for that council. You can join any library in England just by showing your proof of address to a
librarian and asking for a library card. Some councils will say that you can use the library if you live, work or study in the area but
nobody will ever question why you want to join a library. They’ll just be happy you joined.
Overdrive is the dominant eBook and Audiobook borrowing system in England. Behind that is BorrowBox, a system with a user interface that is
almost exactly the same but is not compatible at all. Overdrive and its app, Libby, lets you link multiple library cards to your account and borrow items from any of them. Because it has become a mild obsession, I will now discuss libraries, library consortiums and Overdrive libraries for several paragraphs.
In the UK there are some councils that have decided to join their libraries together into a library consortium. Basically all the
councils in the consortium agree to pool resources, so residents anywhere in the consortium get access to the same catalogue. These
can be spread quite far geographically. So far the consortiums I have found that cover London, as well as individual council libraries are:
| Name | Areas | Overdrive Catalogue | Other Services |
|---|
| The Libraries Consortium | Barking & Dagenham, Brent, Croydon, Ealing, Enfield, Essex, Hackney, Hammersmith, Haringey, Harrow, Havering, Hounslow, Kingston upon Thames, Lewisham, Luton, Merton, Newham, Redbridge, Surrey, Sutton, Thurrock, Tower Hamlets, Redbridge, Waltham Forest | 100,000 | Kanopy (Essex and Redbridge only) |
| Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster Libraries Consortium | Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster | 38,000 | |
| Better Libraries Consortium | Bromley, Dudley, Greenwich, Lincolnshire, Wandsworth | 31,000 | Freegal |
| City of London Libraries | City of London | 27,000 | |
| Barnet Libraries | Barnet | 24,000 | Freegal |
| Lambeth Libraries | Lambeth | 15,000 | Kanopy |
| Richmond Libraries | Richmond | 15,000 | |
| Bexley Libraries | Bexley | 13,000 | |
| Southwark Libraries | Southwark | 11,000 | Kanopy |
| Islington Libraries | Islington | 6,000 | |
| Hillingdon Libraries | Hillingdon | 1,900 | |
The extra services I’ve chose to include are Kanopy and Freegal. Freegal is a way to download and stream music with your library card. All of the libraries in the Better Libraries Consortium have access to Freegal, as well as Barnet, Portsmouth Central and Suffolk. Kanopy is a TV, documentary and movie streaming service, again using your library card. Kanopy is available from Southwark Libraries, Lambeth Libraries, Windsor and Maidenhead Libraries Consortium, Newport Libraries, Suffolk Libraries and if you sign up to The Libraries Consortium in Redbridge or Essex.
Freegal and Kanopy are both interesting in their own ways. Freegal lets you download or stream music. The selection isn’t as good as
Spotify but the option to download albums intrigued me, as I tend to buy albums and play the MP3s from my phone rather than use a streaming service. The streaming and downloading is limited per week, and how much you you are allowed of each varies by library/consortium. Barnet gives you 3 downloads and 3 hours streaming per week, Greenwich gives you 3 downloads and 6 hours streaming per week, Portsmouth gives you 5 downloads and 5 hours streaming per week, and finally Suffolk gives you a massive 5 downloads and unlimited streaming per week. I’ve actually got library cards from all of these councils so I wrote a Python program to help me manage my weekly downloads. The first album I downloaded was “Get to Heaven” from Everything Everything, a good record that I got completely for free!
Kanopy gives you a certain amount of “tickets” per week, and to watch anything on the service you need to “buy” it with your “tickets”, and then you have a limited time to watch it. The content is very much geared to students and educators, with a lot of documentaries. There’s also a decent selection of world cinema, short films and quite a few older films. My watchlist at the moment includes films such as Donnie Darko, Oldboy, The Ring and Black Hawk Down, with television shows such as The Thick of It and Small Axe included. Considering all you need is a library card I think it represents decent value and the selection of educational and children’s shows I should think would please parents as well.