Hi
I’m Jack Reid. I’m an engineering manager for BuzzFeed, living in South London.
At BuzzFeed I work on building websites. My projects there have been pretty varied; if you’re interested you can read a bit more about my work history here. It’s certainly a better account of me than my GitHub or my LinkedIn. Something that’s a common thread through my whole time and BuzzFeed and earlier is a focus on accessible web technology, there’s a bit more about that on the work page too.
Outside of BuzzFeed my personality is unfortunately a thin layer over the last few things I’ve read, listened to, or watched. For that reason most of this website is a catalog of the media I’ve consumed and enjoyed. My degree was English & Politics in name but a mixture of political science, critical theory and digital humanities in practice. That’s formed a lot of my interests ever since.
I track the films I’ve watched and the books I’ve read, but I also post highlight from articles I read online. You can even see what I’ve got saved to read later in Pocket. I haven’t really worked out a way to do something similar for music and podcasts yet, but rest assured I’m consuming that an unhealthy rate too. Read more about this weird media diet fixation here.
For some rare pieces of original thought, there’s my notes (think tweets) and blog.
Random photo
Wednesday, 26 April 2017
Brockwell Park
Elsewhere
Recent posts
I love cooking but the terminology seems so fluid to me until I hear chefs talking to each other about how they prepare an ingredient in a way that sounds so specific. It turns out this words do have distinct meanings that I struggle to hold in my …
I went and saw Jamie in the park. It was freezing cold today but I had panicked and put on a heavy coat. The hills in Dulwich were unrelenting from the beginning and I was dripping in sweat before I reached Clapham. We spoke about things breaking …
In East Dulwich there is a Pellatt Road. I still don’t know how to pronounce it; a simple “pellet” seems most statesmanly. I’ve wondered where that name came from. It struck me as a person’s name, probably.
I started looking, and found an MP for …
In this second lockdown it’s all suddenly become about long walks and big cooks. Emma’s been walking for a dozen miles at a time through a river of wild spaces in South London called the Green Chain Walk. I’ve been churning through …
But the real gem of the library, in Lannon’s view, is the stuff that you can find only in boxes like the ones now strewn across the table. “You can get a book anywhere,” he said. “An archive exists in one location.” The room we’re standing in is the …
But the most recurrent complaint was that it was too text-oriented. People really hated the command line, with all the utilities, obscure flags, and arguments they had to memorize. They hated all the typing. One mislaid character and you had to …
Remember, the device has no buttons and is not a touch screen; it only shows the front page of the paper. But that’s enough to get the gist of what’s going on in the world, and if I want to continue reading an article that caught my attention, I use …
At present more than 60 City buildings exceed 75m in height and nine exceed 150m. Several more are on the drawing board. Most of the new batch are located inside an approximate triangle bounded by Liverpool Street station, Fenchurch Street station …
There is a saying that “the suit makes the man.” When I was finished dressing and looked at myself in the mirror, I felt complete. Finally, the inner persona I was projecting as a performer was reflected externally.
— To Feel Right, Amanda Chemeche …
The latest issue of the All My Stars newsletter got me reading about Crash (1996). It was obviously a very contraversial film, that much I remember. There was some monocle-popping from Francis Ford Coppola on the Cannes jury; he refused to present …
I was forwarded a PDF that began life as a Google Doc, before it was overwhelmed by demand. Crowd-sourced, guerrilla resources often spring up like this in times of difficulty. Perhaps I should be less surprised at how quickly Londoners have acted to …
I was locked down for two weeks, so when I got out I wanted to make the most of the autumn leaves.
Dulwich Woods are …