Android is belatedly getting a Bluetooth tracker feature which doesn't rely on proprietary apps. Long-time readers will know that back in 2016 I reviewed both the Chipolo and the TinTag. Both of those were adequate at finding things which were in range of your phone, but hopeless … | Continue reading
"Mirror Mirror on the wall. What's the hottest gadget of them all?" Do you need a mirror which is connected to the Internet? Yes. Obviously. What's the point of having anything which doesn't have an IP address‽ The good folks at Infrared Group don't want me shivering while I blog … | Continue reading
I love ripping off good ideas from other people's blogs. I was reading Alvaro Graves-Fuenzalida's blog when I saw this nifty little force-directed graph: When zoomed in, it shows the relation between posts and tags. In this case, I can see that the posts about Small Gods and Pyra … | Continue reading
I've got a bunch of travel coming up to exotic locations. Previously, I've bought a local SIM card when I've landed - but they're often expensive, fiddly to fit, and queuing in an airport isn't much fun. I've also bought pre-paid SIMs which have a fixed amount of data or only las … | Continue reading
My friend, the photographer Paul Clarke has an uncanny eye for detail. Every single shot he publishes is beautiful - they capture life in a way that I don't have the language to describe. I'm quite content to point my phone at someone, use the default settings, and grab a snap. M … | Continue reading
Lots of people using banking apps on their Android phones. They're a convenient way to check your balance, transfer money to people, and get alerts about fraudulent transactions. But, like anything related to money, they can be abused. Nowadays, thieves are not only snatching pho … | Continue reading
This starts out as a delightfully silly and charming book about the bureaucracy of Time Travel and ends up as something darker and more thought provoking. What would happen if the UK Civil Service had access to TIME TRAVEL!?!?! It's a brilliant idea for a novel and is written wit … | Continue reading
I read this brilliant blog post by Wouter Groeneveld looking at how many dead links there were on his blog. I thought I'd try something similar. What is a broken link? Every day, I look at the On This Day page of my blog and look at that day's historic posts. I click on every lin … | Continue reading
Either I'm particularly thick, or this is the most over-written and under-explained academic claptrap I've read in some time. Some of the language is pure poetry: the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion It doesn't actually mean anything. You … | Continue reading
Welcome to this very silly series of blog posts where I attempt to identify all the mobile phones used in Doctor Who. The 2024 Xmas special is fairly light on phones. Right at the end, we see Ruby Sunday calling her mum. And a shot of the base of the phone. It looks like it's the … | Continue reading
I have been "retired" for exactly one week. It's going pretty well so far! After handing in my laptop & badge, Liz took me for lunch at Gauthier Soho. Much as our previous visit, it was a meal of utter indulgence and fabulous service. The Christmas lunch menu was divine and, as I … | Continue reading
This is a peculiar murder mystery novel. In truth, the murder mystery takes second-place to the internal monologue of a protagonist who is viscerally disgusted with his corporeal body. The majority of the book is about the protagonist's neuroses, self-loathing, and contempt for b … | Continue reading
I go to lots of theatre performances, shows, and events. I am constantly baffled by how poorly thought out the pre- and post-show experiences are. From the moment you enter the theatre, you are having "an experience". The atmosphere created within the venue all adds up to how muc … | Continue reading
This is an exquisitely detailed and righteously determined look about the how and why of Digital Government. Richard Pope was there at the beginning of GOV.UK and helped steer it to the magnificent beast it is today. He reflects, clear eyed, on the various successes and failures … | Continue reading
What can be said? Macca. Live on stage. All the classic songs, a band that hits all the right notes, and an arena full of people who are singing their hearts out. Way back in the 1990s, I bumped into Paul when he was doing a poetry reading at my university. I'd missed out on tick … | Continue reading
Analogies are like soufflés - they all collapse eventually. Food can be delicious, but certain foods can cause people physical pain or, in some cases, death. In most parts of the civilised world, governments have food safety laws. They mandate how to properly prepare, store, labe … | Continue reading
As of today, I've quit. I started working full time before going to university. I worked part-time during my studies. Graduated into a crappy job. Got a place on a prestigious grad scheme. Worked my way up through the public and private sector. Start-ups and Ministries of State. … | Continue reading
Neal Stephenson's "Seveneves" is one of those massive, crushing, momentous, century-spanning and era-defining hard sci-fi novels. It starts with the immortal line "The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason." Classic! It dives into a world plagued with Kessler sy … | Continue reading
Because I'm dead fancy and know lots of mega-important people, I occasionally get to go to swanky places. A few weeks ago, I was invited to the House of Lords for a high-powered business meeting about important stuff. The best meetings take place in opulent surroundings, so we ad … | Continue reading
This is a real mixed bag of a book. Some of it is outrageously fun stories of real-life diplomacy and derring-do, and other parts are tediously basic information with plenty of padding. I suppose it's helpful for the uninitiated to understand the lay of the land but, when mixed w … | Continue reading
Back in 2022, I wrote this rather grumpy post on Mastodon, the federated social media platform. @Edent@mastodon.socialTerence EdenMastodon enforces a "noreferrer" on all external links.I have mixed feelings about that.As a blogger, I want to see *where* visitors are coming from. … | Continue reading
My long journey to replace my teeth is (I hope) at an end. Last week, my lovely dentist fitted my two custom-made teeth. After all the months of drilling, screwing, photographing, x-raying, and prodding, the last fitting was little more than gluing. I now have two colour-matched … | Continue reading
I take great delight in seeing people reply to my blog posts. I use WebMentions to collect replies from social media and other sites. But which of my posts has the most comments? Here's a snipped to stick in your functions.php file. It allows you to add ?comment-order to any Word … | Continue reading
A few weeks ago, I got a chance to speak truth to power. I used my WordPress.org account to sign in to the official WordPress.org Slack where the various WordPress dramas were being discussed. After a brief chat about the latest shenanigans, I publicly replied to the CEO: Here's … | Continue reading
This has been a tough year - I've found it hard to get back in to reading. A few books knocked me off my stride and the lack of a commute meant less downtime for reading. Nevertheless, 46 books isn't too bad! Of note, for the first time in ages I read a couple of paper books! Lik … | Continue reading
This is so fucking stupid. There is no way to update the logo of a custom social connection on Auth0 without using the command line. On literally every other service I've used, there's a little box to upload a logo. But Okta have a funny idea of what developers want. And, to make … | Continue reading
Let's say you have a website - your_website.tld - and you want people to log in to it using their Mastodon account. For a traditional social-media site like Twitter or Facebook, you would create an OAuth app on the service that you want. But there are hundreds of Mastodon servers … | Continue reading
When Flaubert wrote Madame Bovary in 1857, I'm not sure if he imagined a cast of four playing every character, bouncing around the stage, performing magic, and reacting to non-diagetic sound. I cannot overemphasise how silly this production is! It is a joyful explosion of madcap … | Continue reading
Here's a knotty problem. Lots of my posts use URl Fragments. Those are links which start with #. They allow me to write: | Continue reading
At last month's BarCamp London 13 I ran a little experiment that I'd been meaning to do for a while. "Getting To Know You" bingo is a well-established team-building exercise. Usually, you gather a bunch of interesting personal facts from a team, stick them on a bingo card, then h … | Continue reading
What is a hashtag? Fifteen years ago (fuck, I'm old) I started documenting what Twitter's nascent hashtags could and couldn't do. Back in 2010, this is how the official Twitter site linked hashtags. Notably, punctuation symbols didn't "count" as part of a tag. How does modern soc … | Continue reading
Hot new social networking site BlueSky has an interesting approach to usernames. Rather than just being @example you can verify your domain name and be @example.com! Isn't that exciting? Some people are @whatever.tld and others are @cool.subdomain.funny.lol.fwd.boring.tld I wante … | Continue reading
Once in a while, there is a disaster. Phone lines go out, the Internet breaks down, and mobiles don't work0. Then the Ham Radio Operators save the day. Amateur radio is one of those things I'm only vaguely aware of. It chugs along in the background unnoticed. It doesn't follow th … | Continue reading
Both Mastodon and BlueSky have the concept of "self-verification". Rather than trust a central authority to assess your notability and then bless your account (as Twitter used to do), they let anyone self-attest using Domain Verification0. What does that mean? You tell the servic … | Continue reading
These are little biographies of characters who tried to inveigle their way into stories that were inappropriate for them. Perhaps they'll graduate to full stories one day. For now, regretfully, they are stuck in the Writer's Waiting Room leafing through dusty magazines until insp … | Continue reading
[Content Note: death, colonialism, racist views, the dog dies.] Carter was dying - that much was clear. Although he didn't believe in "the curse" it seems his body did. He was once a dynamic presence on the world stage and was now reduced to little more than a quivering jelly. He … | Continue reading
A glistening stream of blood gently wept from the body's jagged holes. The crimson gore sparkled under rapid flash photography as it loosely clung to the wounds. So many wounds. Far too many for this to have been an accident. Under the forensic lights it appeared ethereal. The sk … | Continue reading
[Content Note: Drugs, Violence Sexual Assault, Death] Silphium isn't extinct; it's just a tightly guarded secret. If you go spelunking through the bio-history of this planet you'll find a range of plants which don't make sense. The avocado has a humongous fruit which can't easily … | Continue reading
Asbestos was the material that built the future! Strong, long lasting, fire-proof, and - above all - completely safe for humans. Every house in the land had beautiful sheets of gloriously white asbestos installed in the walls and ceilings. All the better to keep your loved ones s … | Continue reading
While I was at OggCamp, I noticed a few people had repurposed supermarket eInk shelf displays as name-tags. Nifty! I wondered if there was a retail version I could hack around with. I found the HSN371. It is a colour eInk screen with a lanyard hole. The picture quality is amazing … | Continue reading
Mathew Duggan has a brilliant post called "Self-Hosting Isn't a Solution; It's A Patch". In it, he (correctly and convincingly) argues that compelling people to run their own computer services is a complex and distracting crutch for the current problems we face. It's expensive to … | Continue reading
As every good geek knows, Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope was originally called… "Star Wars". That's it. No subtitle. No episode number. When Empire Strikes Back came out, it was called "Star Wars Episode V" - which necessitated rewriting history and calling the original film "Ep … | Continue reading
Everyone on the spaceship was dead. And I can't help wondering if it was my fault. "So, Macy, I understand something funny happened to you while you were filming a scene on your latest movie, right?" The talk-show host is warmly genial and his generous smile hides the dead eyes o … | Continue reading
Would you like to spend two hours with David Tennant whispering in your ears? You'd be a fool to say no! The stage is bare, the costumes are monochrome, Pepper's Ghost serves as a backdrop, the audience wears headphones. Is this style over substance? Almost. So let's talk about t … | Continue reading
Greetings Comrades! Are you ready to begin your assessment? This immersive reworking of Orwell's 1984 holds so much promise, but the production is so sparse that it ends up feeling a little underwhelming. In theory, everything about this should work. It is set in Hackney Town Hal … | Continue reading
The new Twitter-Wannabe BlueSky has an interesting approach to verifying accounts. Rather than you sending in your passport, or paying a 3rd party, or bribing an employee - you can self-verify for free! This opens up verification to small organisations, individuals, and anyone wh … | Continue reading
It's my birthday! Therefore it marks the end of another year of me hurtling around Earth's yellow sun. So, as is customary, here's my year in review. I'm not really sure what happened to the last year. As the philosophers once said, "the years start coming and they don't stop com … | Continue reading
Being the further and various adventures of The Guerrilla Infrastructure Team - a renegade bunch of digital anarchists and freedom fighters who mostly just wish things were slightly better and who would stop at nothing to find convoluted technical solutions to complex social prob … | Continue reading