When I was seven or eight, I asked Santa to bring me a set of screwdrivers for Christmas. I wanted to take apart my toys to see how they worked1. I also thought they might be useful on our upcoming holiday; if the aeroplane needed repairing mid-flight I'd be able to help2! Santa … | Continue reading
Everyone smokes in the future. It is such an obvious truism that sci-fi writers can predict faster-than-light travel, yet fail to see that manly men won't be smoking pipes on board their spaceships. Someone recommended that I read "Autofac" which is the sci-fi version of "The Mag … | Continue reading
I was saddened to hear of Kris Nóva's untimely death a few weeks ago. I had her book "Hacking Capitalism" on my eReader for several months, but hadn't got around to reading it yet. Never put these things off. The book is a complicated but fitting legacy. It absolutely showcases N … | Continue reading
Google Books is one of many projects that Google has forgotten about. There's no support available and, of course, it's impossible to send them a bug report. The best anyone can do is write a ranty blog post and hope it gets noticed. When I search for my name in Google Books, it … | Continue reading
Here's the problem. The current Bluetooth spec doesn't allow high-quality audio to be sent to a headset when it is also sending audio from the microphone. Instead, it switches to the Hands Free Profile (HFP) which only streams low quality mono sound. It makes Teams calls sound li … | Continue reading
There's a new HTML element in town! You can now use to semantically mark up a search box. It's great for letting screen-readers and other assistive tech know what a form does. It's only supported in WebKit for now - other browsers will get it eventually. The WordPress default se … | Continue reading
It looks like it's the end of the party for streaming services. Prices are going up, choice is going down, and the quality is declining. Despite all the hype about how transformative streaming would be for the industry - there's one thing which never really seemed to take off. It … | Continue reading
In linguistics, a "False Friend" is a word which looks similar in multiple languages, but means something different in each of them. For example the word "gift" in English means "a present", in German means "poison", and in Norwegian it means "married". The Internet uses Top Leve … | Continue reading
You can now have this post federated to your social media site by following @blog@shkspr.mobi If you're on Mastodon, it should look something like this: You should be able to follow it on Lemmy, kBin, PixelFed, and some cool social network I've never heard of. How This blog runs … | Continue reading
The Selenium WebDriver is a brilliant way to programmatically interact with websites. You can write little Python scripts which can click around inside browser windows and do "stuff". I use it to download a file generated by a Javascript Blob and automatically save it to disk. He … | Continue reading
People can subscribe to receive my blog via email. This is managed by the JetPack plugin. I want to be able to display something like "Join 1,234 subscribers and receive updates via email". So, how do I get the subscriber count from the API? As documented in the JetPack HTTP API, … | Continue reading
I recently came across a post about "The Energy Bill 2023 and the Fusion of Technology and Law - We are going to be governed under 'Law 3.0', and we won't like it one little bit". It is a superficial look at the "horrors" of being governed by technical measures. It starts off rea … | Continue reading
Yesterday I was on a train. I clicked on a link and my browser loaded a long article for me to read. Halfway through reading it, the train went into a tunnel and I lost signal. That meant I couldn't see the images on the other half of the page for the rest of the […] | Continue reading
A few years ago, I got rid of all my paper books and switched exclusively to eBooks. Whenever I tell bibliophiles1 this, they usually shriek in horror. What about the smell of books2?!!? What about showing off your bookcases to impress people3!?!? What about your signed first edi … | Continue reading
Hello! Thank you for reading what I write. Sorry to ask, but… who are you? I was chatting to a friend about what it is like running a blog, finding new topics, keeping up with a daily schedule, moderating comments, etc. And they asked, quite reasonably, "who are your readers?" An … | Continue reading
I bloody hate this cartoon that's doing the rounds (I think it's by the incredibly talented Len in Private Eye). Here's what I want the caption to say: OK, one more time: Get here at least 30 minutes early because the queue barely moves and you'll inevitably be stuck behind someo … | Continue reading
I mentioned in my previous weeknotes that a change was coming1. I've left the Civil Service. I've started my new consultancy. And now... I've got a new job! A previous regeneration saw me catapulted into the world of health tech at NHSX. Then another saw me go to data. Then over … | Continue reading
Last night I received a call from my bank. They'd detected an unusual transaction and wanted to make sure that it was legitimate. Had I recently purchased £10,000 worth of crypto in the Maldives? What?!!? No! ARGH! I started to panic. All my apes money gone! No. Wait. The other t … | Continue reading
Let's say you want to automatically delete specific sorts of comments from your WordPress blog. For example, immediately trashing any comment that has a specific phrase "Elephant Juice" in it. You can do this by going to Settings -> Discussion → Disallowed Comment Keys. Or you ca … | Continue reading
There's a brilliant post by WordPress about how they've optimised some of the backend code to make it more efficient. So here's a suggestion for something else which can be optimised. If you want to schedule a blog post to be published later, you have to use this WordPress contro … | Continue reading
While farting around online, I stumbled across this 2008 Time Capsule from Stephen Fry. In it, he discusses the state of mobile phones - diving into the problems with BlackBerry's and Apple's latest offerings. BlackBerry had released the Storm1 and Apple's 2nd iPhone was now 3G c … | Continue reading
Way back in 2011, I contributed to an article on The Next Web called "What will the Web be like in 20 years?". Foolishly, I missed the 10 year anniversary, but let's see how we're doing against those predictions a little over halfway through. My prediction for the Web? The same s … | Continue reading
I've just finished watching Hulu's WeWork documentary. It is genuinely one of the funniest movies I've seen this year. Seriously, how can you watch that and not crack up? If I were the head of an investment fund, I think I probably would have fallen for Theranos. Sure, Elizabeth … | Continue reading
August is meant to be full of gloriously hot days. An endless parade of sunshine and drinks in the park. This year it seemed mostly grey, miserable, and prone to pissing it down at a moment's notice. We all know that solar panels' efficiency wilts in the heat, but do they get a t … | Continue reading
The good folk at ChubbyCable have sent me a trio of gorgeous USB-C cables to review. If, like me, your work colleagues always "borrow" your cables never to be seen again - these are a godsend. They're available in a range of colours - you can even design your own. You'll never ha … | Continue reading
One of the reasons I'm still on the original Mastodon.social instance is that I am vain. I joined shortly after the project was announced and, as a consequence, I have a "joined" date of 2016 and a user ID of under 10,0001. This doesn't make me an "elder statesman" and is rarely … | Continue reading
The first section of this book are, frankly, dull. It's the sort of sneering, middle-class soap opera which leaves me cold. Entitled twats ignoring the world around them. It's a stultifying atmosphere which nearly made me stop after a few chapters. And then... It's amazing just h … | Continue reading
The latest version of Mastodon includes search functionality. It's early days, but seems to work pretty well. Here are some of the interesting things I found when using it. Search is complex - expectations I don't mean the act of searching a database - that's routine - but I mean … | Continue reading
I've recently started using Mosh. It's a clever bit of software that keeps your SSH sessions running, even if your client goes offline or changes IP address. But I find the syntax used to launch it a bit verbose and easy to forget. A typical command is something like: mosh --ssh= … | Continue reading
This blog post was written in 2023 about events in 2008. Such are the joys of time travel… In August 2008, I published a blog post about being stopped and searched by the British Transport Police as part of The War Against Terror. A journalist, Elena Favilli contacted me asking i … | Continue reading
I want a new phone! I went to a wedding and everyone1 had one of those new folding phones. Social marketing has done a number on me and inveigled its way into my brain. Hey, I make decent money, perhaps I'll buy one. How much could they possibly cost? About £1,700 for a Pixel Fol … | Continue reading
Without a doubt, the most annoying aspect of using VR is that the equipment eats batteries. On the Oculus Quest, the headset is rechargeable via USB-C - but the controllers take plain AA batteries. By default, there's no way to recharge them So a whole industry has sprung up to … | Continue reading
These are notes that I wrote during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. I've published them a few years later. By now, you're probably sick and tired of shoving a swab up your nose and / or down your throat. You've grown blasé about the little medical marvel as it reacts to what … | Continue reading
It occurs to me that I mostly read modern books. But sometimes I dip into the classics to see what modern literature is built upon. Quentin Crisp was - depending on how you read his1 autobiography - famous for being infamous, notorious for being Proud before Pride, or an uncompro … | Continue reading
tl;dr - edit the file ~/.bash.rc add the line export MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 then reboot. Once done, type into the Firefox address bar about:support and check that "Window Protocol" is set to "wayland". You can configure how swipes work by visiting about:config and filtering for "sw … | Continue reading
Please imagine I have an extreme-YouTube-shocked-face as this post's thumbnail image. We recently got a 4.8kWh solar battery installed. Batteries are still somewhat complex beasties. In order to prevent damage to the internal structure, a BMS (Battery Management System) ensures t … | Continue reading
It is 2023. XHTML is dead and buried. HTML is a "living standard" with billions of users. So what kind of idiot would want to build a website using XML? Me. I am that idiot. Last year, I launched a "web page" which didn't use HTML. Called, appropriately enough, "YOU DON'T NEED HT … | Continue reading
There's an absolutely delightfully bonkers post doing the rounds called "My Overkill Home Network" - which is a look into what happens when a computer geek goes feral and stuffs as many Internet connected thingamajigs in a living space. We're talking professional grade, rack moun … | Continue reading
As previously mentioned, I quit my job. So now I'm no longer working for The Man. Instead, I am working for a man. Specifically: me1. I've launched Open Ideas Ltd. It's a bespoke computing consultancy focused on open technologies. Here's a brief run-down of what I offer: Open Sou … | Continue reading
I'm getting increasingly annoyed with SQFMI's Watchy. The documentation is terrible, the device is fragile, and now it turns out that the "Real Time Clock" loses several seconds per day! Which means, after a couple of weeks the watch is a couple of minutes fast. Ugh. But, on the … | Continue reading
This is the final post in my MSc journey. Last month, in an academic congregation at Northumbria University, I was formally awarded a Master of Science Digital and Technology Specialist (Data & Analytics) with Distinction. Look! Actual proof! Thanks to Mike, my Father-in-Law, for … | Continue reading
This is a sickly sweet and somewhat preposterous book - but it is a lot of fun. Fifties feminism and cooking go together like bangers and mash. Chemistry and gender politics are the garnish on top. I loved the way it told the story from multiple points of view - even the pet dog … | Continue reading
Computers, eh? Leave them for five minutes and they become obsolete. Leave them for five years and they become legacy infrastructure. How do we deal with a tower of "quick fixes" which are older than Moses? What strategies do we need to stop teams going mad as they try to upgrade … | Continue reading
My mate Greg, without meaning to, makes all other husbands look bad. It's not enough that he is a loving partner, devoted father, and pillar of the community. Oh no. He also has to go and make the most amazing reservations for wedding anniversaries. My wife, Liz, and I were runni … | Continue reading
I hate being introspective. But I'm told it's good for me. A few months ago, I handed in my notice to Cabinet Office. And now I'm no longer a Civil Servant. It's hard to sum up those 2,462 days. Every day brought new challenges. I saw my work presented to the highest offices in t … | Continue reading
I really like this article from Rohan D "Every Phone Should Be Able to Run Personal Website". In it, they make the convincing case that phones are perfectly capable of hosting websites and - if we want more people to escape the walled-gardens - this could be a good way to get peo … | Continue reading
Perhaps this was obvious to you, but it wasn't to me. So I'm sharing in the hope that you don't spend an evening trying to trick your webserver into doing something stupid. For years, HTTP content has been served with gzip compression (gz). It's basically the same sort of compres … | Continue reading
My doctor told me that sitting at a desk all day was slowly killing me. So I purchased a standing desk adapter. Then my doctor said I ought to take better care of my feet. So I purchased a massaging foot mat to go with my standing desk. Now my doctor says that I need […] | Continue reading