💾 Download this page! What’s going on behind the scenes? Here’s the code. Note – it doesn’t require thousands of imported NPM libraries, a complex Docker set-up, or any AI-o… | Continue reading
This is a slow, and very silly, way to experience an ancient browser. I’m aware that you could spin up a virtual machine, or pay for a browser testing service. But there’s something nic… | Continue reading
(Written mostly to settle a good-natured disagreement.) One of the great advantages of HTML is that it can call on external resources. Your index.html can load a style.css and display a picture.jpg… | Continue reading
Yet more MSc yak-shaving. I’m currently reading Melissa Schilling’s book “Strategic management of technological innovation”. In a passage talking about customers’ resi… | Continue reading
(Yes, I’m back on my bullshit!) Regular readers may remember that I’m trying to create an “Organization of Cartographers for Social Equality” map. That is, a map with a Gall… | Continue reading
After my rant the other day about Adobe Digital Editions, I discovered libgourou by Grégory Soutadé libgourou is a free implementation of Adobe’s ADEPT protocol used to add DRM on ePub files.… | Continue reading
I recently had cause to take a beginners course in R – a language I’m fairly familiar with. One of the other students had never used it before, so we were buddied up in order for me to … | Continue reading
Many moons ago, when I was very young and you were even younger… London was in full bloom of tech-startups. I was running my own consultancy. Dashing from business to business, trying to pick… | Continue reading
It’s hard to ascribe “firsts” in history. Did Ada Lovelace write the first computer program? Does it count if it is a mechanical computer? Are Bombe and Tunny really computers in … | Continue reading
One thing I’m finding extremely frustrating in academia is the number of people citing papers which don’t seem to actually exist. As part of a data analytics class, I’m learning a… | Continue reading
I am grumpy. As my very clever wife summarised, I hate when designers prioritise their æsthetic preferences over my usability needs. I tried sharing a website using Google Chrome for Android. I hit… | Continue reading
A few months ago, I wrote about how data is so cheap it is being given away. Mobile network Three were offering £10 data SIMs which came with 200MB of zero-cost data. Recently, I’ve found ano… | Continue reading
I’ve worked on some big product launches. Every time there’s a major update, developers have to think about which features to port over and which to drop. Sometimes it is easy. Analytic… | Continue reading
One of the frustrating things about computers is their limited input options. A “standard” PC keyboard only has about 100 keys. Sure, some have some bonus buttons for controlling the ma… | Continue reading
As part of my MSc, I’m getting a few lessons in technologies I’m not familiar with. I’ve found some of these lessons extremely confusing – even when I’m proficient in … | Continue reading
The world is a complex place. It is tempting to enforce simplicity upon it to make things easier for computers. Gender is a boolean, no one is older than 99, all text flows left to right, and names… | Continue reading
I got a student discount to buy a Google Stadia games system for £60. Seemed like pretty good value. But I didn’t buy it – because Google refuses to tell me how much their ecosystem cos… | Continue reading
M’colleague Charles has introduced me to the most spectacular phrase – “Time To 200”. That’s a measurement of the length of time it takes a new user to go from signing… | Continue reading
The UK is facing an epidemic of SMS fraud. Scammers know that we’re all at home eagerly waiting for deliveries. So they send out phishing messages saying “Sorry we missed you” or … | Continue reading
I have a cheap WiFi enabled vacuum cleaner. One morning, I barked “ALEXA! CLEAN THE HOUSE.” The gynoid immediately responded with “Now playing songs by Crowded House.” The f… | Continue reading
Twitter has never really solved its spam problem. It is a constant irritation that ordinary people get booted off the service for minor infractions, while large spam rings go unpunished. For the pa… | Continue reading
Marketing really is crap. Recently, SE Railways sent this piece of email drivel to my wife: We don’t have any kids, thankfully – and are not having any in the future. My wife was litera… | Continue reading
After my rant a few weeks ago, I finally found a cheap WiFi smoke alarm. A few disclaimers before I get into this review: It was shipped from China, not from the UK as stated. The device doesn̵… | Continue reading
I blog about my solar panels – probably a bit too much! Recently, a reader asked me if I’d heard of Rowan Energy’s solar payback scheme – so I took a look into it. Here̵… | Continue reading
One of those things that organisations love to do is issue identifiers. My credit card provider issues me with a Customer ID, a Billing ID, a Reference Number, and an online login ID. All of which … | Continue reading
This is a two-part blog post about rewriting the rules. I hated playing sports as a teenager quelle surprise. In a vain attempt to get me to love the beautiful game, a PE teacher once made me team … | Continue reading
(This post written partly to tease my delightful colleague Charles, but also as a way of thinking about user needs.) During a recent Open Data Café, one of the guests made an entirely reasonable po… | Continue reading
Welcome to Yak Shaving School! As part of my MSc I’m reading a book about Data Analytics. So I’ve been chasing down quotes to find their origin. One paper had this popular quote in it (… | Continue reading
I’ve had a Nest smoke alarm for about 7 years. It connects to my WiFi network and occasionally pings a message to my phone that I’ve burnt my toast. Nifty! But, due to planned obsolesce… | Continue reading
Messaging app Signal is launching a payment service in the UK. This will allow users to send each other money cryptocurrency. Many people have written about why this is a daft idea. But they’… | Continue reading
Let me start by saying that Emoji Passwords are probably a really daft idea. I want to use emoji in my passwords. They’re easy to type on a mobile keyboard, easy to remember, and a lot more f… | Continue reading
Whenever you buy a second-hand book, you are stealing revenue from the author and publisher. It makes no difference whether you buy from a charity shop or a for-profit store. All the money goes to … | Continue reading
I’ve been thinking a lot about APIs and their design recently. I stumbled on this fantastic quote from Greg Parker: When I first started learning C++ (back in the bad old days) I was convince… | Continue reading
If you have a bank account, you probably have an IBAN – an International Bank Account Number. It is a well-structured text string which unambiguously identifies your account. A typical UK IBA… | Continue reading
Nine years later and I’m still bitter – and that’s an unhealthy emotion. So I’m blogging as a form of catharsis. Back in 2012, I was taking the fledgling “QRpedia̶… | Continue reading
Matt Webb has a whimsical blog about buying unused TV advertising space. There are a bunch of shows on streaming services which have ad-breaks unfilled. Mostly, I assume, because everyone hates adv… | Continue reading
I don’t have a great memory. I often meet people who remember me, but I don’t remember them. I’ve had whole conversations with people who clearly know me, but on whom I’ve d… | Continue reading
(A hastily written and grumpy post.) Another day, another Blockchain Bullshit project. Someone “claimed” one of my Tweets and added it to the Blockchain. I’m not particularly happ… | Continue reading
Once in a while, big companies suggest that the answer to abuse is to ban anonymity and institute a Real Names policy. This time, it is Google’s turn. They think that critical software should… | Continue reading
I’m a weirdo – I fully admit that. As part of my home working set up, I use a vertical monitor. I read and write a lot of long documents – and this form factor suits me perfectly.… | Continue reading
I’ve told this story at conferences – but due to the general situation I thought I’d retell it here. A few years ago I was doing policy research in a housing benefits office in Lo… | Continue reading
This is probably me being a bit dense. I’m on a video call with two other people. Alice is on the left of my screen, Bob is on the right. Why isn’t the audio in stereo? (Zoom lets you s… | Continue reading
One of my lovely colleagues made an small speech during a recent meeting. She was delighted to announce that she was heading off on maternity leave next month and looked forward to seeing us all ne… | Continue reading
Another day, another high-profile website cloned to phish credentials. In the replies, you’ll see lots of techbros saying “this is why you should switch on 2FA people!!!” Except, and I hate to brin… | Continue reading
… as our money becomes completely electronic, new crimes will undoubtedly be committed which take advantage of the technology itself. Perhaps if we could imagine what crimes might happen, we … | Continue reading
(For the new reader, there is a famous essay called Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names. It has since spawned a long list of Falsehoods Programmers Believe About….) Everyone has finger… | Continue reading
I once drove my company car to my company’s office and then drove around the company car park for 20 minutes looking in vain for a parking space. Whereupon I double-parked across a couple of … | Continue reading
There are lots of celelbrities and famous academics on Twitter. Then there’s Professor Richard Feynman. Who died in 1988. Every so often, one of “his” pearls of wisdom is regurgit… | Continue reading