I’m a board member of Open UK – which promotes UK leadership in open technology – and we’re looking for nominations for our Open Source Awards. These are designed to honour … | Continue reading
Pharo (http://pharo.org) is a pure dynamic and reflective object programming language inspired by Smalltalk. Pharo offers a powerful environment with unique ... | Continue reading
Do you play games?.... Duh! Ever thought of building one yourself?... Hmm.. Games innately seem diff... | Continue reading
This a rant, written at midnight, after battling software errors. Set your profanity filters accordingly. I despair over the state of software engineering – specifically, stability. We seem t… | Continue reading
I love reading Changelogs – but I hate writing them. Here’s what’s changed with SuperTinyIcons since I launched it in 2017. It’s a project to create SVG logos of popular ser… | Continue reading
This is the latest of my many terrible lockdown-induced ideas. I’m saving money on commuting. So I’m spending it on tech-crap I really don’t need. I bought a new laptop sticker. A… | Continue reading
I wanted to see what I was Tweeting on this exact day last year. And all the years before. So I built a website! It’s a disgusting hack, and I’m truly sorry for unleashing it on you. Us… | Continue reading
There was a “situation” at work. We were publishing a high-profile project (take a wild guess) on GitHub. We had received abuse and were worried that someone might target the programmer… | Continue reading
I’m not sure if I’m the first person to do this – but I’m going to claim credit anyway! You can verify by pasting the alt text into keybase.io/verify – or by using you… | Continue reading
The UK register of businesses – Companies House – has an online record of every company in the UK. It contains articles of incorporation, statement of accounts, and all sorts of legal d… | Continue reading
I haven’t used a trackball in earnest since about 1998 – when they were briefly all the rage at school. But we’re all working from home during lockdown, and my desk isn’t bi… | Continue reading
HTML is magic. It comes with all sorts of great usability and accessibility features. But people often ignore them or misuse them. Take a look at these checkboxen: If you click on this label, nothi… | Continue reading
WebP is the hip new image format on the scene. It offers unrivalled image compression at superior visual quality. But, in my opinion, it is deficient compared to JPG in one significant aspect. It d… | Continue reading
Half-a-dozen years ago, I proposed that web developers spend one day a year browsing without JavaScript. It’s a great way to see how the web works when things break. Similarly, April 9th is C… | Continue reading
A short meander through some of the more obscure miscellany within Unicode. Languages hang around far longer than there are native speakers, and symbols get reused and repurposed (🍆). Here are some… | Continue reading
Once in a while, I’ll see someone Tweet a “link” to file:///C:/users/… – that’s the Microsoft Windows way of representing a location on a filesystem. Usually thi… | Continue reading
Due to COVID19, I’m using a wide range of video conferencing services. Those of us who have work-supplied laptops usually have locked-down hardware. No unauthorised apps can be installed. Tha… | Continue reading
Someone took a nice photo of me recently. I’d like to use it as my avatar photo everywhere to present a consistent image. This is not easy to do. I’ve had to manually change it on a doz… | Continue reading
I stared at my TOTP generator. Surely this must be a bug? Leap Year related? Or a cold-start error? Or some freaky prank? How could my login code be 000000?!?! A standard TOTP code is normally 6 di… | Continue reading
Facebook has an interesting feature. It will let you see which companies have associated your off-Facebook activity with your Facebook account. If you visit you’ll see what companies are snit… | Continue reading
SETI is the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. They use massive radio-telescopes to search the sky for signs of intelligent life. But the sky is big. Where should we point the telescopes to… | Continue reading
The news has just broken that Google’s Authenticator App can have its codes stolen by malware. I doubt Google will ever release a fix for this issue – their 2FA app hasn’t been up… | Continue reading
(Another in a long list of posts which will turn out to be touchingly naïve!) When teaching people about safe sex, one topic bitterly divides people – whether abstinence is a suitable method.… | Continue reading
My Chinese takeaway delivery was late. Very late. I flipped open the confirmation email sent by Just-Eat to double-check I had all the details correct. At the bottom was a “click to call̶… | Continue reading
Here’s a quick tutorial for turning an old Nook into a passive display. This is an update to my 2013 post End Result An eInk screen which displays the trains I can catch from my local station… | Continue reading
Post-it® notes are the life-blood of Agile. So we’re told. Those little flaps of paper, usually hastily scribbled on, are the only way to prove you’re Doing It Right™. I’m not a b… | Continue reading
Here’s a great set of questions to ask at your next corporate strategy away day. I know you know the answers to these questions – but I promise that the people in charge of your organis… | Continue reading
In the UK, most professional jobs pay monthly. In the USA, it seems most professional jobs get paid every two weeks. This usually comes as a great shock when someone from one side of the pond finds… | Continue reading
I have a lot of smarthome gadgets – but my favourite is the Tado° Thermostat. I think it might be the most boring gadget I’ve ever used – and that’s why I love it! We spend … | Continue reading
I rediscovered an curious Tweet from 2012: That was a reasonable – if incorrect – assumption at the start of the decade. Streaming TV was in its infancy, and it was ridiculous to sugges… | Continue reading
I, unironically, love Reddit. But it’s just USENET with a better UI, and a few moderation improvements. Most days I use DropBox. But it’s just FTP, but a bit easier to use and automate.… | Continue reading
I’m going to start this discussion with the why and then move on to the how. Let’s begin with a couple of user stories. As the recipient of some data, I want to verify that it hasn̵… | Continue reading
tl;dr Google forgot to renew a domain used in their documentation. It was mildly embarrassing for them. And possibly a minor security concern for some new G-Suite domain administrators Background C… | Continue reading
I made a little girl cry recently. “But why do I have to learn Python?” She wailed, “I like Scratch!” “I know,” I said, “But there are different programmin… | Continue reading
I set myself a resolution last year – go 12 months without using physical cash. No coins, no notes, no gold bullion, no cheques. I attempted to do all my spending on credit card, Direct Debit… | Continue reading
Let me preface this post by saying that I am a lazy idiot. I have a problem, I keep leaving the fridge door open. I’ve come home a few times only to discover my half-hearted push hasn’t… | Continue reading
bləʊk ʧeɪn Noun: any technology which attracts clueless men User Stories are great! A simplified snippet to help you understand the problem you’re facing. There are, of course, a vanishingly … | Continue reading
We’re delighted to announce that our OpenBenches.org project has been awarded a $250 microgrant from Icculus! Huge thanks to Ryan, and everyone else who chipped in. Because I’m part of … | Continue reading
Yesterday, January 2nd, my wife received a billing alert from her phone provider. Luckily, she’s not with EE – because it’s a pretty convincing text. That domain name is specifica… | Continue reading
It’s really easy to think “I haven’t achieved anything this week!” and fall into self-pity. So, at the start of 2019, I decided to give future-me a present. I started a Trel… | Continue reading
My friends, and former employers, at the Government Digital Service have written a spectacularly good blog post “Making GOV.UK more than a website”. In it, they describe how adding Sche… | Continue reading
(For the avoidance of doubt, I have nothing to do with hiring at my employer. This test is probably deeply problematic in ways you’ll angrily Tweet me about.) I’d like to tell you a sto… | Continue reading
Thames Water seem to love giving me a new account number each month. That would be fine, but each time they do, I have to manually add that number to my online account. I’m bored of being the… | Continue reading
I want Schema.org to add dietary requirements to the Person specification. And I need your help! Background Schema.org is a metadata standard. You can include it on webpages to create structured, m… | Continue reading
I really wanted to write a rant about how incompatible smart lights are ruining the world. But… errr… Everything just works. Previously on my smarthome adventures, I kitted my house out… | Continue reading
I’m increasingly concerned with the power that CDNs wield – and CloudFlare in particular. So I decided to delete my CloudFlare account. While they claim to have removed my account, they… | Continue reading
If you’ve seen that episode of The West Wing, you’ll remember this scene: I’m not a paying member of the OCSE, but I fully support their aims. Because messing around with maps is … | Continue reading
Somewhere, stuffed in a cupboard or undeveloped on an old roll of film, is a photo of me laughing and joking with a murderer. It was one summer, while I was visiting home between university terms, … | Continue reading