As the kids grow older… someday our final soft play session – something we used to do all the time, and now do only rarely – will be in the past. But for now, at least, it remains a chaotic way to tire them out on a morning! | Continue reading
Two weeks into my extended break from work and on my way home from Spain, I've discovered something magical about a sabbatical: it frees me from my compulsion to think about next week's work, at the weekend. | Continue reading
Tony Domenico's 3D Workers Island is a clever application of the retro-Web as a storytelling medium, in sort of a "found footage" way but with webpages instead of, y'know, videotape. The story's not perfect, but the execution is great. | Continue reading
Cory Doctorow's post this week about how Bluesky's model isn't (yet) immune to enshittification matches my reasoning for not using it, too. But also points out a hypocrisy in my own behaviour for so-far failing to apply a "Ulysses Pact" model to Three Rings. | Continue reading
I borrowed a bike from our hosts in el Vilosell so I could ride the rough hilltop trail to the bridge over the river Set, 3km away, and find a geocache. | Continue reading
Okay, is every company using AI to fuck up their mailing lists, now? For the second time this week I've received an email from a company whom I'd explicitly demanded cease processing my PII. This time, in February they outright told me that they'd deleted my data and sent screens … | Continue reading
This checkin to GCAA274 Garrigues #23 - El Vilosell reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. The geokids and I are staying nearby and came out for a walk this morning to discover this under-appreciated cache. What an amazing location and such a great vie … | Continue reading
The Nerdwriter's done a video essay about La Jetée, and it truly does justice to that remarkable movie. | Continue reading
Just received an unsolicited marketing email from a company that I asked to remove me from their systems eleven and a half years ago (!). I haven't heard from them since then. The marketing email is sent using a platform that "uses AI to help you seamlessly connect with your cust … | Continue reading
Hero of Alexandria is my hero. And it's not for the steam engine he didn't invent (that was Vetruvius), nor for his formula for the area of a triangle, nor even for his programmable robot (yes, really). It's for his square root algorithm. | Continue reading
Made it through a day and a half of theme park fun with the kids. Time for a much-needed beer, then as long a sleep as circumstance will allow. | Continue reading
Just in time for Halloween, this comic (published via the ever-excellent Oh Joy Sex Toy) is fundamentally pretty silly... and yet still manages to touch upon important concepts of safer sex, consent, aftercare etc. | Continue reading
This checkin to GC448J6 EL TRESOR DEL POU DEL MON reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. The geokids and I had to give up after an extended search. We solved the riddle (we think) and counted steps, but, being unsure, hunted for a nearby map and attemp … | Continue reading
For some reason, the breakfast chef assumed that when I asked for two eggs benedict that I might want them on two separate plates. As if I WEREN’T totally planning to scoff them both myself! 😂 | Continue reading
This checkin to GCA8R9X Xemeneies a Barcelona #2 Foneria Giralt reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. An early morning walk from my hotel while I waited for the rest of my family to wake up brought me to this, another old chimney. I’ve really been enj … | Continue reading
This checkin to GC1788D Torre Agbar reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. My 7-year-old, who’s really interested in skyscrapers, was excited to point this one out to me upon our arrival in Barcelona on Saturday, observing that it looks very similar to … | Continue reading
This checkin to GC6TKBN MALIP - Monument a les il·lusions perdudes reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. After failing to find this yesterday, I came back earlier this morning for another go. Thanks to the hint, I was pretty confident I’d been looking … | Continue reading
This checkin to GC1BA7C Parc central del Poblenou reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. QEF while on my way back to my hotel after a morning of exploring the area. GPC. | Continue reading
This checkin to GC6TKBN MALIP - Monument a les il·lusions perdudes reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. An extended search bore no fruit this morning. Worth help of the hint and an initial survey I was pretty confident in what kind of thing I was loo … | Continue reading
This checkin to GCARWF7 Antigua Fábrica de Tallada i Lora reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Visiting from Oxford, UK, I woke up early this morning and decided to come out for an explore before my partner and the children got up. A walk through the … | Continue reading
Parenting is about sacrifices. Here, I’m making the noble sacrifice of forcing myself to drink a delicious beer so my 10-year-old can use the customer-only bathroom at a beachside amateur football club. Such a sacrifice. | Continue reading
Me, hacking challenging Javascript at work: “Damn, I need a holiday.” Me, hacking challenging Javascript on sabbatical: “Ah, so relaxing.” | Continue reading
This checkin to GCAG598 Mimetic - Passeig de Gràcia reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. QEF for the geokid and I while exploring beautiful Barcelona this wet weekend. Greetings from Oxford, UK. TFTC! | Continue reading
Waking during the "hour of uncertainty" at the end of European Summer Time, I find myself wondering why we no longer expect computers to tell us what they're doing about daylight savings, and when. | Continue reading
Enjoying a glass of cava while the kids peer down out of the week dies of a Barcelona skyscraper. Day 8 of my sabbatical. Think I’m doing this right? | Continue reading
This child is eating sausages with one hand while playing a video game about eating sausages with the other. Is this life-imitating-art or the other way around? Who can possibly say? | Continue reading
I own a shirt that I bought for 50p, 23 years ago. How on earth has it lasted so long? | Continue reading
I like pickled onions. And I like the vinegar flavouring and the onion flavouring from salt & vinegar and cheese & onion crisps, respectively. So I ought to like pickled onion crisps too. So why don't I... and can I rationally persuade my brain that it's wrong? | Continue reading
NextPress.ai is among the many fork/fork-adjacent WordPress clones that have started to appear recently, and it's perhaps a worst-of-all-worlds solution: something which aims to maintain backwards-compatibility with WordPress, but which throws away 100% of the backend code and re … | Continue reading
My sabbatical might give me more time for geohashing, so long as the numbers come up right. So let's take an expedition up Harcourt Hill with the dog (plus video)... | Continue reading
Not for the first time, our eldest child has drawn me a network diagram. It's cute, but I've outright refused to name one of the new servers I'm provisioning after our dog. Here's why... | Continue reading
Day #2 of my sabbatical had a morning in which I’ve mostly been roped into some charity-related digital forensics… until I got distracted by dndle.app, which apparently I accidentally broke yesterday! Move Fast and Fix Things! | Continue reading
Kicking off day #1 of my three-month sabbatical from work at a hotel in Reading, at a meeting with fellow Three Rings volunteers to discuss our organisational culture and values. | Continue reading
The Beeb continue to keep adding more and more non-news content to the BBC News RSS feed (like this ad for the iPlayer app!), so I've once again had to update my script to "fix" the feed so that it only contains, y'know, news. | Continue reading
I've extended CapsulePress to support Nex, an ultra-lightweight smolweb protocol from the Nightfall City community. | Continue reading
This checkin to GC9GTV3 Drive Slowly; Fox Crossing reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Checked-in in this cache to ensure it was still healthy, after a recent spate of muggling. Happy to report the cache is well. | Continue reading
✅ Inbox Zero ✅ Slack Notification Zero ✅ Assigned PR Reviews Zero ✅ Owned PRs... one, but it's approved and just waiting for the right moment to merge That's got the be the first time in... literally years... that I've ended a workday so "clean". Feels amazing. There'll be a mess … | Continue reading
Okay, I've officially had enough of WordPress drama now. Can we all just go back to making awesome content and contributing to our awesome CMS, please? | Continue reading
Happy International Pronouns Day! 🥳 I use he/him pronouns. | Continue reading
And while we're talking about AI... it took a disproportionate about of time to find the right (tiny) link, but eventually I managed to opt-out of my content being used to train Facebook's AI. They don't make it easy, do they? | Continue reading
As Google invest in next-generation nuclear generation to provide electricity to their energy-hungry AI datacentres, so they can keep providing shit answers to everyday questions, I'm optimistic that maybe after the LLM fad fizzles out we'll be left with new power technologies th … | Continue reading
You know that you REALLY needed that coffee when you: 1. get out a mug, 2. turn on the coffee machine, 3. load the dishwasher while you wait for the coffee machine to warm up, 4. can’t find your mug any more, oh shit it’s in the dishwasher 🤦 | Continue reading
eBay UK have changed their terms to (a) remove seller fees for most private sellers, but (b) instead of paying-out immediately, payouts are four times a year (or on-demand). That sounds like they’re trying to keep money in their ecosystem. The hope is, I guess, that by paying sel … | Continue reading
This evening I pushed against my illness-addled brain to try to sit in on the fortnightly Zoom call with the Three Rings dev team. Unfortunately it seems like the primary symptom of my cold is an inability to string words together. At one point, I apologised to by colleague “Beff … | Continue reading
I was listening to the bats flying silently above me while I watched the Perseids, the other month. When was the last time I was actually capable of hearing their echolocation? I simply can't remember, because it didn't feel significant at the time. | Continue reading
Girl on the Net diverts from her usual sex blogging to write about taking a date on a 25-forms-of-transport tour of London, and it's delightful. | Continue reading