Fire, my team at work, has been extinguished and I've been moved to Team Desire. I've struggled to find my feet, but I think I'm settling in now. | Continue reading
The ever-excellent Molly White has wise words to say on the subject of generative AI: specifically - it's actually pretty useful for some tasks, but she's not sure it's worth the cost. This mirrors my thinking so closely I wish I'd written it first! | Continue reading
Me? Underprepared? (He says, literally writing his presentation in the bar at the event...) | Continue reading
West Oxfordshire District Council seem to want to disenfranchise me by requiring that I bring photo ID to a polling station with a different name on it than the photo ID that they themselves issued. | Continue reading
This checkin to GC2W6AF Babel Fish reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. The younger child and I had an initially fruitless search in, under and around the nearby bridge before we had the sense to insert our babel fishes, after which the hint item bec … | Continue reading
This checkin to GC51F07 Knapwell one and a half reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. The second of two caches found on a morning walk from the nearby Cambridge Belfry Hotel, where some fellow volunteers and I met yesterday for a meeting. This cache l … | Continue reading
This checkin to GC10ZT3 Off Yer Trolley! (Cambourne) reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Even early on a Saturday morning, after a volunteering event the previous day at the hotel across the road, this highly-exposed GZ made me feel vulnerable! It’s … | Continue reading
The elder child and I are staying nearby and couldn't resist coming to a nearby cache with so many FPs. The name gave us a bit of a clue what we would be looking for but nothing could have prepared us for for this imaginative and unusual container! | Continue reading
Userscripts are awesome, and you should be using them. Let me rotate some sandwiches for you to demonstrate their versatility! | Continue reading
Let's use some self-data-mining plus a convex hull algorithm to plot a convex polygon onto a map that optimally encircles the entire corpus of my successful geocaching/geohashing expeditions! | Continue reading
In an effort to work-around Google Search's obsession with everything having to be "new" to be searchworthy, Nilay Patel of The Verge reiterates his previous article about the joy of Brother printers, and it's excellent. | Continue reading
This "choose your own adventure"-style game about making the perfect cup of tea is just... excellent. If you lack the imagination to understand how a game like this could have dozens of possible endings, you desperately need to play it. | Continue reading
Sometimes you just gotta have exactly the right prop for a presentation... | Continue reading
The start of April's a perfect time for a "Spring refresh" of a personal website. This year, I'm enabling a handful of experimental new features; visit DanQ.me and you might randomly be selected to try one out! | Continue reading
A promotional video for Aberystwyth University, made in 1984, could almost pass as being 15 years younger than that. Aber never changes, I guess. | Continue reading
What they say: "This site works better in our app." What they mean (optimistic): "We couldn't be bothered to make a good website." What they mean (realistic): "We can track and monetise you better if we can coerce you into installing this." | Continue reading
A fellow jigsaw-hating geocacher, familiar with my work on Jigidi, challenged me to find a way to bypass JigsawExplorer too. Here's what I came up with... | Continue reading
At next month's Oxford Geek Nights I'll be talking about why Oxford's telephone area code makes no sense... until it does! But that's not why you should attend: you should attend because of the five far more-talented speakers I'll be sharing the stage with! | Continue reading
I live near two junctions at which I can join the A40 trunk road. When I drive East, I use the Easternmost; when I drive West, I use the Westernmost; but I almost never drive the stretch of A40 between them! It's inevitable I suppose that there should exist a "road (segment) less … | Continue reading
This checkin to GC2BHX9 C-130J Hercules reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Found by the geohound and I after a brief battle with the first stinging nettles of the season. Owie! She and I came over from Stanton Harcourt this morning – from which we … | Continue reading
This checkin to GC6Q3A1 Cur.Bri.Lew 11 reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. The pup and I unearthed a few likely hiding places without success here. Not sure what we’ve missed: feels like we lifted every hint item in the vicinity! | Continue reading
This checkin to GC6Q39R Cur.Bri.Lew 10 reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. QEF for the geopup and I on this strangely springlike morning. Cache container is damaged almost beyond recognition, as others have observed, and is desperately in need of re … | Continue reading
By optimising a few bits of my homepage I've halved its size, which incidentally takes me up from the third to the second league of 512kb club members! | Continue reading
A video version of my blog post "My Favourite Video Game Easter Egg", in which I show you Alorik's crystal ball from Ultima Underworld II and tell you why it's so important to me. | Continue reading
My favourite video game Easter egg is Alorik's crystal ball from 1993's Ultima Underworld II, and I'd love to tell you why. | Continue reading
Yesterday, I wrote the stupidest CSS code of my entire web development career. The code itself wasn't the stupid bit; my misinterpretation of the designer's wishes was what caused the problem! | Continue reading
Having lost the (stupid, proprietary) charging cable for my smartwatch, and not been able to find it for several days, I've undertaken the magical ritual that's most-certain to make it reappear: ordering a replacement one. | Continue reading
Do you think the 80s/90s advertisement campaign for Sarson's vinegar - "Don't say vinegar, say Sarson's" - ever worked? Like: have you ever heard anybody ask you to "pass the Sarson's"? | Continue reading
This week, a live-to-earth fault on the grid resulted in me getting zapped with mains electricity. Unfortunately, it didn't give me superpowers, just a mildly-interesting anecdote and a partially-shaved chest. | Continue reading
I received a lovely letter from the Vagina Museum - which I've not had the opportunity to visit yet - printed on their new laserjet printer. | Continue reading
There are two - maybe three - things I love about the recent discovery that bees exhibit complex social learning behaviours. Allow me to drone on about bees for a while... | Continue reading
BBC News' RSS feed has lately started getting duplicates because they're mucking about with guids. Also what's with the iPlayer and BBC Sounds content in there? Let's "fix" that for them, shall we? | Continue reading
RSS is better than ActivityPub. Fight me. | Continue reading
This week, Parry Gripp and Nathan Mazur released Young Squirrel Talking About Himself. I've been singing it all day. | Continue reading
For World Book Day (which here in the UK is marked a month earlier than the rest of the world) the kids' school invited people to come "dressed as a word". As usual, the kids and teachers participated along with only around two other adults. But of course I was one of them. Thi … | Continue reading
If you enjoy a bit of "cable gore", let me introduce you to the fusebox cupboard at my house, with its plethora of junctions, fuses, breakers, switches, timers, and cabling everywhere! Banana for scale. | Continue reading
I've been "out" about my polyamory in every job I've had for the last 20+ years. I recommend it. | Continue reading
I guess installing a sign was cheaper than retraining the helpline operators not to shout at everybody. | Continue reading
Hot on the heels of my victory over Wonder Boy 35 years after I first played it, I can now finally claim to have beaten Golden Axe, 25 years after I first played it (with some help from a 7-year-old). | Continue reading
After IFTTT axed their Legacy Pro plan, I needed to move my Sonarr-to-Slack notification system to Huginn. This turned out to be super easy! | Continue reading
Being able to safely ski virtually any run in any resort is a privilege I enjoy, but I wonder if perhaps my skiing skills have peaked and it's time to try to learn another snowsport... | Continue reading
This checkin to GCADXC6 Tour de France reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. My very first “ski-o-cache” was 9 years ago, down in La Tania: this was my second! Found the host easily at the coordinates and found the cache in the third hiding place I tr … | Continue reading
I'm pretty sure that Wally/Waldo, Woof, and Wizard Whitebeard must be out on this mountain somewhere, too. | Continue reading
In my first expedition in a while, I made two brave outings to an exceptionally muddy field this morning in order to find a geohashpoint. | Continue reading
This checkin to GC82XT0 Cumnor Minions - Dr Nefario reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Found after trying a few different hosts while out on an expedition to try and reach the 2024-02-10 51 -1 geohashpoint with the 7-year-old and the dog. The path … | Continue reading
Today a 7-year-old helped remind me that progressive enhancement doesn't have to mean render-blocking DOM manipulation nor ugly layout shifts. | Continue reading
Clayton Errington wrote: After a first attempt at mobile blogging, I found a process that works better for my work flow. Throughout the day, I have ideas and need to write them down. This could be a coding process, a thought to remember, the start of a blog post, and more. I love … | Continue reading