I imagine everyone here has received an unsolicited message telling them that their tax is overdue and that they urgently need to visit Genuine-Tax-Payment-Website.fart or that a parcel is delayed at customs and you can pay a small sum for its release at Almost-The-Right-Acronym. … | Continue reading
This is a gorgeous set of short stories - and a good deal more accessible than some of the heavyweight prose Liu has previously been involved with. Some of the stories contain sentences which are complex jewels to be savoured. What I particularly like is the way he moves between … | Continue reading
If you're reading this, you've probably been hitting your head against a brick wall trying to parse and decipher the new HTTP Signatures sent by Mastodon and other Fediverse servers. This is a basic and somewhat incomplete guide to accepting these signatures. I'm sure there are … | Continue reading
As part of my grant from NLnet to improve my Fediverse bot project, I'm spending time making sure I understand all the fundamentals of ActivityPub. The problem with Internet standards is they're scattered all over the place. Abandoned forums, half-maintained wikis, mailing lists … | Continue reading
The whole point about Shakespeare is that you can set the play on an intergalactic space station or an American high school and keep virtually the rest unchanged. What happens when you transpose Dream from a proscenium arch to a living wood? As the sun sets over the trees, what s … | Continue reading
Back in February, I applied for NLnet's Next Generation Zero grant. They were looking for Fediverse projects to help rewild the social media landscape. Or, as they describe it: Reclaim the public nature of the internet Small and medium-sized R&D grants between 5.000 and 50.000 … | Continue reading
Next to all the code samples on this blog is a little "copy" button. That makes it easier to grab any of the code I've shared. The HTML and JS is delightfully simple: The navigator.... | Continue reading
The monkey-punchers at Google never quite seem to finish any of their apps. There's always some useful bit of work left undone, or showstopping bug which remains unfixed, a thousand jagged edges as yet unsolved by the greatest minds of their generation. I wanted to subscribe to … | Continue reading
This is a charming and zeitgeisty novel which has a strong start and fulfils the promise of its blurb. What if your autonomous vacuum cleaner was sentient and was very sad about your wife's death? It pays obvious homage to the Brave Little Toaster, 100 Acre Woods, Beauty and The … | Continue reading
The good folks at Thermal Master have sent me their latest camera to review - and it is a bit different to all the others I've tried. Whereas previous cameras are good for bird watching, or wildlife spotting, or finding leaks at home - the P3 has a manual macro lens and is spe … | Continue reading
Cats is so silly! In the olden days, after a wild animal was slaughtered, the tribe's shaman would wear the skin and re-enact the hunt. As he became one with the beast, the people slowly understood the ways of nature. Cats is a similarly spiritual experience wherein we watch an … | Continue reading
On our recent trip to the Edinburgh Fringe, I was bemused by just how little effort performers put in to finding out why people had selected their show. Taking a show to the Edinburgh Fringe is ridiculously expensive with some performers paying tens of thousands of pounds. The wa … | Continue reading
Pixels are a lie. Even if you think you're drawing something with "pixel perfect" accuracy, your monitor is lying to you. There is no grid of platonically perfect squares. In CSS, pixels are a double lie: Note that 1px doesn't necessarily equal one physical device pixel. On HD … | Continue reading
This is a detailed examination of the various senses possessed by animals. Some will be intimately familiar to you - like sight and sound - whereas some will seem strange and uncanny - like magnetic detection and electro-sensing. Some straddle an almost understandable space like … | Continue reading
One of the promises of the AI-filled future is that we'll all have highly capable autonomous servants "agents" to work for us. Even back in the 1990s, it was a common trope in future-gazing to insist that a person's personal slave agent would negotiate on their behalf. Ask your … | Continue reading
In early February 2011 Egypt was in the middle of a political revolution. One morning, everyone's phones suddenly pinged with an alert. The Armed Forces asks Egypt's honest and loyal men to confront the traitors and criminals and protect our people and honour and our precious Eg … | Continue reading
This was my first ever time at The Fringe™. Here are some scattered thoughts looking at the good, the bad, and the annoying aspects of this madly extravagant exhibition of talent. We saw 23 shows together, and one separate show each. There were more hits than misses, but the frus … | Continue reading
I'm really not sure what to make of this book. It was recommended by my book club as something between tragedy and comedy. The characters are excruciatingly well written - if you (or your friends) shoplifted Impulse body-spray back in the 1990s, you'll be hit by a terrifying wave … | Continue reading
Easily the best show I've seen at the Fringe. For plot-related reasons, a television company asks a literary genius to create a "pro-weapons sitcom". It is a fast paced mix of the sitcoms 2012 and Episodes. The jokes come at a steady pace - some attack with the furiousity of bu … | Continue reading
For a pay-what-you-want show this was decent. Three comedians doing sets on the theme of philosophy - followed by a Q&A where the audience poses philosophical conundrums to them. It more-or-less works as a gimmick. Although an early afternoon crowd may have been more likely to a … | Continue reading
This play is fucked up! Such a brilliant concept - what happened to the kids from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory after they were rejected by Wonka? Stuck together in a Big-Brotheresque household, they trauma-dump on each other. New Zealand's Half Trick have shrunk their ful … | Continue reading
Quite simply marvellous! Three Scottish divas giving us their interpretations of the greats while backed by an excellent pianist. So many shows at the Fringe skimp on sets and props - not this! A luscious array of costumes, hats, wigs, and ruby slippers bring the characters to l … | Continue reading
Walking down the street, I noticed a ringing phone box so, naturally, I answered it. What happened next was a few minutes of pure fringe magic! I had a little chat with the caller, he welcomed me to the smallest venue in the fringe, and then he improvised a banger of a song bas … | Continue reading
I'm not sure what they're teaching at LAMDA, but it certainly isn't vocal projection. We were forewarned about the technical difficulties - but if a trained stage singer can't reach the 6th row of a tiny theatre, that can't be blamed on the backstage team. The show advertises it … | Continue reading
Are menopausal women hot? It is often said that pornographic actresses move straight from "barely legal" to "MILF" without so much as moment in between. Unlike the fringe's other burlesque shows - which seem to exclusively feature nymphettes and twinks with nary a grey hair betwe … | Continue reading
The undisputed queen of short-form viral video comedy snacks takes to the stage. Well, swims to the stage. The Mermaid is a delightful and gentle amble through the confusing world of a girl who just wants to become a mermaid. Less standup and more storytelling, nevertheless it p … | Continue reading
This is a disappointing and frustrating book - not least because it so nearly hits the mark. The subtitle is "How Computer Programming Is Changing Writing" - but it never gets close to discussing that topic, let alone deeply examining it. Instead, it is a book mostly focussed on … | Continue reading
There are at least four different Heated Rivalry shows at the Fringe this year. Earlier this week we saw Edinburgh Fringe - Heated Rivalry: The Musical Parody!. This is different because it is the unauthorized musical parody. Oh, and it is in the much larger Udderbelly venue. S … | Continue reading
This is a technically precise and emotionally complex show with energetic delivery from a talented performer. Sadly, it did nothing for me. I found it a little one note in terms of storytelling. The rhythm of the story followed all the predictable beats which I thought was a li … | Continue reading
Easily the worst show we've seen at the fringe. Garrett Millerick has trained an AI on his stand up. Can it replace him? Yes, but only in the sense that the AI is obnoxiously dull and Millerick is simply obnoxious. He insulted a kid who he'd called on to stage to help him. Not … | Continue reading
I'm a sucker for anything Beatles related - and the fringe has no shortage of musicals, reinterpretations, and shameless cash-ins of the Fab Four. When Vincent Met John is an oddity in that it is a normal play, rather than a musical. It is also an oddity in being 90 minutes long … | Continue reading
Sometimes at the Edinburgh Fringe, you take a punt on a random show because it's close by and you can't be bothered walking any further. Justina Seselskaite's set was round the corner and started in 7 ½ minutes - so we scurried into one of the less glamorous rooms of The Hilton, … | Continue reading
Part of going to The Fringe is to expose yourself to new ideas, different art forms, and a range of artworks. Not everything needs to be a "zany" comedy about AI or a loving pastiche of that 1990s disaster movie you love. So I found myself sat in a Unitarian Church listening to … | Continue reading
🎼"Hamlet's Mum Has Got It Going On"🎵 There you go, now you've seen the show. That's about the height it reaches. Distil the tortured Prince of Denmark down to an hour and sprinkle in parody pop songs. It so nearly works. There are a few good chuckles and a smatt … | Continue reading
Afrofuturism is a hot topic in the world of sci-fi. This is the circus version of "For All Mankind" where the Zambia Space Academy (a 100% real thing) attempt to land on the moon and win the space race. Told in an acrobatic style, naturally. It is delightful to see classic acro … | Continue reading
It is a brave children's show which starts with the song "I'm a smooth muthafukker"… This is sort of a live-action XKCD cartoon. A frenetic troupe of performers are decked with hand-drawn portraits and then… well, it is somewhere between a Sesame Street animation and the stick-f … | Continue reading
Last year, I reviewed a new type of Clip-On earphone - the Soundpeats Clip1 Cuff. I was a bit sceptical, but was won around by their comfort. The good folks at Soundpeats have sent me their new version to review. I had a few niggles with the Clip1 - so let's see how the UU2 Clip2 … | Continue reading
Sex work is work, so we're told. There's no difference between picking up a night job stacking shelves and a night job jacking-off on screen. Right? Perhaps a couple need a little bit of extra cash and the siren song of OnlyFans is right there. Let's fire up the webcam and relea … | Continue reading
OMG! If you remember A/S/Ling your way through MSN to fill in your MySpace top 8, then you'll love this show. You're also over 30 and, therefore, old. Ew. The stage is littered with a Nokia 3310, Bliss Magazine, and Charlie Red. Katie (15/F/UK) talks us through the complexitie … | Continue reading
The terror of AI has come to comedy. There are a dozen shows this year about the threat that technology poses to the way we live, laugh, and love. In this case, AI stands for Austrian Imperialism and the fight is for Switzerland's independence. Well, sort of. It gets a bit lost … | Continue reading
My mum's friend Rachel has a one-woman show on at the Fringe. As, apparently, the only orthodox Jew on the UK comedy circuit she has constructed a fully interactive Jewish Mother experience. Like several shows on the fringe, it relies on the audience writing questions on cards a … | Continue reading
Fancy a quickie in Scotland's most haunted pub? Smut Slam is a (mildly) interactive performance where a handful of speakers get to tell their dirtiest stories. The audience fills in cards with their questions or confessions which may be read out. The format mostly works. There … | Continue reading
By my count there are at least three "Heated Rivalry" musical parodies on at the Fringe this year. The zeitgeist skates to where the puck was six months ago, I guess! There's also a live version of a HR podcast if you just can't get enough of their wacky ice-capades. Just how … | Continue reading
Our first show at the Fringe! Caught by a rainstorm (in Scotland?!?!?) the app said this was the nearest comedy show to our sodden carcasses and it was free! This is bang-average stand-up. That isn't to disparage it at all. Four Australian blokes each doing 15 minutes of materi … | Continue reading
There's a certain strain of commentator who is just sure that nothing can ever get better. In amongst all the hullaballoo about the UK potentially banning under 16s from social media, I saw a prominent historian say: i assume banning kids from social media will be accompanied b … | Continue reading
How do you tell users that the text they're about to read has been synthetically generated? It is polite to readers that you don't waste their time, it's also important that LLMs don't feed on their own regurgitated slurry lest they pollute their own development. I think there … | Continue reading
The good folks at Thermal Master have sent me another Thermal Camera to review. The last one was a big beastie with a huge touchscreen. This one is much smaller and is designed to plug into your phone's USB-C port. The T2 Max is a chunky little camera - but doesn't weight too mu … | Continue reading
It's 1998 and Doogie, the guy across the hall in our student accommodation, will not stop playing The Boy With The Arab Strap. Eventually I crack and ask him who the band are. He infodumps on me with all the authority of an 18 year our music snob about this cool new Scottish band … | Continue reading