I've got about another 10 months left at my current job and after that... I don't know what I'll do. I've already moved down to 4 days a week in an effort to glide down to FIRE. Do I really want to go back up to 5 days? Could I find somewhere that would be […] | Continue reading
Fourteen years ago, I read Fforde's Shades of Grey and my life hasn't been quite the same since. It was a magical tale, almost totally devoid of exposition, building in an fantasy world like no other. Fans have been clamouring for a sequel ever since. The first few chapters of th … | Continue reading
By and large, the English language doesn't use diacritical marks. Even our loanwords are stripped of them; we drink in a cafe rather than the more pretentious café. This has a consequence for HTML and, by extension, eBooks. As a quick primer, modern computing gives us two main wa … | Continue reading
Today was quite the accidental milestone! I've edited OpenStreetMap over a thousand times! For those who don't know, OSM (OpenStreetMap) is like the Wikipedia of maps. Anyone can go in and edit the map. This isn't a corporate-controlled space where your local knowledge is irrelev … | Continue reading
In a recent episode of Doctor Who, we see a lovely sequence where The Doctor has a nice chat with Paul McCartney of The Beatles. Great larks! The Doctor often meets real people - Dickens, Shakespeare, Rosa Parks. But, crucially, all those people are dead by the time the episode a … | Continue reading
"History is not erased when statues are pulled down. It is made." Some people celebrated when Saddam's statue was toppled in Iraq. Yet those same voices condemn the felling of Coulson, Rhodes, and a dozen other statues. Why? Alex von Tunzelmann has a knack for getting to the hear … | Continue reading
Less than a year ago, in August 2023, we installed a 4.8kWh Solar Battery at a cost of £2,900. Whenever I talk about the upfront capital costs of solar power, people rightly want to know what the payback period is. Well, after less than 10 months, the battery has given us 1MWh. T … | Continue reading
A few years ago, I wrote some code to post Untappd check-ins to Mastodon. I've recently updated it to also post a photo of the beer you're enjoying. First up, you'll need a file called config.py to hold all your API keys: instance = "https://mastodon.social" access_token = "…" wr … | Continue reading
I wrote my first public blog post on 2004-05-111. I immediately followed it up with a brief review of my BlackBerry2. I kept up the blogging for a few months, then it trickled off. I preferred posting on Usenet and other primitive forms of social media. But, by 2007, I was back t … | Continue reading
Hot on the heels of yesterday's post, I've now made all of this blog available in text-only mode. Simply append .txt to the URl of any page and you'll get back the contents in plain UTF-8 text. No formatting, no images (although you can see the alt text), no nothing! Front page h … | Continue reading
This is a silly idea. But it works. I saw Dan Q wondering about plaintext WordPress themes - so I made one. This is what this blog looks like using it: The Code You only need two files. An index.php and a style.css. The CSS file can be empty, but it needs to exist - […] | Continue reading
Did you know that a Suffragette invented the UK's electrical plug? Dame Caroline Haslett was an electrical engineer who foresaw the way that electricity could be used to remove domestic drudgery from women's lives. There is a slim biography of her, written by her sister, which is … | Continue reading
This is a retropost. Written contemporaneously in 2020, but published four years after the events. It's May 2020 as I write this. I'm typing to capture the moment. Right now, I've no idea what the impact is. This is the exact moment, on Thursday May 7th, I hit the Big Red Button … | Continue reading
I few years ago, Virgin Media sent me their "Intelligent WiFi Plus Pods". They're part of a mesh network which is meant to improve WiFi coverage around your house. They were basically fine, but they are hardcoded to your Virgin Media service so can't be used for anything else. I … | Continue reading
This book didn't really resonate with me. I enjoyed both Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquillity, so I think I was expecting something in a similar vein. Instead of ethereal sci-fi, this is a tangled tale which feels like a mish-mash of half a dozen movies. The central premise of … | Continue reading
This has to be the campest, most ludicrously sequinned, joyous shows I've seen in quite some time. I knew nothing about Pippin, but my dad saw it back in the 1970s and loved it - so I snagged us a couple of tickets. The story itself is fun enough; an over-privileged princeling go … | Continue reading
You receive a call on your phone. The polite call centre worker on the line asks for you by name, and gives the name of your bank. They say they're calling from your bank's fraud department. "Yeah, right!" You think. Obvious scam, isn't it? You tell the caller to do unmentionable … | Continue reading
While attending IndieWebCamp in Brighton a few weeks ago, a bunch of us were talking about blogging. What is post? What should it contain? What's optional? Someone (probably Jeremy Keith said: A blog post doesn't need a title. In a literal sense, he was wrong. The HTML specificat … | Continue reading
I've launched a WordPress Plugin for an extremely niche use-case. WP GeSHi Highlight Redux works with WordPress's Classic Editor to convert Markdown to syntax highlighted code. That allows me to write: ```php $a = "Hello"; $b = 5 * 2; echo $a . str($b); ``` And have it displayed … | Continue reading
Opening Night is complex, fascinating, and flawed. It is baffling that this is somehow less than the sum of its parts. The acting and singing are incredible - Nicola Hughes in particular has a magnificent stage presence. The directing and staging is wonderfully innovative - givin … | Continue reading
I was building some flatpack furniture the other day (my life is so glamorous) when I came across an interesting example of how not to write technical documentation. Drill a hole in part A and insert part B once you have ensured part C has been aligned after its connection to A. … | Continue reading
This is a weird book. The politics of the Star Wars universe are rarely deeply examined. The various tax-related shenanigans of The Phantom Menace were derided by geeks but here become a potent source for art as a dozen artists reimagine classic propaganda posters from Earth and … | Continue reading
Many years ago - when I was very young and you were even younger - it was standard for an ISP to provide all their users with a small amount of webspace. Both Pipex and Demon offered webspace back in 1996. If my hazy memory is correct, they offered a few megabytes - more than […] | Continue reading
This is a blast from start to finish. I haven't heard such screams of laughter since, well, the last Mischief production I saw! The Mind Manger is a crap magician dealing with his shitty home life, a tosspot stooge, and an audience full of idiots. Naturally, everything that can g … | Continue reading
The good folks at Kaiweets have sent me their KTI-W01 Thermal Camera to review. You can use coupon code TEB15 for an exclusive 15% discount. Let's get this unboxed and working! Demo Photos The photos are stored as JPGs which can be read by any normal graphics program. They also c … | Continue reading
Every technology is a transitional technology. This book makes the case that the complexity of modern technology is, well, complex! Systems are designed by so many people that their outputs are an utter mystery to anyone - even those deeply enmeshed within them. It is somewhat sc … | Continue reading
The good folk at WAVLINK have sent me their Dual-Screen USB-C adapter to review. Plug it in to a USB-C socket and you now have two extra monitor ports. It'll even work on a USB-A socket, if it is USB 3.0. But is it any good? No. Not really. Hardware It's a fairly chunky hub, […] | Continue reading
My love of Android waxes and wanes according to how much the software feels like it is fighting me. On a good day, I can flash the OS and install whatever apps I want. On a bad day, I can't remove bloatware and I'm forbidden from changing the internals. I started using the latest … | Continue reading
An outstanding and joyous show. Through Rachael Stirling we catch a glimpse of Sarah Siddons - the acclaimed 18th/19th century actress. Stirling - and the entire cast - are exceptional. They transport us backstage with a dazzling array of characters. Every single actor gets a sce … | Continue reading
I was noodling around in PHP the other day and discovered that this works: | Continue reading
I want to make one thing **very** clear. Despite my propensity for IoT gadgetry, I did not connect my toilet to the Internet! It's 2024. Why are you still scraping your arsehole with paper like some kind of 20th century throwback? A decade ago, I got a cheap bidet attachment. It … | Continue reading
Because I'm a grumpy old man, I don't use Gutenberg or Block themes on my WordPress. Instead, I write everything in Markdown. When I write code snippets in Markdown, they look like this: ```php $a = 1; echo $a; if ($a < 5) { // Do Something return thing( $a, true ); } ``` But […] | Continue reading
This has to be the most infuriating bug report I've ever submitted. I went to type in my 2FA code on a website - but no numbers appeared on screen. Obviously, I was an idiot and had forgotten to press the NumLock button. D'oh! I toggled it on and typed again. No numbers appeared. … | Continue reading
Oooh! This is an interesting slice of philosophical fiction. On the surface, it is a fairly standard story about a mysterious Victorian book which contains dark secrets and has since been lost to history. You probably know how it goes; our fearless heroine finds a long-lost copy, … | Continue reading
I've been using Android since before it was released in the UK. When I was working at Vodafone, I got a pre-release HTC device with an early version of Android on it. I've been pretty much in the Android ecosystem ever since. Recently, I treated myself to an upgrade - a Pixel 8 P … | Continue reading
I want to make emoji bigger than the text that surrounds them. At my age and eyesight, it can be difficult to tell the difference between 😃, 😄, and 😊 when they are as small as the text. Is there a way to use CSS to increase the font size of specific charac … | Continue reading
You can safely skip the first 45 minutes of this movie. It's the most clichéd Dead Poets / Breakfast Club nonsense I've seen in quite some time. As for the rest? Well… it is shot on film with a unusual aspect ratio. So, you know, that's cool... There's also lots of ✨acting✨ and q … | Continue reading
Recap - I want to build an NFC reader expansion card for the FrameWork laptop. So I've bought a couple of components. This is the ACR1251T-E2 - it's a USB pen-drive sized NFC reader with a side-out USB-A plug. Costs about £40. There's a recessed green LED which flashes to let you … | Continue reading
Recap - I want to build an NFC reader expansion card for the FrameWork laptop. So I've bought a couple of components. This is the ACM1252U-Z2 and Oh! It is a dinky little component! The only sign that it is working is a flashing green LED. There's no buzzer on the board. It reall … | Continue reading
If you got the chance to travel in time and space, with an immortal alien, and got to rescue the universe again and again - would you ever give up that life? Would you be content to go from unravelling the mysteries of the universe and fighting DALEKs to, I don't know, marrying a … | Continue reading
Humans are lazy. That's why we have computers; to do the boring work for us. I recently downloaded a file. The website said the file should have a SHA-256 hash of: ca978112ca1bbdcafac231b39a23dc4da786eff8147c4e72b9807785afee48bb So I ran sha256 filename on my machine. And then la … | Continue reading
There are lots of one-man plays. There are a decent number of one-woman shows. Where are the one-girl stories? This is Rosie Day's attempt to fix that imbalance. The plot isn't particularly original (it is hard being a teenage girl!!!) but the way the story unfolds is magical. It … | Continue reading
One of the most frustrating things in modern technology is the effort spent trying to artificially restrict abundance. Take, for example, this tale from museum-worker Aaron Cope: I was out with a friend who worked for Twitter and I asked them whether it would be possible for the … | Continue reading
My Linux laptop used to suspend perfectly. I'd close the lid and it would go to sleep. Open it up, it would spring to life - presenting me with a password screen. But, some time in the last few months, it has stopped doing that. If I close the lid, it keeps running. This is […] | Continue reading
Some of my best friends are designers. But I think we can all agree that - however well-meaning - they can be a little obsessive. Whether it is fretting over tiny details, or trying to align to a grid which doesn't exist, or spending time removing useful affordances in the name o … | Continue reading
The great thing about getting older is that the popular culture of your youth is repackaged and sold back to you with increasing urgency. Yes, I want that Lego set I couldn't afford as a kid. Why, of course I want to watch a reboot of Frasier! Another few Ghostbusters movies? I'm … | Continue reading
Several years ago, at the start of the pandemic, I tried using Nintendo's Ring Fit as an exercise method. It didn't last long. I felt I was spending too much time earning in-game currency, making choices on what to spend it on, crafting, managing inventory, choosing power-ups, an … | Continue reading
This is the 3,000th blog post I've published on this site! Bloody hell! I first started a blog on Blogger.com in 2004 - twenty years ago. Like all blogs, I managed half a dozen posts before I forgot about it. Cut to 2007 and I decided to launch shkspr.mobi as a weird site dedicat … | Continue reading