A simple and free way to post RSS feeds to Threads


Threads logo.

Threads is Meta's attempt to disrupt the social media landscape. Whether you care for it or not, there are a lot of users there. And, sometimes, you have to go where the audience is. Here's how I build a really simple PHP tool to post to Threads using their official API. This allows you to […]

Continue reading →

Revenge Of The Mutant Algorithms - The Guerilla Information Team


Book cover. A distorted Kraken appears on an old fashioned computer screen. Several hands type on distorted keyboards.

Throughout November I'll be releasing new weird sci-fi short stories. Each one is a campfire horror yarn, with a technological twist. Your feedback is highly appreciated. Everything you read is possible - there's no magic, just sufficiently advanced technology. Chapter 4 - The Guerilla Information Team The GITs didn't mean to cause all this trouble. […]

Continue reading →

Revenge of the Mutant Algorithms - Universal Soldier Bin


Book cover. A distorted Kraken appears on an old fashioned computer screen. Several hands type on distorted keyboards.

I gently lowered my face into the autoshave. A hundred AI blades started re-sculpting my beard into this month's mandatory fashion. The snug rubber vacuum seal held tight against my skin while the microbots collected the discarded hairs and applied antiseptic to the few areas where the blades had misfired. Johanna, my partner, thought they […]

Continue reading →

Revenge Of The Mutant Algorithms - The Myth of the Fall of Icarus


Book cover. A distorted Kraken appears on an old fashioned computer screen. Several hands type on distorted keyboards.

Throughout November I'll be releasing new weird sci-fi short stories. Each one is a campfire horror yarn, with a technological twist. Your feedback is highly appreciated. Everything you read is possible - there's no magic, just sufficiently advanced technology. Chapter 2 - The Myth of the Fall of Icarus Icarus had quarrelled with his father […]

Continue reading →

A Cheap and Lazy way to create Mastodon Bots using… BlueSky?!


With the sad news that BotsIn.Space is closing down, I needed to find a new way to host some of my automated accounts. I didn't want to spin up an entirely new instance, or self-host anything. So here's what I ended up doing. RSS → BlueSky → Bridgy → Mastodon RSS to BlueSky I set […]

Continue reading →

Revenge Of The Mutant Algorithms! Are Memories Made Of This?


Book cover. A distorted Kraken appears on an old fashioned computer screen. Several hands type on distorted keyboards.

Throughout November I'll be releasing new weird sci-fi short stories. Each one is a stand-alone story. Think of them as technological campfire horror yarns, each with a little twist. Your feedback is highly appreciated. Everything you read is possible - there's no magic, just sufficiently advanced technology. Chapter 1 - Are Memories Made Of This? […]

Continue reading →

Using phpList for a blog's newsletter


RSS Settings Screen.

Some people like to receive this blog via email. I previously used JetPack to send out subscriber messages - but it became increasingly clear that Automattic isn't a good steward of such things. I couldn't find any services which would let me send a few thousand subscribers a few emails per week, at zero cost. […]

Continue reading →

Is this a bug in every Markdown (Extra) parser?


The Markdown logo.

Markdown is, I think it is fair to say, a frustrating "specification". It's origins are a back-of-a-fag-packet document and a buggy Perl script - and we've been dealing with the consequences ever since. There are now multiple Markdown parsers, each with their own idiosyncrasies. To make matters worse, there's a set of extensions popularly known […]

Continue reading →

Highly Predictable Interactions


3 playing cards on a table.

I remember the first time as an adult I ordered a takeaway. I picked up the phone, menu in hand, and prepared to do battle. The person on the other end of the phone didn't speak English, my menu was out of date, they couldn't understand my address, and I didn't have the right money […]

Continue reading →

Using a CSS cursor to show the external link's favicon


A link with the Google logo hovering over it.

How do you know where this link goes to? If you're on a desktop, you might notice that hovering your mouse over it displays the destination somewhere on your screen. If you're a geek, you could view the source-code of a page. Can we improve the experience for users? Here's an attempt. Try hovering your […]

Continue reading →