What can be said? Macca. Live on stage. All the classic songs, a band that hits all the right notes, and an arena full of people who are singing their hearts out. Way back in the 1990s, I bumped into Paul when he was doing a poetry reading at my university. I'd missed out on tickets because I was a lazy student and didn't feel like waiting in a long queue. So I hung around the stage door and got a quick photo of him. Those were back in the analogue days before selfies were a thing. I've no…
Continue reading →
Analogies are like soufflés - they all collapse eventually. Food can be delicious, but certain foods can cause people physical pain or, in some cases, death. In most parts of the civilised world, governments have food safety laws. They mandate how to properly prepare, store, label, and serve food. In the UK, the laws are onerous for a large food manufacturers because we recognise that introducing pathogens into the supply-chain could cause mass harm. But even small food shops are subject to …
Continue reading →
As of today, I've quit. I started working full time before going to university. I worked part-time during my studies. Graduated into a crappy job. Got a place on a prestigious grad scheme. Worked my way up through the public and private sector. Start-ups and Ministries of State. Constantly working. Not any more! Yesterday was my last day in the office. Laptop and lanyard handed back. Out-Of-Office on permanently. Today is my first full day of being… what? Free? Unemployed? On extended s…
Continue reading →
Neal Stephenson's "Seveneves" is one of those massive, crushing, momentous, century-spanning and era-defining hard sci-fi novels. It starts with the immortal line "The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason." Classic! It dives into a world plagued with Kessler syndrome and the grimly inevitable consequences for the future of humanity. Scalzi's latest book is cheesy homage - fromage if you will - to that giant of literature. It asks an equally important question. What if,…
Continue reading →
Because I'm dead fancy and know lots of mega-important people, I occasionally get to go to swanky places. A few weeks ago, I was invited to the House of Lords for a high-powered business meeting about important stuff. The best meetings take place in opulent surroundings, so we adjourned to The Woolsack - a bar nestled deep within the Lords. As a prolific user of Untappd - the social network for beer drinkers - I'm always on the lookout for a beer I've never met before. So I was delighted to…
Continue reading →
This is a real mixed bag of a book. Some of it is outrageously fun stories of real-life diplomacy and derring-do, and other parts are tediously basic information with plenty of padding. I suppose it's helpful for the uninitiated to understand the lay of the land but, when mixed with the frequent name-dropping, comes across as one of those senior leaders who is desperate to prove they are still relevant. Much like Turn the Ship Around by L. David Marquet, you have to just accept that some…
Continue reading →
Back in 2022, I wrote this rather grumpy post on Mastodon, the federated social media platform. @Edent@mastodon.socialTerence EdenMastodon enforces a "noreferrer" on all external links.I have mixed feelings about that.As a blogger, I want to see *where* visitors are coming from. I also like to see (and sometimes join in) with the conversations they're having.But, I get that people want privacy and don't want to "leak" where they're visiting from.Is it such a bad thing to tell a website "I was…
Continue reading →
My long journey to replace my teeth is (I hope) at an end. Last week, my lovely dentist fitted my two custom-made teeth. After all the months of drilling, screwing, photographing, x-raying, and prodding, the last fitting was little more than gluing. I now have two colour-matched gnashers installed in my bonce. And all my brain can do is scream… ARGH! THERE'S SOMETHING IN MY MOUTH! The first few weeks of having the teeth removed was weird. My tongue kept prodding the gaps as if it were h…
Continue reading →
I take great delight in seeing people reply to my blog posts. I use WebMentions to collect replies from social media and other sites. But which of my posts has the most comments? Here's a snipped to stick in your functions.php file. It allows you to add ?comment-order to any WordPress URl and have the posts with the most comments on top. // Add ordering by comments add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'pre_get_posts_by_comments' ); function pre_get_posts_by_comments( $query ) { // Do nothing if …
Continue reading →
A few weeks ago, I got a chance to speak truth to power. I used my WordPress.org account to sign in to the official WordPress.org Slack where the various WordPress dramas were being discussed. After a brief chat about the latest shenanigans, I publicly replied to the CEO: Here's a link to the full exchange There was no reply forthcoming - although, as you can see, my message gathered a fair few positive reactions. As was inevitable, the next morning I found myself locked out of the Slack.…
Continue reading →
This has been a tough year - I've found it hard to get back in to reading. A few books knocked me off my stride and the lack of a commute meant less downtime for reading. Nevertheless, 46 books isn't too bad! Of note, for the first time in ages I read a couple of paper books! Like some kind of old-fashioned cave-man! Myself When Young from 1938 is astounding. If you want to understand proto-feminism or how society viewed itself, it is a must read. The Intergalactic Omniglot was a book I…
Continue reading →
This is so fucking stupid. There is no way to update the logo of a custom social connection on Auth0 without using the command line. On literally every other service I've used, there's a little box to upload a logo. But Okta have a funny idea of what developers want. And, to make matters worse, their documentation contains an error! They don't listen to community requests or take bug reports, so I'm blogging in the hope that this is useful to you. The Command curl --request PATCH \ -H…
Continue reading →
