Some background reading. Skip if you’re familiar with fonts. A font file contains a list of characters (usually letters, numbers, and punctuation) and glyphs (the drawn representation of that character). It is, of course, a lot more complicated than that. Each character has a codepoint which is represented in hexadecimal. For example, U+0057 is the…
Continue reading →Mobile Phones of Doctor Who – BONUS ENTRY!
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Hello gang! I’ve identified all of the mobile phones used in every single episode of Doctor Who! This bonus post looks at a very special entry from s01e01 – but feel free to rummage in the archives. A Rose By Any Other Name… The very first episode of New-Who has some lovely zeitgeisty phones. But…
Continue reading →The New Mutants – one of the more interesting superhero movies
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I hate superhero movies – let’s get that out of the way first. They’re a bag of clichés, where flashing lights are considered an adequate replacement for new ideas. 2017’s “Logan” is the only one I’ve found interesting. What happens to a Superhero after they’re too old for this shit? What does it mean to…
Continue reading →Book Review: Algorithms of Oppression – Safiya Noble
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Run a Google search for “black girls”—what will you find? “Big Booty” and other sexually explicit terms are likely to come up as top search terms. But, if you type in “white girls,” the results are radically different. The suggested porn sites and un-moderated discussions about “why black women are so sassy” or “why black…
Continue reading →Review: Moixa Solar Battery
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A few years ago, I took part in a local trial to install a solar battery in our home. The battery was excellent – and made a reasonable difference for our energy use. Sadly, last year, it died. It was prototype hardware, and these things happen. Moixa offered to replace it with an updated model…
Continue reading →What would happen if computers never got any faster?
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My first computer was a BBC Micro. It could do basic graphics at a resolution of 640×256 – with 8 different colours. Not a typo. Eight! The mono speaker produced bleeps and bloops. It was basic, in all senses of the word. Eventually, talented hackers found a way for it to do simplistic 3D graphics…
Continue reading →Movie Review – The Craft: Legacy
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A group of high school students form a coven of witches. A sequel to the 1996 film, “The Craft”. This bills itself as a sequel to the mid-90’s classic, but it’s a completely independent movie. Although it is not as dark or scary as its predecessor, it’s a fun and challenging film. What starts out…
Continue reading →Three small tips for shrinking SVG images
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I work on the SuperTinyIcons project. Our aim is to make pixel perfect SVG icons in under 1KB. Because SVG can be quite verbose, every single redundant byte we can eliminate is a byte we can use in drawing. Here are three quick tips for shaving a few bytes off an SVG. Decimal Magic SVG…
Continue reading →How do you raise a software bug with a book publisher?
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Recently, I bought an eBook which has a bug. I’d like to explain what the bug is, why it is a problem, and how I’m trying to get it corrected. Amazon sells eBooks in KF8 format. That is an ePub with some proprietary extras. ePub is a standard based off HTML5. You can read the…
Continue reading →Living the Stochastic Life
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When I become Emperor Of The World, I will implement my favourite method of electing officials. The Single Stochastic Vote. It’s a cheap, simple, and quick way of electing people. It retains the best features of First Past The Post and Proportional Representation. Here’s how it works: Everyone in the constituency votes for their most…
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