Terence Eden’s Blog
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The bad news is - this book isn't released until September 2023... The good news is - I have an advance reader copy. So I get to revel in it now! I appreciate that you might not consider that much of an upside. But sucks to be you, I guess? Scalzi's writing reminds me why […]
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Apple have an Android version of their Apple Music app. The Amazon FireStick runs Android. So you can run Apple Music on the FireStick, right? WRONG! The official advice is to link Apple Music to the Alexa Skill - with its justifiably low review score. But we're hackers, we can do better than that, right? […]
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The "Baader-Meinhof phenomenon" is that weird experience where you learn of a new word or phrase and then suddenly see it crop up everywhere. At the time of writing, the Wikipedia entry for "frequency illusion" said: The name "Baader-Meinhof phenomenon" was coined in 1994 by an online message board user, who, after mentioning the name […]
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I am not non-binary. I am cis-gendered - and pretty much the definition of "default male". And yet, whenever I encounter a form which has it as an option, I select my title to be "Mx". I've even stopped my usual practice of choose His Excellency - much to the dismay of my postie, I'm […]
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I recently downloaded a single-page HTML template for a project I was working on. I wanted a good-looking scaffold to help me getting running quickly. The code had an attribution licence which I was happy to comply with. I ended up removing about a whole bunch of the HTML that I didn't need. That also […]
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I want to detect if a web browser is running on a device which is capable of placing a telephone call. Is that possible? I'm going to go with a cautious "no - not quite". Although there are several proxies which get you part of the way there. Here's a link to a telephone number […]
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I was trying to install a new open source project and was having a hell of a time. Nothing seemed to be working despite me following the tutorial to the letter. I was getting the most bizarre error messages and was on the verge of quitting to become a goat farmer, when I threw one […]
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There's an old joke about a man who reads his morning paper in bed. If he's not listed in the obituaries, he gets up to start his day. A few months ago I was checking my email in bed (always a bad idea) when the vanity alert I have for my name appeared. Google took […]
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This is annecdata - not a serious academic study. Adjust your expectations accordingly. When I first got online, the World Wide Web was still in its infancy - so CompuServe was my gateway to the Internet. I loved their well organised chat room. A couple of clicks and I could be discussing Babylon 5 with […]
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As we head unto an AI dominated future, the Turing test will probably become less like a Voight-Kampff test and more like a warzone Shibboleth. Yesterday, I asked the Alexa to set a timer. "What do you want to name your timer?" She It asked. "Bow," I replied. "Bow timer set," it said. Except… that […]
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