I like to listen to music while I work. I find - especially in an open plan office - that it is an essential aid to concentration. That said, I find music with lyrics particularly problematic as my brain prefers to concentrate on the words rather than the task in hand. On long flights, I often use a white noise generator to drown out sound. I've recently started listening to random music. A simple command line script to generate a highly synthetic / chiptune / glitchnoise neverending piece…
Continue reading →
Here's a quick way to display how many times a WordPress post has been read. For this, you will need: A blog running WordPress. The JetPack plugin installed. The ability to edit your themes. Here's the snippet of code I'm using to add "This post has been read 12,345 times". I'll explain how it works in a bit more detail. if( function_exists( 'stats_get_csv' ) ) { $stats_query = "page_stats_for_" . get_the_ID(); if ( false === ( $special_query_results =…
Continue reading →
I love my keyboards. I mean, I have an unhealthy obsession with them. I spend a lot of time typing and the cramped keyboards which come with most laptops and MacBooks just don't cut it for me. Their poor ergonomics leave my wrists in pain. For years I was a devotee of the Microsoft 4000 Keyboard. It's a big old beast - and that's its main drawback; it's just too large to carry around. It could also do with an integrated USB hub if it's going to take up one of my precious laptop ports. So…
Continue reading →
Last week I was contacted by the BBC's consumer affairs programme "You And Yours" for my expert opinion on a new type of mobile phone scam. Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentWarning! I'll be on @BBCRadio4's You And Yours shortly.Please tune your wirelesses accordingly. pic.x.com/6f3zsiwuin❤️ 4💬 1🔁 011:18 - Mon 11 April 2016 Several people had contacted the show to say that they had missed calls from the number "08454290015" or "08439800142" - despite not answering the call, nor dialling it them…
Continue reading →
Here's a simple step that Twitter App Developers can do to reduce the amount of abuse which is generated on the platform. A few friends of mine regularly receive harassment on Twitter. Typically, there are two ways to deal with it: Mute the offending user. This means their tweets to you never show up in your replies. Block the offending user. The same as muting, except the offender is also prevented from seeing your Tweets while they're logged in. There's a flaw with both of…
Continue reading →
This is a quick unboxing / set-up / review of the Chipolo. This was a nifty piece of schwag from the Twitter Developer Relations team, to whom I'm grateful. The Chipolo is a multi-purpose Bluetooth Low Energy tag. It's like a high-tech version of one of those things which you attach to your keyring which will beep when whistled at. As the box says, it will work up to 60 meters away. It'll beep when you lose it, and it can make your phone beep if someone moves it out of range - handy if…
Continue reading →
I was listening to the excellent RHLSTP - because I am one of the cool kids - when the guest, Richard Bacon, made a curious confession about his adventures bringing News Bunny to the State Opening of Parliament. I got a letter from Black Rod - who runs both houses […] and it says that I am banned for life from the House of Commons and the House of Lords. It's at the 7 minute 20 mark on the video - or listen to the whole thing on SoundCloud. "Hmmm…" I wondered, "Who else has been banned fro…
Continue reading →
Last week I ran a mentoring session with a young woman working in technology. She's smart, capable, dedicated, confident and utterly un-ambitious. She was incredibly frustrated that all of the training courses and women's networks she had found were fixated on her becoming a manager, an executive, or a CEO. We were both in agreement that our industry needs diverse representation at all levels - but that doesn't mean that everyone wants to reach those levels. In her case, she was loving work …
Continue reading →
Just a bit of fun for a Friday afternoon - and spoilers ahoy! Star Wars VII contains the most magnificence dream sequence. When Rey lays her hand on a lightsaber for the first time, the world dissolves as a cacophony of audio hallucinations plague her. It's a short sequence - lasting just under a minute - but the sound design is beautiful. After seeing the fabulous Path of a Lightsaber video I thought I'd have a go at deconstructing all the voices which went into creating such a mesmerising…
Continue reading →
