Rather than wait until the end of the December, I like to use my birthday to reflect on how the year has been. This has been a very weird year. I mean, even aside from all the news, it was just an absolute mess of a year. I ended 2015 by unexpectedly winning tickets to the Star Wars premiere! That day in December was, basically, the high point of 2016... I started off the year with an amazing job opportunity. I was all set for a perfect role which then, unexpectedly, fizzled away. No one's…
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If you have a TingTag, your location is being broadcast without encryption! Earlier this year I purchased and reviewed the TinTag. I've spent the last month trying to get hold of the company to report a serious privacy problem with their Android app. I've not received an adequate response, so I'm publishing this post to let affected users know about the issue. The TinTag is a BLE tracker. It's designed to attach to your keys or bag. An app on your phone can send a message to the tag,…
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Off the back of my ThingMonk talk I was invited on to BBC Radio 4's PM programme to talk about the Internet of Things in the home. Listen to me on BBC Radio 4 - about 47 minutes in 🔊 💾 Download this audio file. Want me on your show or podcast? Give me a call! You can read more about my IoT adventures, including: Singing to my lightbulbs. Hacking my vacuum cleaner. Hacking my electric car. Getting hacked by my light switches. Securing my security cameras. Thanks to Chris Valla…
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Moribund train company Great Western Rail currently have a two month backlog of complaints. I think that this breaches their agreement with the Office of Rail and Road. In an ideal world GWR would be forced to improve, or be stripped of their franchise. I've spent an utterly miserable month commuting between Oxford and London on GWR's over-crowded and decrepit trains. I was delayed around 21 times in a single month. That's close to 80% of all journeys that I caught arriving late. An…
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Always a delight to be interviewed by the BBC again. This time, talking about our Solar Batteries. You can listen again on the BBC iPlayer. The solar stuff starts at 14m 30s, with my interview at 17 minutes. You can also hear my electric car being charged :-) Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentBeing interviewed by a nice man from the BBC about @Edent_Solar, @OxfordSolarLive and @edent_car!Thanks @JonDgls! pic.x.com/uvPiXQRM2r❤️ 4💬 0🔁 018:08 - Tue 18 October 2016 🔊 Solar Power, Free-range E…
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This blog post looks at the 3D conversion process for The Force Awakens. Where it succeeds and where it falls short. Last year I managed to blag tickets to the premiere of The Force Awakens - in 2D. The next day, we saw it again in 3D. I've never been a huge fan of 3D films and, despite owning a 3D TV, think the format is a bit of a gimmick. But the 3D Star Wars was something else! Most of the scenes really didn't benefit - but some of the special effects just popped out of the…
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Just a quick shout out to the wonderful people at Ink Edibles. I was heading to a bunch of conferences and was looking for a fun and quirky way to promote one of my websites. At some of the bigger conventions, I'd noticed people handing out branded confectionery. All the sites I went to would only take orders for several thousand units - which was far too expensive for me. I stumbled across a new Manchester based company which will print colour logos on to all sorts of sweets. Terence Eden…
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My friend died last month. When I was a lad, it seemed that I was always going to funerals for some ancient relative. Everyone looks old when you're a kid. But my friend wasn't old. He was about my age. He had a trendy, digital job. The funeral is done, the grief lingers on. What should I do now? Do I stop following his accounts? I don't want to. In part, because I don't want to think he's gone. But on a practical level, if I don't then I know some well-meaning AI will suddenly say…
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One of the hardest things about attending conferences with multiple tracks is deciding which talk to go to. 👩🏻💻Karina Pencarski@kary_keyReplying to @hackferencebrum@hackferencebrum is breaking my heart, 2 amazing talks by @supersole with Servo and @etiene_d with my lovely Lua at the same time! #hf2016❤️ 2💬 1🔁 013:21 - Fri 21 October 2016 If your friends are talking opposite each other, it is particularly hard. As a speaker, though, it's even tougher to know you're up against a brilliant spea…
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In September 2016, I was delighted to deliver this talk to ThingMonk 2016. This is the 20 minute distilation of my adventures Singing to my lightbulbs, hacking my vacuum cleaner, finding my car's source code, hacking my electric car, getting hacked by my light switches, securing my security cameras, and a whole host of other IoT nonsense. Huge thanks to Bennycrime for filming, and the whole ThingMonk team. If you'd like me to speak at your conference, please get in touch. A selection of …
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Imagine you have a series of number you wish to sort. Sorting is a well known computer science problem - generally speaking you compare one value to the next and then move the item either up or down a list. With "English" characters, that's fairly easy. When a computer sees the character 1 it's really seeing the Unicode character U+0031. When it sees 2 it's really seeing the character U+0032 and so on. The Arabic numbers we use (0 - 9) have an identical ordering in Unicode. This makes it…
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The history of slavery and its devastating aftermath is too complex for a simple blog post, but I wish to draw your attention to how slave owners were compensated when slaves gained their freedom. And whereas, towards compensating the Persons at present entitled to the Services of the Slaves to be manumitted and set free by virtue of this Act for the Loss of such Services, His Majesty's most dutiful and loyal Subjects the Commons of Great Britain and Ireland in Parliament assembled have…
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