(Or, watching culture evolve in real-time.) I love Mad Magazine. My mother introduced it to me as a child. Although half the jokes flew over my head, I was hooked. I've spent years scouring bookshops for ancient Mad paperbacks, and picking through the discard pile at comic-book stores. One thing which always struck me was how progressive Mad was. Even back in the 1960s, it was an…
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This is a sponsored post - from the good folk at GearBest. Introducing the Onda V96. A 3G tablet for around £60. Hardware It's a pretty solid set of specs. The 9.6 inch IPS Screen runs at 1280*800. Colours are clear from all angles, skin tones are well reproduced. The screen is bright - if anything a little too bright on its dimmest setting. There's 5 point multi-touch - so you can use …
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A warning to programmers - try to understand how people will use your error codes. This morning, I was confronted with a rather bemusing error message on my WordPress blog: Ok, so this should "never happen" and yet somehow it has. I wonder what on earth the error code means? I selected the error code and Googled it! I just copied and pasted the error message into Google and got back a set …
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We've all been faced with this screen, right? You haven't logged in to a website for a while, so it prompts you to change your password. sigh Annoying but probably necessary. The problem was, every time I tried to change my password, it told me that my old password was invalid. The one that I'd just used to log in. I use the incredible LastPass Password Manager - so I knew I wasn't typing…
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Cheques (checks if you're American) are an amazing legacy technology. Invented in the 17th Century, they immediately transformed the financial landscape. They allowed anyone to transfer both vast and trivial sums of wealth with ease. Whole industries grew up around them - one of my first jobs was programming binary loadlifters repairing computerised cheque-readers - they're an example of a…
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Is it the end-of-days for the humble headphone jack? As Apple prepare to remove it from their next iPhone - with Android manufacturers no-doubt following suit - I thought now would be a good time to look at the previous occasions when smartphone makers have tried to kill the headphone jack. This is a non-exhaustive history, mostly drawing from my industry experience and drawers full of old…
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A couple of months ago I was giving a talk in Romania - the organisers had set up a technology expo showing off some great local start-ups. One which caught my eye was TinTag. Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentTintag is pretty clever. BLE beacon but has built in Qi recharging. Very useful. thetintag.com#DevTalks pic.x.com/sjizdew274❤️ 3💬 2🔁 010:29 - Wed 11 May 2016 I've previously reviewed the…
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Remember when PayPal was a cool new company dedicated to radically improving online payments? Seems like it was ages ago. Now PayPal is little better than then bloated banks it sought to overthrow. Arcane bureaucracy, impenetrable fees, and a lamentable approach to security. I was minded recently to switch on 2-Factor-Authentication (2FA) for all my accounts. Whenever I want to log in, I give …
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A few years ago, Google introduced a new image format to the world - WebP. It purports to be a superior image format for the web but, like all new toys, it takes a little while for the bugs to be ironed out. I found a curious case where some WebP images are rendered upside down! On the left is Opera for Android, centre is Chrome for Android, and on the right is Firefox for Android. Firefox…
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I am an idiot. I am a Grade A+, certified, undeniable plonker. The man in the hire car office looked at me with barely concealed contempt. Fair, really. He'd asked for my Driver's Licence and I'd collapsed to my knees at the sudden realisation that the slim plastic card was 1,700 miles away from the Canary Islands. "I am sorry sir, but there is really nothing I can do." My wife was hobbling …
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I like to go on holiday in order to read books. After last year's post a few people expressed surprise that I hadn't included many female authors. I felt compelled to rectify that, so I decided to read only female authors this holiday. I only had 7 days, and did quite a lot of sight-seeing, so there's only 6 entries here. Will try for a more relaxing holiday next year! First up, "Station…
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A former advisor to the Prime Minister was recently convicted on charges of downloading indecent images of underage girls. I don't want to go into detail about whether or not his punishment is adequate, but I would like to talk about this curious remark made by the Judge during his sentencing: beginning today and lasting for two years, you are prohibited from using any device capable of…
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