It's my birthday! As is customary, here's my year in review. See 2017, 2016, 2015, 2013, 2012, 2011, and 2010. It has felt like a bit of a "holding pattern" year. When I started writing this post, I really didn't feel like I'd accomplished much. Turns out, I'm an idiot and have been franticly busy! Domestic Life Huge thanks to The Hodge for turning me on to this great way to track to-dos and achievements. Cheap chalkboard-paper and some chalky-pens. Sure, I could start yet-another Trello…
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Pop quiz! Which is bigger - 25% or 20%? That's a pretty simple question, isn't it? If your boss asked if you wanted a 25% bonus, or a 20% bonus, you know which one you'd pick. The UK Government has a savings product called a LISA - Lifetime Individual Savings Account. The premise is pretty simple. You pay in up to £4,000 per year and the government will give you a 25% bonus on your payments. (I'm currently a Civil Servant, but I don't work on LISA. These are my personal opinions.) Now, …
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I've been a long time user of LastPass - but over the last year, they've abandoned their Linux customers and insisted that users pay to access enhanced security. Forget that noise! I started looking for a new password manager and, on the recommendation of several friends, started using BitWarden. Pros Open Source! Works in the browser - tried in Firefox and Chrome. Fast, and easy to use. Linux app - handy, but a little clunky to use. Bonus CLI tool available Android app - great at…
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I have friends. More than one! I also have a home full of smart-gadgets which are controlled by apps. The two don't mix. This is yet another complaint about solipsistic app design. Let's take my Lifx bulbs. I have a friend staying for a few days, and he needs to be able to turn lights on and off. Lifx make this functionally impossible. The available options are... Give my full email address & password to him. This feels suboptimal. Allow him on to my main WiFi. Again, suboptimal. This…
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This isn't a new speaking tip - and it is one I've stolen from several other speakers on the conference circuit - but I want to explain how it made me feel to use it. I started my talk at Hackference Birmingham with an impassioned plea to the audience. If you don't understand something I've said - please don't wait for the end of my talk. Stick your hand up and ask. Because I guarantee you, several other people will be just as confused. Hackference attracts a mixed crowd. If I'm talking to a …
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One of Android's mottos is "Be Together; Not The Same". What does that mean to you? To me, it means that you don't need to conform to a single way of doing things. Sadly, Google seems to be moving far away from that ideal. The latest change - adaptive icons. All "adaptive icons" means is that every unique icon has to be constrained in a circle. It makes every icon look monotonous and, in some cases, shrinks the icon so that they're hard to see even on large screens. There's a cognitive…
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Last week I took an all-too-short visit to Aberdeen for Open Data Camp 6. A two-day unconference looking at Open Data from an international perspective. What works, what doesn't, how we can do better, and what exciting things are coming up. I was mostly there for work - but managed to spend some time talking about our personal project OpenBenches. Here's a brief run down of what I loved, and what could have gone slightly better. Love Scotland! It is so nice to attend an event outside of…
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Here's how to control the Toshiba 49U6863 - and other similar models - using Telnet. Quickstart At the command prompt, type telnet 192.168.0.123 4660 then type 1012 and your TV will turn on. MAGIC! Background After six years of use, I decided to upgrade my old 37 inch Panasonic TV. I know Toshiba aren't the coolest brand around, but the 49 inch monster was half the price of the old TV. Yay Moore's Law! BUT! It turns out that Toshiba don't actually manufacture their own TVs. They just…
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For a musical that's over 90 years old, Anything Goes is pretty funny, lightly charming, and wildly racist. A few weeks ago we saw a youth-theatre production of the classic Cole Porter show. The cast were enthusiastic, the band in fine form, the voices loud, and - apparently - at no point did anyone there say "Hang on... is it OK for a bunch of white actors to put on exaggerated Chinese accents for a laugh?" You can gender-bend the cast, race-flip the characters, muddle-about with their…
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Quick review of https://www.moneydashboard.com/ - sorry for the lack of screenshots, but I don't need you seeing the state of my bank balance! Open Banking is here! For the technical among you, it means I can use OAuth to give a read-only token to an authorised financial institution. Updates are streamed in real-time. They can then do "stuff" with my financial details. For the non-technical, Open Banking lets me automatically send my bank statements to an aggregator. They then analyse them. …
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There's a lovely Twitter feed called Yore Computer - run by Rob Manuel, it randomly tweets out scans of 1980s computer magazines. A wonderful mix of nostalgia, dated references, primitive graphics, incompatible file formats, and unrealistic promises by advertisers. Here are a few of my favourites that I've spotted. Behold! The comment section - hasn't changed much! YORE COMPUTER 🕹@yorecomputer8000 Plus Magazine Issue 34, page 88archive.org/stream/8000-pl… pic.x.com/qstatttxut❤️ 8💬 1🔁 005:48…
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I popped round to an NHS dentist a few months ago - and they stuck my head on one of these contraptions. The Kodak 8000C takes a panoramic X-ray, giving a superior view of your teeth. Nifty. The dentist showed me where my wisdom teeth were and I was impressed with how high resolution the image was. Afterwards, I asked the dentist if I could have a copy of the scan. She wasn't terribly sure. She thought that she had to charge me for it. Then wondered if there was a data protection problem.…
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