Every year, I take part in NaBloPoMo the Judoon mating festival where people blog every day in November. I ended November 2019 with more blog posts than I knew what to do with, so I tried blogging every day in January. And then, well, February is only a short month, isn't it? If all has gone to plan, you're reading this at the end of 2020 and this is my 366th blog post! Fucking leap years, eh? WHY!?!? They say every day is a school-day. I try to blog about the new things I've learned, or…
Continue reading →
Google Calendar is one of the cornerstones of G-Suite. Sadly Google don't dedicate enough resources to develop into its full potential. Other than a new icon and forced Google Meet integration, it hasn't had many improvements recently. Leaving it to the community to pick up the pieces. Here's how to get an external calendar integrated with your internal calendar. Why is this useful? I'm starting a university course soon. They give me an .ics calendar feed of all my upcoming classes,…
Continue reading →
Lots of pixels have been spilled recently on whether you should build your own stuff, or buy stuff and then configure it. Wardley Mapping (which I still don't understand) seems to say that you should buy commodity items and only build where you can add unique value. And I think I agree with that. For work though, not for personal stuff. There are two reasons why you should build your own stuff. These aren't good reasons, and they're full of exceptions, but I think it's a useful template. …
Continue reading →
One of the annoying things about being on the bleeding edge, is that some things don't work as you expect. I use the Wayland Display Server on my Linux box. And I couldn't find a simple screen recorder which worked. Turns out, Gnome has a hidden screen recorder! To activate it, press these keys simultaneously. CTRL+ALT+SHIFT ⇪+R A small circle icon will appear in your tray to show it is recording. By default, the recordings last 30 seconds, and are saved as a WebM in the ~/Videos directory. …
Continue reading →
Mostly notes to myself. Nestled away in my Linux Bash profile, I have this one-liner alias lh='ls -trhgGN --color=always | cut -d" " -f4-' When I run lh it outputs a list of files in the directory, showing their size, with the newest files on the bottom. I use this regularly to see what I've downloaded recently and how big the files are - so I made an alias. Here's how it works. Alias Alias is a Jester in disguise useful Linux tool which lets you create a shortcut to…
Continue reading →
When I first started in the mobile industry, 3G had just launched. It was slow and expensive. Nowadays it is fast and free. UK Network Three are giving away free SIMs which comes with 200MB per month of free data. Visit three.co.uk/datareward to register. My SIM was delivered a few days later. Update - the SIM is now £10 but comes pre-loaded with 1GB for the first month. Then 200MB free for every subsequent month. The first byte is always free Obviously nothing in life is free. Three want …
Continue reading →
This pre-release whitepaper is a multidisciplinary approach to the challenges associated with using Quantum BlockChain technology to improve the performance of 6th Generation data networks for their performance with neural objects. By reconceptualising the way the nano-structures of 5th Generation (5G) networks interface with the OSI stack of traditional networks, we have found a way to perform novel temporal manipulation of the bitstream to deliver data at super-luminal speeds. Quantum…
Continue reading →
Cunningham's Law states "the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer." Edent's 7th Law (My blog; my rules!) states "the best way to get an open source project to fix an issue is to send a slightly wrong Pull Request." Let me explain... Two years ago, I noticed an annoying bug in the markdown parser of WordPress's JetPack plugin. I did what every good open sorcerer is supposed to do - I wrote out a comprehensive bug report,…
Continue reading →
In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders. But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves. Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it's too late? Fluff. Charming, unpretentious, and uncomplicated…
Continue reading →
A curious little data leak, but one I struggle to care about. Perhaps useful for a bit of fingerprinting? Websites can access your system's camera and microphone. That's how modern video conferencing works in the browser. In an effort to retain user privacy, the browser asks the user for permission to use the camera and mics. No audio or video will be sent until the user agrees. But some metadata gets shared before you agree! Visit the WebRTC Detection Experiment site. You'll notice that…
Continue reading →
Five years ago, I wrote that I had 30 connected devices at home. How has that changed over the last half-decade? Some of my devices have consolidated. My Eufy security cameras have a hub - so despite having more cameras, They're using fewer IP addresses. Similarly, I've replaced most of my LIFX bulbs with Zigbee which also use a hub-and-spoke model. So these are the devices I currently have connected: Video Doorbell Solar Battery LIFX bulb in external light Security camera EInk display…
Continue reading →
Remember schlocky 1990s splatter film "Event Horizon"? No, me neither. But lockdown has us exhausting our supply of Sci-Fi movies, so we rewatched it. Anyway, I found some bugs! I'm a big fan of the Sci Fi Interfaces blog. It details the Human Computer Interaction design of the imagined future. It has primed me to pay attention to the interfaces in films. Look, you have your hobbies and I have mine! Early on in the film, a crew-member is watching a video message from home: Let's focus on…
Continue reading →
