Is Synthetarianism Compatible With Veganism?


Breaded drumsticks - with a bone sticking out of them.

Lab grown meat is nearly here. To be fair, it has been "nearly" here for a long long long long long time. But with the imminent arrival of lab-grown meat, it is time to investigate Synthetarianism. A diet of Synthetic food. I haven't eaten meat for... oh... 20 years now. I live with a carnivore but, despite her amazing cooking, I've no real desire to eat animal flesh. I'm sure it tastes nice to you, but my (smug) morals just don't allow it. But is it morally OK to eat synthetic meat? I…

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Weeknotes: I've hit the wall


AI generated photo of Batman tucked up all cosy in bed.

I spent the first few months of lockdown in a blur. Working with NHSX, on the national app launch, meant that I didn't have a minute to think about what was going on outside my immediate focus. Then, a few months ago, I switched to a new job in the Data Standards Authority - so I've had all the excitement of getting up to speed on new projects. And this week. Just... *bleugh*. I've hit the wall. I seem to have spent the week drifting off in meetings, nodding, and wondering if I'm adding any…

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Movie Review: Zombeavers


A zombie beaver menaces a group of young women.

A group of college kids staying at a riverside cabin are menaced by a swarm of deadly zombie beavers. The moment that the zombie beavers deliberately chewed through the phone lines in order to strand our hapless heroes, I knew I was in for a treat. This is an unapologetic B-Movie. It knows exactly how much sex and violence it can cram into a 15 certificate. The female cast members mostly consist of legs, whereas the male cast members are an indistinguishable bunch of frat-boy stereotypes. …

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How to get a 10% speed boost on Virgin Internet FOR FREE


A WiFi set up screen on Android.

If you have Virgin Media's cable service, you may have been forcibly opted-in to their WiFi Hotspot Sharing service. This allows anyone with a Virgin Media account to connect to your WiFi! Virgin have been moderately sensible with their design of this - users get a separate IP address, so their activity cannot be commingled with yours. But what about your bandwidth? Here, Virgin have been clever / annoying. If you're paying for the 350Mbps service (as I am) your cable modem is actually…

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Coping with HEIC in the browser


The best camera is the one that's with you./

Apple's HEIC format is... annoying. At the moment, Apple's products are the only mainstream cameras which use it. Forums are littered with people trying to upload HEIC files to web services and failing. So, here are four quick tips for dealing with this formal. Display in browser Absolutely no browser supports HEIC. Not even Apple's own browser supports it. Why? Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentOK, but *why* is the iPhone's default photo format HEIC if the iPhone's default browser can't…

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Book Review: Doctor Who - Scratchman


The Doctor stands beneath a ragged sign saying Scratchman.

In his first-ever Doctor Who novel, Tom Baker’s incredible imagination is given free rein. A story so epic it was originally intended for the big screen, Scratchman is a gripping, white-knuckle thriller almost forty years in the making. The Doctor, Harry and Sarah Jane Smith arrive at a remote Scottish island, when their holiday is cut short by the appearance of strange creatures – hideous scarecrows, who are preying on the local population. The islanders are living in fear, and the Doc…

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Should ₹ be part of the Latin font subset?


Stock photo of colourful Indian Rupee notes.

Some background reading. Skip if you're familiar with fonts. A font file contains a list of characters (usually letters, numbers, and punctuation) and glyphs (the drawn representation of that character). It is, of course, a lot more complicated than that. Each character has a codepoint which is represented in hexadecimal. For example, U+0057 is the Latin letter Capital W, U+20AC is the Euro Symbol €, and U+1F600 is the Emoji Smiling Face 😀. These codepoints are assigned by the Unicode Cons…

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