blogging meta · 2 comments · 700 words · read ~287 times.
This is a quick round-up of the blogs which "did numbers" this year - and a few which I feel were cruelly overlooked. I posted a new blog every day in 2020 - so don't be surprised if you missed a few. OK? Here we go!
Watch out; there's a scam about. People love sharing horror stories.
Scammers registering date-based domain names
A venture into the arcane mysteries of programming
Why do we have different programming languages?
A nice security report to Google but, sadly, no bounty.
Even Google forgets to renew its domains
Lots of people loved this guide - although I need to find a new use for the screen now I'm no longer commuting.
Turn an old eReader into an Information Screen (Nook STR)
A few months after I posted this rant, Google fixed their long-neglected 2FA app
Google's Abandoned Android Authenticator App
A runaway success - pointing out a privacy flaw with Facebook
Who is Facebook's mysterious "Lan Tim 2"?
I helped make access to the NHS websites free for UK mobile users. Which was nice.
Doesn't everyone have unlimited data?
You can now access most NHS services from your mobile, with no data charges.
In awe of the team who pulled this together very quickly.
gov.uk/government/new…
gov.uk
Mobile networks remove data charges for online NHS coronavirus advice
Free access to online NHS services will be available for as long as coronavirus (COVID-19) remains widespread in the UK.
I get annoyed at Twitter accounts which dupe people into following them by pretending to be someone famous.
Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Feynman
Trolling MacOS users always gets lots of hits. Thankfully I don't use a Macbook any more.
Things I can't do on MacOS which I can do on Ubuntu
This caught the imagination of some - there's a lot of interesting celeb-spotting in the historial record
Autograph hunting in Companies House
I loved building this silly idea - and I even sold some too!
Building a physical <blink> tag!
Ranting about technology - always a cathartic favourite.
We've built a towering pile of shite
Similarly, pointing out the pendulous nature of technology gets people excited.
Symbian Won
I watched every episode of 90s sitcom Frasier so you don't have to.
All your Frais are problematic
It's really important to show people how easy it is to fact-check for themselves.
Any claim without a URl should be treated as suspicious
I bought a record player!
Inside a £30 record player
I bought the shortest domain name possible and used it for XSS!
Buying a single character domain - and 3 character FQDN - for £15
I built a Walkman which plays albums from floppy disk.
A floppy-disk Walkman - using a Raspberry Pi
I built some art made of floppies.
A Collection of Imaginary Software
I didn't get a lot of jobs. Some people found this reassuring.
All the jobs I failed to get
I got angry with Cloudflare for doing a crappy GDPR job.
Don't trust Cloudflare with your personal data
More tech grumps
Please stop using CDNs for external Javascript libraries
Google are particularly inept sometimes.
Localisation is too hard for Gmail
This experiment caught the imagination of lots of people. Ironically, it stressed my server so much that I ended it early.
Introducing Slowww.ml - the slow web server
Pondering the future of computing.
What would happen if computers never got any faster?
I love Doctor Who - and I was overjoyed that someone contributed a phone that I'd COMPLETELY missed!
Mobile Phones of Doctor Who - BONUS ENTRY!
Noodling about with footnotes.
A (terrible?) way to do footnotes in HTML
Me getting into a bit of a strop and throwing my toys out of the pram.
I have resigned from the Google AMP Advisory Committee
I'm probably going to take a short blogging hiatus. So thank you for reading, subscribing, and sharing.
Mike says:
I was looking at this post in Chrome on iOS and when I went to open one of the links in a new tab I found I can't. Usually a long press on a link brings up a menu with an option to "open in new tab", but for all the links in this post the menu only offers "open". Even after inspecting the HTML on a proper computer I can't work out why. I thought it might be the presence of target="_top" on the a elements but I've made a basic webpage to test if the issue was the presence of target attribute or the value of the attribute but that test didn't replicate the behaviour so only made me more puzzled. The "open in new tab" option still exists, as it is presented for every other link I've tried including in your other blog posts. The issue doesn't occur with Chrome on Android. I can't find anyone else talking about the issue. Very odd.
@edent says:
The WordPress OEmbed code inserts iFrames. So it might be that?