Last year, I blogged about why I make my work calendar public. It is useful to have a public website where people can see if I'm free or busy. But the version I created relied on Google Calendar which, sadly, isn't that great. It doesn't look wonderful, especially on small screens, and is limited to only one calendar feed. So I used the mighty power of Open Source to build my own! https://edent.tel/calendar It uses two cool components. First, the DHTMLX Scheduler tool - a GPL-licensed…
Continue reading →
As part of my MSc, I'm being asked to think about "digital disruption" - so here are some personal thoughts about the future of transactions with the state. The UK Government has a lot of APIs to let computers communicate with each other. Most of them are department-to-department. For example, the Ministry of Birds wants to get an updated list of incidents from the Department of Avian Accidents and Catastrophes. So it gets the information from api.daac.gov.uk But some APIs are human to…
Continue reading →
I'm a weirdo - I fully admit that. As part of my home working set up, I use a vertical monitor. I read and write a lot of long documents - and this form factor suits me perfectly. I've been doing this for a long time. It is a natural part of my workflow. For anything longer than an email, it's the perfect orientation. Most Linux apps work just fine like this - although menu buttons tend to hide behind overflows. Websites though, ah! That's where the problem begins. Lots of websites think…
Continue reading →
One of the great things about the Web is that you don't really need to ask anyone's permission before you use it. There are no fees to pay for the HTML spec, browsers don't cost any money (they used to!), and most websites don't charge a fee to read, or use. But is it really true that you don't need permission to publish? Let's take a look at how easy it is to get content onto the web without permission. What is the Internet? Connect two laptops with an Ethernet cable. Congratulation - you…
Continue reading →
