One of my favourite movie moments is in the 1998 movie Antz - when one of the ants turns to camera and says: It's the workers who control the means of production! Even though we're not in the age of the Hollywood Blacklist, it's still rare to see overt - and literal - Marxism on the big screen. "The Mitchells" might be the most insightful critique of Silicon Valley and the AI hype that I've ever seen. Sure, on the one hand it's a daft kids' movie which flings memes at your face to the…
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Most of us give little thought to the back of the book - it's just where you go to look things up. But here, hiding in plain sight, is an unlikely realm of ambition and obsession, sparring and politicking, pleasure and play. Here we might find Butchers, to be avoided, or Cows that sh-te Fire, or even catch Calvin in his chamber with a Nonne. This is the secret world of the index: an unsung but extraordinary everyday tool, with an illustrious but little-known past. Here, for the first time,…
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(This was written in response to a Reddit question. Lots of people seemed to like my answer, so I thought I'd re-blog it. I think the asker was expecting answers like "1980s - Young Ones, Red Dwarf, etc" - but I decided to answer it in a slightly different way.) When you were about 14. Everything in comedy seems new to you. You start to understand some of the more sophisticated jokes - and the ruder ones. The call-backs to things that you saw as a kid seem incredibly edgy and help you feel…
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A few months ago, I wrote about how data is so cheap it is being given away. Mobile network Three were offering £10 data SIMs which came with 200MB of zero-cost data. Recently, I've found another free provider of data, with an intriguing price-plan. RWG Mobile are a Welsh MVNO who use EE as their backhaul. As well as the usual high-end plans, they also have this at the lower end. Yup! A free SIM with 50 UK minutes / SMS included. Think about how much calling and texting you do each month. …
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As I am a bear of very little brain, these are notes to myself on my slightly shonky process for creating animated TreeMaps in R. The aim is to end up with something like this: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/animated-tree-map.mp4 Generate the images Getting the data is left as an exercise for the reader (sorry!). This loops through the data and generates a separate image for each TreeMap: for(week in weeks) { weekly_data <- subset(file_data, Week == week) size…
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More yak-shaving for my MSc. A book I read was discussing data pipeline problems. How so much of the work of ETL is cleaning up crappy data and reformatting it to something useful. We should be going to the source of the data, the book suggested. Rather than wasting time cleaning - get better at production. Or, as it pithily put it: Whenever I see a generic quote like that, attributed to an authority figure, my Spider-Sense goes haywire. Did they really say that? Where's the evidence? …
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Nine weeks ago, I got my first does of the AZ vaccine. Yesterday, I received my second. Despite all the dire warnings of overloaded websites and limited slots, the booking process was boringly anticlimactic. I entered my NHS number, date of birth, postcode - and was then given a choice of locations. I picked one, and was given a range of times. I picked one for a few days hence and my wife - on the computer next to me - picked hers for five minutes later. Only after booking did we bother to…
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Into the woods, it's time to go, I hate to leave, I have to go. Into the woods, it's time, and so I must begin my journey. I live near the ancient Abbey Woods. Site of the derelict Lesnes Abbey, full of flowers, trees, and eternal mysteries. A tattered parchment map fluttered into my hand promising adventure and enlightenment deep in the heart of the woods. This is Lore of the Wild an immersive art installation as part of the Estuary 2021 festival. And so, shortly before sunset, a dozen …
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Bomb-throwing suffragettes. The pioneer of the refuge movement who became a men's rights activist. Forget feel-good heroines: meet the feminist trailblazers who have been airbrushed from history for being 'difficult' - and discover how they made a difference. Here are their stories in all their shocking, funny and unvarnished glory. It is a cliché that well behaved women seldom make history. It is, nevertheless, true. None of the women who changed the world did so in a polite and easy …
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I've worked on some big product launches. Every time there's a major update, developers have to think about which features to port over and which to drop. Sometimes it is easy. Analytics show no one is using this feature? Drop it. Sometimes it is hard. It's a moderately well used feature, but complicated to get running on a new environment. If you keep it - that's a huge extra cost, for marginal utility. If you drop it - die-hard users will complain. So we come to Philips Hue. I've long been …
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English is a stupid, irregular language. But at least it doesn't needlessly ascribe gender to inanimate objects. However, I think this is a weakness when using 2nd Person pronouns - especially in fiction. Most literature is written in the 1st person ("I opened the door") or the 3rd person ("She picked up a fork"). But very occasionally, mostly in interactive fiction, authors use the 2nd person ("You break open the crate"). And herein lies the problem. When you are reading a book, you is…
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One of the frustrating things about computers is their limited input options. A "standard" PC keyboard only has about 100 keys. Sure, some have some bonus buttons for controlling the machine, but it is becoming clear that there simply aren't enough buttons to efficiently program computers. Most programming languages have the concept of relational operators. How does variable X compare to variable Y? If we want to ask if X is less than or equal to Y, we write X <= Y. Which is a bit weird,…
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