This is such an unfairly maligned Doctor Who story. It is chock-full of brilliant high-concept Sci-Fi ideas. Even the spelling on the stencilled doors and windows rewards the careful viewer with little insights into the far future. This is heavily "inspired" by Fantastic Voyage - and I think that's great; Doctor Who has always ripped off other sci-fi. It introduces younger viewers to concepts that they are going to encounter in the future. The mad scientist has the requisite German accent,…
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The web service TurnItIn is a "plagiarism detector". Lots of universities use it to assess whether their students are copy-n-pasting content which they haven't written. I'm not a big fan of it. First, I'll explain how to opt-out your websites. Then I'll explain why I don't like the service. Block Their Robot TurnItIn scans the web and records everything on your website. It then uses that to tell Universities whether a student has plagiarised from you. While I don't condone cheating, I…
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Apparently, Apple plans to make a port-less iPhone which only uses wireless charging. This is something I predicted 7 years ago! Qi - the wireless charging standard - is excellent. Put your phone down on a mat, or in a cradle, and it starts charging. Lovely! But there's a problem. You can't pick up your phone while it's charging. How many times have you lain on the sofa, cord tethered twixt phone and wall, while you watch cat videos and charge? After a year of use, I'm convinced Magnetic…
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It always amuses me how rarely American actors are allowed to act. Ryan Reynolds stars as Ryan Reynolds - with the exact same delivery and intonation as all his other rôles. The same semi-improvised witty asides. The same fourth-wall breaking memes. Hey, look, it works for him and audiences seem to love it. I just think it'd be nifty to see him playing something other than Ryan Reynolds. Anyway, Free Guy is a fun, uncomplicated movie about the perils of cross-licencing GPL code within a …
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Previously on Terence Eden's Blog: I turned an old eReader into an Information Screen. This time, I'm taking a different Nook, and turning it into a magic gallery. Here's what it looks like in action: Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentUpcycled an old eReader into an art frame.Displays a new black & white piece of art from Flickr every few minutes.Full write-up this weekend, but pretty straightforward to do. pic.x.com/ttvrbhz3ee❤️ 137💬 14🔁 021:20 - Wed 22 September 2021 Video With the front l…
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How do you build a Tardis? What are the secrets of teleportation? Could Cybermen take over the world? Is telepathy possible - even for an alien? Will extra-terrestrials one day visit planet earth on their travels through the galaxy? Can a robotic dog catch a cold ...? Take a journey with the Time Lords as Michael White guides us through the real science behind Doctor Who. Here he shows us how one of the world's best-loved science-fiction programmes is actually based on genuine theories -…
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Here's an idea that can't possibly work. People used to pay-per-minute for telephone calls. Some numbers were "zero-rated". That is, if you called them you wouldn't be charged. At first it was calls to the emergency services which were free. Businesses and other organisations realised that it was good customer service to provide a free-to-call number. Generally speaking, this means that the called-party pays the phone company for incoming call rather than the caller paying. Thus 0800 numbers…
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In 1961, a boy from Somerset embarked with his family on a six-week voyage to New Zealand. He left behind an English village where generations of his family had lived, to make a new home in a remote country that was still closely tied to the one he'd left. Despite challenges adapting as new immigrants, these were good times to be growing up in rural New Zealand. But the country was about to embark on its own change as ties with Britain were loosening and a more outward-looking, confident and …
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Sue Black confronts death every day. As a Professor of Anatomy and Forensic Anthropology, she focuses on mortal remains in her lab, at burial sites, at scenes of violence, murder and criminal dismemberment, and when investigating mass fatalities due to war, accident or natural disaster. In All That Remains she reveals the many faces of death she has come to know, using key cases to explore how forensic science has developed, and examining what her life and work has taught her. Part memoir,…
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I am very interested in your opinion on this. Imagine that you work at a company which sells widgets. Each widget has a unique serial number. The number is a fixed length, and can contain leading zeros. That is, the following are all valid identifiers: 00001 01010 12345 What data type would you use to store these data in a database? This is one of those strong opinions, weakly held. I'm not sure there's a right answer to it. A quick survey on Twitter was inconclusive: Terence Eden is…
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Here's how to stop Firefox automatically turning on dark-mode for websites. In the address bar, type in about:config and press ⏎ and accept the warning it gives you. Add a new value ui.systemUsesDarkTheme set it to type number and pick one of the following: 0 to tell websites to always use the light theme. 1 to tell websites to always use the dark theme. 2 to tell websites you have no preference. Dev Tools If you want to do this on a one-off basis, open up the Dev Tools and click on t…
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We communicate through the spoken and written word and language has evolved over the centuries. Many languages have survived although only in small pockets throughout the world. This book explores a selection of those languages. Did you know that some people believe that the speakers of Burushaski, the language of a distant valley below the Himalayas, are actually the descendants of the soldiers of Alexander the Great? And that, even though the Venetian language is not official in Venice, it …
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