This is the first paid-for game that I've played on the Oculus Quest 2. I've mostly stuck to demos - because I get bored easily. Or free games - because I'm a cheapskate. But Meta gave me £30 in credit for helping people fix their broken Quests. So I bought this much hyped puzzle game. […]
Continue reading →Book Review: The Galaxy, and the Ground Within - Becky Chambers
When a freak technological failure halts traffic to and from the planet Gora, three strangers are thrown together unexpectedly, with seemingly nothing to do but wait. Under the care of Ouloo, an enterprising alien, and Tupo, her occasionally helpful child, the trio are compelled to confront where they've been, where they might go, and what […]
Continue reading →You can't make secure payments in the Metaverse
Another in an occasional series bemoaning the shitty user experience of Zuck's Metaverse. I have an Oculus Quest 2 and wanted to pay money for an in-app purchase. This seems like a normal thing to do. There's no way to add a credit card while your head is strapped to an overheating Android device. So […]
Continue reading →Have I reached the Douglas Adams Inflection point (or is modern tech just a bit rubbish)?
The all-knowing sage Douglas Adams had this to say about technology: Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably […]
Continue reading →Some new HTTP verbs
Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol is, by some measure, the most popular way for computers to talk to each other on the Internet1. Generally speaking2, clients (like browsers) talk to servers using a set number of HTTP "verbs". This tells the server what sort of thing the client is trying to do. The two most popular3 verbs […]
Continue reading →Running a Shortest Splitline Algorithm on the UK - and other mapping adventures
How do you fairly split a country into electoral subdivisions? This is a difficult problem. Whatever you choose, you'll piss off someone. A politician will be annoyed that their loyal voters are no longer in their district. And voters will be annoyed that they're now lumped in with people from the wrong side of the […]
Continue reading →What's the cheapest domain you can register for 10 years?
I'm concerned about the longevity of the domains I register. I want my domains to be available for as long as possible. But it seems that every year prices rise - and the discount often provided for a new domain rarely continues into subsequent years. So I recently started renewing them for as long as […]
Continue reading →Would you go to the Job Centre or DMV in the Metaverse?
I'm just getting started with the Oculus Quest 2 from Facebook Meta. It is amazing. OK, that's a lie. It's a pretty good tech demo of what one vision of the future could look like. But it is making a little bit of my brain itch. What Government services1 could / should be run in […]
Continue reading →Meta Quest 2 - Refurb Exchange Experience - how to fix "Unable to Connect to Your Headset"
Skip to instructions I bought a Meta Quest 2 second hand from a child who was bored of it. The Quest was in excellent condition but, after a few days use, it became clear that the physical volume up key was broken. There are lots of tips and trips for fixing this. One of which […]
Continue reading →"Writing an app is like coding for LaserDisc"
11 years ago to the day, I was at a tech conference. It was 3 year after the iPhone had launched its app SDK. Those of us who had been in the mobile game a while had already spent years developing apps for Symbian, BlackBerry, Windows CE, and at least a dozen other OSes which […]
Continue reading →