After railing against eSIM-only phones for over a decade, I've finally succumbed. It appears impossible to buy a modern phone without them. Thankfully, most seem to be dual-SIM. So I can have a regular SIM card and an eSIM. I find dual-SIM phones handy. I have a disposable number which I give out to people who don't need my main number. And when I go abroad, it's useful to have a local SIM. When I'm at home, I like my 2nd SIM to be used as a backup in case I'm somewhere with no signal on my…
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A few years ago, classic TV comedy MASH, was remastered and released on streaming platforms. The picture quality was massively increased with just one minor flaw. They cropped the image to 16:9 widescreen 😱 This upset some fans. The thing about widescreen is that it chops off the top and bottom of the picture. The top of Hawkeye's head? Gone! The bottom of Hot-Lips' boots? Vanished! אױ װײ איז מיר But, there is an upside. Or should that be side-side? Anyway, the new remaster adds some previo…
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Bill's back! Fresh from winning some dance show on linear-TV and ready to... well, do the same thing as he's been doing for years. Rambling tales, dozens of instruments, innovative tech, and a charming whimsy - undercut with, perhaps, a little more darkness than usual. It is a classic, if unsurprising gig. There's an odd segue into Pachelbel's Canon - material which has been mined to extinction by a dozen other musical comedians - but Bill manages to find something new in it. Just about. The…
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It's always fun keeping your network inspector tab open. While looking around the O2 UK website, I found this page all about eSIMs. For some reason, it wants to know the user's phone number. I put in a random number, and it refused to let me in. Putting in a genuine O2 number let me through. So what is it doing to validate numbers? It is making an API call to this URl: https://www.o2.co.uk/o/customer/mods/lookup/447700900123 After a bit of testing, this is how I think it works. If you …
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A few weeks ago, I built an ActivityPub Server in a Single PHP File. It's a proof of concept showing how easy it is to turn a website into a full-featured Fediverse participant. After a bunch of feedback and testing, I've added a some features to make it slightly more useful. A single PHP file - 45KB of no-library goodness. Just add your details, upload, and done. No databases. Everything stored as JSON files on disk. Be followed. External users can discover and follow you. Send messages.…
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After watching the First few series of the TV show "M*A*S*H", I thought I'd give the original movie a go. It isn't very good. Even if you ignore the rampant racism - and there is a lot of racism - you still have to content with the brutal misogyny - and it is toe-curlingly grim. Then you get the homophobia which, may have been of its time, but the sexual assault isn't. And if you can get past all of that, you still have to suffer though a movie that gets so bored of its central thesis (war…
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