wikipedia · 150 words
I have no idea what I was doing on the 28th of November 2007 but, apparently, that's when I first logged in to Wikipedia. Which means, as of right now, my Wikipedia account is 18 years old! I didn't make my first edit until April 2009. That was for the nascent Ada Lovelace Day. Since then, I've racked up a bit over 600 edits which simultaneously feels like a lot and barely anything. Every…
Continue reading →a11y accessibility AltText HTML · 6 comments · 400 words · Viewed ~305 times
Alt text is great. It allows people who can't see an image to understand what that image represents. For example, the code might say: <img src="whatever.gif" alt="Two cute kittens are playing on a blanket"> If you are blind, you get an idea of what's being conveyed by that image. If you're on a train and the WiFi craps out just before the image loads, you'll also benefit! If the image is of…
Continue reading →gadget headphones review usb-c · 1,800 words · Viewed ~272 times
The good folks at SOUNDPEATS have sent me their new "Clip1" headphones to review. They are easily the most comfortable headphones I've ever worn. Typically, headphones fall into three broad categories. In ear, like the Apple EarPods. Over ear, like the Beats. Bone Conducting, like the AfterShokz. But these are not typical headphones. These are part of a new category of "cuff" audio. They…
Continue reading →ActivityPub BlueSky fediverse mastodon statistics · 9 comments · 850 words · Viewed ~651 times
How can you measure the popularity of a social network site? Perhaps by counting the number of active accounts, or the quality of the discourse, or even how many people reply to your witty memes. Me? I prefer to look at how many people visit my blog from each site. It is an imperfect measure - and a vain one - but lets me know where I should be spending my time. No point posting on a network…
Continue reading →HTML review webdev websites · 5 comments · 550 words · Viewed ~299 times
D'yer remember the eighties? The eighties, eh? Remember 'em? With the Acorn Archimedes an' that? What were we like? Remember them mags what y'got? The computer mags? Wirral the source code? Remember typin' it all in be hand? If yer semicolon were outta place y'd gerra syntax error! And you try telling that to the young people of today, will they believe yer? For those of you born this century,…
Continue reading →BDFL mastodon Open Source oss · 6 comments · 600 words · Viewed ~13,444 times
Most of the people who run Open Source projects are mortal. Recent history shows us that they will all eventually die, or get bored, or win the lottery, or get sick, or be conscripted, or lose their mind. If you've ever visited a foreign country's national history museum, I guarantee you've read this little snippet: King Whatshisface was a wise and noble ruler who bought peace and prosperity…
Continue reading →FIRE meta · 2 comments · 1,000 words · Viewed ~498 times
Much like the emperors of old, the year ends on my birthday. As of today, the world is reborn anew as I ascend into the next year of my life. So, what was being 45 like? Odd. Odd but good. At the end of last year's post, I said: I only have one goal. Stop. A few weeks ago, Liz and I both quit our jobs. By the end of 2024, our careers will be on hiatus. I want to have a big mental clean-out. …
Continue reading →OpenBenches OpenStreetMap · 4 comments · 650 words · Viewed ~562 times
When Liz and I created the OpenBenches website, it was just designed to be a fun way for people to record memorial benches. Since then things have got out of hand and we now have over thirty-nine thousand benches recorded! Our plan was never to compete with something like OpenStreetMap. The OSM project is vast, complex, and brilliant - we are small, simple, and differently brilliant. But, over…
Continue reading →gadget linux review usb-c video · 3 comments · 600 words · Viewed ~328 times
Want to capture video from your phone or console? You could just point a camera at the screen, but a more sensible way to do it is to capture the video directly via USB-C. The good folks at Benfei have sent me another gadget to review! This is a USB-C Video/Audio capture dongle. Plug one end into a device and the other into your computer - it will show up as a USB video capture device. Notice …
Continue reading →Book Review · 300 words
While visiting Goethe Haus in Frankfurt, I read a summary of the 1822 book "Meister Floh" and thought it might be fun to read. It is curious. Half the satire has long since lost all relevance to the world, yet it is still an entertaining and mysterious novel. Much like 1827's "The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century" things just happen. People wander into rooms, announce their…
Continue reading →Book Review comedy · 1 comment · 300 words · Viewed ~212 times
I find misery-memoirs like this difficult to read and disturbing to think about. Much like the tragic story of Mini and Me, reading this book made me feel like I was trapped in one of those nightmares where you try to scream a warning but no sound comes out. Fern has been refreshingly honest about autism and how it affects women in particular. I can't think when I last read an autobiography…
Continue reading →Book Review trains · 350 words · Viewed ~223 times
This is a gloriously nerdy book. Shuichiro Yamanouchi - considered to be one of the founding forces behind Japan's "Bullet Train" system - takes us behind the scenes of its development. It's a mixture of autobiography and corporate retrospective, with a healthy dose of engineering geekery. Although originally published in 1999 there are fairly comprehensive footnotes updating the reader on…
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