I read a lot of books. I'm sure there's some Jane Austen quote about how it unsettles a young lady's mind to fill it with such wide-ranging nonsense, but I've not read any Austen this year 🤷 In total, I read 64 books. I strictly alternate between fact and fiction otherwise my brain gets confused. I try to maintain an even gender ratio and I like old books as well as new books. I mostly buy eB…
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If you've ever tried to write a computer program, you'll know the dread of a syntax error. An errant space and your code won't compile. Miss a semi-colon and the world collapses. Don't close your brackets and watch how the computer recoils in distress. The modern web isn't like that. You can make your HTML as malformed as you like and the web-browser will do its best to display the page for…
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Many many years ago, I did some work for the NHS. As part of that, I was given access to certain GitHub organisations so that I could contribute to various projects. Once I left that job my access was revoked. Mostly. A few weeks ago, I received this email from GitHub. On the surface, this is a sensible email. They want all their members to only have strong 2FA and I still had SMS configured …
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There are many things I like about the WordPress blogging software, and many things I find irritating. The most annoying aspect is that WordPress insists that its way is the best and there shall be no deviance. That means a lot of forced cruft being injected into my site. Headers that bloat my page size, Gutenberg stuff I've no use for, and ridiculous editorial decisions. To double-down on the…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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. …
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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…
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