Terence Eden. He has a beard and is smiling.

Terence Eden’s Blog

Theme Switcher:

Book Review: The Examiner - Janice Hallett

· 2 comments · 350 words


Book cover featuring a scorpion.

I've thoroughly enjoyed all of Janice Hallett's previous crime books. The Examiner is, frankly, more of the same - and I'm happy with that! You, the reader, are given a series of transcripts and have to work out what crime (if any) has been committed. You don't find out who the victim(s) is/are until reasonably far through the story. The characters are well realised (although a little similar…

The cost of running OpenBenches.org

· 7 comments · 800 words · Viewed ~917 times


The Open Benches logo.

After my recent presentation at FOSDEM, someone asked a pretty reasonable question. What does it cost to run OpenBenches? It is, thankfully, surprisingly cheap! In part, that's because it is a relatively simple tech stack - PHP, MySQL, a couple of API calls to external services. It was designed to be as low cost while also being useful. Here's the breakdown: Hosting - £171 per year Our biggest …

Book Review: The Voyage of the Space Beagle by Alfred Elton Van Vogt

· 4 comments · 400 words


Book cover featuring a large alien on a scary planet.

This is Star Trek before Star Trek. It is Alien long before Alien. It is the template for so much modern science fiction. What it is not is particularly good. I don't intend to dump on the classics (and this is undoubtedly a classic) but 1950s sci-fi takes place in an almost alien media environment. Even if you ignore the anachronisms (like having to develop film in order to see photographs)…

Vanguard - The Government Project to get British Businesses to use the Internet

· 3 comments · 1,200 words · Viewed ~479 times


Vague graph showing how adopting technologies is beneficial.

Email isn't an obvious business benefit. Imagine it is the early 1980s and you need to communicate with people across the country. A first-class letter will cost you 17p - about 60p in today's money. The letter will be delivered the next day and you'll have your answer back the day after. By contrast, a single computer terminal was likely to set you back around £3,000 - and that's before you …