Movie Review · 2 comments · 450 words
There's nothing wrong with this movie. It's just so... ordinary. Partly, that's a failure of the superhero genre. They're all identical movies. I am strong enough to defeat common thieves! Here is a baddie who is somehow stronger than you! I will defeat you due to really believing in myself! Fan service post-credits scene. WW1984 hits all the tropes in all the right places. Superhero fans…
Continue reading →Book Review · 450 words
How should we live: how should we care for one another; grow our capabilities to work, to learn, to love and fully realise our potential? This exciting and ambitious book shows how we can re-design the welfare state for this century. A challenging read for civil servants and policy makers. When old institutions and systems don't produce the results needed, just how radical are we prepared to…
Continue reading →twitter WordPress · 3 comments · 650 words · Viewed ~247 times
I like quoting people's Tweets in my blog posts. But, sometimes, people delete their Tweets. This blog post examines two questions. How to preserve Tweets in blog posts that they are still readable even after the user deletes them. Whether this is morally acceptable behaviour. Let's tackle the easy question first. Preserving Tweets Using the WordPress OEmbed feature, I can just paste in a…
Continue reading →Book Review · 1 comment · 350 words
A literary fantasy about love, music and sorcery, set against the background of Mexico City, finalist for the British Fantasy, Locus, Sunburst and Aurora awards. The only way I can describe this book is that it's the movie "The Craft" crossed with Nick Hornby's novel "High Fidelity". At times it gets bogged down in the name dropping of musicians and their albums. I get that - for a certain…
Continue reading →MSc WeekNotes · 2 comments · 600 words · Viewed ~305 times
I'm doing an MSc Apprenticeship! As part of my desire to work in the open, these are (semi-regular) weeknotes about what I've done / learned / achieved. I tend to be grumpy and curmudgeonly when faced with something I don't understand - or when I suspect I won't be good at an activity. So read the following with that in mind. I've spent the last few weeks working through the pre-course…
Continue reading →design falsehoods policy security · 17 comments · 700 words · Viewed ~8,736 times
(For the new reader, there is a famous essay called Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names. It has since spawned a long list of Falsehoods Programmers Believe About....) Everyone has fingerprints! The BBC has a grim tale of a family with a genetic mutation which means they have no fingerprints. It details the issues they have getting official ID. In 2010, fingerprints became mandatory for…
Continue reading →Book Review · 250 words · Viewed ~234 times
What makes a bridge wobble when it's not meant to? Billions of dollars mysteriously vanish into thin air? A building rock when its resonant frequency matches a gym class leaping to Snap's 1990 hit I've Got The Power? The answer is maths. Or, to be precise, what happens when maths goes wrong in the real world. A lightweight and charming book looking at the mathematical mistakes which have…
Continue reading →Book Review MSc · 700 words · Viewed ~265 times
This is a terribly written book - albeit one with an important message. Eat That Frog is about how to avoid procrastinating. But rather than approach it from a scientific or methodological point of view, Tracy just gives some basic tools for arranging your work day. There are no citations in this book - something the author is strangely proud of. I do not dwell on the various psychological or…
Continue reading →covid19 wfh · 650 words · Viewed ~331 times
I once drove my company car to my company's office and then drove around the company car park for 20 minutes looking in vain for a parking space. Whereupon I double-parked across a couple of cars, flipped on my hazard lights, and dialled in to my Very Important Meeting. Half-an-hour later, I drove home to think about my life choices. I then started looking for a new job. From the moment I…
Continue reading →Movie Review · 150 words
An utterly superfluous movie. Have you seen Cube? Or perhaps Saw? Maybe My Little Eye? All identical. But this has put last year's zeitgeist as its title as a selling point. The major problem with this outing of the plot is that it invites us to participate in a puzzle but provides none of the clues. A good story lets the audience guess the answer just a second before the cast. Or, at least,…
Continue reading →api WordPress · 2 comments · 400 words · Viewed ~240 times
This blog runs on WordPress. Using their JetPack plugin, I get fairly detailed stats on views and visitors. But, bizarrely, the API is undocumented. Well, sort of... Let me explain: Just Show Me The Code Here's the API call to get a year's worth of data about your blog. https://public-api.wordpress.com/rest/v1.1/sites/shkspr.mobi::blog/stats/visits ?unit=day &date=2021-01-03 &quantity=365 …
Continue reading →Book Review feminism · 1 comment · 300 words
For the past decade, Richard Herring has been answering sexist trolls on International Women’s Day when they ask ‘when is International Men’s Day?’ in the mistaken belief there isn’t one. If only the trolls had learned to use Google they would realise that there is an International Men’s Day – it’s on November 19th. In The Problem with Men Richard expands on his Twitter discussions and tackles s…
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