This is an an interesting and varied set of sci-fi/fantasy stories. Some barely a couple of pages, others cutting short at just the right time. They are all on a similar theme - the strife between parents and children. Whether it is a twisted take on classic fairy tales, or a dive into the far future - there's always something interesting going on. Samantha Mills has a excellent eye for…
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Chimoney is a new "multi-currency wallet" provider. Based out of Canada, it allows users to send money to and from a variety of currencies. It also supports the new Interledger protocol for WebMonetization. It is, as far as I can tell, unregulated by any financial institution. Nevertheless, it performs a "Know Your Customer" (KYC) check on all new account in order to prevent fraud. To do this,…
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This is an intriguing and mostly satisfying sci-fi tale. It has shades of Oryx Crake mixed in with A Canticle for Leibowitz - we are mere observers of the tattered remains of humanity. Watchers guide scattered settlements as they strive to evolve and understand their place on a corrupted Earth. The writing is dreamy and hazy - reminiscent of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. It isn't…
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Yes, I know the cliché that bloggers are always blogging about blogging! I like semantics. It tickles that part of my delicious meaty brain that longs for structure. Semantics are good for computers and humans. Computers can easily understand the structure of the data, humans can use tools like screen-readers to extract the data they're interested in. In HTML, there are three main ways to …
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Given my blog's domain name, I don't write nearly enough about Shakespeare. Luckily, the good folks at NetGalley have sent me Irene Coslet's provocative new book to review. Who was the real Shakespeare? It's the sort of low-stakes conspiracy theory which is driven by classism ("a low-born man couldn't write such poetry!"), plagiarism ("he stole from other writers!") and, according to this…
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I travel a fair bit. My passport is usually quickly scanned and I can enter or leave a country without delay. But every time I use the eGates at Heathrow Airport to get back in to the UK, my passport is rejected and I'm told to seek assistance from Border Force. Today, I think I discovered why! The border guards are usually polite and tell me there's nothing wrong with my passport (not that they …
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I cracked open my review copy of Room 706 and settled in for an early night in my hotel room. I was up until way past midnight tearing through the book - my heart pounding. Given that the book centres around a woman trapped by terrorists in her hotel room, it was perhaps not the best choice to read on holiday! If you were held hostage - what message would you want to send to your family? Would …
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You can't put a price on pure delight. In Thailand you can get a perfectly decent Pad Thai and beer for a few hundred Baht. You can have an good pizza or freshly cooked burger for next to nothing. Food, in general, is cheap and cheerful. After a week of spring rolls and Tiger beer, we decided to treat ourselves to a fine-dining experience in the Michelin recognised Smokaccia Laboratory. We…
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While looking down the back of the Internet for something or other, I stumbled across Time Magazine's Best Inventions of 2001. It has been a quarter of a century since 2001 (!!) so that's a good excuse to look back at what stood the test of time. The article states: Inventions come in all shapes and sizes. Some are as simple as purple catsup. Others push the limits of quantum physics. The…
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Happy Birthday Bitcoin! At the risk of awakening long-dormant beasts, it looks like Bitcoin has failed for day-to-day transactions. So I've a simple question to ask - can you meaningfully spend any cryptocurrency in your city centre? A few months ago, my wife and I went on a 30 day Interrail holiday across Europe. 10 countries, over a dozen cities, making over a hundred payments. I looked in…
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While digging though some old journals in a fruitless side-quest, I came across this delightful description of what I think is the Comet Encke. It is quite an astonishing prediction, and the last line is perfection. In 1926, several journals and almanacs syndicated a column discussing this comet. The above is from The New Jerusalem magazine and theological inspector which has added "This is…
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A couple of years ago, I started serving my blog posts as plain text. Add .txt to the end of any URl and get a deliciously lo-fi, UTF-8, mono[chrome|space] alternative. Here's this post in plain text - https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/12/a-small-collection-of-text-only-websites.txt Obviously a webpage without links is like a fish without a bicycle, but the joy of the web is that there are no…
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