I am grumpy. As my very clever wife summarised, I hate when designers prioritise their æsthetic preferences over my usability needs. I tried sharing a website using Google Chrome for Android. I hit the share button, and a panel popped-up from the bottom of the screen. Hmmm. It didn't have the share destination that I wanted. It was early in the morning - when I'm not at my cognitive best - …
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I never get power cuts. But, we've had two in the last week. They've both been fixed quickly, but it takes an age for my cable modem to reboot - and then an age for my smarthome to reconnect to the WiFi. So it was time to invest in an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS). My friend Paul Curry recommended the APC SMT1500i. It usually retails for around £700, but I found a refurbished one for £200 L…
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In all the universe, no species has ever reached for the stars without the guidance of a patron — except perhaps mankind. Did some mysterious race begin the uplift of humanity aeons ago? And if so, why did they abandon us? Under the caverns of Mercury, Expedition Sundiver prepares for the most momentous voyage in our history, a journey into the boiling inferno of the sun... to seek our destiny i…
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Maybe I'm an old grump. But this book did not make me happy. It starts off bad - then gets worse. We begin with a series of incorrect assumptions. Apparently, there's no antonym for Doomsday (Errr, how about "Rapture"?) and apparently no one ever investigates why a hospital is performing well (ummm... Yes they do!) and no one is ever described as "stark raving happy" (hello mania! Hello…
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The fashion industry has the concept of "prêt-à-porter" - ready to wear. You pick a thing off the rack and off you go. No tailoring needed. Similarly, the food industry has "prêt-à-manger" - ready to eat. No telling l'artiste du pain how much mayo you want, just grab a boxed sandwich and start munching. What's the equivalent for Open Source Software? (I know it is facile to say "There are two …
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Update! It's fair to say no one liked this idea - so I've reverted it. Thanks for all the feedback 🙂 Do you ever see those daft email footers which say "Please consider the environment before printing this email." Like, who the fuck is still printing out their emails? Anyway, a few years ago I went along to a blogging event where someone had printed out one of my blog posts. I was stunned. Th…
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I'm still unsure where this fits in the MCU... After the complete lack of chemistry between McCarthy and Bateman in Identity Thief, it seems inexplicable that they've been paired together in yet another movie. Just like Identity Thief, Thunder Force is two good ideas for separate movies squished into one bad film. It suffers from an almost complete absence of jokes - other than that the leads…
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Verifiable Credentials are a brilliant standard to help... well... Verify Credentials. How do you know that someone has an MBA from Harvard? It's pretty easy to fake a degree certificate, or to change your name to George W. Bush, or simply lie. The same is true with any attestation - it's often hard to contact the issuer of a claim and check that it is genuine. Verifiable Credentials aims to…
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One of my favourite movie moments is in the 1998 movie Antz - when one of the ants turns to camera and says: It's the workers who control the means of production! Even though we're not in the age of the Hollywood Blacklist, it's still rare to see overt - and literal - Marxism on the big screen. "The Mitchells" might be the most insightful critique of Silicon Valley and the AI hype that I've…
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Most of us give little thought to the back of the book - it's just where you go to look things up. But here, hiding in plain sight, is an unlikely realm of ambition and obsession, sparring and politicking, pleasure and play. Here we might find Butchers, to be avoided, or Cows that sh-te Fire, or even catch Calvin in his chamber with a Nonne. This is the secret world of the index: an unsung but…
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(This was written in response to a Reddit question. Lots of people seemed to like my answer, so I thought I'd re-blog it. I think the asker was expecting answers like "1980s - Young Ones, Red Dwarf, etc" - but I decided to answer it in a slightly different way.) When you were about 14. Everything in comedy seems new to you. You start to understand some of the more sophisticated jokes - and the…
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A few months ago, I wrote about how data is so cheap it is being given away. Mobile network Three were offering £10 data SIMs which came with 200MB of zero-cost data. Recently, I've found another free provider of data, with an intriguing price-plan. RWG Mobile are a Welsh MVNO who use EE as their backhaul. As well as the usual high-end plans, they also have this at the lower end. Yup! A free …
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