My first computer was a BBC Micro. It could do basic graphics at a resolution of 640×256 - with 8 different colours. Not a typo. Eight! The mono speaker produced bleeps and bloops. It was basic, in all senses of the word. Eventually, talented hackers found a way for it to do simplistic 3D graphics and even speech synthesis. Recently, people have worked out a way to perform ray-tracing on it! …
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A group of high school students form a coven of witches. A sequel to the 1996 film, "The Craft". This bills itself as a sequel to the mid-90's classic, but it's a completely independent movie. Although it is not as dark or scary as its predecessor, it's a fun and challenging film. What starts out as shrieky-teen glee gets pretty grim pretty quickly. OK, at times, it veers into "Toxic…
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I work on the SuperTinyIcons project. Our aim is to make pixel perfect SVG icons in under 1KB. Because SVG can be quite verbose, every single redundant byte we can eliminate is a byte we can use in drawing. Here are three quick tips for shaving a few bytes off an SVG. Decimal Magic SVG co-ordinates can have decimal precision, like: 123.456. But what about co-ordinates which are less than one? …
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Recently, I bought an eBook which has a bug. I'd like to explain what the bug is, why it is a problem, and how I'm trying to get it corrected. Amazon sells eBooks in KF8 format. That is an ePub with some proprietary extras. ePub is a standard based off HTML5. You can read the ePub 3 specification but, basically, it is a .zip of HTML files. If you unzip an eBook, you can read the source code…
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When I become Emperor Of The World, I will implement my favourite method of electing officials. The Single Stochastic Vote. It's a cheap, simple, and quick way of electing people. It retains the best features of First Past The Post and Proportional Representation. Here's how it works: Everyone in the constituency votes for their most favoured candidate by marking an ☒ next to the c…
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‘Understanding how the zeros and ones increasingly influence and control our lives is critical to understanding how we can reciprocate influence and control back onto those zeros and ones.’ This vital book is a call to action: to reduce online harm, to protect the integrity of our digital lives and to uphold democratic participation and inclusion. A diverse group of contributors reveal the hid…
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Last year, I set myself a challenge to read a new book per week. I managed to read 50 books, which I was pretty happy with. This year, I decided to only read books written by women. Here's what I learned. Obviously, COVID had a fairly negative effect on my reading rate. I went months without touching a book, and some evenings I could only get a few pages in before giving in to the need to…
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New Year! New Me! I'm crap at sticking to my multiple resolutions. I think I did okay on last year's resolutions. So this year, I'm just making a single one. At the start of the Gregorian calendar 2021, I'll begin an MSc Digital and Technology Specialist. My resolution is to get my coursework in on time. That's it. It has been so long since I formally studied anything that I'm a little nervous …
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It's my birthday! As is customary, here's my year in review. See 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2013, 2012, 2011, and 2010. WHAT. A. FUCKING. YEAR! The year started with me getting a colonoscopy - and went downhill from there. Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentWell gang, I'm drinking a litre of industrial strength laxative in preparation for a colonoscopy tomorrow morning.How's *your* Saturday…
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The Kendrick family have been making world-famous dolls for over 200 years. But their dolls aren't coveted for the craftsmanship alone. Each one has a specific emotion laid on it by its creator. A magic that can make you feel bucolic bliss or consuming paranoia at a single touch. Though founded by sisters, now only men may know the secrets of the workshop. Persephone Kendrick longs to break…
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In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child - not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power - the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves. My brother…
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My date of birth is the 1st of January 1901. My phone number is 0000000000. My gender is decided on a coin flip. My country of residence is Afghanistan. And my Mother's maiden name is a random mix of upper-case, lower-case, numbers, and symbols. Well, that's what you would believe if you were any website I've registered for. If you're a free WiFi provider, you get random details. Unless you have …
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