money · 5 comments · 800 words · Viewed ~652 times
Look - I get why your app or service wants me to pay a subscription. Recurring revenue is useful for a business. Your ARPU KPI is OMG to your VC. And, no doubt, there's research showing how people are more likely to eat a kitten than cancel a subscription. But I hate it. I resent having to expend mental energy to keep track of my subscriptions. Making sure they're still good value for money.…
Continue reading →WeekNotes · 2 comments · 400 words · Viewed ~213 times
Eleven years ago, the BBC announced plans to encrypt all of its free-to-air digital TV channels. The technology world was aghast! I saw thousands of Tweets from hundreds of people, angry blog posts, mailing lists erupting with fury. There may even have been a petition. The regulator, Ofcom, announced an enquiry and solicited for feedback. Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentDespite all the…
Continue reading →a11y accessibility graphics usability · 3 comments · 300 words · Viewed ~1,065 times
Dark Mode is the new cool. Apps which automatically switch to an eye-friendly palette when lighting conditions are poor. Nifty! Most of the time, it's as simple as making the text a lightish colour, and the background a darkish colour. But all that fails when you use transparencies in images. Here's a quick example. Using the GitHub app in dark mode, I visited a repo which used a transparent…
Continue reading →HTML laptop stickers w3c · 29 comments · 300 words · Viewed ~3,594 times
This is the latest of my many terrible lockdown-induced ideas. I'm saving money on commuting. So I'm spending it on tech-crap I really don't need. I bought a new laptop sticker. Anyway, enough waffle, here's the end result: This uses 2-frame lenticular printing. History No browser supports the <blink> element any more. It used to make text blink. It was a silly idea that got out of…
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(Written because I couldn't find an easy guide online.) Here's the code (formatted for readability): <time datetime="{{page.first_published_at|date:"c"}}"> {{page.first_published_at|date:"j F Y"}} </time> You can also use last_published_at if it is a page which has been updated. WHY?!??! Semantics. HTML5 contains the <time> element. The contents of it show up as normal running text, but…
Continue reading →Book Review media medicine Social Media tv · 350 words
This book demonstrates how popular culture can be successfully incorporated into medical and health science curriculums, capitalising on the opportunity fictional media presents to humanise case studies. Studies show that the vast majority of medical and nursing students watch popular medical television dramas and comedies such as Grey’s Anatomy, ER, House M.D. and Scrubs. This book is c…
Continue reading →HTML twitter Web Development · 3 comments · 350 words
I wanted to see what I was Tweeting on this exact day last year. And all the years before. So I built a website! It's a disgusting hack, and I'm truly sorry for unleashing it on you. Using the API You can't. The Twitter search API only goes back 7 days. This whole idea would be much easier if I had access to the Premium API. But! The Twitter website has no such restrictions. Advanced Search …
Continue reading →diy home HowTo led · 5 comments · 250 words · Viewed ~591 times
When we moved house, we found the previous owners had installed under-cupboard lighting in the kitchen. It uses basic and cheap 12V LED strips. The strips are flexible and have glue on the back. We didn't like them in the kitchen. So we tried them on the stairs. Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentTrying to work out where I want LED strips.The "aeroplane emergency lighting" look on the stairs…
Continue reading →art diy home · 150 words · Viewed ~269 times
One of the problems with buying a house, is that you're inevitably stuck with someone else's taste in decor. Our new place isn't too bad - it's just a little dull. With lockdown in full-force, some of the boring bits of the house have been annoying me more than is reasonable. I'm not a big fan of net curtains. They always look a bit ratty, and are a dust trap. So we decided to get some…
Continue reading →github · 12 comments · 450 words · Viewed ~375 times
There was a "situation" at work. We were publishing a high-profile project (take a wild guess) on GitHub. We had received abuse and were worried that someone might target the programmers who worked on the project. Obviously, we take cyber-security seriously, but how do we deal with personal-security? Here are the options we considered: Get everyone to sign up for a secondary GitHub account to …
Continue reading →encryption pgp twitter · 3 comments · 300 words · Viewed ~3,215 times
I'm not sure if I'm the first person to do this - but I'm going to claim credit anyway! Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentHello! This Tweet has been signed with my PGP Key. pic.x.com/ed4rcldlvw❤️ 35💬 7🔁 008:03 - Thu 14 May 2020 You can verify by pasting the alt text into keybase.io/verify - or by using your favourite command line tool. Back in 2017, I wondered if Twitter's alt text could be (ab)…
Continue reading →HowTo tip twitter · 1 comment · 150 words
Twitter's search interface has all sorts of lovely and obscure options. My three favourites are "min_retweets:", "min_replies:", and "min_faves:" Using those filters, you can create a search for Tweets which meet a certain threshold. For example, here are my Tweets which have been liked more than 500 times: twitter.com/search?q=from:edent min_faves:500 Here are the ones which have been…
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