By @edent · home · 7 comments · 450 words
One of the things that often confuses Americans when they visit the UK is our lack of window screens. All the Imperialist Yankee media I consumed as a kid had a delightful array of screen doors and windows. But here in rainy old England, there's never been much call for them. Mosquitos are rare. Our […]
Continue reading →By @edent · Book Review Sci Fi · 1 comment · 200 words
This is a decent slice of sci-fi. It's the sort of story that probably could have been written any time in the last 100 years. The sole survivor of the human race is picked up by friendly aliens and spends his life as a specimen of scientific and cultural curiosity. And then... events occur! It's […]
Continue reading →By @edent · Movie Review · 2 comments · 300 words
I'll say one thing for ゴジラ(Godzilla)-1.0（マイナスワン, it is loud. Even at a moderate volume, your subwoofer will get a workout and your neighbours will start banging the walls. Let them. Godzilla rules! Got neighbours on both sides? Good! Your rears speakers will also be thoroughly abused by Godzilla's roar and the terrifyingly loud explosions. There's […]
Continue reading →By @edent · GE2024 politics retropost · 4 comments · 300 words · read ~486 times.
This is a retropost. Written in January 2023 but published long after I left the Civil Service. One of the weird things about working in Westminster is how terrifyingly normal it becomes to work in grand old buildings, stuffed with grand old artworks, and staffed with grand old politicians. You turn a corner and there's […]
Continue reading →By @edent · Doctor Who DrWho predictions · 8 comments · 350 words
You're a big Doctor Who fan, right? If I asked you what the world DALEK meant, you'd probably tell me that it is an anagram of KALED - the original name of their species. You'd be wrong. In 1965, it was clearly established by a canonical source, that the world DALEK stands for: Destroy without […]
Continue reading →By @edent · av hdmi Home Cinema HowTo · 3 comments · 300 words
I bloody hate hardware manufacturers. I wanted to use HDR on my PlayStation 5. The console supports it, my TV supports it, my amp supports it, my cables support it. Yet it wasn't working. I tried everything - updating firmware, replacing cables, and even reading the manual. Nothing. And then I stumbled on the answer […]
Continue reading →By @edent · election GE2024 politics retropost · 4 comments · 400 words · read ~270 times.
This is a retropost. Written contemporaneously in May 2020 during the height of the pandemic, but published long after the events. The day the EU referendum was announced, the then Prime Minister came to visit our office. We were given a chance to talk to him in front of TV cameras. This was my chance. […]
Continue reading →By @edent · business introspection · 18 comments · 600 words · read ~227 times.
You're in a restaurant with a group of friends. The waiter won't let you split the bill, so you offer to pay for it on your card and have your friends send you their share. How much would you charge them for that service? That sounds absurd, right? OK, you might agree to split the […]
Continue reading →By @edent · Book Review privacy · 1 comment · 400 words
Heather Burns has an absolutely deft way of turning the sometimes-dull world of digital privacy into entertaining, informative, and actionable prose. Too many of these sorts of books end up being a list of woes and end with "someone should do something, I guess?". Understanding Privacy is different. All the way through the mantra is […]
Continue reading →By @edent · FIRE money · 4 comments · 650 words · read ~225 times.
Everyone's favourite tabloid, The Daily Telegraph, contains an article decrying the Financial Independence Retire Early philosophy0 I have a mixed relationship with the FIRE movement. It basically boils down to "spend less, save more, then you can retire once you've save 25x your annual spend". That's it. As Michael Taylor writes, some people fetishise the […]
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