It started with a hummingbird dive-bombing Amelia Thomas over her morning coffee, and a pair of piglets who just wouldn’t stay put. Soon Amelia, journalist and new farmer, begins to question the communications of the creatures all around her: her pigs, her dogs, the pheasant family inhabiting her wood, her ‘difficult’ big red horse: even the earwigs in the farm’s dark, damp corners. Are they all…
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I've written before about the nascent WebMonetization Standard. It is a proposal which allows websites to ask users for passive payments when they visit. A visitor to this site could, if this standard is widely adopted, opt to send me cash for my very fine blog posts. All I need to do is add something like this into my site's source code: <link rel="monetization"…
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I'm reasonably sure I've read all the "Old Man's War" books. As the last one was published a decade ago, you'll forgive me if I don't remember all the intricacies of galactic politics and interpersonal intrigue. Thankfully, Scalzi has carved off a side character from a previous book and given them a brand-new adventure. There's enough exposition to tickle the parts of your brain that go "Ah,…
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At some point around the start of the pandemic, The Algorithm instructed me to listen to music by Rainbow Girls. Who am I to question the ineffable will of the machine? I don't know what it was about their harmonies, slide guitar, and double-bass which tickled my brain, but I was hooked. A few days ago, a different algorithm alerted me to the fact that they were touring the UK - so I snapped up…
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Let's say that you've visited a website and want to share it with your friends. At the bottom of the article is a list of popular sharing destinations - Facebook, BlueSky, LinkedIn, Telegram, Reddit, HackerNews etc. You click the relevant icon and get taken to the site with the sharing details pre-filled. The problem is, every different site has a different intent for sharing links and…
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Is it offensive to call a burlesque show "charming"? Sure, it is a funny and mildly titillating evening, but Show:Girls is suffused with such good natured charm that it is hard to describe it as anything else. Unlike Gallifrey Cabaret which puts on a plethora of variety acts, this is a rather stripped down production. The central conceit is that two acts have been accidentally double booked.…
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Let's see if this post makes it through the spam filters! Sluts With Consoles is a brilliant two-hander. Girly-twirly pick-me Player One and Gothy just-one-of-the-boys Player Two are locked in mortal - and emotional - combat. They represent the duality of the female gaming experience. Is it better to be feminine or feminist? Is gaming an escape from the cliques of teenage oppression, or just…
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You're the sort of cool nerd who knows all the weird esoterica which makes up DNS, right? In amongst your A, AAAA, SOA, and MX records, there's a little used NAPTR. Yes, you can use DNS to store Name Authority Pointers! What?! It is yet another of those baroque standards which spits out things like: cid.uri.arpa. ;; order pref flags service regexp replacement IN NAPTR…
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I recently had a chance to ask a question to one of the top AI people. At a Q&A session, I raised my hand and asked simply "What is your estimation of the future educational value of AI?" The response was swift and utterly devastating for those laggards who want to hold back progress. The AI guy said: Books will soon be obsolete in schools. Scholars will be instructed through AI. It is possible …
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Mr Wickham is ready to set the record straight. Celebrating the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, Adrian Lukis, who starred in the renowned BBC TV adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, returns to the role of Mr Wickham. Join Pride and Prejudice’s most roguish gentleman, George Wickham, on the eve of his sixtieth birthday, to lift the sheets on what exactly happened thirty years on from whe…
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I am massively sceptical of any claims that Blockchain can be useful. I even took the Certified Blockchain Professional course so I could better understand the batshittery. At the risk of appearing on QTWTAIN, and seeking a papal indulgence from Betteridge, I think I might have stumbled on a retroactive use-case for Blockchain! First up, what is LIBOR and what was the scandal which led to…
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I have rarely been this bored during a West End Show. Conor McPherson seems to have fundamentally misunderstood what makes an engaging drama and, simultaneously, what makes for an enjoyable "jukebox musical". The writing is like an exaggerated soap opera script which consists solely of angry people asking each other questions, which are then answered with more questions. Sample dialogue: Who…
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