bit.ly emoji · 2 comments · 150 words · Viewed ~630 times
Popular URl shortner Bitly allows users to customise its links. This means you can have all sorty of weird and wonderful character in there. For example: bit.ly/ó¾°ó¾° You can also use Emoji! bit.ly/☹ bit.ly/♐ Well, OK, not all Emoji. If you try to use most of them, the Bitly system craps out and generates broken URls, like so: But you can use most Unicode Miscellaneous symbols - so…
Continue reading →Book Review time travel · 1 comment · 150 words
The first book in the bestselling Chronicles of St Mary's series which follows a group of tea-soaked disaster magnets as they hurtle their way around History. This is stupid amounts of fun! A roaring adventure through time. Doesn't bother getting hung-up on paradoxes - or science - but goes straight for the heart of history. Historians! Specifically, historians fightin', drinkin', and…
Continue reading →HowTo linux twitter · 250 words
You can't post raw audio to Twitter directly. It sucks. Sure, you can post links to audio, but it's not quite the same. Here's a couple of Linux one-liners which will turn audio into simple video suitable for uploading to social media. Waves This converts audio to a waveform: ffmpeg -i input.mp3 -filter_complex "[0:a]showwaves=s=640x480:mode=line,format=yuv420p[v]" -map "[v]" -map 0:a -c:v…
Continue reading →Book Review economics technology · 4 comments · 250 words
This book debunks the myth of the State as a large bureaucratic organization that can at best facilitate the creative innovation which happens in the dynamic private sector. It argues that in the history of modern capitalism the State has not only fixed market failures but also shaped and created markets, actively investing in new technologies and sectors that private investors only later find…
Continue reading →future · 550 words · Viewed ~259 times
Here's a great set of questions to ask at your next corporate strategy away day. I know you know the answers to these questions - but I promise that the people in charge of your organisation will have some illuminating answers. Thinking about the next five years... will computers be faster or slower? will the price of computing go up or down? will internet speeds get faster or slower? will…
Continue reading →money pay work · 6 comments · 600 words · Viewed ~221 times
In the UK, most professional jobs pay monthly. In the USA, it seems most professional jobs get paid every two weeks. This usually comes as a great shock when someone from one side of the pond finds out how poorly employment conditions are on the other side. Naturally, everyone believes their own way of doing it is superior. Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentI find it strange that Americans are…
Continue reading →meta Web Development WordPress · 7 comments · 400 words · Viewed ~229 times
I've been blogging for a long time. Over the years, I've linked to tens of thousands of websites. Inevitably, some of those sites have gone. Even when sites still exist, webmasters seem to have forgotten that Cool URls Don't Change. I use the WordPress Broken Link Checker plugin. It periodically monitors the links on my site and lets me know which ones are dead. It also offers to link to…
Continue reading →laptop security webcam · 4 comments · 150 words · Viewed ~882 times
Here's something I didn't know - but should have, because it's obvious... Your screen's auto-brightness depends on your webcam. If, like me, you have a privacy cover - this happens: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/WebCamp-Cover.mp4 The MacBook I'm using doesn't have any lux sensors that I can see - most phones have a separate sensor which means the camera isn't in use all…
Continue reading →Amazon BBC bug hdmi iplayer · 2 comments · 250 words · Viewed ~1,081 times
Technology never works right. And video technology never works right even harder. The Amazon 4K Fire Stick is a pretty cool bit of kit. It's an Android device which can push 4K HDR video with surround sound to your TV. But, like any technology, it's buggy. Here's the bug report I've tried to send to Amazon and the BBC. They haven't answered - so I'm publishing it here as well. BBC iPlayer…
Continue reading →OpenBenches · 600 words · Viewed ~211 times
Our community project - OpenBenches is going really well. At the time of writing, we have 33,211 photos, taking up over 100GB. Cameras and phones all have different ways of naming the photos they save. Some files are named with a datestamp - 2019-12-25_01.jpg. Others are sequential - photo_0001.jpg. Or they might have a system generated name - 7bba245908_k.jpg. Storing all those photos in a…
Continue reading →debugging tv · 3 comments · 650 words · Viewed ~6,542 times
Here's a quick guide to hacking investigating your TV's engineering menu. This works on all Vestel TVs - including modern Toshiba screens. I've also written about Telnet control of Toshiba Smart TVs. If you manage to break your TV using this forbidden knowledge, please don't come crying to me for help. Turn on your TV. Switch to an HDMI source. You must not be on a TV menu. Hold down the 0…
Continue reading →audio mp3 opus · 4 comments · 450 words
As much as technology marches forward, there are two truths I need to accept. File transfer speeds are always going to be slower that I can be bothered to wait My ears aren't going to get any better at hearing For years, I ripped all of my music as FLAC. I collected ridiculously high-resolution audio files. I devoured disk drive space for surround sound soundtracks. "One day," I thought,…
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