Book Review · 250 words
What is it like to be a brain surgeon? How does it feel to hold someone's life in your hands, to cut through the stuff that creates thought, feeling and reason? How do you live with the consequences when it all goes wrong? Henry Marsh reveals the exhilarating drama of surgery, the chaos and confusion of a busy modern hospital, and above all the need for hope when faced with life's most…
Continue reading →Book Review · 200 words
After a mysterious schooner runs aground in an English harbor with no human passengers -- only the dead captain, drained of blood -- a series of bizarre nocturnal crimes takes place in London. It can only be the work of Count Dracula, and only one man can save the city: the world’s greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes. This is a very silly book! I recently watched the amazing film "Batman Vs t…
Continue reading →email security · 2 comments · 500 words · Viewed ~352 times
Like all security minded people, I use a unique email address for every service I sign up to. This week, I noticed I had started receiving spam to an email address associated with my Join.me account. Join.me is a screen sharing service now owned by LogMeIn. I signed up for a trial of Join.me back in 2012(!) and as far as I'm aware, never used it again. Checking my records, this piece of spam…
Continue reading →accessibility discrimination · 13 comments · 1,500 words · Viewed ~24,618 times
I've spent a week cosplaying as a disabled user. And I hate it. A couple of months ago, I attended a private talk given by a disabled colleague of mine. "Everyone should believe disabled people's stories about accessibility problems," she said. "But, given that people don't, here's what I want you to do. Spend one week pretending to be disabled. Pick a disability and try to interact with…
Continue reading →podcast · 100 words
If two blokes meet up and don't record a podcast, did it even happen? Social Media Maven Documentally showed off his podcasting rig - an app called Backpack Studio. You can listen to the ramblechat we recorded on his feed. Here's our quick chat about this nifty podcasting app - which I hope will one day come to Android. 🔊 💾 Download this audio file. …
Continue reading →vegetarian · 2 comments · 750 words · Viewed ~1,357 times
I've been a vegetarian for half my life and I have been blogging about crappy vegetarian labelling for a decade. Usually it's a rant about how a seemingly innocuous dish has hidden bone jelly in it - but today I experience the reverse situation. So, I was in the "veggie snacks" aisle of my local supermarket. I grabbed some tofu bites, mushroom sausages, a bean burger - and then I saw this. …
Continue reading →Book Review · 400 words
One of America's top doctors reveals how AI will empower physicians and revolutionize patient care. Medicine has become inhuman, to disastrous effect. The doctor-patient relationship - the heart of medicine - is broken: doctors are too distracted and overwhelmed to truly connect with their patients, and medical errors and misdiagnoses abound. In Deep Medicine, leading physician Eric Topol…
Continue reading →edent websites · 5 comments · 1,400 words · Viewed ~12,021 times
I go by "edent" on most websites. It's short, relates to my real name, and is usually unique. I quite often sign up to things just to snag the name. But there have been a couple of sites where someone else has got there first and started using "my" name. I don't own the trademark, nor have any special rights to that name. So I wanted to document how I recovered it on a few prominent sites. …
Continue reading →presentation public speaking speaker speaking work · 2 comments · 450 words · Viewed ~619 times
I do lots of public speaking as part of my job. I'd like to share one of my tips for giving engaging and impactful talks. Two caveats: This is a sort-of work post. In that, I'll be discussing something I did for my employer - but they haven't asked me to write this, nor have they reviewed it. Just because this works for me, doesn't mean it is right for you. Sometimes you have to find your own…
Continue reading →solar twitter · 1 comment · 400 words · Viewed ~7,111 times
Back in 2014, I set up a rather silly Twitter account - @OxfordSolarLive. The premise was simple. A camera took a photo of the sky above my house. It took a reading from my solar panels to see how much electricity they were generating. It superimposed the reading on the photo. Then posted it on Twitter. Solar Realtime Edent@OxfordSolarLive1206 watts. pic.x.com/ip2cp5rrao❤️ 0💬 0🔁 014:11 - Fri 24 …
Continue reading →emoji flags unicode 🏳️⚧️ · 4 comments · 700 words · Viewed ~5,090 times
This blog post contains emoji which your system may not be able to display. You may see broken text, weird symbols, or other buggy rendering. The Transgender Flag is a draft candidate for Emoji 13.0 under the name Blue, Pink, and White Flag. A number of platforms include an image for this emoji, but do not show it on the emoji keyboard. As of June 2019 this is now supported on Twitter platforms …
Continue reading →3d printing podcast · 50 words
Hannah works for Eagle Labs, where she 3D prints things and builds IoT lamps. 🔊 💾 Download this audio file. …
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