When I'm bored, I like to search websites for the "Lorem Ipsum" placeholder text. It's a quick way to find discarded pages and test content. I was particularly confused that the UK's Post Office had a dozen pages containing that little Latin phrase. A quick dive into one of the pages, found this enlightening snippet of code: This is a monumentally inconsiderate thing to do. I can guess…
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Last year I reverse engineered Renault's Electric Car API. One of the curious omissions was mileage - it just doesn't appear there. However! All is not lost. If you log in to your Renault Account - https://www.renault.co.uk/my-account/my-car.html - you'll get details back about your car including its make, model, date of next service, and mileage! Why isn't this in the regular API? Who knows. …
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Just a quick note on a mistake I see people making. Webcam covers are a cheap and easy way to prevent your laptop's camera from spying on you. But too many of the covers obscure the LED which indicates that the camera is on. If you cover your activation LED then you won't be able to tell if a malicious entity has surreptitiously switched it on the camera. Keep it uncovered and you'll…
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Digital technology allows us to seamlessly share media with no degradation. Well, that's the theory - the reality is more complicated. This low quality gif is doing the rounds again. The HD version is easily available - but there appears to be something more "real" about low quality. It keeps being shared on social media - one Tweet currently has around 45 thousand likes. Here's the…
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A few weeks ago, I had a delightful chat with the BBC about our solar battery storage. You can watch it on iPlayer starting about 7m 30s in. Community battery technology is here. It is feasible. And it just works. The solar panels on our roof generate more power than we can use - so we store it and share the rest. Yes, even in rainy England, solar panels work! Storage is expensive now -…
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A bit of future-gazing which I can't be bothered spinning into a 15,000 word Gartner report. In the UK we have a competitive electricity market. Only one set of wires comes to your house, but you can buy your electricity from a number of providers. Some only offer organic, corn-fed, Wind Farm power - others promise price stability - another gives you a discount at their electric car chargers -…
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I spent 15 years in the mobile phone industry - working variously for big mobile operators, with phone manufacturers, and consulting with industry groups. I say this not to brag, but to let you know that I have experience with these matters. Web browsers are often called a User Agent. They are a software agent acting on behalf of their user. So what happens when the browser acts against the…
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A little mathematical / spatial / design problem I've been having. I have an icon which, depending on the user's preference, can be inside a square or a circle. Is it possible for it to be centred in both? Here's a visual example. On the left is the AirBnB logo centred in a square. When the background is turned into a circle, the logo appears to "drop" - the bottom of the logo is closer to the …
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As ever, mostly notes to myself. I have a bunch of old images which don't have any timestamp associated with them. This quick Python script will add a DateTime EXIF metadata tag to an image. This uses piexif which can be installed using pip install piexif This simple script reads a photo, adds a timestamp, then saves a copy of the new photo. from PIL import Image from PIL.ExifTags import…
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Amazon Alexa is a fun little bit of kit. But it can be tricky getting it to work with all your smart devices. Not every company has an Alexa skill - just like not every company has an app. Using Flask-Ask it is possible to bring Alexa smarts to a range of previously mute devices. Alexa coding works on "intents" - the following is a simple intent. That is, you can only ask the skill one…
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I recently signed up for a hackathon. Part of the deal these days is that sponsors get to send promotional messages to the attendees. Fair enough. The only problem is, most of these messages are rubbish! Here's the verbatim message I received - there were no links other than to Twitter. See if you can work out what this startup does... Just a quick heads up to let you know that we'll be…
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Recently, Lea Verou asked an important question about whether HTML should have a standardised way of letting users select a country from a list. Lea Verou@LeaVerouHTML Idea: <input type="country"> which would become a searchable dropdown with all countries and their flags.Wouldn't that be awesome?❤️ 1,863💬 113🔁 013:17 - Sat 21 October 2017 You can read through the conversation and make your own …
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