The British intelligence service GCHQ has been on Twitter since January 2016 - however they only sent their first tweet today. GCHQ@GCHQHello, world. bit.ly/GCHQhello❤️ 1,612💬 453🔁 010:02 - Mon 16 May 2016 As I never tire of saying, Bitly is a terrible at keeping your data private. Simply add a + on to the URL and you can see some really interesting stats about the link and the user who created…
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I love my Lifx Bulbs. They're a quick and easy way to retrofit Internet connected goodies into a smart-home. One of the best things about them is their open API. Sure, you can use IFTTT if you want something easy - but us 1337 hax0rs want an API and Lifx provides it. The API is pretty secure - good use of OAuth and tokens to make sure whatever you're building is resistant to infiltration. I…
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I've been trying to find the perfect Linux laptop. I need something small, light, powerful, and with an ergonomic keyboard. Hmmm... Perhaps I don't need a laptop. I could use a tablet and my new Bluetooth keyboard... Enter BQ's Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition. It promises the Ubuntu experience in a convenient tablet package. I wanted to love this tablet. But it is so unbelievably bad that I'm…
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This weekend, I spotted that a person I know was running a Shakespeare themed GameJam - a sort of informal collection/competition arranged around a theme. The Shakespeare #BardJam ends midnight BST tonight, & works-in-progress are welcome. https://itch.io/jam/bard-jam #interactivefiction #textgame — Ash (@ggnewed) April 30, 2016 Given my previous experience developing Interactive Fiction, I f…
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I like to listen to music while I work. I find - especially in an open plan office - that it is an essential aid to concentration. That said, I find music with lyrics particularly problematic as my brain prefers to concentrate on the words rather than the task in hand. On long flights, I often use a white noise generator to drown out sound. I've recently started listening to random music. A…
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Here's a quick way to display how many times a WordPress post has been read. For this, you will need: A blog running WordPress. The JetPack plugin installed. The ability to edit your themes. Here's the snippet of code I'm using to add "This post has been read 12,345 times". I'll explain how it works in a bit more detail. if( function_exists( 'stats_get_csv' ) ) { …
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I love my keyboards. I mean, I have an unhealthy obsession with them. I spend a lot of time typing and the cramped keyboards which come with most laptops and MacBooks just don't cut it for me. Their poor ergonomics leave my wrists in pain. For years I was a devotee of the Microsoft 4000 Keyboard. It's a big old beast - and that's its main drawback; it's just too large to carry around. It…
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Last week I was contacted by the BBC's consumer affairs programme "You And Yours" for my expert opinion on a new type of mobile phone scam. Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentWarning! I'll be on @BBCRadio4's You And Yours shortly.Please tune your wirelesses accordingly. pic.x.com/6f3zsiwuin❤️ 4💬 1🔁 011:18 - Mon 11 April 2016 Several people had contacted the show to say that they had missed calls f…
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Here's a simple step that Twitter App Developers can do to reduce the amount of abuse which is generated on the platform. A few friends of mine regularly receive harassment on Twitter. Typically, there are two ways to deal with it: Mute the offending user. This means their tweets to you never show up in your replies. Block the offending user. The same as muting, except the offender…
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This is a quick unboxing / set-up / review of the Chipolo. This was a nifty piece of schwag from the Twitter Developer Relations team, to whom I'm grateful. The Chipolo is a multi-purpose Bluetooth Low Energy tag. It's like a high-tech version of one of those things which you attach to your keyring which will beep when whistled at. As the box says, it will work up to 60 meters away. It'll …
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I was listening to the excellent RHLSTP - because I am one of the cool kids - when the guest, Richard Bacon, made a curious confession about his adventures bringing News Bunny to the State Opening of Parliament. I got a letter from Black Rod - who runs both houses […] and it says that I am banned for life from the House of Commons and the House of Lords. It's at the 7 minute 20 mark on the v…
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Last week I ran a mentoring session with a young woman working in technology. She's smart, capable, dedicated, confident and utterly un-ambitious. She was incredibly frustrated that all of the training courses and women's networks she had found were fixated on her becoming a manager, an executive, or a CEO. We were both in agreement that our industry needs diverse representation at all levels…
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