Star Wars · 700 words · Viewed ~270 times
There's something poetic about watching a film you know intimately being performed in another language. Like many children of my generation, I don't remember a time before Star Wars. My birthday cakes were sloppy green Jabba The Hutts, my brother always got the "baddie" toys and I got the "goodies", every cardboard tube became a deadly lightsabre in my hands. The force run strong in my…
Continue reading →fiction interactive fiction twitter · 14 comments · 1,450 words · Viewed ~15,072 times
I've spent the last few days writing a Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) game on Twitter. This blog post briefly discusses how I did it - and what pitfalls I discovered when creating it. But, first, if you want to play.... Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentYou should probably be asleep.I've created a "Choose You Own Adventure" on Twitter.Start here ➡ @wnd_goPleasant dreams.❤️ 6,416💬 429🔁 022:50 -…
Continue reading →dabr · 11 comments · 500 words · Viewed ~1,046 times
Way back in 2008, David Carrington created Dabr - a really simple mobile website for accessing Twitter. Dabr@dabrFact of the month: @dabr is now 5 years old! Born in August 2008 when @davidcarrington was inspired by @Whatleydude.❤️ 7💬 10🔁 013:59 - Mon 16 September 2013 In those days, Twitter had a kick-arse API and were happy for people to build exciting new services on it. I was eager to contr…
Continue reading →facebook http twitter · 1 comment · 450 words · Viewed ~1,212 times
I've nothing against the Swedes. Lovely people. Sweden is the third-largest country in the European Union by area. But I'm not from there. Neither, as far as I am aware, is Facebook. But Twitter seems to think so. When I share a link to Twitter on Facebook, this (sometimes) happens. And sometimes, I get this delightfully mangled Unicode atrocity! So, what's going on? When Facebook wants…
Continue reading →css fonts web · 650 words · Viewed ~7,506 times
tl;dr - If a mobile web browser recognises an Emoji, it should display it natively. If not, it should fall back to a supplied web font. Is this possible? When Android and iOS find Emoji in text, rather than display them as black-and-white fonts, they show them off in gorgeous colour. For example, the unicode smilie is ☺. Depending on your system, it will look something like this: From Tim W…
Continue reading →android google rant · 15 comments · 900 words · Viewed ~71,782 times
I can only assume that on their first day at Google, new employees are given their Android phone, a ChromeBook, a self-driving car, and complementary Laser Eye Surgery. That's my theory on some of the problems besetting Android's Lollipop release. I've ranted about Lollipop before, and now I'd like to point out two particular problems. All of these tests were performed on a Nexus 4 running…
Continue reading →android ux · 6 comments · 600 words · Viewed ~4,434 times
I don't get Google. I really don't. Some of my smartest friends work there - and yet, as an organisation, Google continually demonstrates an imbecilic attitude to quality. I've already shared some of my thoughts on Android 5.0 Lollipop - it's slow, buggy, and shows that Google either doesn't bother with testing, or simply doesn't care about quality. Let's take a look at a few examples - all…
Continue reading →Open Data solar · 3 comments · 1,000 words · Viewed ~2,135 times
It's been a full year since we had solar panels installed on our semi-detached house in Oxford, UK. By coincidence, the panels were switched on during the Winter Solstice - the shortest day of the year. So, how have they performed? Tracking Solar Performance - The Easy Way The solar panels have a generation meter. It tracks every kWh the panels produce. As of today, it stands at 4,061kWh. …
Continue reading →podcast · 150 words
Oxford's Bodleian library makes high resolution scans of Shakespeare's First Folio available under a Creative Commons licence. Pip Willcox tells us more. 🔊 Pip Willcox and the First Folio🎤 Terence Eden 💾 Download this audio file. About A Minute is an amuse-bouche for podcast listeners. No long intro and outro. No waffling on. No adverts, competitions, arguing, or begging for iTunes…
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Talking to Kerri Russell about the Oxford Corpus of Old Japanese. 🔊 Kerri Russell on Ancient Japanese🎤 Terence Eden 💾 Download this audio file. About A Minute is an amuse-bouche for podcast listeners. No long intro and outro. No waffling on. No adverts, competitions, arguing, or begging for iTunes reviews. You get to listen to an interesting person chat for about a minute - that's…
Continue reading →data shakespeare spelling · 300 words · Viewed ~244 times
As part of the Shakespeare Hackday I attended a few weeks ago, we discussed some interesting analysis which can be done on the text. Certain forms of analysis are hampered due to the archaic and inconsistent spelling. I wondered if that could be mined for anything interesting. For example, in modern UK English we use the word "honour". In modern US English, it loses the "u" to become "honor". …
Continue reading →gender · 100 words
Student Paula Clerkin has just run a successful conference for Women In Technology. Read about how she organised the conference, check out her blog, and follow her code on GitHub. 🔊 @kerpowla and InspireWIT🎤 Terence Eden 💾 Download this audio file. Get About A Minute as soon as each episode goes live. Stick this Podcast Feed into your podcatcher Or you can Subscribe on iTunes I…
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