I've always loved taking things apart. I remember, as a child, trying to sneak a set of screwdrivers onto a transatlantic flight. I wanted to see how the aeroplane worked and figured that unscrewing vital components while in flight would be just fine. I've (mostly) grown out of the habit of tearing down things which are currently useful, and tend to wait until they reach their natural end before …
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Earlier this week, I wrote about the Future of AudioBoo. I'm sure the service is going to be just fine - but thought it would be an interesting exercise to liberate my data from there just in case. As I begin the move to decentralised services where possible, I think it's important that I take responsibility for my own data. The API docs for AudioBoo are very clear, so here's a quick guide on…
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Strolling along London's Southbank the other day, I came across one of those new-fangled information posts. Crudely stuck to it was a decidedly old-fashioned piece of paper bearing a planning notice. But! My my! What's that in the lower left corner? A QR code! Unsurprisingly, scanning the code takes you directly to the planning application on the web. Although the site isn't specifically…
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Analysts estimates are always interesting to read - especially if you know the real statistics which they are trying to prophetize. Even when someone releases "official" statistics, they're usually hard to verify independently, and even harder to analyse by region. Benedict Evans - who I've had the pleasure of meeting at Mobile Monday - published some very interesting official stats on…
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My good friend Documentally has written up his thoughts on the future of AudioBoo. Here is my reply, appropriately enough, in audio format. 🔊 The Future of AudioBoo is Uncertain🎤 Terence Eden 💾 Download this audio file. You may be interested in my other posts on the subject - Preparing for the Collapse of Digital Civilization and I Don't Want To Be Part of Your Fucking Ecosystem (So…
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How much checking do we perform that our code is running as intended? I found a curious bug this weekend, which made me think about some of the assumptions that we use when programming. Imagine sorting an array using JavaScript. var arr = [10, 5, 66, 8, 1, 3]; arr.sort(); So far, so normal. Create an array of numbers, then sort that array. The result should always be [1, 3, 5, 8, 10, 66]. …
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It's 1986. You're working on the Russian's Buran space programme - trying to create a re-usable space vehicle which will exceed the capabilities of the American's "Space Shuttle". There's a problem. You have very complicated real-time algorithms which you need to review, improve, optimise, and then turn into code. How do you do it? Obviously, you invent DRAKON! ДРАКОН, "dragon" Backronym for…
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A few weeks ago, I received what I thought was a particularly inept phishing attack. Subject: shkspr.mobi ***PLEASE NOTE THAT IF YOU DO NOT RESPOND TO THIS EMAIL YOU MAY RUN THE RISK OF THIS NAME BEING ERRONEOUSLY DELETED - PLEASE ENSURE THAT YOU REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE (VIA EMAIL) WITH REFERENCE TO THE ACCURACY OF THE WHOIS INFORMATION*** Hello; I'm writing to you from Tucows (Registrar for…
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This is a necropost - resurrected from the now defunct blog of a previous employer.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTEqKd92kcI Pop quiz: How many MB did you use watching that YouTube video? When dealing with data usage, a familiar cry in the telco world is “Customers just don’t understand what a MB is!” Is this true? The theory goes something like this… Some elements of a phone bill are e…
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No spoilers, sweetie :-) This evening's Doctor Who - The Bells of St John - revolves around mysterious WiFi signals. Alien SSIDs which, if you connect to them.... well, watch the episode to find out! In the show, they look like these: So, can we do the same thing for our home WiFi network? Yup! There are some limitations though. SSIDs can only have a maximum length of 32 byte. Those are…
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*And a telescope.... The photo on the left is me just pointing my Galaxy Note II at the sky - the one on the right uses the same phone, but with a bit more kit... Last year, I bought myself a small telescope as a birthday present. I wanted to use it to take photos of the moon. I like the moon. The problem is that putting the phone up to the lens of the scope is really tricky to align. Which …
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There's a lot of snake-oil in the technology world. From gold plated fibre optic cables to anti-radiation phone cases - there are a whole lot of people willing to exploit technical ignorance in return for money. There's also a lot of misinformation, folklore, and crazy thinking which confuses us when we try to interact with "simple" technology. For example, I was in Waterloo Tube station when…
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