Movie Review · 1 comment · 100 words
You can safely skip the first 45 minutes of this movie. It's the most clichéd Dead Poets / Breakfast Club nonsense I've seen in quite some time. As for the rest? Well… it is shot on film with a unusual aspect ratio. So, you know, that's cool... There's also lots of ✨acting✨ and quirky camera angles… The final third is your typical mismatched buddy movie. Isn't it funny that the old man and you…
Continue reading →gadget linux nfc review USB · 300 words
Recap - I want to build an NFC reader expansion card for the FrameWork laptop. So I've bought a couple of components. This is the ACR1251T-E2 - it's a USB pen-drive sized NFC reader with a side-out USB-A plug. Costs about £40. There's a recessed green LED which flashes to let you know that it is working. It doesn't beep or vibrate when it detects an NFC token. It is a little bit tricky …
Continue reading →gadget linux nfc review · 2 comments · 300 words
Recap - I want to build an NFC reader expansion card for the FrameWork laptop. So I've bought a couple of components. This is the ACM1252U-Z2 and Oh! It is a dinky little component! The only sign that it is working is a flashing green LED. There's no buzzer on the board. It really is a tiny thing. Side on it is almost invisible. Does it work with Linux? Oh yes! It has a Micro-USB port, so…
Continue reading →Doctor Who · 5 comments · 4,000 words · Viewed ~438 times
If you got the chance to travel in time and space, with an immortal alien, and got to rescue the universe again and again - would you ever give up that life? Would you be content to go from unravelling the mysteries of the universe and fighting DALEKs to, I don't know, marrying a stranger or going back to your old life? The joy of Doctor Who is that we - the viewers - are the constant companion. …
Continue reading →cryptography · 4 comments · 450 words · Viewed ~408 times
Humans are lazy. That's why we have computers; to do the boring work for us. I recently downloaded a file. The website said the file should have a SHA-256 hash of: ca978112ca1bbdcafac231b39a23dc4da786eff8147c4e72b9807785afee48bb So I ran sha256 filename on my machine. And then lazily compared the hashes. By which I mean "Yeah the first few characters match, as do the last few. It's probably…
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There are lots of one-man plays. There are a decent number of one-woman shows. Where are the one-girl stories? This is Rosie Day's attempt to fix that imbalance. The plot isn't particularly original (it is hard being a teenage girl!!!) but the way the story unfolds is magical. It is witty, irreverent, and cringey in just the right amount. Charithra Chandran has easily enough stage presence to…
Continue reading →ActivityPub fediverse IoT Social Networks · 15 comments · 550 words · Viewed ~2,988 times
One of the most frustrating things in modern technology is the effort spent trying to artificially restrict abundance. Take, for example, this tale from museum-worker Aaron Cope: I was out with a friend who worked for Twitter and I asked them whether it would be possible for the museum to “create 200,000 Twitter accounts, one for each object in the Cooper Hewitt’s collection”. My friend looke…
Continue reading →linux pop_os ubuntu · 5 comments · 500 words · Viewed ~2,052 times
My Linux laptop used to suspend perfectly. I'd close the lid and it would go to sleep. Open it up, it would spring to life - presenting me with a password screen. But, some time in the last few months, it has stopped doing that. If I close the lid, it keeps running. This is unhelpful. If I manually run the suspend command - systemctl suspend - the laptop blanks the screen then immediately…
Continue reading →android design google ui ux · 6 comments · 500 words · Viewed ~417 times
Some of my best friends are designers. But I think we can all agree that - however well-meaning - they can be a little obsessive. Whether it is fretting over tiny details, or trying to align to a grid which doesn't exist, or spending time removing useful affordances in the name of æsthetics - they always find a way to make something prettier at the expense of usability. Google used to have some …
Continue reading →BtVS BuffyRevamped theatre · 2 comments · 250 words
The great thing about getting older is that the popular culture of your youth is repackaged and sold back to you with increasing urgency. Yes, I want that Lego set I couldn't afford as a kid. Why, of course I want to watch a reboot of Frasier! Another few Ghostbusters movies? I'm in! Brendan Murphy has prepared a dose of 100% pure 90's nostalgia and wishes to inject it into your eyeballs. Ahhh!…
Continue reading →metaverse oculus vr · 1 comment · 550 words
Several years ago, at the start of the pandemic, I tried using Nintendo's Ring Fit as an exercise method. It didn't last long. I felt I was spending too much time earning in-game currency, making choices on what to spend it on, crafting, managing inventory, choosing power-ups, and all sorts of other tedious nonsense. In short, I constantly felt like I was working rather than working out. If…
Continue reading →blog blogging WordPress · 9 comments · 850 words · Viewed ~207 times
This is the 3,000th blog post I've published on this site! Bloody hell! I first started a blog on Blogger.com in 2004 - twenty years ago. Like all blogs, I managed half a dozen posts before I forgot about it. Cut to 2007 and I decided to launch shkspr.mobi as a weird site dedicated to rendering Shakespeare's plays in txt spk. Judging by Archive.org I was still using Blogger. By 2008 I was…
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