Book Review · 600 words
The problem with autobiographies is that every anecdote ends with "needless to say, I had the last laugh!" This corporate-autobiography is no different - as it details the rise and impact of Bellingcat - a team of investigators and journalists. I am in awe of Bellingcat - and have seen them give talks on a couple of occasions. This book is a thrilling account of how they perform "open source"…
Continue reading →accessibility security usability · 3 comments · 400 words · Viewed ~528 times
Sometimes a client asks me a question and I'm a little stunned by their mental model of the world. A few weeks ago, we were discussing the need for better cybersecurity in their architecture. We spoke about several aspects of security, then they asked an outstanding question. "What should I buy to be secure?" It took a few moments to tease out exactly what they thought they were asking. In…
Continue reading →election general election politics uk · 7 comments · 500 words
The UK is almost certain to have a General Election this year. The Boundary Commission for England has reworked the existing Parliamentary constituencies to make them more fair. As such, constituencies are generally more equal in terms of electorate. But, of course, geography trumps geometry. So the Isle of Wight now has two constituencies of 56k and 54k, whereas the average constituency has…
Continue reading →dhsc meta nhsx retropost work · 350 words · Viewed ~226 times
This is a retropost. Written contemporaneously in February 2019, but published much later. My life is weird. Again. Looking out over London from the top floor. The Eye is glittering and the Palace of Westminster is glowing. Someone pours me a glass of (very expensive) champagne, as the Secretary of State laughs at my witty bon mot. Is this my life now? People of distinction and influence…
Continue reading →ActivityPub mastodon php · 9 comments · 1,950 words · Viewed ~3,734 times
Any computer program can be designed to run from a single file if you architect it wrong enough! I wanted to create the simplest possible Fediverse server which can be used as an educational tool to show how ActivityPub / Mastodon works. The design goals were: Upload a single PHP file to the server. No databases or separate config files. Single Actor (i.e. not multi-user). Allow the Actor to…
Continue reading →ActivityPub fediverse i18n mastodon unicode · 35 comments · 750 words · Viewed ~309 times
We live in the future now. It is OK to use Unicode everywhere. It seems bizarre to me that modern Internet services sometimes "forget" that there's a world outside the Anglosphere. Some people have the temerity to speak foreign languages! And some of those languages have accents on their letters!! Even worse, some don't use English letters at all!!! A decade ago, I was miffed that GitHub only…
Continue reading →Apps gov.uk · 21 comments · 850 words · Viewed ~1,021 times
Shortly before I left the Civil Service in 2023, I made a complete fool of myself. Someone on Slack was discussing their department's app and I (rather snidely) asked why it was an app rather than a website. After all, one of the seminal blog posts of GDS was about not building apps. In response, I was given an eye-roll and told "because that's how most people get their information, grandpa!" …
Continue reading →Climate Crisis electricity near future · 3 comments · 350 words · Viewed ~2,266 times
An interesting snippet about the future of computation: Starting with this build, we are introducing the Power Grid Forecast API. This API empowers app developers to optimize app behavior, minimizing environmental impact by shifting background tasks to times when more renewable energy is available in the local electrical grid. Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26052 Some…
Continue reading →bitwarden HowTo json linux · 3 comments · 300 words · Viewed ~567 times
I highly recommend BitWarden as a password manager. It is free, open source, and has a great range of apps and APIs. The one thing it doesn't have is a way to sort your accounts by creation date. I now have over a thousand accounts that I've added - so I wanted to prune away some of the older ones. So, here's how to do it. Export your vault In the desktop version of BitWarden, go to File → E…
Continue reading →Game Review oculus vr · 1 comment · 350 words
It is impossible to describe just how cute this game is. Most VR games take place at "human scale" - you play as a human inside a building, or other human-sized space. But Moss lets you play as a mouse named Quill with you (the player) towering over her. You are a human literally peering down into a mouse-sized kingdom. It is one of the most stunning uses of VR in a game that I've seen. …
Continue reading →Book Review · 200 words
The central schtick of this book is a cliché brilliantly delivered. Take a side-character from a beloved book and retell the story through their eyes. I only have hazy memories of reading 1984 - where Julia is little more than a femme fatale. This book is an explicit and visceral journey through Julia's life in Airstrip One. We see how, from her point of view, Winston Smith is little more than …
Continue reading →Computer Science language programming python · 7 comments · 300 words
I've been thinking about programming languages and their design. In her book about the divergence of the English and American languages, Lynne Murphy asks this question: wouldn’t it be great if language were logical and maximally efficient? If sentences had only as many syllables as strictly needed? If each word had a single, unique meaning? If there were no homophones, so we’d not be able to mi…
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