Book Review · 200 words
What if the heroine in a Jane Austen novel had visions of the future and the past? That's the rather compelling premise of Time Squared. But, ultimately, it doesn't really fulfil the promise. It starts as a fairly standard regency-style novel - which of the two dashing brothers will our orphaned heroine marry?!? Our protagonist sometimes has headaches which lead her to see glimpses of a future…
Continue reading →history language · 7 comments · 850 words · Viewed ~1,434 times
It's one of those pithy little quotes which reveals so much about our two cultures. The average Briton considers anything more than a 45 minute trip a bit of a schelp, whereas Americans will seemingly drive half a day just to get some ribs from that one place they like. Conversely, I went to school opposite a church which pre-dated Columbus's invasion of North America - and I doubt that was the…
Continue reading →HTML5 notemail · 3 comments · 300 words
In web-development circles, it is a well-known fact that trying to validate an email using a regular expression is… complex. The full set of modern email standards allows for such wonderful addresses as: chief.o'brien+ds9@spásárthach.भारत So determining whether or not your user has entered a valid email address becomes an ever-increasing challenge. But what if you have the opposite issue? Suppo…
Continue reading →mastodon MastodonAPI python · 3 comments · 1,150 words · Viewed ~2,882 times
I wrote a moderately popular post on Mastodon. Lots of people shared it. Is it possible to find out how many different ActivityPub servers it went to? Yes! As we all know, the Fediverse is one big chain mail. I don't mean that in a derogatory way. When I write a post, it appears on my server (called an "instance" in Mastodon-speak). Everyone on my instance can see my post. My instance looks …
Continue reading →tools · 5 comments · 750 words · Viewed ~366 times
When I was seven or eight, I asked Santa to bring me a set of screwdrivers for Christmas. I wanted to take apart my toys to see how they worked. I also thought they might be useful on our upcoming holiday; if the aeroplane needed repairing mid-flight I'd be able to help! Santa heard my plea and delivered a set of screwdrivers. I used them for years. A few decades later and they're still in use - …
Continue reading →Book Review Sci Fi · 3 comments · 400 words
Everyone smokes in the future. It is such an obvious truism that sci-fi writers can predict faster-than-light travel, yet fail to see that manly men won't be smoking pipes on board their spaceships. Someone recommended that I read "Autofac" which is the sci-fi version of "The Magic Porridge Pot". But the story was surprisingly hard to find. Originally published in a magazine in 1955, it was…
Continue reading →Book Review technology · 450 words · Viewed ~787 times
I was saddened to hear of Kris Nóva's untimely death a few weeks ago. I had her book "Hacking Capitalism" on my eReader for several months, but hadn't got around to reading it yet. Never put these things off. The book is a complicated but fitting legacy. It absolutely showcases Nóva's ideas, ideals, and potential. Perhaps a little overwrought in places, and a little underpowered in others. It's c…
Continue reading →books bugs google · 3 comments · 400 words
Google Books is one of many projects that Google has forgotten about. There's no support available and, of course, it's impossible to send them a bug report. The best anyone can do is write a ranty blog post and hope it gets noticed. When I search for my name in Google Books, it returns books I have reviewed. These aren't books that I've written. They don't mention, quote, or cite me. My reviews …
Continue reading →bluetooth HowTo windows · 1 comment · 200 words · Viewed ~1,774 times
Here's the problem: the current Bluetooth spec doesn't allow high-quality audio to be sent to a headset when it is also sending audio from the microphone. Instead, it switches to the Hands Free Profile (HFP) which only streams low quality mono sound. It makes Teams calls sound like garbage. The usual solution in Google Meet, Zoom, and MS Teams is to manually tell the app to use Bluetooth for…
Continue reading →HowTo HTML php WordPress · 3 comments · 150 words · Viewed ~264 times
There's a new HTML element in town! You can now use <search> to semantically mark up a search box. It's great for letting screen-readers and other assistive tech know what a form does. It's only supported in WebKit for now - other browsers will get it eventually. The WordPress default search widget hasn't yet updated, but I'm going to show you how you can start using it today! In your theme,…
Continue reading →media Netflix streaming tv · 15 comments · 450 words
It looks like it's the end of the party for streaming services. Prices are going up, choice is going down, and the quality is declining. Despite all the hype about how transformative streaming would be for the industry - there's one thing which never really seemed to take off. It's almost impossible to find "foreign" TV on Netflix, Apple, Prime, and the BBC. Outside of a few breakout movie hits …
Continue reading →HTML internet tld · 7 comments · 400 words · Viewed ~557 times
In linguistics, a "False Friend" is a word which looks similar in multiple languages, but means something different in each of them. For example the word "gift" in English means "a present", in German means "poison", and in Norwegian it means "married". The Internet uses Top Level Domains (TLD) to organise information into hierarchies. This website uses .mobi - you may also be familiar with .com …
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