Way back in 2011, I contributed to an article on The Next Web called "What will the Web be like in 20 years?". Foolishly, I missed the 10 year anniversary, but let's see how we're doing against those predictions a little over halfway through. My prediction for the Web? The same speed. Faster pipes & processors – more bloated markup & JS. Well... fuck! Bang on the money there. The web is f…
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I've just finished watching Hulu's WeWork documentary. It is genuinely one of the funniest movies I've seen this year. Seriously, how can you watch that and not crack up? If I were the head of an investment fund, I think I probably would have fallen for Theranos. Sure, Elizabeth Holmes was a bit of a kooky Steve Jobs tribute act - but the science sounded plausible. Perhaps with due…
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August is meant to be full of gloriously hot days. An endless parade of sunshine and drinks in the park. This year it seemed mostly grey, miserable, and prone to pissing it down at a moment's notice. We all know that solar panels' efficiency wilts in the heat, but do they get a tan work standing in the English rain? At the beginning of August we installed a 4.8kWh solar battery to supplement…
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The good folk at ChubbyCable have sent me a trio of gorgeous USB-C cables to review. If, like me, your work colleagues always "borrow" your cables never to be seen again - these are a godsend. They're available in a range of colours - you can even design your own. You'll never have to say "where's my boring black cable? Janice? Do you still have it?" No, you'll see the dayglow colours from…
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One of the reasons I'm still on the original Mastodon.social instance is that I am vain. I joined shortly after the project was announced and, as a consequence, I have a "joined" date of 2016 and a user ID of under 10,000. This doesn't make me an "elder statesman" and is rarely useful beyond bragging rights. If I moved to a different server, my "birthday" would be irrevocably lost 😢 But… what i…
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The first section of this book are, frankly, dull. It's the sort of sneering, middle-class soap opera which leaves me cold. Entitled twats ignoring the world around them. It's a stultifying atmosphere which nearly made me stop after a few chapters. And then... It's amazing just how well that cloying sense of safety is gradually shattered beyond repair. I knew very little about Biafran War. It…
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The latest version of Mastodon includes search functionality. It's early days, but seems to work pretty well. Here are some of the interesting things I found when using it. Search is complex - expectations I don't mean the act of searching a database - that's routine - but I mean it is socially complex. Lots of people left Twitter because it was too easy to search for them. For example, if…
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I've recently started using Mosh. It's a clever bit of software that keeps your SSH sessions running, even if your client goes offline or changes IP address. But I find the syntax used to launch it a bit verbose and easy to forget. A typical command is something like: mosh --ssh="ssh -p 1234" myname@example.com Within the FAQ is a fleeting mention of how to configure Mosh. It says: Q: How do …
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This blog post was written in 2023 about events in 2008. Such are the joys of time travel… In August 2008, I published a blog post about being stopped and searched by the British Transport Police as part of The War Against Terror. A journalist, Elena Favilli contacted me asking if I'd be interviewed about the experience. I agreed and, in November 2008, they shot the following video: h…
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I want a new phone! I went to a wedding and everyone had one of those new folding phones. Social marketing has done a number on me and inveigled its way into my brain. Hey, I make decent money, perhaps I'll buy one. How much could they possibly cost? About £1,700 for a Pixel Fold or a Galaxy Fold. WHAT THE JUDDERING FUCK!? That's over twice the cost of my laptop. Over 4x the cost of my large …
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Without a doubt, the most annoying aspect of using VR is that the equipment eats batteries. On the Oculus Quest, the headset is rechargeable via USB-C - but the controllers take plain AA batteries. By default, there's no way to recharge them 😭 So a whole industry has sprung up to fix Meta's mistakes! The good folks at ZyberVR have sent me this smart docking station to review. Let's take a qu…
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These are notes that I wrote during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. I've published them a few years later. By now, you're probably sick and tired of shoving a swab up your nose and / or down your throat. You've grown blasé about the little medical marvel as it reacts to whatever antibodies are flowing laterally. You don't even bother reading the paper leaflet any more. Right? But that swab …
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