Exactly two years ago to the day, I reported a weird little emoji bug with Bitwarden. Let's say you want a password of: ✅🐎🔋📎 (As close as possible to Correct Horse Battery Staple) That works. Emoji are stored and retrieved correctly. You can use them with any system which supports them. But you can't view them. Here's what it looks like if you try to see your password using the Bitwarden Andr…
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As I've discussed previously, I'm helping a collector who has acquired loads of mobile phones used in Doctor Who. Today's edition - The Poisoned Sky. As the Sontarans choke the Earth, the Doctor and UNIT battle to keep both Martha and Donna alive. A large plot point is Evil Clone Martha stealing a UNIT PDA and using it to HACK THE MAINFRAME. At various times she prevents missiles being…
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Many years ago, I was involved in student politics. It was a great way to understand the fundamental disconnect between the ways different people see the world. I remember having a blazing row high-spirited discussion with someone about the way I thought about society. In a fit of rage an attempt to provide clarity, I tried using a metaphor: "Didn't your mother ever tell you to share your…
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I had a weird experience in a previous job. As it is long in the past, I thought now was a good time to blog about it. I worked in a hip office. Everyone was trendy and right-on. It was a heavily female dominated industry and the office politics were biased towards intersectional feminism. Which I regarded as a good thing. I'd rather have a natter about reproductive justice than who won the…
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This is a retropost. It was written in 2022, but published later. Well, that was the most bizarre day. A few days ago, Amanda Brock - the CEO of OpenUK - asked if I'd be on a podcast. I agreed, and offered up my office's media studio for the recording. Then she asked if it was OK if Bruce Perens came to record an episode. Errr... OMG, yes! So I got to spend 10 minutes showing Bruce around the…
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Wouldn't it be good if digital currencies worked offline? I'm going to talk through a proposed user experience, and then discuss how it would work in practice. Let us imagine a future digital currency ₢. It might be fiat, it might be crypto, doesn't really matter. Alice loads up a smartcard with ₢100 and locks it. Alice gives Bob the smartcard. Bob uses offline verification to see that the sma…
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They say that The Best Camera Is The One That's With You - the same is true of Raspberries Pi. As much as I'd love a 4B, they seem permanently sold out. So I dug through my scrapheap of old tech and resurrected an ancient Pi2. It's old, outdated, slow, with limited RAM, and has a bunch of much-abused GPIO pins. But it works and - crucially - is still supported by Home Assistant OS. Well...…
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I don't understand capitalists. Taylor Swift - the popular beat combo - wanted to sell tickets for her concert. She priced the tickets too low. People purchased the tickets and resold them at a higher price - up to $28,000. Tay-Tay's fans purchased the higher priced tickets. And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Why didn't the organisers of the concert just sell the tickets at the…
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This is a curious - and slightly unsatisfying - collection of short stories. There's no cohesive theme; some are about space travel, some alien invasion, some about madness on Mars, some about interstellar religions. You bounce around between themes without much chance to reflect on how different authors tackle the same subject. The stories alternate between Chinese authors and English-speaking…
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I'm a big fan of Untappd. It's a social drinking app which lets you check in to a beer and rate it. Look, we all need hobbies, mine is drinking cider. You can see a list of everything I've drunk over the 13 last years. Nearly 900 different pints! After checking in, the app automatically posts to Twitter. But who wants to prop up Alan's failing empire? Not me! So here's some quick code to…
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The last part of my MSc Apprenticeship was my EPA Professional Discussion. It's designed to be a 90 minute chat to make sure you've actually learned something on the course. The official guidance is available. But I thought you might find it helpful to see the questions that I was asked. Disclaimer I jotted these down while doing the assessment. They are relevant to the Digital Technology…
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I was looking to buy the latest Zelda game for my wife as a present (Shhh! Don't tell her!) and it was SIXTY BLOODY QUID! For a video game! That seems extortionate. I remember, when I were a lad, video games cost... wait? Do I remember? Or is it just rose tinted glasses? I remember saving up my pocket-money for weeks on end, and getting an advance on my birthday money, in order to be able to…
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