Search back through this blog and you'll find dozens of posts about QR codes. Back in the day, I was a freelance "Mobile Internet" consultant. I'd rock up to companies and say "you know you can get the Web on your phone, right? It's going to be the next big thing!" And people would pay me handsomely for that advice. I'd also talk about apps - "You don't need one, but if you're going to…
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I remember being blown away by the original Matrix. I was an impressionable teenager and it absolutely melted my mind. The story was recycled from a hundred different sci-fi tropes that I was already familiar with - but the direction and effects were outstanding. Nowadays, of course, CGI is par for the course. Literally any film-maker with a laptop can churn out effects a hundred times better…
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"Alexa… timer for fifteen minutes." The problem with the English language is that it is full of homophones, or semi-homophones. 15 and 50 sound basically the same. Humans have a hard time distinguishing them. So there's no wonder that voice assistants also have difficulty. Recently, I've noticed that my wife and I have adopted a very specific accent when talking to our Alexa. Certain constants a…
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What a dull and plodding movie. It is utterly devoid of joy, wonder, and excitement. Instead, we get obviously bored actors reciting tediously incomprehensible exposition for two hours. It's Captain Planet for the modern age. Only with their powers combined can our calculatedly-diverse cast defeat the baddies! So just like every other MCU story. The eponymous Eternals are aliens masquerading as…
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As previously discussed, I'm doing the Certified Blockchain Professional course. It is self-directed learning, so I'm going through it at my own pace. In order to consolidate my learning, and help organise my thoughts, I'm blogging about my reflections on each module. These are mostly notes to myself - but I hope if you find something interesting (or incorrect) that you'll leave a comment. Part …
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I wish I was clever enough to get all the symbolism of this movie! Dev Patel is consistently one of the best British actors of the modern age. He doesn't just carry this film - he elevates it. Usually I'd tire of an actor being in every single shot, but he has this gift of remaining interesting and allowing the focus to flow to the other characters. It feels like the sort of movie that Terry…
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These tetrominoes are built from emoji and have roughly the same colour as the pieces from Tetris. They are not accessible to people with screen readers. But they're quite fun if you want to play Tetris via a text-only medium. ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️🟦 ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️🟦 ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️🟦 ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️🟦 ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️ 🟩⬛️🟧⬛️⬛️🟥🟥⬛️⬛️⬛️ 🟩🟩🟧⬛️🟨🟨🟥🟥⬛️⬛️ 🟫🟩🟧🟧🟨🟨⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️ 🟫🟫🟫🟧🟪🟫🟫🟥🟦⬛️ 🟦🟧🟧🟧🟪🟪🟥🟥🟦⬛️ 🟦…
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Some of you may be familiar with the Feynman Algorithm. It is a general technique to solve any problem. The steps are as follows: Write down the problem. Think real hard. Write down the solution. Easy! As part of my MSc, I have to write a series of assignments. These are essays with a strict word count and an even stricter marking scheme. I'm proud that I've successfully developed a…
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If you enjoyed this, I would thoroughly recommend that you watch シン・ゴジラ (Shin Godzilla) - a brilliant Japanese film about the bureaucracy involved in the Japanese state's reaction to a Godzilla attack. It's a biting satire - expertly showcasing the number of photocopiers it would take to organise the response. Brilliant film! Don't Look Up is a lot less subtle. But, it does have the A-List of com…
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Sometimes - only sometimes - slowness is a feature, not a bug. A few weeks ago, I was reading about a purported use for "smart contracts". If your plane is cancelled, a smart-contract could automatically pay out your travel insurance, the millisecond the cancellation was reported. Nifty, right‽ Slowness for crap reasons There are plenty of processes which are slow for annoying reasons. The i…
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Here's a (possibly) daft idea. What if you could pay for goods using a transferable bank account? Say you want to pay a friend some money. But you're not physically close enough to hand over cash. You create a new bank account with a unique username and password. As quickly and easily as getting a new email address. Couple of clicks and it is done. You move money from your main account into…
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Julien Savoie has written a brilliant post explaining how you can enable https on your intranet. This is useful for several reasons. It means your employees aren't constantly fighting browser warnings when trying to submit stuff internally. All your http traffic is encrypted. You don't need to install a self-generated root certificate on devices. Lovely! But there's a downside. Every TLS…
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