Not Quite Emoji Domain Names

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on · · 1 comment · 700 words · read ~324 times.
A bright red power symbol.

Like all good geeks, I have far too many domain names that I acquired for interesting projects which never took off. My latest is a bit different though. https://⏻.ga/ That's "Unicode Power Symbol Dot Gabon". Because why not. Regular readers will know that I helped get ⏻ and several power symbols into Unicode. When I […]

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Emoji Tetris Pieces

By
on · · 100 words · read ~1,178 times.
Blocky Tetris pieces.

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. ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️🟦 ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️🟦 ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️🟦 ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️🟦 ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️ 🟩⬛️🟧⬛️⬛️🟥🟥⬛️⬛️⬛️ 🟩🟩🟧⬛️🟨🟨🟥🟥⬛️⬛️ 🟫🟩🟧🟧🟨🟨⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️ 🟫🟫🟫🟧🟪🟫🟫🟥🟦⬛️ 🟦🟧🟧🟧🟪🟪🟥🟥🟦⬛️ 🟦🟨🟨🟩🟪🟦🟥⬛️🟦⬛️ And the individual pieces: […]

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Set your own emoji shortcuts in Ubuntu / Pop_OS

By
on · · 200 words · read ~225 times.
List of symbols.

How do you quickly insert a 💩 emoji when using your laptop? I just type ScrLck, p, o, o! What is this 🧙‍♀️ craft? In your keyboard settings, you should see an option like this: You can set the "Compose" key to be anything you like. Personally, I use the otherwise-useless Scroll Lock button. Now, […]

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Replacing broken avatar images with background SVG Emoji

By
on · · 1 comment · 300 words · read ~138 times.
Group of emoji.

When someone on Twitter mentions my blog, the WordPress WebMentions plugin automatically fetches those Tweets and turns them into comments on the blog post. It looks something like this: That is pretty cool - but has one slight problem. If someone changes their Twitter avatar, or deletes their account, the image disappears and I'm left […]

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🔥.me.ss! You can't register emoji domains in South Sudan

By
on · · 4 comments · 450 words · read ~215 times.
Dear Terence, We have contacted the registry and they said they don't allow 2 successive dashes.

It's useful to share negative results. Not every experiment has an amazing or successful outcome. tl;dr you can't register Punycode .ss domains. This also means Internet users in South Sudan can't register domains using their own writing system. Background The Republic of South Sudan became independent and joined the United Nations back in 2011. A […]

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Easy Emoji in Ubuntu / Pop OS

By
on · · 1 comment · 150 words · read ~1,228 times.
Searching for cat emoji brings up lots of cats.

All the Cool Kids™ use emoji. On Android, they're usually built right in to the keyboard. But that's not the case on desktops and laptops. Well, unless you build a dedicated emoji keyboard. So I was delighted to find this brilliant little Gnome Extension called Emoji Selector. It sits in your dash, until you click […]

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Emoji Passwords and BitWarden

By
on · · 4 comments · 150 words · read ~284 times.
Screenshot of the Bitwarden Android interface. Emoji are showing as question marks.

Let me start by saying that Emoji Passwords are probably a really daft idea. I want to use emoji in my passwords. They're easy to type on a mobile keyboard, easy to remember, and a lot more fun than boring ASCII characters. Let's go with ✅🐎🔋📎 (As close as possible to Correct Horse Battery Staple) […]

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A QR code built from Emoji

By
on · · 10 comments · 2,950 words · read ~15,322 times.
A QR built from emoji squares.

It's possible to encode QR images as text. In this case, Emoji!

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iOS 14 gets support for the Unicode Power Symbol!

By
on · · 1 comment · 200 words · read ~260 times.
Power symbols displayed on the screen.

It has been four years since Unicode officially accepted our Power Symbols proposal into the standard. Now I’m delighted to announce that users on iOS 14 are finally able to use the full set of Power Symbols. ⏻ ⏼ ⭘ ⏽ ⏾ They’re available to use in the browser, in emails, and messages. Here’s how […]

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Bitly Emoji Links

By
on · · 2 comments · 100 words · read ~520 times.
Weird symbols in the bitly dashboard.

Popular URl shortner Bitly allows users to customise its links. This means you can have all sorty of weird and wonderful character in there. For example: bit.ly/󾰀󾰀 You can also use Emoji! bit.ly/☹ bit.ly/♐ Well, OK, not all Emoji. If you try to use most of them, the Bitly system craps out and generates broken […]

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