I'm Dan Q. I've spent the last 25+ years creating and writing on the Internet.
I work at Automattic and volunteer with Three Rings. I live with my partner, her husband, two kids and a dog. I can sometimes be found out geo*ing, cycling, or performing magic.
I believe in open source, open relationships, and opening doors to marginalised groups.
-
Babies and Baubles
Each year, we encourage our two children to each select exactly one new bauble to add to our tree. The result is a decoration that's a celebration of the changing tastes and interests of our two kinds: a mismatched, discordant, crazy mixture of colours and shapes, but in which each and every item is its own story. Read more →
-
99 Days of Blogging
I've blogged a total of 219 posts spanning 99 consecutive days of blogging, a personal best by a long stretch. Read more →
-
Stuck in a Lift
About twenty years ago, I spent three hours playing I-Spy in a broken-down elevator. And in doing so, I learned two things about my friend Fiona. Read more →
-
Horse-Powered Locomotives
You probably know the story of George Stephenson's Rocket beating its competitors and going to to influence steam locomotive design for generations. But did you know that one of its competitors... was a horse in a carriage? Read more →
-
US Constitution and Presidential Assassinations
A thought came to me this morning: if a US President-Elect dies before their inauguration, does their running mate automatically get the Presidency? Finding the answer led me through a warren of interconnected Constitutional Amendments. Read more →
-
Sadder Than Fiction
There's a short story that I tried on-and-off to write, but I've now given up on it. The concepts it makes light of all feel a bit too close-to-home, as conspiracy theorists increasingly migrate from the 'harmless nutjob' to the 'dangerous political leader' category. Read more →
-
XPath Scraping AdamKoszary.co.uk
My old colleague Adam's started blogging again, but his blog doesn't have an RSS feed. Which means it's time for some more XPath Scraping in FreshRSS, and an excuse for me to explain the testing and debugging process I use when making XPath Scraping rulesets! Read more →
-
Sabbatical Magic
Two weeks into my extended break from work and on my way home from Spain, I've discovered something magical about a sabbatical: it frees me from my compulsion to think about next week's work, at the weekend. Read more →
-
Hero of Alexandria
Hero of Alexandria is my hero. And it's not for the steam engine he didn't invent (that was Vetruvius), nor for his formula for the area of a triangle, nor even for his programmable robot (yes, really). It's for his square root algorithm. Read more →
-
More articles →
(articles are traditional long-form blog posts) -
kirby vs. this blog post
mgx shows off a cute use of Javascript to make a fun blog post post more-fun, all the while helping to keep the Internet fun and weird. Read more →
-
TFW a recipe calls for a glass of wine but you can’t get the cork back in the bottle so you just have to drink the rest of it. Ah well, what’s a chef to do? 🤷🍷× Read more →
-
Not quite ready for wintering indoors, our village’s hardy sheep are enjoying pasturing in the large field near the school this beautiful but chilly morning. × Read more →
-
In good news, my injured arm is not broken and should recover within a couple of weeks. In amusing news, the doctor who treated me recognised me from (tales of) my electric shock admission earlier in the year, even though she never treated me on that ocassion. × Read more →
-
I’m leaving Ireland a day late, from the wrong airport, and with one fewer functioning arm than I anticipated. It’s been quite the ride. I’ll be glad to get home. (for those that are concerned: I’ve damaged my shoulder, possibly while slipping down a hill in search of a geocache or geohashpoint; so, y’know, the […] Read more →
-
Sooo… I’m in Dublin.I missed me flight at Knock airport, which turns out to have been the only plane leaving that tiny airport today. So I arranged a flight from Dublin tomorrow, extended my car rental and arranged to drop it off in the capital’s airport instead, and zipped over here. Now I’m in an […] Read more →
-
Found GC8XWKX Shamrock #20
My mum and I have been visiting Ireland on a geohashing & geocaching expedition. We’d spotted this shamrock shape but it wasn’t in our operating zone so we didn’t get a chance to hunt any of them, until today’s journey up to Knock airport saw us take a comfort break nearby, and we figured we’d […] Read more →
-
Found GC8E8A0 Challenge 💖 Virtual x 15 💖 Country x 5 💖
I’ve never much gone for ‘challenge caches’. Mostly they just bug me when I fail to filter them off my map and only end up realising that I’m arbitrarily disallowed from logging them when I’m already out and about.So imagine my surprise when, stopping in town this misty morning on my way to Knock airport […] Read more →
-
Geohashing expedition 2024-11-27 53 -8
A sixth Irish geohashing trip in Ireland spelled disaster. The hashpoint itself was easy, but we missed our flight back to the UK and ended up having to road-trip our way coast-to-coast to get back to somewhere we could catch a plane in the morning... Read more →
-
I’ve only been driving in Ireland for several days, so less than 100% of the iconography of the signage makes sense to me instantly, for now. But this one’s a complete mystery to me. Is this warning joggers than tiny cars might bounce off their heads? Or is it exhorting distant swerving motorists to put […] Read more →
-
Found GC9QNY4 NFCache
Despite having been hidden as recently as 2022, this “feels” like an old-school cache. A non-trivial offset, a real scramble through the terrain to find it, and a generous-sized container at the other end. Back around 2010 many more caches felt like this, and in a way I miss them: being able to find a […] Read more →
-
Found GC6TZ1G CachePoint
After a boat tour of the bay and a delightful late lunch, my mum and I came out here to find this cache as the last of three muggles present were packing up. TFTC!× Read more →
-
Geohashing expedition 2024-11-26 53 -9
A fifth geohashing trip in Ireland for me and my mum was foiled when I couldn't find anybody who'd take my money in exchange for driving us to a random spot out in the sea. We took a boat tour but it didn't come close enough to score. Read more →
-
Found GC1X432 Swan Lake
Found by my mother and I while exploring the area. What a beautiful estate, thanks for bringing us here. Log slightly damp but usable. TFTC. Greetings from Oxfordshire and Lancashire, UK!× Read more →
-
Did not find GC9VD2M Claremorris_01
Two of us hunted for about 10 minutes without any luck. We found a the host object without difficulty and soon found a man-made hook upon touch we suspect the cache might once have resided. Eventually we had to give up and move on. Nice location, but might need CO attention. Read more →
-
More posts →
(of all kinds:
articles, 
checkins, 
notes, 
reposts...)