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.
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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 →
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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 →
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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 →
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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 →
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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 →
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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 →
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Hour of Ambiguity
Waking during the "hour of uncertainty" at the end of European Summer Time, I find myself wondering why we no longer expect computers to tell us what they're doing about daylight savings, and when. Read more →
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My Oldest Article of Clothing
I own a shirt that I bought for 50p, 23 years ago. How on earth has it lasted so long? Read more →
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How I Learned to Enjoy Pickled Onion Monster Munch
I like pickled onions. And I like the vinegar flavouring and the onion flavouring from salt & vinegar and cheese & onion crisps, respectively. So I ought to like pickled onion crisps too. So why don't I... and can I rationally persuade my brain that it's wrong? Read more →
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More articles →
(articles are traditional long-form blog posts) -
On the way to school this morning, the 10-year-old lagged behind to build a small snowman.
When we came back to it, the dog insisted that it was not trustworthy and wasn't keen on going anywhere near the strange new construction. Read more → -
Snuffles in the Snow. This morning's freak snowfall in Oxfordshire is a source of some confusion on this pupper's morning walk.
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I was sceptical when the forecast said there'd be sleet and snow this morning, but sure enough, it's just barely beginning to settle on the skylight of my attic bathroom. 🫢
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Found GC34G3G Coventry - Hertford Street
The rest of the family and I are visiting for my youngest’s birthday to do a handful of fun activities. Geocaching didn’t make the list, but that wasn’t gonna stop me finding this QEF while putting our swimming stuff back in the car before we eat our lunch. Thanks to the hint, this was in […] Read more →
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Miika used a marquee tag to add a cable car to a web page, and I think I couldn't be more impressed. Read more →
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Harswell Steel
My past self, receiving a copy of Transport Tycoon for his 14th birthday, would have his mind blown if he could see the kind of insanely-complex super-stations that are possible in (the open-source successor to) the game 30 years on... Read more →
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Found GC656RM Church Micro 8564...Ducklington
The dog and I came out to Ducklington today for a spot of geohashing, in search of the 2024-11-14 51 -1 geohashpoint. After a walk around the fields to the East we had to give up on that expedition (for reasons that’ll be described in my geohashing log) so we decided to console ourselves with […] Read more →
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Geohashing expedition 2024-11-14 51 -1
The dog and I got within 33 metres of a geohashpoint today, but couldn't quite make it to the zero point. Read more →
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Maybe it's just that my sabbatical is making me pay more attention then usual, but it feels like I'm getting very lucky with nearby geohashpoints lately. Tomorrow's hashpoint in my graticule might be achievable!
This is a good omen, perhaps, for next week. Next week my mother and I are going to hop over to the West coast of Ireland where there are several contiguous mostly-land graticules that have never seen a successful expedition. We could be the first! 🤞 Read more → -
Kids' ability to pick up new words from context is amazing.
Kids' confidence even when they've misunderstood how a word is used is hilarious. 😊
This evening, our 7-year-old was boasting about how well-behaved his class was while their regular teacher had to attend an all-day meeting, vs how much it impressed the temporary teacher they had.
His words: "Today we had a supply teacher and we totally DOMINATED her!" Read more → -
Waiting patiently at the school gates on a distinctly Autumnal morning, our pupper’s squat stature means she’s about knee-deep in the season’s golden leaves. × Read more →
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I’ve just enumerated my personal domain names. There’s a lot fewer of them than there used to be!Anyway: here’s the list – danq.me and a variety of aliases (danq.uk, danq.dev, danq.link, danq.blog, scatmania.org); there’s also like a billion subdomains in use of course, like things.danq.me and find.danq.me freedeedpoll.org.uk, which I really ought to update at […] Read more →
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Geohashing expedition 2024-11-10 51 -1
I finally got my Tron achievement by riding my bike^H^H^H^H lightcycle to a hashpoint in Barnard Gate and back... without crossing my own track! Read more →
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Future Arimaa grand masters at practice, this Sunday morning boardgaming session. × Read more →
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In spite of their signage, Costa weren’t happy to take my old jockstrap for recycling. × Read more →
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More posts →
(of all kinds:
articles, 
checkins, 
notes, 
reposts...)