I'm Dan Q (he/him). I've spent the last 26+ years creating and writing online.
I work as a software engineer, and I volunteer with Three Rings. I live with my partner, her husband, two kids and a dog. I can sometimes be found geo*ing, performing magic, or recording the most pointless podcast.
I believe in open source, open relationships, and opening doors to marginalised groups. Black lives matter. Trans
rights are human rights.
Be nice to humans, human.
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Wood-Fired
This year's 3Camp venue had a wood-fired pizza oven, so I signed-up for a shift of cooking for my fellow volunteers and thoroughly enjoyed making and baking a monumental amount of dough. Read more →
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Food divided by Distance
In the kind of dream that only happens when I'm ill, I invented an app that would track both your location and your food consumption, and report to social media your journey progress as a proportion of your remaining meal. Read more →
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Did I Cheat?
I solved a puzzle geocache in an unconventional way: by writing a program to permute all the possible solutions and check them for me. Was that cheating? I can see arguments either way... Read more →
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A Random List of Silly Things I Hate
Just a list of eleven random silly things that I hate, to various degrees. Read more →
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A Hundred Inconveniences
It's F-Day plus 31, and our flood-disrupted lives have become defined by the hundred or so daily inconveniences that are imposed by our accidentally-nomadic lifestyle. Here's hoping we can sort-out some more stable accommodation sometime soon! Read more →
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Why Security Engineering needs a Hacker Mentality
Security engineering is about a lot of things, but the best security engineers show the 'hacker mindset' characteristics of curiosity and imagination. Here's an example of how I found an XSS vulnerability in a forum, mostly by accident, and how curiosity was the key. Read more →
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Ten Weird Games
This blog post's been sitting incomplete in my drafts since last decade. I think it's finally time to share with you... ten weird games (and game adjacent media) you should see. Read more →
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Cold Giraffe
My mum painted a cold giraffe onto a postcard and sent it to me. Read more →
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Subverting AI Agent Logging with a Git Post-Commit Hook
I keep hearing from developer friends who are 'expected' by their employer to demonstrate that they're using AI, even for tasks at which the AI is demonstrably a suboptimal choice. So - as a joke - I came up with a git post-commit hook that makes it look like they're doing so, even when they're not. Read more →
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More articles →
(articles are traditional long-form blog posts) -
Found GC1ZEKG Church Micro 2809 - Bledington
QEF for the geohound and I as we came out for a walk from the house we're borrowing this week - the latest of many AirBnB-like week-long lets we've had to decamp to after our house was rendered uninhabitable by a flash flood around fifty days ago. Hopefully the last, though, as the insurance company may at last have found us sonewhere to live longer-term while our house is repaired! Read more →
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Did not find GC4M7C4 Scouting About
The elder geokid and I had a search in all the likely spots we could find after attending her cousin's 2nd birthday party nearby. No luck for us today! Read more →
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Did not find GCARTHJ Knock Knock, Who's There!
Ran out of time and had to give up.. Nice view of our accommodation for this week from this hill, though! Read more →
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Predictions in a Hat
Two decades ago this month my friend Matt posted five predictions about the future of the world. I've revisited these predictions twice since: ten years later and twenty years later, and "scored" his predictions both times.
I love that the Web's memory (and the persistence of URLs) makes this kind of long-term conversation possible. Read more → -
Found GCARTHE Rope Swing
Found without difficulty while the geokid amused himself on the swing. Shame about the litter near the GZ, may be a CITO opportunity up here! Loving the views: think I can see our accommodation from here! TFTC and for showing us this rope swing! Read more →
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Found GCARTHN The Bird in Hand
Not a fan of this kind of container, but I must admit that I enjoy a decent-sized cache! TFTC. Read more →
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Found GCARTHR Coton Hill Community Orchard
We enjoyed sitting on the nearby bench while we cracked open this decent sized cache (and emptied out the accumulated water!). Log still in good condition, though. TFTC! Read more →
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Found GCARTHZ Coton Grange
Quick find with the boy (thanks to the hint!) as we stopped for a sandwich break. TFTC! Read more →
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Found GCARTJ3 Gone Fishing
Incredibly easy find for the younger geokid and I: we could see the cache before we even reached the GZ. TFTC! Read more →
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There was no mixing bowl in the house large enough to make enough pizza dough to feed all of the Three Rings volunteers present at this year's 3Camp, so I just had to pour out all the ingredients onto the surface and work from there.
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Fools Mode
I'd completely forgotten that my website pranks visitors on April Fools' Day with a randomly-selected one of a selection of "features" until I went to it myself and got "party mode".
So yeah, this year I managed to April Fools' myself. Read more → -
Did not find GCARTJD 5Gee, Under the Oak Tree
After hearing of my failure to find this cache the other day, the younger geokid persuaded me to come back and try again. We poked into every hidey-hole we could find and even extended our search to the next candidate oak tree (just in case the coordinates were off), but still had no success despite an extended search. Read more →
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Found GCARTJ6 The Pylon King
It took the geokid and I a moment or two to work out why this pylon was king, but once we had it was easy to find this (good-sized) cache. What a delightful Spring afternoon it was! And then the geokid found a tree under which the banks had eroded, making a perfect "hobbit hole" cave within its exposed roots (where he ate his ice cream). Read more →
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Found GCARTJB Stop, Look... er... Listen?
I'm volunteering at the building right next door to this bridge, this week, working on software that helps charities... among them, Samaritans! So finding this thematic cache was a must-do for the younger geokid and I on our lunch break today. A quick and easy find thanks to the clear telegraphing in the description, aided by our direction of approach. It's a wonderful large bridge, and we got to watch a train zoom along the tracks beneath us as we crossed. Read more →
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Some days, developing Three Rings is about being hunched over a keyboard alone in the middle of the night, swearing at Rubygem incompatibilities.But just ocassionally it’s about getting together in beautiful places with some of the most dedicated geeks I know… to swear about Rubygem incompatibilities.Either way, a walk in the garden can lead to […] Read more →
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More posts →
(of all kinds:
articles, 
checkins, 
notes, 
reposts...)