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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We'll Prescribe You A Cat by Syou Ishida
I just finished reading We'll Prescribe You A Cat, and while I enjoyed the stories within, I felt like the overarching plot that bound them lacked a satisfying payoff. Read more →
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Small-World Serendipity
We travelled 7,000km across the ocean only to find, by complete coincidence, that the Caribbean’s biggest cymruphile is the captain of a boat we chartered when we fancied a morning of reef-snorkelling and turtle-spotting. Read more →
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James Acaster's Classic Scrapes
James Acaster's Classic Scrapes - which I received during our Christmas Eve book exchange - was an enjoyable, occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, series of anecdotes with thematic links connecting them. It's perhaps not for everybody, but it was a great gift for me! Read more →
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Entitled by Kate Manne
Entitled is a bleak and sometimes uncomfortable pop-sci dive into the issue of male entitlement. Covering a variety of different areas in which our patriarchal society somehow continues to disenfranchise women in particular and injure everybody by proxy, it provides neither a 'quick fix' nor even an optimistic outlook for the future, but it provides valuable focus areas for the continued fight for a better future. Read more →
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Endless SSH Tarpit on Debian
Given that I already routinely run my SSH servers on unusual ports, I'm surprised it took me until today before I discovered Endlessh, an SSH tarpit you can install on the conventional port to waste the time of anybody attempting a brute-force attack. Here's how I set it up on a Debian 12 server. Read more →
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My Ball
One of my dog's favourite games is 'My Ball', in which my role is to want the toy that she is guarding. It's all about the motivation, you see! Which is like some of the games I used to play with our eldest, when she was a toddler, I realise. Read more →
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Moving Three Rings' Servers
Yesterday I achieved one of my primary sabbatical goals and moved Three Rings' primary servers to a new datacentre and a new architecture. But while the visible part happened yesterday, the whole thing's been months in the making and builds upon the effort of an entire team of dedicated volunteers. Read more →
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Building another secret cabinet
When I was ten, I'd have killed to have a secret compartment hidden in my bedroom bookshelves. And once she'd seen the one I built for my own room, earlier this year, my ten-year-old predictably wanted one of her own, too. Luckily I had the spare parts and, now, the experience to make her one. Awesome. Read more →
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International Volunteer Day
It's International Volunteer Day, and thanks to being on sabbatical I got to spend most of the day volunteering with Three Rings. I liveblogged everything I got up to in a series of notes to try to shine a light on what volunteering (in a developer/devops role) with Three Rings can look like; this post is a summary of all that liveblogging, plus a few extra thoughts. Read more →
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More articles →
(articles are traditional long-form blog posts) -
Goodbye, Trinidad and Tobago. 🇹🇹 You were wonderful. I hope to visit you again. ❤️ × Read more →
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When you love Jesus but you’re sick of Him blocking your driveway. × Read more →
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This is funny, but I’m confident Wrexham’s potholes have nothing on the Trinbagonian ones I’ve been experiencing all week, which have sometimes spanned most of the width of a road or been deep enough that dipping a wheel into them would strike the road with your underchassis! × Read more →
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Yesterday, Ruth and I made the first ever attempt at a geohashing expedition in Trinidad & Tobago, successfully finding a hashpoint in Chase Village in the West of Trinidad!🔗 https://danq.link/gh-trinidad Read more →
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Geohashing expedition 2025-01-15 10 -61
Braving an off-the-beaten-track explore on Trinidad during a State of Emergency, Ruth and I found our way to a geohashpoint on the island, becoming the first people ever to do so not only in this graticule but also in this entire country! Read more →
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After driving 300 (vertical) metres up a terrifyingly winding road, we find ourself at 'Top if the World', one of Tobago's highest points. Being able to look down the steep sides of this long-extinct volcano to the sea on both sides is quite spectacular, and the Caribbean and Atlantic horizons seem so far away that you can almost believe you're seeing the Earth curve.
My camera fails to do this view justice. -
The Nylon Pool is a sandbar in the Buccoo Reef, off the coast of Tobago. Despite the distance from the shore, it's only about waist-deep. Truly mind-boggling.
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Came half way around the world to find a surprising boat with a non-English name I understand. (“Cariad” is Welsh for “love”) × Read more →
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Dark Patterns Detective
A fun website that aims to educate the visitor on the dangers of dark patterns is let down only slightly, in an ironic fashion, when it links to its author on LinkedIn, a website plagued with dark patterns. Read more →
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Did not find GC3PJYY Paradise
Found the location and the hint object, but a thorough search did not reveal the cache. I think it might be missing, and the previous log (erroneously tagged as if it were found but clearly indicating in the text that it was not, and therefore possibly in need of deletion?) implies the same.(I initially assumed […] Read more →
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A couple of hours into our ferry journey, we just got our first glimpse of the island of Tobago, where we’ll be staying for the next few days. × Read more →
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Just visited the Logos Hope, an ocean-going, volunteer-staffed floating book fair (run by a Christian charity, but it’s not-TOO-religiousy inside, if that’s not your jam) that’s coincidentally docked for a fortnight right next door to my hotel on Trinidad!What a strange concept. Fun diversion though. × Read more →
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My 12:55 flight is, according to this departure board, delayed to… 12:55!?Either it’s running a full 24 hours late, or this board is untrustworthy. × Read more →
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Except to children, I don't really give Christmas presents to (or expect to receive them from) others any more.
But that didn't stop my buying myself a gift of a particularly fun Lego set to build over the festive period (with a little help from the eldest child!). Read more → -
I’m pretty impressed with running WordPress on Caddy so far.
It took a little jiggerypokery to configure it with an equivalent of the Nginx configuration I use for DanQ.me. But off the back of it I get the capability for HTTP/3, 103 Early Hints, and built-in “batteries included” infrastructure for things like certificate renewal and log rotation. Read more → -
More posts →
(of all kinds:
articles, 
checkins, 
notes, 
reposts...)