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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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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What can you do with a software privacy polariser?
Samsung's 2026 phones will feature a dynamic privacy filter, blacking-out parts of the screen selectively from shoulder-surfers. I'm so curious about the capabilities of (and API for) this technology: what could I make it do? Read more →
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F-Day plus 12
It's been only twelve days since our house flooded (it feels like a lot longer!), and progress is slow on getting damage assessments and medium-term accommodation planning sorted. Read more →
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Taskmaster: 220 Extraordinary Tasks for Ordinary People, by Alex Horne
I recently read Taskmaster: 220 Extraordinary Tasks for Ordinary People by Alex Horne, and was... underwhelmed. Read more →
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Fake Herons
This morning, I saw a real heron and a fake heron, and it made me think of a police officer I photographed myself while geocaching with a few years ago. Let's talk theoretical psychology! Read more →
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Hello World by Hannah Fry
It took me a while, but I finally got around to reading Hannah Fry's "Hello World: How to Be Human in the Age of the Machine", and it was really good! Read more →
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6-12 Months
"How long should we plan on renting another house to live in?" I asked, warily.
"Six to twelve months?" guessed the loss adjusters. Read more → -
Run your own WireGuard VPN
I stopped paying for VPN services a decade ago and I haven't looked back. When I 'need' a VPN service, I just spin one up on cheap VM services, and then I throw it away when I'm done. It's cheaper and more-customisable... and if the UK goes ahead with an idea to age-gate VPN services, it might soon become more-convenient too. Read more →
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F-Day plus 3
It's only been three days since we had to evacuate our rapidly-flooding house. Here's some horror pics. Read more →
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More articles →
(articles are traditional long-form blog posts) -
I Am Experimenting with Blocking HTTP1.1
Andrew Stephens has added Caddy configuration to prohibit HTTP/1 clients from accessing most of the pages of his website. I decided to probe it and see how that works. Read more →
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Found GCAABPG North Leigh Loop #7
Completing our loop (minus a couple of DNFs, but plus a couple of nearby caches), this damp geopup and I were really happy to finish with this good-sized cache!TFTC, and for the series, if which this was our favourite and so earns the FP.Now we’d better go get cleaned and dry!× Read more →
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Found GCAABNW North Leigh Loop #6
Tougher than we expected to find – not only is this a stealthy container but it’s hidden unusually-thoroughly too! TFTCI’m increasingly regretting my choice this morning to wear comfortable but not waterproof shoes rather than my not-fully-broken-in walking boots. Between the muddy puddles and the long wet grass, my feet are soaked! Read more →
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Did not find GCAABNV North Leigh Loop #5
No sign of this one, despite the geohound and I’s best efforts.Maybe it washed away if the nearby drainage ditch broke its banks this winter?× Read more →
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Found GC1QY29 Can Rabbits Climb Trees??
Coming up from Evergreen/Loop #4 the geohound and I made a poor guess about which side the the hedgerow we ought to be on, and – to avoid having to backtrack – opted to cut through red thicket just East of this cache. The little pupper got stuck and had to be carried, which was […] Read more →
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Found GCAABN0 North Leigh Loop #4
An extremely easy find, although a bit of a spiky retrieval. TFTC! Read more →
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Found GC1QYPN Back to Evergreen
The geopup and I are out doing the North Leigh Loop from New Yatt, where we’re temporarily living while our house is dried and damage assessed by the insurance company following a catastrophic flood a few weeks ago.Between Loop #3 and #4 we took a small diversion to find this cache, and I’m glad that […] Read more →
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Did not find GCAABMN North Leigh Loop #3
While the geohound busied herself with the important task of collecting sticks several times larger than herself, I began the search for what I’d figured would be a QEF.Within the circle of uncertainty lay an obvious-looking host covered with obvious-looking candidate spots into which to squeeze a cache of this kind. After 15 minutes of […] Read more →
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Found GCAABMJ North Leigh Loop #2
Clearly I’ve trained the geohound well, because she found the geotrail out to this GZ before I did!This cache is definitely benefitting from its layers of defense against the elements: the log, in its inner sanctum, was dry despite moisture getting through all the other layers! TFTC!× Read more →
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Found GCAABME North Leigh Loop #1
Coming to the “start” of this loop having come from the “end” gave the geohound and I a perfect vantage point to sight this QEF. Now it’s time to find out how boggy the trail to #2 is! If it’s as muddy as the one from #8 back to the village then we might need […] Read more →
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Found GCB1N17 Square root of E/m
QEF for the geohound and I. My GPSr can’t connect to the Internet and I’m not retyping a URL into my phone so I can’t comment on the hint, but the cache itself is fine. SL, TFTC. Read more →
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Found GC7PC86 North Leigh Number 6
Coming from Leigh Loop 8 the geohound and I figured we had an easy and direct run here, but intolerable mud at the East end of the field path drove us out onto the road and back before we could get to this cache. Even here, conditions were boggy and crossing the path to improve […] Read more →
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Found GCAABQ1 North Leigh Loop #8
Since our house flooded a few weeks ago we’ve been living out of a series of short holiday lets, waiting for the floors to dry out and the insurance company to assess the damage, before we’ll hopefully be able to secure a slightly longer tenancy somewhere while repairs are done.Right now we’re staying in New […] Read more →
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Non-exhaustive list of things I'm doing when I'm writing code, that don't look like "writing code":
- thinking
- researching
- contextualising
- testing
- measuring
- documenting
- communicating
- planning
- future-proofing
- educating
- learning
- expressing
- anticipating
- discovering
- inventing
- experimenting
- debugging
- analysing
- monitoring
For all its faults, an AI agent might "write code" faster than me.
But that's only a part of the process.
My typing speed is not the bottleneck. -
Wrote note for GC9EXXC Shady Seat on The Green
Spring's coming, and with it a stack of cachers either new or else returning from hibernation. Therefore; I'm briefly checking-in on my geocaches to ensure they're in good condition. Today I peeped at this one, and found it happy and well and ready to be hunted. Go find it! Read more →
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More posts →
(of all kinds:
articles, 
checkins, 
notes, 
reposts...)