Dan Q

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.

Photograph of Dan, his ponytail hanging over the shoulder of his black t-shirt, smiling from behind his beard and waving to the camera.

  • Sabbatical Lesson #1: Boundaries

    My three-month work sabbatical has taught me a lot, perhaps too much to digest in a single blog post, so here's the first lesson: especially in a life-friendly distributed workplace, it's important to set boundaries to make your work/life-balance function properly. Read more →

  • 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 →

  • 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 →

  • 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 →

  • 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 →

  • 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 →

  • 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 →

  • 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 →

  • 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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  • Note #25585

    After a night that alternated between raining and freezing winds here, at the edge of Storm Éowyn, this morning my skylight has ice patterns on it that look beautiful and almost organic. × Read more →

  • 'All Americans legally female': Trump invites mockery with sloppy executive order

    I'm not sure that President Trump knew what she was doing when three days ago she signed a law into effect that declares herself legally-female. But if that's how she identifies, then of course I'm happy to use her correct pronouns. Read more →

  • Wrote note for GC9GTV3 Drive Slowly; Fox Crossing

    Checked in on this cache while on a dog walk to ensure the Storm Éowyn hadn’t trashed it. Good news: it’s fine! I need to update the cache description to reflect that the speed limit here is now 20mph, though! Read more →

  • My 8-year-old asked me "In Spanish, I need to use an upside-down interrobang at the start of the sentence‽" (I assume the answer is yes!)

    A little while later, I thought to check whether Unicode defines a codepoint for an inverted interrobang. Yup: ‽ = U+203D, ⸘ = U+2E18. Nice.

    (And yet we don't have codepoints to differentiate between single-bar and double-bar "cifrão" dollar signs...) Read more →

  • Note #25565

    Last year, a colleague introduced me to lazygit, a TUI git client with a wealth of value-added features.
    Somehow, though, my favourite feature is the animation you see if you nuke the working tree. 😘 Excellent.

  • Note #25556

    The final weekend of my sabbatical was spent, like the first one, at a Three Rings event. As a side activity to the volunteer work, everybody was asked to put their name on a paper plate and leave it on a particular table, allowing others to semi-anonymously add compliments, thanks, or kind words about its […] Read more →

  • Note #25554

    Goodbye, Trinidad and Tobago. 🇹🇹 You were wonderful. I hope to visit you again. ❤️ × Read more →

  • Note #25552

    When you love Jesus but you’re sick of Him blocking your driveway. × Read more →

  • Note #25538

    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 →

  • 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 →

  • 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 →

  • Wrote note for GC71F0E UFO Light (Alien Alphabet)

    Cache page no longer shows image, and backup link doesn’t work either. Needs CO attention. Read more →

  • Post: Top of the World

    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.

  • Note #25492

    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.

  • Note #25490

    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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