Dan Q

Month: August 2017

Review of The Blackpool Tower

This review of The Blackpool Tower originally appeared on Google Maps. See more reviews by Dan.

The Blackpool Tower, Promenade, Blackpool FY1 4BJ, United Kingdom.

Rating: ⭐⭐

Compared to trips here in my youth, this iconic tourist attraction now seems very expensive (with ‘modular’ pricing: no more can you just buy a ticket and enjoy the day, you must buy tickets for each individual experience, and activities like Jungle Jim’s – which seems much reduced from its origins layout – have time limits). Long queues, particularly for getting up to and especially getting down from the tower itself.

Review of Miller & Carter Kidlington

This review of Miller & Carter Kidlington originally appeared on Google Maps. See more reviews by Dan.

Miller & Carter Kidlington, 117 Bicester Rd, Kidlington OX5 2PX, United Kingdom.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Shared a delightful tenth anniversary meal here recently. Hadn’t booked, but despite being busy they managed to squeeze us in. Enjoyed the third-best steak I’ve ever tasted, plus delightful deserts and a range of exciting cocktails all at a price point that’s very reasonable for what you get.

Review of Cygnet Nursery Kidlington Ltd

This review of Cygnet Nursery Kidlington Ltd originally appeared on Google Maps. See more reviews by Dan.

Cygnet Nursery Kidlington Ltd, 44-45 Evenlode Cres, Kidlington OX5 1RF, United Kingdom.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Loving, friendly staff provide a great environment for fun and development for babies through preschoolers. Failed an Ofsted inspection in 2016 but were swiftly able to act upon the report and make the necessary changes and have since gone from strength to strength (once this is out of recent memory, I’d upgrade my review to 5 stars).

Of particular credit to them is the diversity of play and learning activities they provide and their thorough feedback to parents on their children’s development.

OMGYes

This article is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

Oh Joy Sex Toy: OMGYes

Wow, I was really blown away by OMGYes. The concept sounded novel but I wasn’t prepared for how completely engrossed listening to the interviews, watching the examples, and getting to practice the different techniques on the interactive vuvlas would be. This is genuinely an invaluable resource for folks looking to learn about touchin’ twats. OMGYes…

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Engineering Empathy

This article is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

This was a talk I gave at an internal R&D conference my last week at Workiva. I got a lot of positive feedback on the talk, so I figured I would share it with a wider audience. Be warned: it’s long. Feel free to read each section separately, though they largely tie together.

Why do you work where you work? For many in tech, the answer is probably culture. When you tell a friend about your job, the culture is probably the first thing you describe. It’s culture that can be a company’s biggest asset—and its biggest downfall. But what is it?

Culture isn’t a list of values or a mission statement. It’s not a casual dress code or a beer fridge. Culture is what you reward and what you don’t. More importantly, it’s what you reward and what you punish. That’s an important distinction to make because when you don’t punish behavior that’s inconsistent with your culture, you send a message: you don’t care about it…

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Manchester’s bike-share scheme isn’t working because people don’t know how to share

This article is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

I really wanted to believe that Mancunians could be trusted with nice things. Just over a fortnight ago, a Chinese company called Mobike brought 1,000 shiny new silver and orange bikes to my city. Unlockable with a smartphone and available to rent for just 50p for half an hour, they could be ridden wherever you liked within Manchester and Salford and, crucially, could be left anywhere public once you were done…

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A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened and what it means for Ethereum

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Yesterday, a hacker pulled off the second biggest heist in the history of digital currencies.

Around 12:00 PST, an unknown attacker exploited a critical flaw in the Parity multi-signature wallet on the Ethereum network, draining three massive wallets of over $31,000,000 worth of Ether in a matter of minutes. Given a couple more hours, the hacker could’ve made off with over $180,000,000 from vulnerable wallets.

But someone stopped them…

Hacker figure among code

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Why it is just lazy to bad-mouth Ruby on Rails

This article is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

It’s inevitable these days: we will see an article proclaiming the demise of Ruby on Rails every once in a while. It’s the easiest click bait, like this one from TNW.Now, you may say “another Ruby fanboy.” That’s fair, but a terrible argument, as it’s a poor and common argumentum ad hominem. And on the subject of fallacies, the click-bait article above is wrong exactly because it falls for a blatantly Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy plus some more confirmation bias which we are all guilty of falling for all the time.

I’m not saying that the author wrote fallacies on purpose. Unfortunately, it’s just too easy to fall for fallacies. Especially when everybody has an intrinsic desire to confirm one’s biases. Even trying to be careful, I end up doing that as well…

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