Dan Q

Month: June 2018

Digest for June 2018

Summary

This month I attended The Lead Developer conference and used my lunch break (and my journey back to the station) to find a reasonable number of central London geocaches, as listed below. I also reshared an announcement by Garrett Coakley that IndieWeb Oxford was to go ahead in September.

All posts

Posts marked by an asterisk (*) are referenced by the summary above.

Checkins

Reposts

Reposts marked with a dagger (†) include my comments or interpretation.

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Lateral: Game 1 with Kat Arney, Helen Arney, Simon Clark, and Sally Le Page

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

https://youtu.be/_xS-BIcu4ew (youtu.be)

Tom Scott’s new YouTube game show, Lateral, has just finished it’s first series. Start watching from here, if you’re at all interested… and you should be, it’s funny and clever (albeit in a very different way to Citation Needed).

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Unbreakable smart lock devastated to discover screwdrivers exist

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https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/15/taplock_broken_screwdriver/ (theregister.co.uk)

It’s never easy to crack into a market with an innovative new product but makers of the “world’s first smart fingerprint padlock” have made one critical error: they forgot about the existence of screwdrivers.

Tapplock raised $320,000 in 2016 for their product that would allow you to use just your finger to open the “unbreakable” lock. Amazing. Things took a turn for the worse when the ship date of September came and went, and backers complained that the upstart has stopped posting any updates and wasn’t responding to emails nor social media posts.

But after months of silence, the startup assured El Reg that everything was still moving forward and the delays were due to “issues with manufacturing in China.”

Fast forward 18 months and finally – finally – the $100 Tapplock is out on the market and it is… well, how do we put this kindly? Somewhat flawed.

…

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REPORT: Cards Against Humanity officially surpasses acoustic guitars as the most annoying thing you can bring to a party – The Beaverton

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https://www.thebeaverton.com/2018/06/report-cards-against-humanity-officially-surpasses-acoustic-guitars-as-the-most-annoying-thing-you-can-bring-to-a-party/ (thebeaverton.com)

VICTORIA, BC – After data collection from thousands of parties across the country, reports are coming in that the annoying person who brings an acoustic guitar to a party is now officially less hated than the person who expects everyone to sit down and play Cards Against Humanity.

“At least when some asshole starts playing the tune to Wonderwall you can get up and go to a different room,” says Michelle Kalleta, 22, avid partygoer. “Jerks who show up with any sort of card game expect everyone to play, and the last thing I want to do at a party is sit in a circle with a bunch of people who think they’re hilariously edgy.”

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Dan Q found GLW6FJQ9 A Meating place for Martyrs

This checkin to GLW6FJQ9 A Meating place for Martyrs reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

An easy find although as I approached the GZ I was concerned that some roadworks that are underway might have prevented me from getting to find the Wills and Bill, but they turned out not to be too near the actual location I was heading for. Answers sent. TFTC!

Dan Q couldn’t find GC4201 St Etheldreda’s (Central London)

This checkin to GC4201 St Etheldreda's (Central London) reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

Sometimes the muggles just aren’t on your side… I can SEE the cache but four people are just sitting around right next to it so I can’t get close. Ah well… another time perhaps!

JS Oxford Indieweb presentation – Polytechnic

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JS Oxford Indieweb presentation by Garrett Coakley (polytechnic.co.uk)

Last night I attended the always excellent JS Oxford, and as well as having my mind expanded by both Jo and Ruth’s talks (Lemmings make an excellent analogy for multi-threading, who knew!), I gave a brief talk on the Indieweb movement.
If you’ve not heard of Indieweb movement before, it’s a pu…

Last night I attended the always excellent JS Oxford, and as well as having my mind expanded by both Jo and Ruth’s talks (Lemmings make an excellent analogy for multi-threading, who knew!), I gave a brief talk on the Indieweb movement.

If you’ve not heard of Indieweb movement before, it’s a push to encourage people to claim their own bit of the web, for their identity and content, free from corporate platforms. It’s not about abandoning those platforms, but ensuring that you have control of your content if something goes wrong.

From the Indieweb site:

Your content is yours

When you post something on the web, it should belong to you, not a corporation. Too many companies have gone out of business and lost all of their users’ data. By joining the IndieWeb, your content stays yours and in your control.

You are better connected

Your articles and status messages can go to all services, not just one, allowing you to engage with everyone. Even replies and likes on other services can come back to your site so they’re all in one place.

I’ve been interested in the Indieweb for a while, after attending IndieWebCamp Brighton in 2016, and I’ve been slowly implementing Indieweb features on here ever since.

So far I’ve added rel="me" attributes to allow distributed verification, and to enable Indieauth support, h-card to establish identity, and h-entry for information discovery. Behind the scenes I’m looking at webmentions (Thanks to Perch’s first class support), and there’s the ever-eternal photo management thing I keep picking up and then running away from.

The great thing about the Indieweb is that you can implement as much or as little as you want, and it always gives you something to work on. It doesn’t matter where you start. The act of getting your own domain is the first step on a longer journey.

To that end I’m interested in organising an IndieWebCamp Oxford this year. If this sounds like something that interests you, then come find me in the Digital Oxford Slack, or on Twitter.

I’m so excited to see that there are others in Oxford who care about IndieWeb things! I’ve honestly fantasised myself about running an IndieWebCamp or Homebrew Website Club here, but let’s face it: that fantasy is more one of a world in which I had the free time for such a venture. So imagine my delight when somebody else offers to do the hard work!

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Rab the Giant versus the Witch of the Waterfall

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Rab the Giant versus the Witch of the Waterfall (firesidefiction.com)

Once upon a time there was a giant called Rab who lived in Glasgow and almost no one came to his door to kill him anymore. He had lived there since the time before legend, long before there even was a Glasgow, when giants and witches and kings and fairies and goblins fought, loved, and tricked their way across the land. It was a time when you had to live on your wits and you could only survive by being clever enough to escape from the traps and tricks that you‘ll have heard about in other fairy stories. It was a time of hotheads and feuds but luckily for him Rab was a more thoughtful person who managed to survive, more by avoiding than outwitting or fighting. So it was that he kept living in Glasgow right up to the present day.

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Beautiful, fabulous modern-day fairytale.

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Dan Q found GLW6CMKQ 16th Century Pub (Central London)

This checkin to GLW6CMKQ 16th Century Pub (Central London) reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

A lovely little place. Reminds me of a similarly-old (and well-hidden) pub in Oxford. Bit early in the morning for me to stop for a drink, but enjoyed the visit anyway. Answers to follow.

Dan, outside a pub, holding a GPS receiver.

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