Month: January 2025
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On Wednesday, Vodafone announced that they'd made the first ever satellite video call from a stock mobile phone in an area with no terrestrial signal. They used a mountain in Wales for their experiment.
It reminded me of an experiment of my own, way back in around 1999, which I probably should have made a bigger deal of. I believe that I was the first person to ever send an email from the top of Yr Wyddfa/Snowdon.
Nowadays, that's an easy thing to do. You pull your phone out and send it. But back then, I needed to use a Psion 5mx palmtop, communicating over an infared link using a custom driver (if you ever wondered why I know my AT-commands by heart... well, this isn't exactly why, but it's a better story than the truth) to a Nokia 7110 (fortunately it was cloudy enough to not interfere with the 9,600 baud IrDA connection while I positioned the devices atop the trig point), which engaged a GSM 2G connection, over which I was able to send an email to myself, cc:'d to a few friends.
It's not an exciting story. It's not even much of a claim to fame. But there you have it: I was (probably) the first person to send an email from the summit of Yr Wyddfa. (If you beat me to it, let me know!)
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Trump's Strategy
I've worked out what convicted felon Donald Trump's endgame strategy is! And I can explain it... through the medium of a comic in the art style of Sid Meier's Civilization!
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Can AI retroactively fix WordPress tags?
My blog's tagging is a mess. With posts going back 27 years, an inconsistent taxonomy, and changes in focus, that's pretty-much inevitable. Perhaps an AI can help: reading through old under-tagged posts and suggesting tags that could be added? Let's try it...
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Back at work after a three-month break, and it turns out the first thing that I'd missed is my team's quirky morning ritual.
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Slack screenshot of Dan saying, at 08:57am: 'You know how many people pika-waved at me on a morning while I was on sabbatical? None. None at all. I missed you guys.' The quote is bookended by an animated GIF of Pikachu waving and another of Pikachu dancing around a heart. Five people have reacted with a mixture of Pikachu dances and waves.
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Found GCA1K70 Oak Protection
This checkin to GCA1K70 Oak Protection reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. After claiming the FTF on the new cache to the North East, the geohound and I continued our walk with a wander through thy woods, eventually finding ourselves near this gate. I'd nearly attempted this cache during a โฆ
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Found GCB2FZ4 Family Fun #2
This checkin to GCB2FZ4 Family Fun #2 reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. FTF! It's been a while since I've typed that!
Woke this morning slightly hungover and figured a nice walk with the geopup might help me feel better. And what an opportunity: a brand new cache only a short โฆ -
After a night that alternated between raining and freezing winds here, at the edge of Storm รowyn, this morning my skylight has ice patterns on it that look beautiful and almost organic.
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Skylight window viewed from the inside. The outside has a layer of ice punctuated by thinner patches of whirling, seaweed-like patterns that crisscross around it as if formed by a living thing.
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'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.
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Wrote note for GC9GTV3 Drive Slowly; Fox Crossing
This checkin to GC9GTV3 Drive Slowly; Fox Crossing reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Checked in on this cache while on a dog walk to ensure the Storm รowyn hadn't trashed it. Good news: it's fine! I need to update the cache description to reflect that the speed limit here โฆ
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My 8-year-old asked me "In Spanish, I need to use an upside-down interrobang at the start of the sentenceโฝ" (I assume the answer is yes!)
A little while later, I thought to check whether Unicode defines a codepoint for an inverted interrobang. Yup: โฝ =
U+203D, โธ =U+2E18. Nice.(And yet we don't have codepoints to differentiate between single-bar and double-bar "cifrรฃo" dollar signs...)
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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. ๐ Excellent.
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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.
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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 owner.
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Dan holding a plate containing his name and a collection of compliments, listed in the full post.
Comments on my plate:
* Your my faveriot [sic] brother (gee, I wonder who THAT one was from ๐)
* Always seems to be doing interesting things. A maverick! Thinks outside the box
* Awesome
* Thank you for inventing this (a) system & (b) corporate model!
* Always smiley and excited
* Thanks for always pushing lots of new features!
* Puts up with idiots willingly and patiently
* You literally dreampt this whole thing into existence!
* Quirky
* Innovative solutions!
* Helpful in all ways!Fabulous. I might wall-mount it.
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Goodbye, Trinidad and Tobago. ๐น๐น
You were wonderful. I hope to visit you again. โค๏ธ
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Dan and Ruth clink champagne glasses between the booths of their club class seats.
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When you love Jesus but you're sick of Him blocking your driveway.
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Orange garage on a tropical hillside, on the front of which are painted the words: 'Jesus is Lord. I love him.' And then below and between those lines: 'No parking'.