Year: 2025
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Found GC2F23P A Road Anarchy - A40 Eastbound to Oxford
This checkin to GC2F23P A Road Anarchy - A40 Eastbound to Oxford reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. No logs here since... 2023!? Mindboggling.
The geopup and I were out running some errands this damp afternoon and figured we'd take a walk near here. Spotting the cache on our radar we … -
The sustain pedal broke on our upright piano.
Normally the insides of the piano are a terrifying place that only our tuner gets to look at. A scary realm whose mysteries I cannot begin to comprehend.
But I was feeling very brave, so I popped it open, found this troublesome hinge, and bodged a fix. It sounds great.
I feel accomplished.
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Behind the lower front board of an open upright piano, a hand reaches in between the pedal rods and the soundboard to point at the hinge screw of the sustain pedal.
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INSULTS.COM
As a kid, I enjoyed a 1983 program that dynamically generated insults. So I found a copy of it, reverse-engineered it, and reimplemented it in Perchance. Who wants to be insulted?
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Reply to Ed Catmull on Change
Matt talked about change, and mentioned the history of WordPress. I weighed-in, talking about my (positive) experience of open source in an environment of change, and contrasting it to fighting with Squiz CMS at the Bodleian!
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I have A Plan for today. Step #2 involves a deep-dive into Algolia search indexing, ranking, and priority, to understand how one might optimise for a diverse and complex dataset.
So obviously step #1 involves a big ol' coffee and a sugary breakfast. Here we go...
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A wooden kitchen surface containing a red mug full of freshly-brewed coffee alongside a plate painted with fruits on which sits a heart-shaped doughnut, topped with chocolate and decorated with an iced motif of a sunflower. Beneath the plate, out-of-focus, are the pages of a news periodical.
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The 55 Words you Can't Say in Faster Payments
Step aside, George Carlin! Sam Easterby-Smith wants to share with the world the 55 words you can't say in a UK faster payments reference.
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"I'm only asking for basic respect." - Dr. Beth Upton, in the face of a hostile courtroom, media, and world.
Her fucking bravery is amazing. 💖
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After "fixing" BBC News' RSS feeds I noticed that I was seeing less news (and, somehow, stressing less over everything happening in the USA). Turns out that in switching myself to my new system I'd subscribed to the UK edition, whereas previously I'd been on the Full edition. I've corrected it now in my RSS reader, but it was an interesting couple of days.
tl;dr: I accidentally stopped reading international news and I was less stressed
Anyway: if you're not already using my improved BBC News RSS feeds, they're at: https://bbc-feeds.danq.dev
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UK’s secret Apple iCloud backdoor order is a global emergency, say critics
The UK seems to be strongarming Apple to weaken the security of its consumer products, which is fucking stupid. Weakened and backdoored encryption in mainstream products doesn't help catch smart criminals. But it does help smart criminals to catch regular folks.
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The Continuum
Inspired by Geneveive Raine's "The Continuum", I turned all of my blog post's featured images into a stripy picture.
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BBC News RSS... your way!
It turns out my filtered BBC News RSS feeds are more-popular than I thought, so I've launched a new site with all of them (plus all the source code to produce them) in a variety of editions.
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Blog Questions Challenge
I must be the last blogger on Earth left to do Ava/Kev's 'Blog Questions Challenge'. Let's get to it.
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Don't Bishops normally get to retain their regular name? This BBC News headline makes it sound like we're gonna end up with Bishop McBishopface!
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BBC News headline: Public invited to suggest names for next archbishop.
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God's Adviser
When I was a young child I took part in a school nativity play, and was so insistent about picking holes in the theological inconsistencies implied by the script that I had to be expelled from the classroom. Here's how it went down.
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Reading more rolled papyri
In kind-of local news, I see that the folks at Diamond Light Source (which I got to visit last year) have been helping the Bodleian (who I used to work for) to X-ray one of their Herculaneum scrolls (which I've written about before). That's really cool.