Year: 2025
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Sabbatical Lesson #2: Burnout
The second lesson I took from my sabbatical was that it's possible to risk burnout (and therefore, it's important to be aware of and ready to counteract it) even when you're not working (in the conventional sense). Fortunately, my coach is on hand to help.
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BBC News RSS... with the sport?
Somebody commented on my blog to say they liked my "BBC News... Without The Crap" script, but still wanted sports news in their RSS feed. Luckily, I know just the person for the job: me!
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Possible future presentation concept: using a cafe/dining metaphor to help explain the proximity principle in user interface design (possibly with a "live waitstaffing" demo?).
Great idea? Or stupid idea?
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Photo looking down on a square wooden table in a cafe environment. Far from the photographer, a plate containing a couple of crumbs is pushed far to the other side of the table. Closer to him is a cup of coffee, two folded napkins, and an open MacBook. Arrows and captions draw attention to the relative distances between the components of the scene, labelling them as follows - "I am finished with this plate..." (refering to its relative distance), "...but I'm keeping this napkin" (which is closer to the coffee than the discarded plate), "I'm keeping the napkin while I finish my drink" (the two are close together), and "I'm working" (based on the relative position of the photographer and his laptop).
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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 …
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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 … -
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.
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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 Éowyn hadn't trashed it. Good news: it's fine! I need to update the cache description to reflect that the speed limit here …
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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 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...)
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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. 😘 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.