Month: January 2026
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Found GC9PVXZ EL CRÁTER DE LA RAMBLETA
My partner Ruth and I were disappointed not to be able to hike any of the trails up here today - they're all closed - but enjoyed finding both the nearby Virtual and this Earthcache geocaches. The evidence of lava flows (that remain to this day!) are really quite impressive.
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Found GC9P71A El tEidE
My partner Ruth and I are spending a long weekend in Puerto de la Cruz. We loved coming up to see this beautiful, bleak, stark volcanic landscape.
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If I'm on holiday and a hotel offers me eggs benedict for breakfast, I'll almost always order it. But I'd never make it at home.
I tell myself that this is because hollandaise sauce is notoriously easy to mess up. That I don't want to go through the learning process only to make something inferior to what I eat as a holiday treat.
But maybe it's just that my brain wants to keep eggs benedict as a signifier that I'm on holiday. That I can unplug from the world, stop thinking about work, and enjoy a leisurely breakfast with some creamy eggs and a long black coffee.
Maybe eggs benedict just has to remain "holiday food", for me.
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RSS readers rock. Having a single place you connect for a low-bandwidth bundle of everything you might want to read means it doesn't matter how slow the WiFi is on your aeroplane, you can get all the text content in one tap.
(I'm using Capy Reader to connect to FreshRSS, by the way.)
Time to catch up on some news, blogs, etc.!
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How an RM Nimbus Taught Me a Hacker Mentality
Thirty to thirty-five years ago, as a young and curious hacker, I broke out of the restrictions on my secondary school's computer lab and briefly achieved rockstar popularity amongst peers who, through my tools, could now play videogames instead of doing their coursework. But their interest in the results of my exploits were incompatible with my interest in the sheet joy of discovery... and, inevitably, this meant trouble.
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Our kid doesn't like bagel holes. She'll eat the rest of the bagel, but not the hole.
At least, that's the only explanation I can think of for finding things like this most mornings.
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On a plate, buttered bagel has been nibbled all around the outside, leaving only the hole surrounded in a thin circle of bread.
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I like it when the Internet says "yes, and".
I like it when the Internet says "yes, but".
I even like it when the Internet says "no, because".I'm not so keen when the Internet says "well, actually",
(Probably because it reminds me of what
a shit I was in some not-yet-forgotten time.)But I don't like when the Internet rallies a brigade
To pick apart a character flaw I have, but hate,
Or to attack something I'm not, and expect me to defend.So perhaps next time, start with "yes, and", "yes, but",
Or even "no, because"... or just say nothing, and
Remember what it means to connect with a human. -
Highlight of my workday was debugging an issue that turned out to be nothing like what the reporter had diagnosed.
The report suggested that our system was having problems parsing URLs with colons in the pathname, suggesting perhaps an encoding issue. It wasn't until I took a deep dive into the logs that I realised that this was a secondary characteristic of many URLs found in customers' SharePoint installations. And many of those URLs get redirected. And SharePoint often uses relative URLs when it sends redirections. And it turned out that our systems' redirect handler... wasn't correctly handling relative URLs.
It all turned into a hundred line automated test to mock SharePoint and demonstrate the problem... followed by a tiny two-line fix to the actual code. And probably the most-satisfying part of my workday!
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This morning it took me three attempts to put on a t-shirt the right way around.
I don't think I slept too well.
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That's Not How Email Works, HSBC
A confusing letter from HSBC informed me that I've not been receiving their emails, and I have to change the email address they use to contact me. Except I've been receiving all of their emails just fine! The problem, it turns out, is that surveillance capitalism is now so-widespread that the bank cannot conceive that their own attempts to spy on their customers might not be 100% reliable...
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The internet’s hidden creative renaissance (and how to find it)
This article is good and touches on many sites, people, and topics that I care about... but it's painfully ironic that the author has written a post praising the independent Web... using Substack as their platform.
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Who Is the Winking Chef?
Scott Wiener - who is even more pizza-obsessed than me - noticed the 'winking chef' image that's common on pizza boxes. Then he traced its origin, and wrote a blog post to share the story of the artwork. Delightful.
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As previously indicated, I'm not anticipating cosplaying anybody. But I think I could do Greg Universe.
Not young Greg Universe, the Star Child of 'Story for Steven'... which seems to be the only variety anybody's ever cosplayed as before if an image search is to be believed. No, I mean: overweight old balding Greg Universe. I could totally pull that look off.
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Composite image showing Greg Universe from Steven Universe, in both his 'young, rock star' version and the more-familiar 'old balding car wash owner who lives in his van' version.
Fake tan lines, white t-shirt (I'd probably make a 'guitar dad' one!), sweatpants, carrying a guitar. Easy.
Again, not that I'm planning to. Just saying that I could...
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Why does SSH send 100 packets per keystroke?
Nolen Royalty wrote an interesting piece about diagnosing a quirky SSH-related issue, and I found it both interesting and inspiring.
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Still at MegaConLive. I've not done this kind of con before (and still wouldn't, were it not for my tweenager and her various obsessions). Not my jam, and that's fine.
But if there's one thing for which I can sing it's praises: everybody we've met is super friendly and nice. Sure, you can loudly telegraph your fandoms and identities via cosplay, accessories, masks, badges, bracelets or whatever... but it's also just a friendly community of folks to just talk to.
The fashion choices are, more than anything, just an excuse to engage: a way to say "hey, here's a conversation starter if you'd like to talk to me!"
Overheard a conversation between my kid and another of a similar age, and there was a heartwarming moment where the other kid said, "oh wow, I thought I was the only one!" Adorbs.
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Convention stage with MegaConLive branding.