I'm Dan Q. I've spent the last 25+ years creating and writing on the Internet.
I work at Automattic and volunteer with Three Rings. I live with my partner, her husband, two kids and a dog. I can sometimes be found out geo*ing, cycling, or performing magic.
I believe in open source, open relationships, and opening doors to marginalised groups.

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The Blind Piemaker
Ruth and I spiced-up this week's date night with a challenge from a mysterious book: Ruth, blindfolded, baked pies while I instructed her only in non-verbal ways. It was challenging, stressful, and... pretty fun! (Also we got to eat pie.) Read more →
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WordPress to ClassicPress
A few weeks ago I switched this blog to ClassicPress, a fork of WordPress. Here's a deep dive into how (and why) I did it, as well as a look into what my experience so-far has been with this (mostly-)cut-down version of the world's most popular CMS. Read more →
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Cleaved
What's got nine working fingers and shouldn't be allowed to own a meat cleaver? This guy! 👉🩸😥 Read more →
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Monday Punday
For almost a year I've been slowly working my way through the archives of Monday Punday, a webcomic which challenges the reader to solve picture-based pun puzzles. Give it a go! Read more →
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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? Read more →
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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. Read more →
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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. Read more →
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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. Read more →
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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. Read more →
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More articles →
(articles are traditional long-form blog posts) -
AI Is Reshaping Software Engineering — But There’s a Catch…
Eduaro Ordax is concerned that less-experienced developers will (be encouraged to) use AI as a crutch rather than learning programming fundamentals. I have similar and related concerns, and I'm still of the opinion that we just don't know how to teach people to program! Read more →
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Yesterday, owing to some plot, the dog didn’t get as much outside/walk/play time as she’d like.Today, she let me know how she felt about that by shredding my slippers. 🙄× Read more →
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I was experimenting with VP8/VP9 WebM video transparency and I made a stupid thing: a URL that, if you go to it, means you’ll he followed around my blog by a video of me just hanging out in the corner of the page – https://danq.me/?fool_id=06I’ve added it to my list of “stupid/random things that can […] Read more →
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Reply to Vika, re: Content-Security-Policy
Vika shared her frustrations with Content-Security-Policy nonces when delivering pre-generated/cached content. I've had a similar fight, so I've written-up a few of the things I tried and what I learned as a result. Read more →
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Reply to Blogging for traffic not design
Andy Hawthorne criticised a new website owner for not using a popular CMS, arguing that this would necessarily impact their SEO and so invalidate the point of their website (that point being, Andy presupposes, to attract views). I dispute... almost every single part of that argument. Read more →
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Get Ready with Me: Techfluencer Edition
WordPress.com's YouTube channel just shared an influencer 'get ready with me'-style video but featuring a techfluencer. It's... weird? But funny? Read more →
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A lunchtime dog walk was made especially delightful by the growing warmth of the approaching British springtime. It’s really bright and pretty out, this afternoon! × Read more →
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Large companies find HTML & CSS frustrating “at scale” because the web is a fundamentally anti-capitalist mashup art experiment, designed to give consumers all the power.
- Mia, 2019
This is what I needed to be reminded, today. Read more → -
Queers make the world a safer place
Cat shares the experience of his friend who semi-independently discovered that queer-friendly online spaces are an antidote to patriarchal toxic masculinity. Because duh. A delightful tale. Read more →
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Bloomberg's Terms
Chris Messina remarked about the insane terms and conditions that Bloomberg.com require you to agree to in order to read a news article, effectively signing away your rights. Except... I don't see the dialog: I just see the articles. I haven't given consent, and they can't conceivably prove to the contrary... 😈 Read more →
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Found GC2F23P A Road Anarchy - A40 Eastbound to Oxford
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 took a short diversion to find this cache, which despite not having a visitor yet this year nor for the entirety of last […] Read more →
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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. -
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! Read more →
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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... -
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. Read more →
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More posts →
(of all kinds:articles,
checkins,
notes,
reposts...)