Author: Dan Q
Dan Q is a software engineer, a director of a voluntary organisation, a trainee counsellor, a keen geocacher, and an amateur magician. He lives with his partner and her husband in a polyamorous triad, and occasionally finds time to blog.
-
Found GCAF07M Freeland to Hanborough #06 - Revived
A second diversion from the taekwondo group to find a cache just off the beaten track, this gloriously clear morning!
-
Found GCAXZQ5 Freeland to Hanborough - Bonus Cache #5
A quick find while out with the younger kid on a walk with his taekwondo school. TFTC!
-
Re: My Hobby Is Learning
Like me, Kev Quirk's hobby is learning... to the point at which he, like me, picks up hobbies like they're fistfuls of popcorn. I've got some thoughts on what this lifestyle means for me, too.
-
Alternate timeline in which all Greek and Latin roots are swapped
Remoteoscope and equigamic are both wonderful words and I envy our alternate-universe buddies. Concavenator has some more.
-
/pfp - a /slashpage for profile picture history
/pfp is a /slashpage standard intended to showcase a timeline of 'profile pictures' you've used to represent yourself online over the years. I've added one, now, and man do I look young in some of those photos!
-
I continue to fight to make BBC News' RSS feeds not-suck, despite ongoing efforts to dilute their value by the BBC themselves.
Last month they started injecting ads for their email newsletter-based subscription option into their RSS feed. But I don't need email: I have RSS! The ad initially slipped through the filters because it looks like the URL of a news article: sneaky move, BBC!
Anyway; it's fixed now and these newsletter ads should no longer appear in the feeds available on https://bbc-feeds.danq.dev - hurrah!
-
A peep behind the curtain: here's an animation illustrating how I had to learn to dissect/think about origami in order to make origami.danq.dev for my Weird Web October contribution today:
-
Origami (Weird Web October)
A (well-folded) love letter to the Weird World Wide Web: my entry for day 14 of Weird Web October is "Origami". Go play with virtual paper!
-
Webpage Copy-Protection is Impossible (and that's great!)
A friend of mine was inconvenienced by an over-eager bit of Web copy-protection JavaScript this week, and it reminded me that more-than-ever, these scripts are both harmful (to legitimate users) and pointless (ineffective at preventing downloading).
-
Last time I made a dental insurance claim, Aviva insisted on sending me a cheque. So I asked them via live chat if I could claim via bank transfer. Yes, they say, although apparently I have to ask every time because "they can't store bank details". Sigh. Fine. At least they'll pay this one by bank transfer.
Except a few days later they emailed to say they'd lost my bank details and could I provide them again. They asked me to add it to my claim, but their website won't let me do that because the claim is already agreed to pay-out. So now my claim's stuck in limbo.
Back into live chat I go. I give all the details and we're getting there but then... I suddenly get cut off from the human and I'm back with the robot.
The robot says live chat closed at 6:30pm so I'll need to come back tomorrow.
But it's only 5:45pm.
Is the whole world going mad, or is it just me?
Alt
Live Chat gatekeeping chatbot saying that live chat is open until 6:30pm, which is in the future, but it's claiming that it's closed.
-
What Argentine Tango is like...
A series of metaphors about what tango feels like, to me. Like improvising music. Like spinning tops. Like an flock of birds. Or something like that.
-
Ruth and I stopped at Hanley Swan for a picnic lunch on our way home from our weekend of Argentine Tango classes. Within seconds our lunch had attracted a large flock of ducks from the little duck houses on the village's adorable duck pond.
But better yet: I managed to catalogue like eleven memorial benches around the pond and the village green, all previously unknown to OpenBenches (@openbenches@botsin.space): #46341, #46342, #46343, #46344, #46345, #46346, #46347, #46348, #46349, #46351, #46352!
Alt
A slightly dried-up duck pond with ducks and cute like pontoon duck houses.
-
Found GCB19MJ St Ann's Well
This checkin to GCB19MJ St Ann's Well reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. There's some kind of foot race going on today and the well area is heaving with people: spectators lining the roadside are cheering and whooping as the runners barrel past. My partner Ruth and are only in …
-
On the window sill of the bar at the hotel where Ruth and I are learning to tango... this morning I made a squirrel friend!
At least now I'll have succeeded at something today even if I can't get the hang on not-treading-on-toes!
Alt
A grey squirrel lies against the glass pane of a stone-framed window.
-
The bed in my hotel room tonight is made up for not one, not two, but three occupants. Did they... see me and instantly clock me as polyamorous?
Alt
Wide bed with three sets of pillows laid out.