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.
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A Postcard from a Labyrinth Artist
Another Postcard From The Internet landed on my doormat this week... and it's from a real-life labyrinth designer and artist based in Canada. So cool!
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On Publishing Your Salary
Kev Quirk observes that of folks who (like me) choose to share their salary online, there's likely to be a skew towards higher salaries. What can we do to better-contextualise that, I wonder?
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Re: How I made...
Noah S shared how he used some PHP code to block specific badly-behaved bots from his website. I've got a few suggestions to help him make his block faster, easier-to-maintain, and more-thorough, either using PHP code or webserver configuration.
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Did not find GC3C7FT Woodies
This checkin to GC3C7FT Woodies reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. After seeking (and finding, surprisingly) the 2026-09-13 51 -1 geohashpoint down in the Brook Hill nature reserve, the geohound and I came to try to find this cache, too. After finding the correct way into the nature reserve (access β¦
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Geohashing expedition 2026-09-13 51 -1
A successful geohashing expedition to a swampy area near Woodstock, despite an incident during which I was attacked by a wasp whom I'd attempted to squash using my genitals. (Yes, really.)
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Opusfived
MiloΕ‘ NovoviΔ's experimental interactive fiction is a silly (but with a grain of truth!) simulation of what it feels like to attempt to use vibe-coding to make small, simple, isolated changes to an established codebase. Go play it!
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Hot new laptop features
Earlier this summer Chad Comello's 7-year-old son built a laptop from paint and cardboard and it's got some kickass features that you can't get from anywhere else. Wishlisted.
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Automattic Minus Matt
There's a lot of tech press this morning about the involuntary ousting of my former boss Matt Mullenweg from his CEO position at Automattic. Ernie Smith from Tedium's article is my favourite. Here's my take on why this is good for Automattic (and everybody else!), and why this should be seen not as a power grab... but as an intervention!
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Pixel Area (@pxlarea@mastodon.social) launched a couple of weeks ago, and DanQ.me was selected to be one of the initial "seed" blogs that were there at the outset (I'm at https://pxlarea.com/x38y34).
I'm... honestly not sure what to make of it. Organising personal websites spatially seems like a strange idea (although there's a list view available too). And 'pixel' seems to be a strange name (at my desktop resolution, my 'pixel' comprises... 169 pixels). It's got a little bit of a "million dollar homepage" (remember that) feel to it... though at least it's not operating commercially. In fact, the best thing about it seems to be that it's home-grown indie/smolweb content.
I guess it's a bit like a webring? (Maybe it needs an embeddable component that lets a site show it's "space" and hop to neighbours?)
So... yeah; I'm undecided on this one. But, as always, I love when people do cool, random and experimental stuff with the Web!
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Screenshot from Pixel Area, showing a blue 'pixel' representing Dan Q.
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That moment when you realise that you forgot your sunglasses but figure you'll just squint.
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A fawn-coloured French Bulldog sits on the wooden decking outside a back door, squinting as she looks towards the sun (evident from the direction of the shadows).
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Use Firefox
Ramkumar Shankar says you should use Firefox, and they're right: you should. Not just because it's a great browser, and it is, but because doing so helps protect the freedom and openness of the Web. Use Firefox.
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Needed to renew my driving license. My new one doesn't have an EU flag on it. The sad reminders of Brexit just keep coming. πͺπΊπ
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Hot take: AI peaked with Taco Bot 3000
AI peaked in 2014 with the invention of the Taco Bot 3000. With artificial (taco) intelligence and the latest cheese dispensing technology, it truly represented the summit of human technological achievement the likes of which we might not see again.
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Why Are We Taught to Memorise and Not Learn?
Γaki puts forward a political but fair look at the mass-production standardisation of English-language education in British schools. In an effort to make work measurable and objectively assessable, it argues, we're stripping the joy out of the art of writing.
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The Husbands by Holly Gramazio
One of the best books I've read so far this year (although my review is about three months late!) was Holly Gramazio's debut novel, The Husbands. A proper page-turner that keeps you engaged through all of its twists and turns, I can't recommend it strongly enough.