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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Worst Weekend Of Cinema - Part 1
Dan goes to the cinema with Ruth and JTA, and they don't watch a film. However, they do have a good old complain.
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Shapes on a plane.
AltFlatland movie poster
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Shapes on a plane.
AltFlatland movie poster
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How I feel getting myself off.
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Pay To Post
Facebook is to introduce a new feature that will allow you to pay to "promote" your posts above those of your friends' other friends. Dan is reminded of Hashcash.
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On This Day In 2005
On this day in 2005, Dan received an unusual parcel. No, you're not reading the same post twice... this is not a fault... just deja vu!
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A New Keyboard
Dan already owns the best mouse in the world. Maybe it's time for a new keyboard, too. But what's this? Not what he expected, that's for sure...
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Ageism, Nightline, and Counselling
As a trainee counsellor, I've had plenty of opportunity of late for self-analysis and reflection. Sometimes revelations come at unexpected times, as I discovered recently.
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On This Day In 2004
On this day in 2004, Dan finally handed in his dissertation on the subject of Three Rings. Since then, Three Rings has become the de facto standard for University Nightlines, and has also become the most popular rota management system for Samaritans branches and a variety of other helpline charities, too.
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Visitor Tracking Without Cookies (or How To Abuse HTTP 301s)
A technique for abusing HTTP 301 redirects and random numbers to uniquely track users; even those who have cookies disabled in their web browsers.
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Star Wars - Machete Order
Ruth, JTA, and Dan watch the Star Wars series in Machete Order - that is, episodes IV, V, II, III, then VI.
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One Hundred And Sixty
Dan reminisces about old mobile phones, text messages, and those 160-character limits we learned to work around. Twitter could learn from this...
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If I put a pair of telescopes in parallel, will the effect be multiplicative or additive?
Suppose I have a pair of 15x zoom telescopes (for example, I separated a pair of 15x zoom binoculars) and laid them end-to-end. Naturally there'd be some loss of field-of-vision when looking through them both. But would the resulting zoom level be 152 (i.e. 225x)? Or 15*2 (i.e. 30x)? Or something else entirely? Or … -
Moving Things Around With CSS Transitions
The "pop-up head" in the top-left hand corner of the page is powered entirely by CSS: no Javascript is used at all. Dan explains how.
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Top of the World
This weekend, Dan's father finally made it to the North Pole, as part of his charity trek, albeit in the form of his cremated ashes being carried by another member of his polar team.