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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1984 Revisited: What If Apple Took The ‘Microsoft Route’
Daring Fireball has an article about "Apple vs. Microsoft" with a difference. Contrary to many, he argues that if Apple had taken the 'Microsoft route' in 1984, with their hardware and software (significantly superior to IBM-PC platforms running Microsoft software), by licensing the platform, they wouldn't necessarily be the market leader today. It's a well-written …
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Weather Situation Unclear For Weekend’s Parachuting
As you may know, I'll be doing a crash course in parachuting - hopefully climaxing in a solo freefall - next weekend, to celebrate my (finally) getting a degree, courtesy of my dad. The weather reports don't look too favourable, though - potentially stormy at the end of this week. Hmmph. We'll see. It'll take …
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Windows Security
Just recieved the following error message from Windows, while trying to connect to a shared directory elsewhere on the network... have never seen one like it before, so I thought I'd share it with you:
Oh, so now I'm a hacker? Thanks, Windows. -
Dan Breaks The Internet… Again
Whoops. You'd have thought I'd have learnt my lesson when I fucked around with BIND last year, and 'broke' a small portion of the internet, but no. I managed to 'break the internet' again while playing with the Domain Name System settings on big. That's why Scatmania was inaccessible for the last day or so …
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Bushism Of The Day
"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people - and neither do we."
Full story from BBC News. -
Painful Work Patterns
This is actually getting quite painful. I've now been at work for 13 hours straight, and for a total of 40 hours so far this week. Still; next week should be marginally better.
The knackeredness I can deal with. What's nasty is that I'm not seeing as much of Claire as I'd like. -
I’m Surrounded By Idiots
Conversation with a co-worker, who shall remain nameless:
Her: Is anybody any good at Fireworks?
Me: Yeh; you just light the blue touchpaper and run. But seriously, you ought'a be using Corel Photo-Paint.
(I wander over to her desk, and see that she's working with a bitmapped image of our logo - she's trying to remove some of … -
Computer Hardware For Sale: Bargain Prices
Overclockers Australia is running an article, collecting together advertisements for computer hardware and software over the last quarter of a century. I've pulled out a few of my favourites:
1989 Tandy 500 MC Professional - only $8499; VGA graphics, 386/20MHz, 2MB RAM - this computer's a real beast: and what a bargain! Late-80's Portable Computer … -
Doom 3 Screenshots
Mmm... There's some Doom 3 screenshots online...
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64-Bit Columbine
Toy... Phill from work has gotten himself a sweet new AMD64 processor; I went round to help him install it after he thought he'd broken it during assembly (turns out he'd missed a power lead and hadn't fully locked the processor into it's socket). Jeez; those 64-bit processors have a heap of pins (as one …
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Reb’s Back
Looks like I am making a regular reader out of Reb, my ex-. She posted another comment today. This time I'd improved the trace algorithm already (mostly out of curiosity). She's connecting from her Tiscali IP (80.40.255.212). There's no (meaningful) firewall running on the connection, and ports 439 (DASP), 445 (Microsoft-DS) [that could be interesting], …
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The Jews Are Back In Town (Spread The Word Around)
A large number of orthodox jews have descended upon Aberystwyth as part of an annual tradition going back for as long as anyone seems able to remember. They charter a train and rent out PJM, the student village. It's an interesting spectacle. I recall that about this time two years ago I had a fire …
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Magical Trevor
Everyone love Magical Trevor;
'Cos the tricks that he does are ever so clever.
See Magical Trevor in action. -
This Land Will Surely Vote For Me!
This is hilariously good, and it's kicking up a bit of a fuss. So, in case it gets taken down, I'll be hosting a copy of it here, too... Click here to watch "My Land", starring Bush & Kerry. I can't help but sing along...
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An Idea - How To Get Treeware Junk Mail Banned
Here's a thought: a way to try to get unsolicited (treeware) junk mail banned -
Every time you receive a bit of junk mail, just go and put it back in the post box: it's almost all franked mail, and so the post office will re-sort it and deliver it back to you. Put a tally …