Blog
-
Ideal Conditions Calculator
Waiting for the ideal time to finally do that thing you've been procrastinating on? Greg's clever new micro-site will help you decide the perfect time to do it (and no, it doesn't necessarily just say "now!").
-
I'm not sure which of our children was last in this bath, but the configuration in which they've left their toys makes me feel as though I'm the subject of some kind of waterfowl-related shunning.
Perhaps they finally got wind or my heretical opinions on the God of Ducks (may he throw us bread) and they've collectively decided to disassociate from me?
Alt
Four thematic rubber ducks sit along the edge of a fitted white bathtub, seemingly deliberate in their placement which sees them facing directly away from the bather and towards various shampoo bottles and a candle in a glass.
-
A few pockets of the morning's freezing fog still cling to the hedgerows as the dog and I set out on a chilly West Oxfordshire morning walk.
Alt
A French Bulldog trots along a concrete slab farm track alongside fallow fields bordered by mist, hedges, and distant flanking hills.
-
Obviously I wasn't planning on going to the US anytime soon, but if I did... they might struggle with my visa application when I put every "email address I've used for the last 10 years" on, because I actively use a variety of catch-all domains/subdomains.
I've probably missed some addresses (e.g. to which I've only ever received spam that's since been deleted), but a conservative estimate of the number of personal email addresses which I've sent mail from or to would be... 7,669 email addresses. 🤣
-
CSS Lightbox with Alt Text Viewer
Off the back of my details/summary-based semantic HTML+CSS lightbox, I've come up with a way to add Mastodon-like 'show alt text' widgets in the same way, and I'll be applying both to images on my blog's new theme, in the New Year.
-
Since I relaunched freedeedpoll.org.uk three months ago (with new features) and made an explanatory demo video, the volume and kinds of questions I've been emailed has... become larger and more diverse.
I still get questions about childrens' names and citizenship and gender recognition certificates and things.
But now I also get questions like "how do I print multiple copies of the PDF?" and "why does my homemade deed poll not have a serial number?" 😂
-
Not sure I'm a fan of these new ultra-minimalist Christmas trees.
Alt
Display bed of Christmas trees outside a hardware store except each pot, labelled with its species and approximate height, is empty.
-
For the last few years I've been running a proxy of the BBC News RSS feeds (https://bbc-feeds.danq.dev) that strips out duplicate content, non-news content, and (optionally) sports news.
This weekend, for the first time, somebody asked if it could produce an edition that included only the sports content. Which turned out to be slightly more difficult, because it's the kind of scope-creep that my "uninterested-in-sports-news" brain couldn't conceive that anybody would want! But I got there in the end.
If anybody's looking for their fill of "BBC News Feeds... But Better!", give it a look.
-
Woodcraft Folk statement on the exclusion of trans children from Girlguiding
Girlguiding UK recently opted not to modernise their articles, meaning that their interpretation of the Supreme Court's misguided decision necessarily excludes trans girls and young women from Girlguiding. So it was heartening to read this statement from Woodcraft Folk, reaffirming that their support for trans kids is fundamental and unwavering.
-
We got our dog a Christmas jumper.
My favourite thing about it is that its coat hanger contains instructions for use:
"Please insert dog" 🤣
Alt
Christmas jumper for a dog, featuring blue-and-white stripes and sequin Christmas trees; its hanger contains an arrow pointing down alongside the text 'please insert dog'.
-
I find a lot of these "this company is tried to usurp your brand with Chinese domain name purchases" emails in my spam folder, corresponding to my (many) domains. They're a scam, of course: the scammer is trying to goad me into saying "No, please help protect my brand identity, I'll pay you over the odds for these .cn domains!"
Alt
Screenshot of scam email which begins "Dear CEO, This is a formal email. We are the Domain Registration Service company in Shanghai, China. I have something to confirm with you. Baokang Ltd sent a request on December 3, 2025. They desire to register "danq" as their internet keyword and Chinese domain names..." and goes on to try to bait the recipient into replying and expressing an interest in the domain names mentioned.
But I've always wondered - what happens if you reply and say "Yes, Baokang Ltd DO represent my business interests in China, please go ahead and let them register these domains." I'd know that was a lie, and the scammer would know that was a lie (the company, if it even exists, is under their control in the first place)... but they can't admit that they know that.
Anybody tried baiting this kind of scammer in that way before? (With the usual scambaiting precautions, of course!)
-
Dithering - Part 1
I already understand how using a threshold map to perform dithering works... and yet I still appreciated this amazing visual explainer from Damar Berlari.
-
Fellow folks at the interest-intersection of "public transport" and "queer activism" (I know you're out there!): I had an idea for a t-shirt.
Alt
T-shirt design: a sign in the typographic and graphical style of British road signs, showing the words 'Trams rights at all times' on a background in the blue/pink/white of the trans pride flag, with an outline of a tram whose pantograph is reshaped to resemble the trio of the masculine, feminine, and combined symbols used as a trans symbol.
Do I print it? Or give up on graphic design and go back to backend programming where I belong?
-
HTTP is not simple
After discovering it through a Gemini newsgroup, I very much enjoyed Daniel Stenberg's (of cURL fame) explanation that contrary to what you might think, HTTP (even version 1) is not a 'simple' protocol, and is full of weird and knotty underspecified loose ends.
-
How Online Privacy Has Been Championed by Dreamwidth
Coyote's written some solid words about how well Dreamwidth are standing up for user privacy and liberty against an increasingly hostile and censorship-ridden environment.