Category: Personal
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After "fixing" BBC News' RSS feeds I noticed that I was seeing less news (and, somehow, stressing less over everything happening in the USA). Turns out that in switching myself to my new system I'd subscribed to the UK edition, whereas previously I'd been on the Full edition. I've corrected it now in my RSS reader, but it was an interesting couple of days.
tl;dr: I accidentally stopped reading international news and I was less stressed
Anyway: if you're not already using my improved BBC News RSS feeds, they're at: https://bbc-feeds.danq.dev
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UK’s secret Apple iCloud backdoor order is a global emergency, say critics
The UK seems to be strongarming Apple to weaken the security of its consumer products, which is fucking stupid. Weakened and backdoored encryption in mainstream products doesn't help catch smart criminals. But it does help smart criminals to catch regular folks.
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The Continuum
Inspired by Geneveive Raine's "The Continuum", I turned all of my blog post's featured images into a stripy picture.
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BBC News RSS... your way!
It turns out my filtered BBC News RSS feeds are more-popular than I thought, so I've launched a new site with all of them (plus all the source code to produce them) in a variety of editions.
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Blog Questions Challenge
I must be the last blogger on Earth left to do Ava/Kev's 'Blog Questions Challenge'. Let's get to it.
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Don't Bishops normally get to retain their regular name? This BBC News headline makes it sound like we're gonna end up with Bishop McBishopface!
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BBC News headline: Public invited to suggest names for next archbishop.
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God's Adviser
When I was a young child I took part in a school nativity play, and was so insistent about picking holes in the theological inconsistencies implied by the script that I had to be expelled from the classroom. Here's how it went down.
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Reading more rolled papyri
In kind-of local news, I see that the folks at Diamond Light Source (which I got to visit last year) have been helping the Bodleian (who I used to work for) to X-ray one of their Herculaneum scrolls (which I've written about before). That's really cool.
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Sabbatical Lesson #2: Burnout
The second lesson I took from my sabbatical was that it's possible to risk burnout (and therefore, it's important to be aware of and ready to counteract it) even when you're not working (in the conventional sense). Fortunately, my coach is on hand to help.
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BBC News RSS... with the sport?
Somebody commented on my blog to say they liked my "BBC News... Without The Crap" script, but still wanted sports news in their RSS feed. Luckily, I know just the person for the job: me!
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Possible future presentation concept: using a cafe/dining metaphor to help explain the proximity principle in user interface design (possibly with a "live waitstaffing" demo?).
Great idea? Or stupid idea?
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Photo looking down on a square wooden table in a cafe environment. Far from the photographer, a plate containing a couple of crumbs is pushed far to the other side of the table. Closer to him is a cup of coffee, two folded napkins, and an open MacBook. Arrows and captions draw attention to the relative distances between the components of the scene, labelling them as follows - "I am finished with this plate..." (refering to its relative distance), "...but I'm keeping this napkin" (which is closer to the coffee than the discarded plate), "I'm keeping the napkin while I finish my drink" (the two are close together), and "I'm working" (based on the relative position of the photographer and his laptop).
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On Wednesday, Vodafone announced that they'd made the first ever satellite video call from a stock mobile phone in an area with no terrestrial signal. They used a mountain in Wales for their experiment.
It reminded me of an experiment of my own, way back in around 1999, which I probably should have made a bigger deal of. I believe that I was the first person to ever send an email from the top of Yr Wyddfa/Snowdon.
Nowadays, that's an easy thing to do. You pull your phone out and send it. But back then, I needed to use a Psion 5mx palmtop, communicating over an infared link using a custom driver (if you ever wondered why I know my AT-commands by heart... well, this isn't exactly why, but it's a better story than the truth) to a Nokia 7110 (fortunately it was cloudy enough to not interfere with the 9,600 baud IrDA connection while I positioned the devices atop the trig point), which engaged a GSM 2G connection, over which I was able to send an email to myself, cc:'d to a few friends.
It's not an exciting story. It's not even much of a claim to fame. But there you have it: I was (probably) the first person to send an email from the summit of Yr Wyddfa. (If you beat me to it, let me know!)
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Trump's Strategy
I've worked out what convicted felon Donald Trump's endgame strategy is! And I can explain it... through the medium of a comic in the art style of Sid Meier's Civilization!
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Can AI retroactively fix WordPress tags?
My blog's tagging is a mess. With posts going back 27 years, an inconsistent taxonomy, and changes in focus, that's pretty-much inevitable. Perhaps an AI can help: reading through old under-tagged posts and suggesting tags that could be added? Let's try it...
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Back at work after a three-month break, and it turns out the first thing that I'd missed is my team's quirky morning ritual.
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Slack screenshot of Dan saying, at 08:57am: 'You know how many people pika-waved at me on a morning while I was on sabbatical? None. None at all. I missed you guys.' The quote is bookended by an animated GIF of Pikachu waving and another of Pikachu dancing around a heart. Five people have reacted with a mixture of Pikachu dances and waves.