Kind: Articles
Traditional long form content: a post with an explicit title and body.
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Subverting AI Agent Logging with a Git Post-Commit Hook
I keep hearing from developer friends who are 'expected' by their employer to demonstrate that they're using AI, even for tasks at which the AI is demonstrably a suboptimal choice. So - as a joke - I came up with a git post-commit hook that makes it look like they're doing so, even when they're not.
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What can you do with a software privacy polariser?
Samsung's 2026 phones will feature a dynamic privacy filter, blacking-out parts of the screen selectively from shoulder-surfers. I'm so curious about the capabilities of (and API for) this technology: what could I make it do?
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F-Day plus 12
It's been only twelve days since our house flooded (it feels like a lot longer!), and progress is slow on getting damage assessments and medium-term accommodation planning sorted.
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Taskmaster: 220 Extraordinary Tasks for Ordinary People, by Alex Horne
I recently read Taskmaster: 220 Extraordinary Tasks for Ordinary People by Alex Horne, and was... underwhelmed.
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Fake Herons
This morning, I saw a real heron and a fake heron, and it made me think of a police officer I photographed myself while geocaching with a few years ago. Let's talk theoretical psychology!
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Hello World by Hannah Fry
It took me a while, but I finally got around to reading Hannah Fry's "Hello World: How to Be Human in the Age of the Machine", and it was really good!
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6-12 Months
"How long should we plan on renting another house to live in?" I asked, warily.
"Six to twelve months?" guessed the loss adjusters. -
Run your own WireGuard VPN
I stopped paying for VPN services a decade ago and I haven't looked back. When I 'need' a VPN service, I just spin one up on cheap VM services, and then I throw it away when I'm done. It's cheaper and more-customisable... and if the UK goes ahead with an idea to age-gate VPN services, it might soon become more-convenient too.
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F-Day plus 3
It's only been three days since we had to evacuate our rapidly-flooding house. Here's some horror pics.
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The calm after the storm
This morning, from my Premier Inn window, the skies are clear. I could almost forget that, just 4 miles away, my house is full of water.
Today may well be a day of waders and damage assessment, conversations with insurance companies and of working out where we'll be living for the near future.
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LGBT+ History Month
Here in the UK we celebrate LGBT+ History Month in February. This year, I'd encourage you to look at the history of queer rights in the UK, and use it to celebrate what we've achieved so far... but more-importantly, as a reminder that there's more to do (especially lately).
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Reducing Phantom Obligation in FreshRSS
Terry Godier's fantastic article last week introduced us to the term 'phantom obligation' and reiterated something I've been saying for years: that 'RSS zero', unlike 'inbox zero', is not an admirable goal. And that reminded me to share with you how I personally make my FreshRSS installation feel more like a tool that serves me, not the other way around.
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OpenBenches reaches Tenerife
This weekend, I helped OpenBenches extend its reach to Tenerife, by finding and photographing a bench in the memorial garden for the Dan-Air Flight 1008 disaster. Almost-simultaneously, Terence Eden shared a blog post about the cost of running the OpenBenches service. Taken together, that feels like an excuse for me to plug the project (again)!
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Gamified... Pornography?
When the Online Safety Act came into effect, I considered writing a blog post investigating exactly how difficult it made it to access Pornhub. But it turned out to be boringly easy (it's not NOW, of course!), so I didn't. So here's a different discovery I made about the site...
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Postcard from San Diego
Another postcard for my collection; this time from an indieweb blogger who was previously JUST outside of my circle - Joe from ArtLung. There's something in this.