Notes – Dan Q

Woof! Burglars!

The dog is concerned. Why, despite all her warnings, am I still letting these men take all of our (surviving) furniture?

It’s fifty-five days since my house flooded. Since then, I’ve lived in hotels, with friends, on volunteering retreats and – mostly – in a series of one- or two-week AirBnB-style short-term lets. It’s been wild. It’s also been wildly disruptive. To our work. To our kids. To our general stability.

Today, we make a change. Today we’re moving into a medium-term let: sonewhere we can stay for the… say… six months or so it’ll take to actually repair our house so we can move back in. We’ll have our own space again in a way we haven’t in a couple of months.

I know the hard work isn’t done. Our house is still a wreck! But it feels like, perhaps, we’re beginning the second act of the three-act play “The Year Of The Flood”. And that feels like progress.

Right, I’d better go move house! (for like the seventh time this year…)

Indian Food

On our last day out at our current AirBnB, we searched for a takeaway.

Google Maps found me a Chinese takeaway, but it had an unexpected suggestion when I asked for an Indian:

Surprise Pig

It’s my final day in the cute garden office of the AirBnB we’re living in, this week, and every time I step through the door I catch a glimpse of our small, sandy-coloured dog squatting in the garden.

Except the dog isn’t even here. My brain keeps getting tricked… by this statue of a pig:

Garden Office

I’ve lived in a LOT of different places these last few months while we’ve been arranging a place to live for the next six months or so of our house repairs. Each new AirBnB has had its pros and cons (and each hasn’t felt like “home”).

But man, I really like the “garden office” at our current one. So nice to work in the sun!

(I don’t like the slow WiFi as much, but yeah… pros and cons!)

Tesco Assistnace

I guess I’ll need some “assistnace” from Tesco to explain why my (long-neglected!) Clubcard didn’t work when buying some emergency sunscreen this morning. 😂

Easter Eggy Breakfast

Today I had a Cadburys’ Cream Egg… for breakfast.

I am a monster.

F-Day plus 50

The final of the short term lets we’re staying in (before we switch to a medium-term one!) while our flooded house is repaired is also perhaps the prettiest. Our village this week is peak-Cotswolds, for sure!

Predictions in a Hat

Two decades ago this month my friend Matt posted five predictions about the future of the world. I’ve revisited these predictions twice since: ten years later and twenty years later, and “scored” his predictions both times.

I love that the Web’s memory (and the persistence of URLs) makes this kind of long-term conversation possible.

Note #28647

There was no mixing bowl in the house large enough to make enough pizza dough to feed all of the Three Rings volunteers present at this year’s 3Camp, so I just had to pour out all the ingredients onto the surface and work from there.

Fools Mode

I’d completely forgotten that my website pranks visitors on April Fools’ Day with a randomly-selected one of a selection of “features” until I went to it myself and got “party mode”.

So yeah, this year I managed to April Fools’ myself.

Note #28634

Some days, developing Three Rings is about being hunched over a keyboard alone in the middle of the night, swearing at Rubygem incompatibilities.

But just ocassionally it’s about getting together in beautiful places with some of the most dedicated geeks I know… to swear about Rubygem incompatibilities.

Either way, a walk in the garden can lead to the insight that gets you to the solution.

Note #28632

Not even thanks to Daylight Saving but just because I felt energised and excited, I got up to watch the sunrise this morning… before starting work on a new Three Rings feature!

Note #28621

Kicking off 3Camp 2026, our annual volunteering event, with the traditional “receive and sort a ludicrous amount of groceries” activity.

Eject Toast

Most-often when a toaster has a ‘cancel’ button it’s simply labelled ‘cancel’, ‘stop’, or with a cross. But this week, I discovered a toaster that uses the ‘eject’ icon – like you’d find on a VHS tape recorder – on its button.

At first I thought this was an unusual user interface choice, but I’m coming around to it. It feels like a more-accurate and skeuomorphic representation of what actually happens than a cross suggests.

But the existence of toasters like this one does necessarily mean that, some day, some Gen Alpha will see a tape deck in, like, a museum or something, and will say ‘hey, that’s cute: the button you press to pop the tape out is the same as the one you use to pop your toast out’.

Kind: Notes