Notes – Dan Q

Note #27831

Back at the Rollright Stones fire New Year’s Day, per family tradition. This year the younger child counted 74, the elder 59. The curse that prevents you counting the same number twice continues!

Note #27826

I think the dog’s back paws were cold this evening. The giveaway was when she tucked them into a convenient nearby trouser pocket.

Slamiltee at the Lycaeum

Went to a West End theatre wearing my “Slamilton” t-shirt.

In this corridor, during the act break, a stranger spotted it and did a double-take.

“Is that…? wait… that’s not Hamilton!”, they said.

I seized my chance.

“It’s Slamilton,” I replied. “You know: ‘Who slams, who jams, who tells their story.'”

And then, after a pause: “What’s ‘Hamilton’???”

Boxing Day Breakfast

Boxing Day breakfast (of champions (of leftovers)).

Note #27808

Unusually, we had no guests this Christmas Day. This meant that my usual level of overcatering went even further than normal.

A side effect of this is that a certain little doggo was delighted and surprised by her Boxing Day breakfast of roast goose!

Note #27806

I asked the younger child to “help” me calculate how much Yorkshire pudding batter to make for this Christmas dinner.

“Well,” he began, “I’m going to want FIVE Yorkshire puddings, soo…”

Duck shunning

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?

Note #27761

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.

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. 🤣

Free Deed Poll questions

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?” 😂

Minimalist Trees

Not sure I’m a fan of these new ultra-minimalist Christmas trees.

BBC Sports News (without the crap)

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.

Please Insert Dog

We got our dog a Christmas jumper.
My favourite thing about it is that its coat hanger contains instructions for use:
“Please insert dog” 🤣

Chinese Domain Name Scam

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!”

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!)

Trams Rights

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.

Do I print it? Or give up on graphic design and go back to backend programming where I belong?