Finally got around to rewriting my Mastodon introduction, now that my selfhosted server’s got enough interconnection that people might actually see it!
If you’re on the Fediverse and you’re not already doing so, you can follow me at @dan@danq.me. Or follow my blog at @blog@danq.me.
Morning walk with Demmy, first of her name, Queen of Stealing Your Spot On The Sofa, Empress of the Farts Of Doom, rightful keeper of That Gross Chew Toy, bringer of snuggles, destroyer of rosebeds, scourge of the mailman.
Meta are launching Threads tomorrow.
If you’re wondering how this will impact the world and society’s social connections, I direct you to the predictive powers of 1984 British cinema.
I have minus 26 new articles in my RSS reader! Either I’m a time traveller, or there’s a wraparound bug when you neglect your unreads for long enough.
Both seem equally likely, if I’m honest.
Today I learned that the quiet, high-pitched neighing sound horses sometimes make is called “nickering”.
I learned this from a subtitle which read “[horse nickers]”. Which, as a Brit, I can’t help but interpret as somebody making a misspelling while talking about equine underwear. 🤣
![Screengrab from Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Paladmin Xenk Yendar, played by Regé-Jean Page, rides his horse through a forest. It's subtitled with him saying "I'm sorry." and also "[horse nickers]".](/_q23u/2023/05/d0a809c06b0d71981.png)
Max props to the developer of puppeteer-extra-plugin-stealth, who I just
bought a coffee for.
The screen-scraper I wrote to bulk-export data from my Garmin sports tracker (because Garmin’s API is “only for corporate partners”, which is a magic spell you can say to make me write and open source a screen-scraper that targets your systems) stopped working today. Turns out Cloudflare could detect my automation.
Installed puppeteer-extra-plugin-stealth. Fixed instantly. Awesome.
I bought Zach Weinersmith‘s Bea Wolf for my kids (9 and 6, the elder of them already a fan of Beowulf). It arrived today, but neither of them have had a chance to because I wouldn’t put it down.
My favourite bit is when Bea and her entourage arrive near Treeheart and the shield-bearer who greets them says “Your leader sparkles with power and also with sparkles.” The line’s brilliant, clever, and accompanies the most badass illustration.
I’ll give it to my kids… eventually. But if you’re looking for a book recommendation in the meantime, this is it.
Beginning to prepare/test my costume for an upcoming murder mystery party, I glanced into the mirror and briefly didn’t recognise myself. Glasses can do so much to change your face shape!
Hasbro seem to be rolling up a new character. Maybe this’ll help them.
Things The Other Child Did Wrong That Lead To The Fight that I’ve heard so far today:
Finally got around to implementing a super-lightweight (~20 lines of code, 1 dependency) #spring83 key generator. There are plenty of others; nobody needs this one, but it’s free if you want it:
https://github.com/Dan-Q/spring83-keygen
Unable to sleep, I found myself wondering whether anybody with a retro-hipster vibe had built a smart pocketwatch. All your smartwatch features, but in pocketwatch format.
Then I realised I was describing a mobile phone on a keychain.
Just when I thought I’d seen every conceivable XML data format with an approved MIME type (!) I discover @mamund‘s Maze+XML, a format for describing orthoganally-connected squares of a maze.
The output of this data anonymisation/scrambling script makes me feel seen. 🏳️🌈
Kids: We want porridge for breakfast.
Me: How do you want it?
Kids: Surprise us.
Presenting… oatmeal, honey and sultanas with a toasted marshmallow.
