I guess installing a sign was cheaper than retraining the helpline operators not to shout at everybody.
Kind: Notes
Golden Axed
Hot on the heels of my victory over Wonder Boy 35 years after I first played it, I can now finally claim to have beaten Golden Axe, 25 years after I first played it.
Couldn’t have done it without my magic-wielding 7-year-old co-op buddy.
Where?
I’m pretty sure that Wally/Waldo, Woof, and Wizard Whitebeard must be out on this mountain somewhere, too.
Installation of Windows has Stalled
I was told Windows installation should take less than 20 minutes, but these ones have been sitting outside my house all day while the builders sit on the roof and listen to the radio. Do I need a faster processor? #TechSupport
Open Turds
I’ve open-sourced a lot of pretty shit code.
So whenever somebody says “I’m not open-sourcing this because the code is shit”, I think: wow, it must be spectacularly bad.
And that only makes me want to see it more.
BEEF
Just when I thought I’d already seen the best imaginable television series to star Ali Wong and Steven Yeun in the form of Tuca & Bertie… suddenly BEEF comes out of nowhere and it’s flipping amazing.
Brainfart
Brainfart moment this morning when my password safe prompted me to unlock it with a password, and for a moment I thought to myself “Why am I having to manually type in a password? Don’t I have a password safe to do this for me?” 🤦
It Is Only Q
The programmers at British Gas are among the many who don’t believe that a surname can be only a single character, and their customer service agents have clearly worked around their validations (or just left a note for themselves in the problematic field!)… leading to hilarious postal mail1:
Update
This is getting a lot of attention, so I just wanted to add:
- Yes, my surname really is just the letter Q, and it has been for most of my adult life. The story about it is less-interesting than the fact of it.
- Yes, it causes me problems with online forms and the Passport Office hate it but just sometimes it pays for itself. It’s quick to write out, too (if you don’t count the time I lose having to tell people “no, really…”), and saves me wear-and-tear on my keyboard.
-
I can help you change your name to something
stupidawesome, too. If you’re a British citizen normally-resident in the UK, at least. - I’ve already seen Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names, thanks. I linked it above, but you probably didn’t see the link if you found me via all the Mastodon boosts this post is getting.
- Be gay, do crime.
Footnotes
1 I’m ignoring for the moment that they’re using the wrong title for me.
Magician Roles
Because I work somewhere hip enough to let people tweak their job titles, mine is “Code Magician”.
LinkedIn isn’t as hip as Automattic, though. That’s why they keep emailing me sector updates… for the “Magician” sector… 😅
Mental Elf Day
Christmas Jumper Day at the kids’ school. Because I’m the “embarrassing parent”, I joined in for the school run too.
(Also for my meetings today, obviously.)
Freezing Fog
Gorgeous freezing fog over the fields on the school run this morning.
Tension in the Wires
Received my physical copy of Planets In The Wires today, and I must say it was really cool of Pagan Wanderer Lu to include one of Fred “Thickie” Holden’s famous Tension Sheets as a freebie.
Emoji Reactions
I added a stupid feature to my blog.
On some posts, including this one, you can now send an “emoji reaction”. Y’know, for if you’re too lazy to write a comment.
The available reactions vary by post.
That is all.
The Frosted Pane
Pagan Wanderer Lu‘s new album Planets In The Wires dropped today, and I just cried my eyes out at track 5 (The Frosted Pane).
It opens almost apologetically, like an explanation for the gap in new releases for most of the twenty-teens. But it quickly becomes a poetic exploration of a detached depression of a man trapped under the weight of the world. It’s sad, and beautiful, and relatable.
ET App
Travelling around Edinburgh by tram this weekend, I kept being advertised the “ET app”.
I didn’t install the app, in case it was bundled with spyware.
After all, everybody my age knows: ET phones home.