https://shkspr.mobi/blog
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I want to be able to share my location with my friends on social media. Twitter (RIP) had a way to attach an optional location to a post. Facebook still lets me check in to venues. But neither ActivityPub (Mastodon) nor AT Protocol (BlueSky) allow me to do that. I've been banging on about this for a while so was delighted to be invited to chat with the GeoSocial Task Force on their monthly call. But, before I start, please remember that these proposals are not mandatory. If you don't want to…
In the last year, I've been through over a dozen cities and used public transport in all of them. It is wild just how confusing and complex buying a ticket can be. While some cities obviously take a user-centred approach to ticketing, others appear to take a Kafkaesque delight in a bureaucratic maze of zones, apps, and intricate restrictions. One of the seminal texts in computer systems design is "Don't Make Me Think". Every time a service forces the user into making a decision, it is placing a…
I'm pretty sure this book is a psyop designed to demoralise a generation of starry-eyed dreamers. It is obviously written by the same people who told us not to land on Europa. A malignant energy designed to limit the scope of human ambition and thwart our plans to colonise the universe. The problem is, I can't find fault with any of their logic. The Weinersmiths make a compelling case that space is much harder than any of the propagandists are willing to admit. Even if it were faster, safer,…
The good folks at Thermal Master have sent me their DV2 camera to review. As their name suggests, this is a thermal / infrared camera - they've specifically designed this for bird watching and animal spotting. Let's put it through its paces and see how it compares to the competition! Straight away you can see it is different from normal IR cameras - they tend to have a small fixed screen and a rubber button interface. This has a lush touchscreen which displays the thermal image and is used to…
My wife and I recently went on a 7 week holiday around Europe. Although we each took a massive backpack, we wanted to travel fairly lightly. I took a single universal power brick. This little unit was all I needed to charge my various gadgets. It has a hefty USB-C PD (Power Delivery) port for rapid charging of my phone and laptop. Two other USB-C ports for my other gadgets. And a couple of legacy USB-A ports which were redundant. The pass through was useful for using the same socket as the…
Last year, my wife and I went on a 5,025 Km Interrail adventure. We got the month-long unlimited pass and saw 10 Countries in 30 Days. That was a bit too intense. So this year we got the 15 travel days in 2 months package. We grabbed the 1st class tickets when they went on sale in December. Here's how our journey ended up: The trip included two ferries - one overnight - which had a small Interrail discount. In total we spent approximately 40 hours on trains over a 7 week trip. This blog post…
My new year's resolution is to play more video games with my wife. Specifically co-operative games. I hate playing competitively; it's rubbish to achieve victory at the expense of someone else. So I asked for recommendations and picked the cheapest things which looked reasonable. Several people recommended Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime. It's a neat little game which is just short enough to not get too repetitive. You and your friend (and, I'm pleased to say, lover) have joint control of a…
Verily, some of our brethren (and sistren) be afflicted with a sinister disposition. While the righteous scroll using the thumb of their right hand - as is good and proper - an accurs'd minority swing the other way. Look, you try writing an interesting bug report without sounding like a clanker, OK! I try to optimise my blog as much as possible. It may not look like much, but it has got it where it counts. I've made a lot of special modifications myself to the base WordPress install. One of…
I'm just so bored of talking about AI. It's like listening to vapers tell me how delicious their flavoured poison is. Did you ever meet someone at university who'd just tried drugs for the first time? Listening to a stoner ramble on about their mystic crystal revelations is amusing for the first five minutes, but quickly gets tiresome. Wow! You got your little computer friend to automate calling your mum? Great job, mate! Can we talk about something interesting now? Just as bad are the people…
This was a little idea gnawing at the back of my brain. The humble barcode has been in use since the 1970s. In the next few years it will likely be replaced with a 2D QR Code. I couldn't find anyone who'd made a QR code with an embedded UPC - so I decided to make one. If you move your phone close to the code (so it can't see the squares in the corners) it should read the number in the 1D barcode. Zoom out and it'll read the URl in the QR code. The QR code has a high level of error correction -…
Someone left a comment on my blog recently asking if I'd mind making my language more inclusive. They didn't get some of the cultural references I'd used and suggested it would be easier if I used tropes which were more globally known. Here's the thing. No. All my blog posts start with a simple declaration: <!doctype html> <html lang=en-GB> There's a reason for that. It is more than the language I speak; it is the culture I live in, the way that I think, and the accent I use. When your AI bot…
Thanks to BookSirens for providing me with a review copy. This is an intriguing self-published novel with a backstory almost as interesting as the plot. The story is a descent into paranoia as an author is convinced that an AI is plagiarising his work. As the madness takes over, he's forced to confront whether his creative processes are genuine or not. It raises some excellent questions about whether AI can replicate art. It also posits some solutions for ensuring genuine human content. Without…
Despite vowing not to read sequels of books I love, I'm constantly surprised that regression to the mean is an iron-clad law of the universe. I thoroughly enjoyed the first book in the series, so eagerly gobbled up the second. What a burlap fool I am. What was charming and wry in The Satsuma Complex is now overdone and clichéd. The violence, which was an undercurrent in the first book, is now too pronounced and too grim to be funny. Yet the constant tomfoolery with language undermines any…
I'm not paying seventy bloody quid for an official PS5 controller - so I found a knock-off version for a smidge under £40. And this one has lots of unnecessary blinkenlights! Gamrombo is the consumer-facing brand of the generically named Professional Controller Manufacturer. AKA "Huizhou Ronghui Technology Co., Ltd" - there's virtually no information about them online other than paid-for reviews. Well, I bought this with my own money - so enjoy this honest review: It's basically fine and it…
I find it baffling just how poorly documented most big projects are. Auth0 by Okta has a fair bit of cash, lots of customers, and almost completely absent documentation. Here's how to successfully authenticate a JWT supplied by Auth0. Once your user has authenticated with Auth0, they will be given an accessToken and an idToken. Only the idToken is needed for our purposes. It will look something like this: eyJhbGciOiJSUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCIsImtpZCI6ImFiYzEyMyJ9.eyJnaXZlbl9uYW1lIjoiSm8iLCJmYW1pbH…
Over the years, I've worked for organisations with various levels of risk tolerance for business travellers. Some have been (rightly) paranoid and others have been (wrongly) placid about the threats their employees face. The fact is, individuals are often targeted for espionage, blackmail, or other state-sponsored attacks. Here's a list of some of the different advice I've received, roughly sorted into levels of suitability. Start at the top and work your way down until you reach a suitable…
The Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format is amazing. It allows you to precisely define how an image should look. Written in XML, it uses various mathematical operations to display an image which looks crisp and clear at any size. Here's a trivial example: <svg height="100" viewBox="0 0 100 100" width="100" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <circle cx="50" cy="50" fill="#fff" r="100"/> </svg> That code produces this circle: You could print that out with a kilometre radius and it would still…
This is the most overwritten book I've ever read. Unfortunately, Alan Moore knows exactly how much polysyllabic pressure it takes to transmogrify base coal into precious gems. With lines like "his shaved suede skull made him look like a wilted thistle" and "There was a rumour of pink lipstick circling her mouth" you know you're in for a treat. Even better than the joyful prose of Bob Mortimer's Satsuma Complex. I'm also pretty sure Moore is actually a wizard. I've just finished reading a book…
Back in the late 1990s, I did a brief stint of work experience at the BBC. One of the most memorable moments was sitting in on a meeting about early forms of Interactive TV. I saw a demo of "Two Way TV". A flimsy grey box which (somehow) integrated with your OnDigital TV Box and connected to a server via a modem. If you were watching "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" you could play along at home, send in your answers in realtime, and win REAL CASH PRIZES!!! An anonymous benefactor read my blog…
Read enough articles about The Beatles and you'll repeatedly hit the claim that Frank Sinatra frequently introduced his cover of George Harrison's "Something" as his "favourite Lennon & McCartney number." Much like the misquote about Ringo not being the best drummer in The Beatles, I think this might be one of those semi-apocryphal lines which has taken on a life of its own. Here's what Paul McCartney has to say in The Beatles Anthology, Episode 4.…
When I ran Ethernet around our house, I thought I was being clever. A CAT6 cable for every room - lush! Some of my rooms have lots of devices, so they get a nice big Ethernet switch with lots of ports and blinking lights. But most of my rooms don't have that many devices. Our gym had only an Internet connected TV so that I could watch Quibi while exercising. Recently we added a Kodi box so that I could stream Linux ISOs while sweating on my static bike. Was it worth running another cable there?…
Ooooh! This is a lovely treat of a book. Every time Lauren sends her husband into the loft, a different man comes down. Her past is rewritten and she has now been married to Dave/Gary/Bob/Whoever for a year, a month, a decade, a minute. This isn't like how Groundhog Day became On The Calculation of Volume or Sliding Doors became The Names, instead this is a new and twisty concept rendered through the lens of a chick-lit comedy. It's proper laugh-aloud funny, while playing with all the clichés…
A seemingly simple question which sent me down into the murky depths of standards. How many consecutive hyphens can you have in a domain name? It probably isn't sensible to name your online presence a----------hyphen.com - but is there anything technically stopping you? Table of ContentsHistoryTLD RestrictionsAnomaliesSo What? History Let's do some history! This is 1978's "HOST NAMES ON-LINE". Early Internet standards described the - character as "minus" rather than hyphen.
Six years ago, I nearly got my ISP to upgrade our fibre connection to 1Gbps. As I said at the time: This is a curmudgeonly post which is going to look ridiculously outdated in a few years. What's the point of Gigabit broadband? Well, it's a few years later and Virgin Media have just given me their Gig1 package for £30 per month. Nice! With all the inflation related price rises, it's great to get more for less. But I'm still left wondering if this is massive overkill. What can you actually do…
My mate Lisa has written a book! Along with her pal Matisse, she takes us through the practicalities of publishing communications which are accessible to all. This isn't just about the theory - it takes us across multiple legal jurisdictions, ethical frameworks, and business cases. Once it is done convincing you of the necessity of the work, it begins to explain how to actually create useful and accessible comms. Some stuff you may have heard before. Everyone knows to add alt text, right? But…
It has been sixteen years since the launch of data.london.gov.uk. Back then, it was a trailblazer as one of the first major cities to release Open Data in this way. Now, over a decade later, it is more than a mere repository; it is a celebration of Open Data and the way it can improve Londoners' lives. So, time for a refresh front and back. As well as a bunch of back-end updates, the front-end has been spruced up which should make it easier to find the data you're looking for. I particularly…
What is this, 2016? I like sharing my location with my pocket friends sometimes. If I'm in a cool bar that they know, perhaps they can recommend a drink. If they live nearby, maybe they want to come for dinner. Not everyone has FourSquare's SwarmApp, so it is handy to automatically share its updates with other people. Of course, Swarm doesn't cross-post to social media because walled-gardens are the most profitable. This is my attempt to open it back up again. Here's what they look like on…
I got nerdsniped by a bloody Reddit post! In 2015, the UK Government launched a new passport design. It immediately attracted negative press for its designers' "sexist" decision to feature more men than women. The government has been accused of sexism over the new UK passport design, which commemorates the achievements of two women but seven men. It's true that there are only two named women - but there is another unnamed woman on the passport! Here's the "Performing Arts" page: Shakespeare…
It can be hard running a small business. If you want to sell to a large organisation like the UK Government, there are forms to fill in, checks to comply with, tenders to bid on, and a hundred other things. Luckily, there's the RM6237 Low Value Purchase System to make everything better. If a department wants to buy something below a certain threshold, they can contact any of the registered suppliers and just buy it. No complicated paperwork, cheaper prices, win-win! Except, there's on annoying…
I needed a small and light laptop to take travelling. Something with a larger screen than my phone so I can use the Big Internet™. Nothing too expensive and something that uses the same USB-C charger as everything else. So I settled on the Chuwi Minibook N150. It's literally small enough to fit in my cargo-shot pockets. For the price (around £300ish) it is basically fine. There are a few niggles, but none of them showstoppers for me. I took it to OggCamp and had so many people come and ask me…
