Programming, digital privacy, indie web advocacy, and internet culture.
Open source software plus open standards combine to deliver the latest cryptic crosswords by my friend Ash directly to my device. MyCrossword publishes RSS feeds by setter. FreshRSS subscribes to that feed. Capy Reader syncs that to my phone. Forkyz imports th…
Niki proposed a decimalised analogue clock, with ten subdivisions broken into partial hours. I much prefer a traditional clock, and propose an alternative approach.
The PO Box service that I use to receive postcards from the Internet sends me partial scans of incoming mail before it gets forwarded on to me. It's a tease! Hey look: you're going to get a postcard from... I want to say Croatia? But now you have to wait until…
This week I relaunched my static site, Dan Q's Things, that catalogues my various Web projects. I'm pretty pleased with the new version! Let me tell you about why...
A video tour of my favourite five features of the Dan Q's Things website I just re-launched, because I'm moderately proud of it.
Off the back of yesterday's conversations about PHP-powered honeypots to IP-ban badly-behaved bots, I'd like to share the configuration I've been using to effectively protect Geohashing.site this year.
Terence Eden's shared the honeypot he came up with to make a powerful honeypot-powered block against badly-behaved bots. I'm concerned, though: I've seen this pattern before and know that it can be used as a denial-of-service attack. Here's how I'd do it diffe…
JTA checked on our house this morning, which has been under repair since it flooded 269 days ago. There he discovered that, after countless delays and long periods of no progress, the replacement flooring has finally arrived! I'm still hopeful of a "Christmas…
Once, I saw a six-digit sequential sequence of my phone number appear in an 'authenticator app' TOTP code. What are the odds? Incredibly rare. And yet, given long enough, inevitable. Here's how I put it...
Did you know that you can make a list of items "sortable" client-side with just one selector and one property of CSS per sort-criteria, and have a fully-fledged ordering system without an iota of JavaScript? Let me show you how!
It's been 266 days since we were flooded out of our home, and progress on repairs still seems to be glacial. It's still unclear if we'll be back by Christmas as delays and excuses continue to stack up. But the most-tragic thing is that working-around this temp…
Delightful location for lunch with the "Old Guard of Cake & Magic", my former team from the Bodleian Libraries, now what... two employers ago!? Still probably one of the friendliest and most-passionate digital teams I've ever had the privilege to work with; it…
Briefly stuck behind this BMW in traffic, and had to wonder... who pays for a custom tagline/slogan on their number plate and doesn't run it through a spelling/grammar checker first?
I glanced at my blogging stats and noticed that, with 559 posts so far this year (including this one), this has been my most-prolific year of blogging ever, beating the previous record holder of 2018. In honour of 2026, I feel like I should call this blogsmaxx…
This checkin to GCB9ZGB Church Micro 2416...Appleton - St Laurence reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Worked out the coordinates on the way out into the woods but was prevented from searching by muggles. Had a hint on the way ba…
This checkin to GCB9ZHJ Besselsleigh Wood - The Old Coppiced Tree reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Found in the second place we looked. The geohound and I definitely approached this one from the wrong direction and the poor pu…
This checkin to GCB9ZHR Besselsleigh Wood - The Fallen Stump reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. (Excellent) container was undisguised and visible from the path, and with both latches unfastened! But I still had something to open…
This checkin to GCB9ZJK Besselsleigh Wood - A Little Birdie Told Me reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Passed the GZ twice without being able to perform a proper search owing to endless streams of muggles on one or the other sid…
This checkin to GC27K1V Church Micro 1146...Bessels Leigh reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. While doing the series in the woods nearby the geohound and I figured we'd look for this cache, too. It might still be there, but if so…
This checkin to GCB9ZJG Besselsleigh Wood - The Conifer reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Easy enough to sight this one despite its disguise, but a bit of a challenge to retreive and return it! Coming back out to the footpath I…
This checkin to GCB9ZJB Besselsleigh Wood - Across The Ditch reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Had a bad GPS fix and stumbled about for a while before we found this, yet another container sized perfectly for its environment. TF…
This checkin to GCB9ZJ0 Besselsleigh Wood - The Lightning Strike reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. An easy find of this brilliant container, not least because it was a little exposed: almost completely without camouflage and wi…
This checkin to GCB9ZJ6 Besselsleigh Wood - The Holey Tree reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. QEF, the cache winking out at us from its hiding place as the geopup and I approached. TFTC, and Happy Halloween!
This checkin to GCB9ZH3 Little Bridges # 3220 - Besselsleigh Wood reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Out for a dog walk around Appleton when I figured I'd have a go at this offset. As soon as we approached the starting waypoint…
This checkin to GCB9ZGP Besselsleigh Wood - The Little Oak reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. A relatively easy find (with a nice container) for the geohound and I while out on a walk around Appleton this morning. TFTC!
Anthropic's latest numbers seem to suggest that they're the first GenAI company to actually make money! But we ought to take that with an enormous pinch of salt.
If your religious beliefs are incompatible with your use of a particular tool that isn't essential for a particular kind of work, then you should absolutely be able to be exempted from using those tools. At least, that's the legal verdict in this case!
Photographic fragments from the last six weeks of my camera roll, presented without context, inspired by Eric Foltin.
Some excellent recommendations from the W3C's TAG on installability of web applications to the "desktop", whether or not they have defined manifests/are PWAs. I really hope to see the major OS and browser manufacturers take these recommendations on board!
This checkin to GC6Q39P Cur.Bri.Lew 9 reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Made two searches for this - one on the way out, one on the way back - but I'm confident that it simply isn't there. CO attention needed.