Étienne Fortier-Dubois's excellent Historical Tech Tree is fun and informative, and worth an explore.

The unrepentant bleppy face of a dog who, without fail, steals the warm spot I’ve left behind on the sofa within like three seconds of me standing up.

Have I posted this joke before? It's all a Blur.

I'll soon by starting in my new role at Firstup, after a rollercoaster of a recruitment process that rocketed through all the usual tech job steps... but in barely over a week. What a rush!

Sometimes LinkedIn’s approach to anonymising who looks you up isn’t very effective. I wonder who that could be? 😂

Fellow Nightline enthusiast James Buller has written a stirring piece about his decades of volunteering for and around Nightlines, and - as usual - underplays the importance and significance of his work. Here's my take.

The court ruling that declares Anthropic's use of (purchased) books as training material leaves a curious sorites paradox. If we assume that an LLM trained on only one book (and so only capable of producing content directly inspired by that book) would necessarily be copyright-infringing, at what number of books does that cease to be the case?

This week, my friend Boro shared a poem that he'd written. It's simple, and energising, and insightful, and I really enjoyed it.

Sometimes all you need to complete the perfect offset geocache is a GPSr, some hand tools… and the willingness to unilaterally declare a remote bench to be a memorial to a fictional person, just to get a particular set of numbers out into the world!

Pretty sure there isn’t a prize for Throwing Wet Sponges At Children during the graduating year’s “fun run” at the school sports day… but just like the kids are asked to, I’m going to try my best. 😁

Recently, I got to answer a technical interview question with "Coincidentally, I implemented exactly what you're describing two weeks ago. For fun. Can I show you the code and the blog post I wrote to explain my design choices?"

Not just a global issue but a local one too. A local one… almost everywhere. #ShowYourStripes

This checkin to GC81KDC Standardisation Roundabout reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Deciphered this puzzle when it was first published: so long ago that I’d forgotten the specifics of how exactly I did so (although I’m pretty confident I remember the gist of it). But I don’t find myself over […]

This checkin to GC7ZA2Z My Friend Dotty reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. In Marston on an errand, I found myself with enough free time to try to find another few local caches. This puzzle wasn’t as easy as Dotty’s other one, fir me, because for a while I was […]

Shortly after I found myself redundant, the other month, my former colleague Kyle wrote some inspiring words on LinkedIn that I've re-read about once a week ever since then. So now I'm going to keep a copy here for posterity.

As part of the Village Festival, there's a scarecrow competition around my way with a televisual theme. I love that my local community works so hard to carve out an individual identity and personality for itself!

Happy Stone Circle Sunday! The youngest and I went out to Avebury Henge, the world’s largest neolithic standing stone circle and henge.

Note to future self: when you want git to tell you all the files you’ve modified, but not those you’ve deleted (e.g. to pipe through xargs and feed to your linter for bulk-linting), the command you’re looking for is – git diff –name-only –diff-filter=M

Third time's the charm. I don't live too far away and I'm often found cycling to, from, or through Eynsham. As a result, I've on two previous occasions come to this GZ with a view to finding this cache... and both times have been glorious summer weekend days when the adjacent café has been brim full of guests, and I've declared it "too muggley" and backed off. Today, though, is a gloomy and overcast day, with rain on the way and a threat of thunderstorms. So as I cycled by, on my way home from the dentist, I stopped by. I quickly found and retrieved the cache, signed the log, and returned it to its spot. Now I'd better see if I can pedal all the way home before the clouds burst! TFTC.

Stopped by while cycling back from Witney. Made a moderately thorough search above and below the titular bridge, without success. Might benefit from a checkin/note from the CO. Maybe I'm just not seeing it, or else maybe it's vanished in the six months since its last successful find. Great place for a cache, though!

This checkin to GCAWNQH Light me up reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. QEF while cycling into Witney for an appointment. Cache lid is absent (missing?): risk of becoming waterlogged later in the year, I suspect. TFTC.

In case you weren’t already a little nervous or uneasy going in to the dental clinic, the doorstop at my dentist’s front door will fix that for you.

I recently read Bored Gay Werewolf by Tony Santorella. I guess it's got a 'werewolf'. It barely feels 'gay'. It certainly left me 'bored', at times. Turns out that it's a very middle-of-the-road story about Gen Z folks growing into their identities, using sexuality and lycanthropy as loosely-fitting framing devices.

Had to give up on this one for now. Found the plaque without difficulty and soon had a believable set of coordinates (though I briefly struggled with what was meant by the D & E description). Soon I was at the GZ and, after a brief hunt through the multitude of possible hosts, tried the hint. No use, though: I'm no wiser what I should be looking for. Sadly this is only a flying visit to Marston and I've got to go wrangle the kids now, but maybe I'll revisit next time I'm in the area.

I'm in Marston on an errand and figured I'd pick up a couple of local caches that weren't around when I was last in the vicinity: which I guess was way back when I lived near here! The puzzle didn't leave me stumped for long, but I always used to score highly at Dotty's kind of game! TFTC.

A quick and easy offset church micro if ever I saw one. I'll tell you what, I totally approve of this form of formula - this letter is this number plus or minus something, ten just string them all together - rather than the more-common algebraic backflips one sometimes has to do. SL, TFTC!

After a brief hunt in a couple of candidate places a hit the hint, which was reassuringly clear on which host I should be searching. Soon the cache was in hand. TFTC.

While I searched through potential hosts in this off-the-path GZ, the geopup just stood in one particular place, looking at me as if I were a fool. I should've listened, because clearly her own geosense is developing: she was right next to the cache's hiding spot! TFTC, and thanks once more for such a brilliant loop of caches: all nicely hidden, well cared for, and appropriately sized. Really enjoyed our walk this morning

After fashioning the requisite tool it still took me a solid 5+ attempts to retrieve the cache - it felt a bit like playing those wiggle-wire fairground games that I suck at so much! Once retrieved, the dog was very disappointed that start I was holding wasn't a plaything for her. TFTC, FP awarded for the right container, right hiding place, right difficulty.

Found at retrieved entirely by feel while the geopup stood (well, sat) guard. TFTC.