Our kid doesn’t like bagel holes. She’ll eat the rest of the bagel, but not the hole. At least, that’s the only explanation I can think of for finding things like this most mornings.

I like it when the Internet says "yes, and". I like it when the Internet says "yes, but". I even like it when the Internet says "no, because". I'm not so keen when the Internet says "well, actually", (Probably because it reminds me of what a shit I was in some not-yet-forgotten time.) But I don't like when the Internet rallies a brigade To pick apart a character flaw I have, but hate, Or to attack something I'm not, and expect me to defend. So perhaps next time, start with "yes, and", "yes, but", Or even "no, because"... or just say nothing, and Remember what it means to connect with a human.

Highlight of my workday was debugging an issue that turned out to be nothing like what the reporter had diagnosed. The report suggested that our system was having problems parsing URLs with colons in the pathname, suggesting perhaps an encoding issue. It wasn’t until I took a deep dive into the logs that I realised […]

This morning it took me three attempts to put on a t-shirt the right way around. I don’t think I slept too well.

A confusing letter from HSBC informed me that I've not been receiving their emails, and I have to change the email address they use to contact me. Except I've been receiving all of their emails just fine! The problem, it turns out, is that surveillance capitalism is now so-widespread that the bank cannot conceive that their own attempts to spy on their customers might not be 100% reliable...

This article is good and touches on many sites, people, and topics that I care about... but it's painfully ironic that the author has written a post praising the independent Web... using Substack as their platform.

Scott Wiener - who is even more pizza-obsessed than me - noticed the 'winking chef' image that's common on pizza boxes. Then he traced its origin, and wrote a blog post to share the story of the artwork. Delightful.

As previously indicated, I’m not anticipating cosplaying anybody. But I think I could do Greg Universe. Not young Greg Universe, the Star Child of ‘Story for Steven’… which seems to be the only variety anybody’s ever cosplayed as before if an image search is to be believed. No, I mean: overweight old balding Greg Universe. […]

Nolen Royalty wrote an interesting piece about diagnosing a quirky SSH-related issue, and I found it both interesting and inspiring.

Still at MegaConLive. I’ve not done this kind of con before (and still wouldn’t, were it not for my tweenager and her various obsessions). Not my jam, and that’s fine. But if there’s one thing for which I can sing it’s praises: everybody we’ve met is super friendly and nice. Sure, you can loudly telegraph […]

I may have been dragged to MegaConLive London by my multi-fandom loving 12-year-old, but I at least managed to find somebody worth getting a selfie with.

My 12-year-old's persuaded me to take her to MegaConLive London this weekend. As somebody who doesn't pay much attention to the pop culture circles represented by such an event (and hasn't for 15+ years, or whenever it was that Asdfbook came out?)... have you got any advice for me, Internet?

Kev Quirk ran a one-question survey recently about how people discover and read his blog posts, and I think it's a pretty inspiring idea. Sure, consent-based surveying introduces biases... but what analytic technique doesn't, really?

This post is secret; you can only find it via my RSS feeds (and places which syndicate them). It's okay to talk about it or link to it, though. Thanks for being part of RSS Club! Sometimes I feel like I’m resting on my laurels. The most-important thing that I’ve given to the world is […]

I just needed to spin up a new PHP webserver and I was amazed how fast and easy it was, nowadays. Just the stock package repositories and around five commands and my fresh box and it was serving PHP applications over HTTPS.

This post is secret; you can only find it via my RSS feeds (and places which syndicate them). It's okay to talk about it or link to it, though. Thanks for being part of RSS Club! I feel like I’ve spent the last week or so half-assing everything. Both at work and at home I’ve […]

Inspired by a conversation with Elle, I expanded my FreshRSS-to-blogroll generator to support injecting 88×31 buttons (where I have them) for folks I follow. There's still a way to go, but my blogroll's looking a little prettier as a result.

The other night, I encountered an optical illusion by which I could see a particular partially-obstructed light only when it was in my peripheral vision. This put me in mind of the experience of being only peripherally able to see the internalised quirks of your employer that were once obvious to you, and this lead me to reflect a little on my first six months at Firstup.

Michail Rybakov's gradient.horse might be the second most-amusing use of a .horse domain name I've yet seen. Draw a horse and let it run wild and free with its friends in the gradient plains of your browser window!

On the morning of the Three RIngs Christmas party, I took an early walk to a nearby geocache, just outside the area where the roads are closed for the Warwick leg of HS2's construction.

I think my “six seven”-obsessed younger child was in the kitchen with a biro earlier. How do I know, you ask?

Well my day, week, and year (which has been off to a slightly ropey start) got a whole heap better today when I received a postcard from August & Sappho, sent from 39c3 on a CCC postcard... with a CCC stamp! Super cool, and exactly the mood boost I needed today.

About 1 in 12 rams (and a similar proportion of ewes) show a strong preference for other sheep of their same sex. To save them from being destroyed by breeders, this German farm is rescuing them and adding them to their queer flock.

Dan of ritual.sh has produced an absolutely epic 88×31 button generator; well worth playing with if you're into that kind of thing.

It turns out that I get nostalgic about technology in the same way as I get nostalgic about music. Here's some things that take me right back to being nine, eleven, thirteen and fifteen years old.

Tonight I learned that when my electric car gets down to 5% battery, it sounds an alarm. And that when it gets down to 4% battery, it sounds a louder alarm. And that when it gets down to 3% battery, it engages 'limited performance' mode and shows a picture of a tortoise. And that when it gets down to 2%, and you've already turned off the heating and the radio and you're wondering how much power the windscreen wipers are using... that's when it stops showing you it's estimated range. Fortunately, I then only had half a mile left to go. But for a while there it felt a little bit hairy!

Bitterly cold and starkly beautiful, this morning: West Oxfordshire is blanketed in an impenetrably thick freezing fog. It’s quite pretty, though I’m regretting not bringing my gloves out with me!

I've been enjoying playing Chain Words, from eclectech, intermittently, since it came out in November. If you've not given it a go yet, and you like a word game that's a bit different, you should try it!

I recently finished reading Clive Barker's Imajica for what I think is the fourth time. It remains one of my favourite fantasy novels, and I'd love to tell you why.

For complicated family reasons, 2026 isn't off to a great start so far. Maybe the folks who are pretending like it's 2016 are on to something, after all?