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Personal blog of Dan Q: hacker, magician, geocacher, gamer...
Dan Q
• Dan Q
Trouble brewing at the village carnival’s decorated-bike competition as, for perhaps the first time in history, a viking longship rams and boards an X-wing of the Rebel Alliance.
Dan Q
• Dan Q
![[Article] A postcard from a distant friend](https://danq.me/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260702_154306-1024x577.jpg)
I received another postcard-from-the-Internet... this one, with a chunky Kererū on it, from my antipodal real-life friend Ele!
Dan Q
• Dan Q
![[Article] You don’t have to blog like me](https://danq.me/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-02-at-18.13.52-1024x378.jpg)
You don't have to have a blog like me. You just need to blog. Blog blog blog. Blog possibly should not be used as a verb, as I blog about here.
Dan Q
• Dan Q
unstory observed that Cloudflare's 'Markdown for machines' feature means that the simplified output given by some websites to LLMs will be superior to the experience afforded to humans. How did we get here? Still... I think I see a opportunity to exploit this...
Dan Q
• Dan Q
Dad Joke of the Day came to me early when some fellow dog walkers coming the other way said “Hello, gorgeous!” “Ooh, thank you!” I replied, nonchalantly tussling my hair and striking a coquetteish pose.
Dan Q
• Dan Q
Evan's done with Twitter and Reddit. But where should he go next? I make some suggestions.
Dan Q
• Dan Q
Emile Silvis asks 'is AI a bubble?' and delivers a concise and balanced view of the key factors - clocks, in this case - that impact the related question, 'do the cash flows arrive before the financing patience runs out?'. There are no answers here, but I've been watching those clocks and they smell like tulips to me... 🌷
Dan Q
• Dan Q
Always reassuring when you fill in a company’s contact form and the next page is placeholder text…
Dan Q
• Dan Q
![[Article] How the European heatwave fucked me up](https://danq.me/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/digestive-sample-1024x570.jpg)
I've been somewhat-offline for the last few days, after a heatwave lead to a heat illness lead to an opportunistic infection lead to me lying in bed and groaning. But I'm getting back to normal, slowly.
Dan Q
• Dan Q
Some mornings… you just gotta make a whole damn litre of coffee. (for iced coffee purposes, of course; and definitely not just for me!)
Dan Q
• Dan Q
Demmy would like to know why I haven’t turned off the UK’s heatwave yet. 🥵
Dan Q
• Dan Q
Iced coffee and air con. Possibly the only things that’ll keep me sane, working in the UK’s current heatwave (especially with the schools closed and kids sent home!).
Dan Q
• Dan Q
Ernie Smith from Tedium wrote about Matt's Script Archive, which back in the 1990s was a big part of how and why I learned to code in Perl. Let's take a trip down memory lane...
Dan Q
• Dan Q
A hundred and thirty days since we got flooded out of our home, and remedial works are starting to ramp up. Today an electrician, tracing a fault that's developed in the wiring, cut a hole through a wall to repair it and threw up so much dust that it's hard to see anything!
I was nearby, helping a restoration company assess the damage to the ride-on lawnmower that was in the garage and whose motor hasn't started since (the garage saw some of the deepest water that hit us), when I heard the fire alarm and went to check on them. All is well: we don't need to add 'fire' to the list of disasters befalling our house this year!
Dan Q
• Dan Q
Sometimes a new CSS feature comes along and I immediately "get it". Like: that's a cool new feature, I can already see how it'll save me time, or make things simpler, or improve accessibility, or allow me to do something new. Other times...
Dan Q
• Dan Q
A morning meander around the local (mostly virtual) caches under the guise of checking the condition of the West End Live queue, while the rest of my group enjoyed a lie-in, eventually brought me to take a seat alongside this iconic bear. TFTC!
Dan Q
• Dan Q
A morning meander around the local (mostly virtual) caches under the guise of checking the condition of the West End Live queue, while the rest of my group enjoyed a lie-in, eventually brought me to take a seat alongside this iconic bear. TFTC!
Dan Q
• Dan Q
Approaching from the West I was foiled by the glare of the rising sun in my efforts to claim this fascinating monument from afar and eventually had to walk all the way past it to line up my photo!
Dan Q
• Dan Q
Initially thought I'd be able to find this one without the hint, but when I couldn't get fix to closer than 8m I took a peep at it and was instantly aware of where to search. Soon the cache was in hand and I was back on my way. TFTC!
Dan Q
• Dan Q
Stood around for a bit reading about David Bowie while I waited for the waitstaff -on their pre-work fag break down the alleyway - stopped their muggling and went inside. Glad I came early while it was quiet here! TFTC.
Dan Q
• Dan Q
Can't do the physical today, but scooping a pic with the virtual during a morning walk around the neighbourhood.
Dan Q
• Dan Q
After nine hours on my feet yesterday queuing for and then attending the first day of West End Live in Trafalgar Square, I somehow decided that the best thing for my poor legs would be to get up early while everybody else slept in, to come walk around and find a virtual or two. Right around the corner from my hotel, this was the first!
Dan Q
• Dan Q
Star network topologies are more common, but you can still occasionally find these…
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• Dan Q
Hanging out in London’s theatreland, attracting double-takes (and a handful of thumbs-ups!) for my t-shirt…
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• Dan Q
The hours of queuing pays off! Let’s go!
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• Dan Q
Back of the queue for West End Live. It’s gonna be a long wait, but hopefully worth it!
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• Dan Q
Off to London for a couple of days of musical theatre fun! Don’t wait up!
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• Dan Q
![[Article] I called out a scam… but now I’m not so sure… [RSS Exclusive!]](https://danq.me/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/changenames.co_.uk_.email_.scammy-1024x698.png)
A few weeks ago I called out a scammer after they asked me to advertise their free deed poll service (which is like mine... except it harvests personal information and provides an inferior output). It's pretty bad... but after talking to its creator I'm no longer certain that it's a scam. What do I do next?
Dan Q
• Dan Q
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! Day 1: Senior management ask me about a proposed change. I tell them it’s not worth doing. They tell […]
Dan Q
• Dan Q
125 days since our house flooded, and the damaged furniture fittings, floors, underfloors, and now inner walls have been torn out. Over a third of a year since we had to move out, I’m optimistic that perhaps, at last, reconstruction work is almost ready to begin. It’s a long, slow process. And there’s clearly a […]
