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Dan Q

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Personal blog of Dan Q: hacker, magician, geocacher, gamer...

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[Note]

The bed in my hotel room tonight is made up for not one, not two, but three occupants. Did they... see me and instantly clock me as polyamorous?

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[Repost] Firing squad execution to be livestreamed, Pentagon says

[Repost] Firing squad execution to be livestreamed, Pentagon says

The public will be able to watch the execution of a former US Army major by firing squad, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has said. I feel physically sick.

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[Article] Halifax Leaked My Financial Information... (Again)

[Article] Halifax Leaked My Financial Information... (Again)

For the second time in two years, Halifax wrote to me about my credit card... but sent the letter to entirely the wrong person, leaking my personal financial information.

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[Article] Move the mouse across the screen (Weird Web October)

[Article] Move the mouse across the screen (Weird Web October)

This year, I'm (slightly) participating in Weird Web October. For today's theme, 'skeuomorphism', I implemented a mouse curser... (not a typo)

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[Note] That time I got locked-in at the V&A

I just realised that I never shared this anecdote online before - One time, I got locked-in at the V&A Museum after closing-time. I'd been there for a museums & cultural institutions event and I'd probably had a few too many glasses of champagne before I excused myself to return to my hotel. Unfortunately in […]

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[Note] Ted Lasso S04E10

Fuck you Ted Lasso season 4 finale, I hadn't planned on crying today. 😭

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[Repost] Weird Web October 2026 (Christopher Kennedy-Nuñez)

I love Weird Web October, and Christopher's off to an amazing start this year: well worth a look at his wacky projects for the month (and trying to find the cat in each one: I've managed!) before you go check out what everybody else who's participating is up to. Also... I might be about to join in!

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[Repost] We are going to kill “unalive”

Anil Dash is unhappy that "unalive" and other algospeak has become so prevalent and mainstream. I, too, am concerned about what this says about our willingness to censor our speech to speculatively appease the whims of corporations to whom we owe nothing.

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[Note] F-Day plus 234 [RSS Exclusive!]

234 days since we got flooded out of our house, and it sometimes feels like we'll never get to move back in. Delay after delay, problems with the construction, disputes over the quality of the repair work... and then yet more delays for good measure. Last month, the insurer...

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[Article] Exploiting Fail2ban "portscan" permablocks over HTTP for denial-of-service

On a forum they and I share, Loebas suggested that I should be careful doing portscans in case I hit e.g. fail2ban rules. I counter that such rulesets would be a terrible idea (and are therefore uncommon), and provide a specific demonstration of how an attacker can turn them against the site's legitimate users!

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[Checkin] Geohashing expedition 2026-10-04 51 -2

[Checkin] Geohashing expedition 2026-10-04 51 -2

A pre-dawn walk around East Bristol from a Three Rings event took me to within 16 metres... but not quite all the way to... a geohashpoint.

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[Note] Crash Diet

A Three Rings development sub-team seems to have developed a habit of making production server changes at in-person events, right before meals are served. On at least one previous occasion this has led to them missing out on dinner as they monitored and maintained at-risk servers when they ought to be eating. Until the servers […]

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[Checkin] Dan Q found GC85TVQ Out Of Office

This checkin to GC85TVQ Out Of Office reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. I expected not to have opportunity for a second attempt at this today, but my schedule opened up somewhat when the fire alarm went off at the hotel and we had to evacuate! As hotel guests and […]

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[Checkin] Dan Q did not find GC85TVQ Out Of Office

This checkin to GC85TVQ Out Of Office reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. I'm spending the weekend in the hotel nearby, for the AGM of a nonprofit I'm involved with. This morning I realised they I had a spare quarter of an hour before a meeting and wondered if I […]

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[Repost] Do not build the LLM torture factory

[Repost] Do not build the LLM torture factory

Sean Goedecke puts forward a few arguments why people shouldn't play at 'torturing' LLMs. I disagree with many of his arguments, but I agree with his conclusion because of a different argument: one made by animal rights activists for hundreds of years now: that people who 'practice' abuse are more-likely to go on to commit (further) abuse.

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[Repost] I’m leaving Reddit because of RSS

For Jeff Johnson, Reddit's ecosystem becoming yet-more closed-down and enshittified, with them dropping RSS support, is the last straw. For me, it would have been too (if I hadn't already abandoned ship nine years prior!).

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[Article] Firefox 157 broke my vertical tabs

[Article] Firefox 157 broke my vertical tabs

Firefox 157's new UI engine Nova made my previously-beautiful vertical tabs into a pile of hot garbage. Ugh.

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[Note] Blind Tango

TIL that I dance Argentine Tango with Ruth better... when I close my eyes. It's a fundamentally intuitive and semi-improvised dance built on connection and communication and it turns out that, for me at least, the best way to stop trying to visually predict what a partner (I know well enough to "read" visually) is […]

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[Reply] Re: Domains Cost More, Blogs Disappear

While bemoaning the rising cost of domain names, Michael also observed that blogging and personal websites are suffering a lack of young newcomers. In my reply I disagree, saying that they're there... just not where he's looking for them!

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[Repost] Tangled earphones were a feature, not a bug.

[Repost] Tangled earphones were a feature, not a bug.

Akshay Chugh misses wired headphones for the anti-feature that they'd inevitably tangle up in your pocket. I echo his sentiment, and add a few other observations about things we've traded away in exchange for the convenience of wireless buds.

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[Article] Top 100 Geohasher

[Article] Top 100 Geohasher

I'm now in the top-hundred geohashers! But the exciting achievement is that I upgraded geohashing.site from MediaWiki 1.31 to 1.43, after leaving it somewhat technically-neglected for about seven years!

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[Note] Slash pages

My newly-revamped personal site has an almost full suite of slash pages; something I'd been meaning to do for a while: https://danq.me/slashes Still no /now, but I'll get that sorted someday, perhaps!

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[Checkin] Dan Q found GC46YDF Second Row - Ball Retention

This checkin to GC46YDF Second Row - Ball Retention reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Found lying on the ground, in the open. Based on the previous log, I guess that, without its magnets, it quickly fell down. Re-hid, visibly, in a large crack in the wall which I hope […]

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[Checkin] Dan Q found GC46YCV Lock - Hanging Bison

This checkin to GC46YCV Lock - Hanging Bison reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. A quick find for the geohound and I while walking back to Tackley (via the TP6298 trigpoint up on the rise to the North) from the 2026-09-27 51 -1 geohashpoint. A successful hashing expedition followed by […]

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[Checkin] Geohashing expedition 2026-09-27 51 -1

[Checkin] Geohashing expedition 2026-09-27 51 -1

I woke early and grumpy and, to try to shake myself out of a funk, went out with the dog in search of a geohashpoint near a trigpoint in a field near Tackley.

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[Repost] Thanking is an action applying to one visible thing

"Thanking is an action applying to one visible thing." is a literal line in the source code of one of my favourite video games, blackle mori observes.

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[Article] Styling :visited links using hue-rotation

[Article] Styling :visited links using hue-rotation

My new site theme offers a :visited link style, but for convenience it's based on a CSS hsl-transformation. Here's how it works...

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[Note] DanQ.me, 2026 Edition

After months of minor tweaks, on-and-off, I finally bit the bullet and hit "publish" on my new theme for DanQ.me. It's not perfect; it's got all kinds of bugs... but what's the point of having a personal webite if you can't trash it once in a while with an ill-advised "fun" rework, right?

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[Note] content-visibility: hidden;

Here’s a neat trick. I’ve got a web page with many HTML popovers, styled as modals to create a no-JS gallery/lightbox. But LCP suffers because the browser tries to reserve space for the images within (even though they’re within not-yet-shown popovers). This CSS one-liner saved the day. It basically says “skip over not-yet open popovers […]

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[Repost] Polyday Politics workshop

Grant ran a workshop on politics (and law) around polyamory, at a recent event. I wasn't there, but enjoyed reading his notes after-the-fact... and wanted to use the opportunity to share some of my own thoughts and experiences.