Book Review: Small Comfort by Ia Genberg ★★☆☆☆
I was left somewhat unconvinced by this book. I liked the concept - a series of interrelated stories all told in different styles. Much like the film "Lola RenntRun Lola Run" there's a briefcase
Terence Eden’s Blog
Regular nonsense about tech and its effects 🙃
Theatre Review: Avenue Q ★★★★★
I'll admit, I was a little sceptical about returning to Avenue Q. I saw it on its original West End run back in… OH MY GOD I AM SO OLD! FUCK! Where did the time go? It's always hard to know how
Did WordPress VIP leak my phone number?
As discussed in my last blog post, the scumsuckers at Apollo.io have been giving out my personal details. Not only did they have my email address, they also had a copy of one of my phone numbers. I
[RSS Club] Banana for scale
This post is exclusive to RSS feed subscribers. Enjoy! I've had this idea stuck in my head for a while, so I decided to make it. This is "Scan Slowly And See". The code is made by cloning some
Someone at BrowserStack is Leaking Users' Email Address
Like all good nerds, I generate a unique email address for every service I sign up to. This has several advantages - it allows me to see if a message is legitimately from a service, if a service is
Welcome to RSS Club!
What if I told you there was a secret social network, hidden in plain sight? If you're reading this message, you're now a member of RSS Club! RSS Club is a series of posts which are only visible to
Book Review: Superintelligence - Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom ★★★★⯪
When I finally invent time-travel, the first thing I'll do is go back in time and give everyone a copy of this book. Published in 2014, it clearly sets out the likely problems with true Artificial
Concert Review: London Philharmonic - Pictures at an Exhibition ★★★★★
A delightful and emotional rendition of three rather different works. Mark-Anthony Turnage's "Three Screaming Popes" was a chaotic cacophony. Wild, bizarre, inventive, and seemingly driven by
Random File Format
This was an idea I had back in the days of Naptster. At the turn of the century, it was common to listen to an "acquired" music file only to find it was missing a few seconds at the end due to a
Gig Review: Vitamin String Quartet at The Barbican ★★★★★
There is no such thing as the Vitamin String Quartet. They're an ever-changing line-up of musicians who have found an excellent schtick; modern songs played like classical music. Somehow they've
OpenBenches hits 40k
Back in November 2023, our crowdsourced website of memorial benches reached 30,000 entries. At the start of March this year, I was delighted when long-time contributor jrbray1 added this gorgeous
Adding human.json to WordPress
Every few years, someone reinvents FOAF. The idea behind Friend-Of-A-Friend is that You can say "I, Alice, know and trust Bob". Bob can say "I know and trust Alice. I also know and trust Carl." That
Book Review: If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light by Kim Choyeop ★★☆☆☆
Short stories offer you the chance to dip briefly into a world and then skip out so there's not much time for development; just straight in to the plot and off we go. But this is all exposition and
Bored of eating your own dogfood? Try smelling your own farts!
I called a large company the other day. Did I know the information I wanted could be found on their website? And was I aware that I could manage my account online? And would I like to receive a link
I'm OK being left behind, thanks!
Many years ago, someone tried to get me into cryptocurrencies. "They're the future of money!" they said. I replied saying that I'd rather wait until they were more useful, less volatile, easier to
Finding the right Bottom Hole paper
On the 6th of January 1995, viewers of BBC Two were treated to a new series of Waiting for Godot Bottom. Stuck at the top of a Ferris wheel, Vyvyan and the People's Poet Eddie and Ritchie wait to see
Some updates to ActivityBot
I couple of years ago, I developed ActivityBot - the simplest way to build Mastodon Bots. It is a single PHP file which can run an entire ActivityPub server and it is less than 80KB. It works! You
Book Review: Robots in Space - The Secret Lives of Our Planetary Explorers by Dr Ezzy Pearson ★★★⯪☆
Mars is the only planet entirely populated by robots. This book is a catalogue of the history of robotic explorers. Nary a human-crewed mission is mentioned, except in passing. Instead, we get to
How Can Governments Pay Open Source Maintainers?
When I worked for the UK Government I was once asked if we could find a way to pay for all the Open Source Software we were using. It is a surprisingly hard problem and I want to talk about some of
An odd font rendering bug in Firefox and Safari
First up, you should go and watch The Importance of Being Earnest with Ncuti Gatwa. It is a brilliant set of performances and a joy to see. While perusing the programme on the National Theatre