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Hammer and nails
There is a Linux distribution called Gentoo, named after a type of penguin (of course it’s named after a penguin), where installing an app doesn’t mean that you download a working app. Instead, when...
View ArticleRemediating sites
Sometimes you’ll find yourself doing a job where you need to make alterations to a web page that already exists, and where you can’t change the HTML, so your job is to write some bits of JavaScript to...
View ArticleBrowsers are not rendering engines
An interesting writeup by Brian Kardell on web engine diversity and ecosystem health, in which he puts forward a thesis that we currently have the most healthy and open web ecosystem ever, because...
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I’m not outside
I’m not outside.Right now, a mass of people are in Centenary Square in Birmingham.They’ll currently be chanting. Then there’s music and speeches and poetry and a lie-down. I’m not there. I wish I was...
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IoT devices and Android and disappointment
One of the projects I’m working on involves creating a little device which you talk to from your phone. So, I thought, I’ll do this properly. No “cloud service” that you don’t need; no native app that...
View ArticleMaking apps for Linux, a proposal
In the spring of 2020, the GNOME project ran their Community Engagement Challenge in which teams proposed ideas that would “engage beginning coders with the free and open-source software community...
View ArticleSetting up a Brother DCP-7055W as a network scanner on Ubuntu
My dad’s got a Brother DCP-7055W printer/scanner, and he wanted to be able to set it up as a network scanner to his Ubuntu machine. This was more fiddly than it should be, and involved a bunch of...
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OpenUK Honours
So, I was awarded a medal.OpenUK, who are a non-profit organisation supporting open source software, hardware, and data, and are run by Amanda Brock, have published the honours list for 2021 of what...
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Today I was vaccinated for Covid
Today I was vaccinated for Covid.It occurred to me that people might have a question or two about the process, what it’s like, and what happens, and I think that’s reasonable. #sil-covid-faq dt {...
View Articleforty-five
It’s my birthday!This year, in the midst of a coronavirus lockdown, it’s been something of a quiet one. I got lots of nice best wishes from a bunch of people, which is terribly pleasing, and I had a...
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Talking to the Competition and Markets Authority about Apple
Last week I was part of a meeting with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, the regulator, to talk about Apple devices and the browser choice (or lack of it) on them. They’re doing a big study...
View ArticleGrandma
A couple of weeks ago, my grandma died.This was not wholly unexpected, and at the same time it was completely unexpected. I should probably explain that.She was ninety, which is a fair age for anyone,...
View ArticleThe Forty-Sixers Club
The Adirondack Forty-Sixers are an organization of hikers who have climbed all forty-six of the traditionally recognized High Peaks of the Adirondack Mountains. They are often referred to just as...
View ArticleContact the CMA about the browser ecosystem
The CMA, the UK’s regulator of business competition and markets, what the USA calls “antitrust”, is conducting a study into mobile platforms and the mobile ecosystem. You may recall that I and others...
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Solo solitaire dungeon crawl card game
I invented a solitaire card game. I was thinking about solo roleplaying, and the Carta SRD stuff I did for Borealis, and I was thinking about the idea of the cards forming the board you’re playing on...
View ArticleHelp the CMA help the Web
As has been mentioned here before the UK regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority, are conducting an investigation into mobile phone software ecosystems, and they recently published the results...
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Farmbound, or how I built an app in 2022
So, I made a game. It’s called Farmbound. It’s a puzzle; you get a sequence of farm things — seeds, crops, knives, water — and they combine to make better items and to give you points. Knives next to...
View ArticleDon’t Read Off The Screen
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View ArticleTransferring to a new phone network, 2022 edition
Some posts are written so there’s an audience. Some are written to be informative, or amusing. And some are literally just documentation for me which nobody else will care about. This is one of...
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How I set up a Twitter archive with Tweetback
Twitter currently has problems. Well, one specific problem, which is the bloke who bought it. My solution to this problem has been to move to Mastodon (@sil@mastodon.social if you want to do the same),...
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