I'm Dan Q (he/him). I've spent the last 26+ years creating and writing online.
I work as a software engineer, and I volunteer with Three Rings. I live with my partner, her husband, two kids and a dog. I can sometimes be found geo*ing, performing magic, or recording the most pointless podcast.
I believe in open source, open relationships, and opening doors to marginalised groups. Black lives matter. Trans rights are human rights.
Be nice to humans, human.
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Two Days Offline
This week we lost Internet access for two whole days, and it was pretty disruptive and annoying! Read more →
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The Beer Token
Thanks to the success of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy, we can never forget quite how much beer you used to be able to get for a fiver (plus an exceptionally-generous tip). Nowadays, it'll get you one pint, if you're lucky... and that offers us an exciting opportunity... Read more →
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MS Paint-grade QR Codes?
I hand-drew a QR code so it looks like what I did was made a maze in Microsoft Paint. But it works! Here's how. Read more →
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Details/summary lightboxes in pure HTML + CSS
For years, I've been using a HTML+CSS-only technique for popover 'lightbox' images on my blog. Now I've come up with a more-semantic way to do the same, and its HTML code is tidier too! Read more →
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Internet Services^H Provider
When you signed up with an ISP, you used to get Web space, email, shared FTP access, a nearby IRC node, newsgroups, and a software bundle. Nowadays you get a shit router, a voucher for a free month of a streaming service you didn't want, and crap customer service. Where did we go wrong? Read more →
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Quesapizza-pizza
A quesapizza is a quesadilla, but made using pizza ingredients: not just cheese, but also a tomato sauce and maybe some toppings. A quesapizza-pizza is a pizza... constructed using a quesapizza as its base! Watch me make one in a 90-second timelapse. Read more →
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Heterophonic Homonyms
On a car journey on which they'd otherwise have been fighting, the kids helped me start a collection of heterophonic homonyms - words that are spelled the same but have different pronunciations and meanings. I've got nine of them now in English, and maybe two in other languages... can you help me find some more? Read more →
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Clapham South Deep Shelter
This weekend I once again found myself underground beneath London; this time exploring the Camden South Deep Shelter with the help of the Hidden London folks. And it was pretty damn cool. Read more →
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Lock All The Computers
I wanted a button on my desk that, when I pressed it, would simultaneously lock every computer connected to my KVM system. Here's what I came up with. Read more →
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(articles are traditional long-form blog posts) -
“What’chu lookin’ at?” I’m away from home this Twenty-Third of Bleptember, but managed to snap this epic blep before I left. × Read more →
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Attempt #2 to get to Belfast starts… at 3:30am in a Premier Inn in Gatwick. 🥱 Today, perhaps, I’ll catch a plane! 🤞 × Read more →
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After standing completely stationary on the M25 for over an hour and a half and with no end in sight, I’m getting increasingly confident that I’m not going to catch my flight from Gatwick whose gate closes… in half an hour. 😢 Well, fuck. × Read more →
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Just blepping around the garden this Twenty-Second of Bleptember. × Read more →
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Developers just love to take what the Web gives them for free, throw it away, and replace it with something worse.
Today's example, from Open Collective, is a dropdown box: standard functionality provided by the<select>element. Except they've replaced it with a JS component that, at some screen resolutions, "goes off the top" of the page... while simultaneously disabling the scrollbars so that you can't reach it. -
On the Twenty-First of Bleptember this young doggo was very excited to see a field of goats. Goats! I like to interpret her expression as saying “OMG have you seen the thing that’s living in this field!?”An inquisitive and excited expression let down only slightly by the inevitable blep and by a tentacle of drool! […] Read more →
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It’s the Twentieth of Bleptember, and I still struggle to conceive of how it’s comfortable to lie down with not only your head but also 50% of your tongue lying flat on your soft, furry pillow.(This troublesome young lady stole and tried to eat a dry-wipe whiteboard pen yesterday. She’s fine, but it was briefly […] Read more →
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Even play-fighting isn’t an excuse for our bleppy dog to put her tongue away. Happy Nineteenth of Bleptember! Photo courtesy Lisa from Muddy Paws.× Read more →
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We took a longer-than-usual walk on this warm Eighteenth of Bleptember morning, and the doggle's all tuckered-out. Read more →
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Sofa Time is Best Time. Happy Seventeenth of Bleptember.× Read more →
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Sometimes you really want the apparel for a band or album to exist and it just doesn't. And so, not for the first time, I made my own... Read more →
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It’s the Sixteenth of Bleptember, and our derpy doggle’s back from a playdate with her best friend… although you wouldn’t know how close they are from this picture, in which she seems to be blowing a raspberry at him as she walks away! Photo courtesy Lisa from Muddy Paws.× Read more →
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It’s the Fifteenth of Bleptember, and our young doggo has never looked so inelegant as when she lies on her back on the sofa with a dorky tongueful grin on her face. × Read more →
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A lazy Sunday morning this Fourtheenth of Bleptember provides the perfect opportunity to dogpile onto a convenient nearby human… and gradually dampen their trouser leg with your blep. × Read more →
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Is it possible to allow sideloading *and* keep users safe?
Terence Eden's upset at Google's proposed changes to Android to further lock-down the ecosystem, and I'm concerned too. Read more →
- More posts →
(of all kinds:
articles, 
checkins, 
notes, 
reposts...)