Author: Dan Q
Dan Q is a software engineer, a director of a voluntary organisation, a trainee counsellor, a keen geocacher, and an amateur magician. He lives with his partner and her husband in a polyamorous triad, and occasionally finds time to blog.
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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...
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It's the Fourth of Bleptember, but I couldn't help but share a photo from the Third, when our dog just couldn't find space for her tongue and her ball in her mouth at the same time... but soon found a workaround.
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In a grassy field, a satisfied-looking French Bulldog wearing a red jumper holds an orange ball in the left corner of her mouth, while her tongue hangs limply all the way out of the right side of her mouth.
Photo courtesy Lisa from Muddy Paws.
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It's the Third of Bleptember, and this routine-loving pupper is still confused by the fact that the elder child doesn't come on the school-run morning walk any more, instead leaving early to catch the bus to her new school. Look at those big anxious eyes, poor thing!
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A French Bulldog wearing a harness stands in a cluttered hallway, looking sideways through an open door. Her tongue is sticking slightly out.
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The Second of Bleptember brought back the morning school run into this doggo's routine. And while she was glad of the extra walk, she also seemed glad of the opportunity to lie down in a quiet, child-free hallway upon our return home.
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A champagne-coloured French Bulldog lies on a rug, with her tongue sticking out almost enough to touch the floor.
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Bleptember's upon us once again, so I'll be attempting to snap a daily picture of my bleppy doggo with her tongue sticking out!
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A sleepy French Bulldog lies on a soft dog bed with her tongue sticking entirely out, lying on a pillowy edge.
This young lady is dog-tired after a long day of running around and playing, this First of Bleptember.
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Railways won’t tell us how their train tickets work - shall we force them to?
Q Misell and CraftByte are speaking the weekend after next at MRMCD, on the subject of the UK's (and Slovenia's) railway ticket barcodes and how FOIA requests are so-far failing to reveal information (that shouldn't be secret!) about what information they encode. Wish I could be there...
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The dog came out for a walk with the eldest kid and I, but we couldn't stop her sticking her head down rabbitholes!
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In a grassy field, a girl in a red dress and comfortable boots kneels with her head completely vanished down a rabbit hole.
(Oh, and the dog kept doing it, too.)
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Developing an alt text button for images on my website
James has come up with a fun way to do Mastodon-like alt-text-bubbles. I'm intrigued, and am looking forward to expanding on the idea when I get the chance to try implementing it on my own blog.
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Looking forward to the school run starting again next week... so I get a bonus excuses for walks around our beautiful village!
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Paddock with horses under a sky of mixed clouds and an arching rainbow.
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The cheese scones from
My local supermarket
Are hexagonal.It's not for packing.
Their film-covered rectangle
Leaves corner gaps.Are perhaps they made
In honeycomb baking tins?
Baked by bumblebee?Or else it's branding.
A visual identity.
Trying to sell more.A six-sided scone
Does not taste better to me,
Nor warm up faster.
The butter doesn't care
For the shape of your scone,
Mr. John Sainsbury.
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A crumbly hexagonal cheese scone, buttered, on a blue-and-white plate, with a single bite taken out of one half.
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Acai plays "Musical Transients" by Psynwav on Clone Hero
Turns out I'm not quite done obsessing over Musical Transients, and I found a video of YouTuber Acai playing the album on Clone Hero, which was a fun and enjoyable watch-along.
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sophie reviews Psynwav - Musical Transients
After sharing the album yesterday, today I found a review of Musical Transients which 100% echoes my experience of this amazing concept album. Spoiler warning: there are themes in the album that I think are most-fun to discover as you listen to it, but if you already did, or if you're not going to anyway, then you might as well read my and sophie's thoughts about it now.
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Will Smith’s concert crowds are real, but AI is blurring the lines
A recent video by Will Smith gained widespread condemnation for using AI to artificially-inflate his crowd's size. Except that's not what happened at all: a little creative editing by his media team, combined with a secret experiment by YouTube to make some videos look immeasurably more-shit by performing AI upscaling on them, seems to have kicked off this particular round of Internet craziness.
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Last month, my friend Gareth observed that the numbered lists in my blog posts "looked wrong" in his feed reader. I checked, and I decided I was following the standards correctly and it must have been his app that was misbehaving.
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App Store page for Unread: An RSS Reader by Golden Hill Software. What's New for version 4.5.2 includes a bullet point, highlighted, which reads 'This update improves display of articles from danq.me."
So he contacted the authors of Unread, his feed reader, and they fixed it. Pretty fast, I've got to say. And I was amused to see that I'm clearly now a test case because my name's in their release notes!
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Musical Transients
Musical Transients from Psynwav is absolutely excellent, and (unless you've already learned better than to pay attention to my music recommendations) you should give it a listen.