Kind: Articles
Traditional long form content: a post with an explicit title and body.
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OpenBenches reaches Tenerife
This weekend, I helped OpenBenches extend its reach to Tenerife, by finding and photographing a bench in the memorial garden for the Dan-Air Flight 1008 disaster. Almost-simultaneously, Terence Eden shared a blog post about the cost of running the OpenBenches service. Taken together, that feels like an excuse for me to plug the project (again)!
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Gamified... Pornography?
When the Online Safety Act came into effect, I considered writing a blog post investigating exactly how difficult it made it to access Pornhub. But it turned out to be boringly easy (it's not NOW, of course!), so I didn't. So here's a different discovery I made about the site...
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Postcard from San Diego
Another postcard for my collection; this time from an indieweb blogger who was previously JUST outside of my circle - Joe from ArtLung. There's something in this.
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Without Bloganuary
Bloganuary died since last time I took part in it (and I can speculate about why), but that didn't stop me writing something for every day in January 2026. Man, I've been blogging a lot lately in general... what's that about, eh?
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How an RM Nimbus Taught Me a Hacker Mentality
Thirty to thirty-five years ago, as a young and curious hacker, I broke out of the restrictions on my secondary school's computer lab and briefly achieved rockstar popularity amongst peers who, through my tools, could now play videogames instead of doing their coursework. But their interest in the results of my exploits were incompatible with my interest in the sheet joy of discovery... and, inevitably, this meant trouble.
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That's Not How Email Works, HSBC
A confusing letter from HSBC informed me that I've not been receiving their emails, and I have to change the email address they use to contact me. Except I've been receiving all of their emails just fine! The problem, it turns out, is that surveillance capitalism is now so-widespread that the bank cannot conceive that their own attempts to spy on their customers might not be 100% reliable...
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PHP 8.4 on Caddy on Debian 13... in Three Minutes
I just needed to spin up a new PHP webserver and I was amazed how fast and easy it was, nowadays. Just the stock package repositories and around five commands and my fresh box and it was serving PHP applications over HTTPS.
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Peripheral Vision
The other night, I encountered an optical illusion by which I could see a particular partially-obstructed light only when it was in my peripheral vision. This put me in mind of the experience of being only peripherally able to see the internalised quirks of your employer that were once obvious to you, and this lead me to reflect a little on my first six months at Firstup.
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Nostalgia, Music, and Computers
It turns out that I get nostalgic about technology in the same way as I get nostalgic about music. Here's some things that take me right back to being nine, eleven, thirteen and fifteen years old.
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Imajica by Clive Barker
I recently finished reading Clive Barker's Imajica for what I think is the fourth time. It remains one of my favourite fantasy novels, and I'd love to tell you why.
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Why I Am So Tired
After dusting off and modernising a joke I first read in a chain email from 1996, I can tell you conclusively that the reason that I'm tired is because I'm overworked.
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Visualising Forged In The Dark probabilities
Blades in the Dark (and other Forged In The Dark-based games) use a highest-value-from-D6-dice-pool mechanic to resolve actions. I was looking for a visualisation of the resulting probabilities, but couldn't find one... so I made my own.
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Roomscale VR Still Rocks
I'd promised the kids I'd dig up my (ten-year-old!) original HTC Vive VR gear and hook it up in the living room over Christmas. Roomscale VR, even running on decade-old kit, still rocks and is as immersive as ever!
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Egg and Dispatch
I don't get much time for videogames, so when I find the opportunity to complete not one but two games within a single month, you know my recommendation of them holds some weight! Let me tell you about 'Egg', and 'Dispatch'.
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Actually, Yes! (that IS what my birth certificate says)
There's a certain kind of person who, upon hearing my unusual name, immediately asks whether that's what's on my birth certificate (with an underlying implication that it's not my 'real' name, whatever that means, if it isn't). Well: as of this week, thanks to a quirk in Scottish law, the name I've used every day for almost two decades DOES appear my birth certificate. Fuck the haters.