Kind: Notes
Short content: a post or status update with just plain content and typically without a title.
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Let this be your reminder to check on how your computer systems truncate long strings for public display.
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Cinema films list starting with the truncated title 'Ghosts: The Possession of Butt'
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Well, it looks like I've committed to playing this on the wettest imaginable weekend. Wish me luck!
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Customised maps of Greater London's transit network alongside a boxed set of Jet Lag: The Game - Hide & Seek and its expansion.
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So elegant. So demure. Much doggle.
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An inelegant looking French Bulldog in a teal jumper lies in her back, with her tongue out, on top of Dan.
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I continue to fight to make BBC News' RSS feeds not-suck, despite ongoing efforts to dilute their value by the BBC themselves.
Last month they started injecting ads for their email newsletter-based subscription option into their RSS feed. But I don't need email: I have RSS! The ad initially slipped through the filters because it looks like the URL of a news article: sneaky move, BBC!
Anyway; it's fixed now and these newsletter ads should no longer appear in the feeds available on https://bbc-feeds.danq.dev - hurrah!
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A peep behind the curtain: here's an animation illustrating how I had to learn to dissect/think about origami in order to make origami.danq.dev for my Weird Web October contribution today:
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Last time I made a dental insurance claim, Aviva insisted on sending me a cheque. So I asked them via live chat if I could claim via bank transfer. Yes, they say, although apparently I have to ask every time because "they can't store bank details". Sigh. Fine. At least they'll pay this one by bank transfer.
Except a few days later they emailed to say they'd lost my bank details and could I provide them again. They asked me to add it to my claim, but their website won't let me do that because the claim is already agreed to pay-out. So now my claim's stuck in limbo.
Back into live chat I go. I give all the details and we're getting there but then... I suddenly get cut off from the human and I'm back with the robot.
The robot says live chat closed at 6:30pm so I'll need to come back tomorrow.
But it's only 5:45pm.
Is the whole world going mad, or is it just me?
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Live Chat gatekeeping chatbot saying that live chat is open until 6:30pm, which is in the future, but it's claiming that it's closed.
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Ruth and I stopped at Hanley Swan for a picnic lunch on our way home from our weekend of Argentine Tango classes. Within seconds our lunch had attracted a large flock of ducks from the little duck houses on the village's adorable duck pond.
But better yet: I managed to catalogue like eleven memorial benches around the pond and the village green, all previously unknown to OpenBenches (@openbenches@botsin.space): #46341, #46342, #46343, #46344, #46345, #46346, #46347, #46348, #46349, #46351, #46352!
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A slightly dried-up duck pond with ducks and cute like pontoon duck houses.
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On the window sill of the bar at the hotel where Ruth and I are learning to tango... this morning I made a squirrel friend!
At least now I'll have succeeded at something today even if I can't get the hang on not-treading-on-toes!
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A grey squirrel lies against the glass pane of a stone-framed window.
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The bed in my hotel room tonight is made up for not one, not two, but three occupants. Did they... see me and instantly clock me as polyamorous?
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Wide bed with three sets of pillows laid out.
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That time I got locked-in at the V&A
I just realised that I never shared this anecdote online before -
One time, I got locked-in at the V&A Museum after closing-time. I'd been there for a museums & cultural institutions event and I'd probably had a few too many glasses of champagne before I excused myself to return to my hotel. Unfortunately in my … -
Fuck you Ted Lasso season 4 finale, I hadn't planned on crying today. 😭
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A Three Rings development sub-team seems to have developed a habit of making production server changes at in-person events, right before meals are served. On at least one previous occasion this has led to them missing out on dinner as they monitored and maintained at-risk servers when they ought to be eating.
Until the servers are stable, they don't get their food.
They call it the "crash diet".
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TIL that I dance Argentine Tango with Ruth better... when I close my eyes. It's a fundamentally intuitive and semi-improvised dance built on connection and communication and it turns out that, for me at least, the best way to stop trying to visually predict what a partner (I know well enough to "read" visually) is going to do and instead... just move together... is to stop looking at her! Weird, but effective!
(Yes, we're still learning to tango. Slowly.)
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My newly-revamped personal site has an almost full suite of slash pages; something I'd been meaning to do for a while:
Still no /now, but I'll get that sorted someday, perhaps!
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After months of minor tweaks, on-and-off, I finally bit the bullet and hit "publish" on my new theme for DanQ.me. It's not perfect; it's got all kinds of bugs... but what's the point of having a personal webite if you can't trash it once in a while with an ill-advised "fun" rework, right?
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Screenshot of DanQ.me with comic avatars of Dan, pride colours, and a 'fun'-feeling theme (plus semi-retro 'under construction' banner!).