Dan Q

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.

Photograph of Dan, his ponytail hanging over the shoulder of his black t-shirt, smiling from behind his beard and waving to the camera.

  • 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... Read more →

  • 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. Read more →

  • 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. Read more →

  • 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. Read more →

  • 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. Read more →

  • 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. Read more →

  • 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. Read more →

  • 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! Read more →

  • 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'. Read more →

  • More articles →
    (articles are traditional long-form blog posts)

  • This morning it took me three attempts to put on a t-shirt the right way around.I don’t think I slept too well. Read more →

  • The internet’s hidden creative renaissance (and how to find it)

    This article is good and touches on many sites, people, and topics that I care about... but it's painfully ironic that the author has written a post praising the independent Web... using Substack as their platform. Read more →

  • Who Is the Winking Chef?

    Scott Wiener - who is even more pizza-obsessed than me - noticed the 'winking chef' image that's common on pizza boxes. Then he traced its origin, and wrote a blog post to share the story of the artwork. Delightful. Read more →

  • Post: Universal Cosplay

    As previously indicated, I’m not anticipating cosplaying anybody. But I think I could do Greg Universe.Not young Greg Universe, the Star Child of ‘Story for Steven’… which seems to be the only variety anybody’s ever cosplayed as before if an image search is to be believed. No, I mean: overweight old balding Greg Universe. I […] Read more →

  • Why does SSH send 100 packets per keystroke?

    Nolen Royalty wrote an interesting piece about diagnosing a quirky SSH-related issue, and I found it both interesting and inspiring. Read more →

  • Post:

    Still at MegaConLive. I’ve not done this kind of con before (and still wouldn’t, were it not for my tweenager and her various obsessions). Not my jam, and that’s fine.But if there’s one thing for which I can sing it’s praises: everybody we’ve met is super friendly and nice. Sure, you can loudly telegraph your […] Read more →

  • Post: It's Eddie Bowley!

    I may have been dragged to MegaConLive London by my multi-fandom loving 12-year-old, but I at least managed to find somebody worth getting a selfie with. × Read more →

  • My 12-year-old's persuaded me to take her to MegaConLive London this weekend.

    As somebody who doesn't pay much attention to the pop culture circles represented by such an event (and hasn't for 15+ years, or whenever it was that Asdfbook came out?)... have you got any advice for me, Internet?

  • How You Read My Content (The Answers)

    Kev Quirk ran a one-question survey recently about how people discover and read his blog posts, and I think it's a pretty inspiring idea. Sure, consent-based surveying introduces biases... but what analytic technique doesn't, really? Read more →

  • Inspired by a conversation with Elle, I expanded my FreshRSS-to-blogroll generator to support injecting 88×31 buttons (where I have them) for folks I follow.
    There's still a way to go, but my blogroll's looking a little prettier as a result.

  • gradient.horse

    Michail Rybakov's gradient.horse might be the second most-amusing use of a .horse domain name I've yet seen. Draw a horse and let it run wild and free with its friends in the gradient plains of your browser window! Read more →

  • Found GC8YPVJ Finn1

    On the morning of the Three RIngs Christmas party, I took an early walk to a nearby geocache, just outside the area where the roads are closed for the Warwick leg of HS2's construction. Read more →

  • Post: 67 Bananas

    I think my “six seven”-obsessed younger child was in the kitchen with a biro earlier. How do I know, you ask? × Read more →

  • Post: I got a CCC postcard!

    Well my day, week, and year (which has been off to a slightly ropey start) got a whole heap better today when I received a postcard from August & Sappho, sent from 39c3 on a CCC postcard... with a CCC stamp!
    Super cool, and exactly the mood boost I needed today.

  • Gay sheep - what the FAQ?!

    About 1 in 12 rams (and a similar proportion of ewes) show a strong preference for other sheep of their same sex. To save them from being destroyed by breeders, this German farm is rescuing them and adding them to their queer flock. Read more →

  • More posts →
    (of all kinds: articles, checkins, notes, reposts...)