I'm Dan Q. I've spent the last 25+ years creating and writing on the Internet.
I work at Automattic and volunteer with Three Rings. I live with my partner, her husband, two kids and a dog. I can sometimes be found geo*ing, cycling, or performing magic.
I believe in open source, open relationships, and opening doors to marginalised groups.
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Quickly Solving JigsawExplorer Puzzles
A fellow jigsaw-hating geocacher, familiar with my work on Jigidi, challenged me to find a way to bypass JigsawExplorer too. Here's what I came up with... Read more →
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Oxford's Area Code at OGN 57
At next month's Oxford Geek Nights I'll be talking about why Oxford's telephone area code makes no sense... until it does! But that's not why you should attend: you should attend because of the five far more-talented speakers I'll be sharing the stage with! Read more →
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Home Page, 50% Off!
By optimising a few bits of my homepage I've halved its size, which incidentally takes me up from the third to the second league of 512kb club members! Read more →
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My Favourite Video Game Easter Egg
My favourite video game Easter egg is Alorik's crystal ball from 1993's Ultima Underworld II, and I'd love to tell you why. Read more →
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The Stupidest CSS
Yesterday, I wrote the stupidest CSS code of my entire web development career. The code itself wasn't the stupid bit; my misinterpretation of the designer's wishes was what caused the problem! Read more →
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Zap
This week, a live-to-earth fault on the grid resulted in me getting zapped with mains electricity. Unfortunately, it didn't give me superpowers, just a mildly-interesting anecdote and a partially-shaved chest. Read more →
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Yours Quim-cerely
I received a lovely letter from the Vagina Museum - which I've not had the opportunity to visit yet - printed on their new laserjet printer. Read more →
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BBC News... without the crap
BBC News' RSS feed has lately started getting duplicates because they're mucking about with guids. Also what's with the iPlayer and BBC Sounds content in there? Let's "fix" that for them, shall we? Read more →
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RSS > ActivityPub
RSS is better than ActivityPub. Fight me. Read more →
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The Road (Segment) Less Travelled
I live near two junctions at which I can join the A40 trunk road. When I drive East, I use the Easternmost; when I drive West, I use the Westernmost; but I almost never drive the stretch of A40 between them! It's inevitable I suppose that there should exist a "road (segment) less-travelled" right on my doorstep, but it still feels strange. Maybe I'm missing out on something great! Read more →
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Found GC2BHX9 C-130J Hercules
Found by the geohound and I after a brief battle with the first stinging nettles of the season. Owie! She and I came over from Stanton Harcourt this morning – from which we see plenty of Brize Nortons’ Hercules! – because many of our favourite local walks are waterlogged. Things are somewhat drier underfoot here, […] Read more →
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Did not find GC6Q3A1 Cur.Bri.Lew 11
The pup and I unearthed a few likely hiding places without success here. Not sure what we’ve missed: feels like we lifted every hint item in the vicinity!
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Found GC6Q39R Cur.Bri.Lew 10
QEF for the geopup and I on this strangely springlike morning. Cache container is damaged almost beyond recognition, as others have observed, and is desperately in need of replacement. TFTC.× Read more →
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My Favourite Video Game Easter Egg [Video]
A video version of my blog post "My Favourite Video Game Easter Egg", in which I show you Alorik's crystal ball from Ultima Underworld II and tell you why it's so important to me. Read more →
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Having lost the (stupid, proprietary) charging cable for my smartwatch, and not been able to find it for several days, I've undertaken the magical ritual that's most-certain to make it reappear: ordering a replacement one.
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Do you think the 80s/90s advertisement campaign for Sarson's vinegar - "Don't say vinegar, say Sarson's" - ever worked? Like: have you ever heard anybody ask you to "pass the Sarson's"?
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Fedicard
Yeah, that's about right. Read more →
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Bumblebees surprise scientists with 'sophisticated' social learning
There are two - maybe three - things I love about the recent discovery that bees exhibit complex social learning behaviours. Allow me to drone on about bees for a while... Read more →
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Young Squirrel Talking About Himself
This week, Parry Gripp and Nathan Mazur released Young Squirrel Talking About Himself. I've been singing it all day. Read more →
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For World Book Day (which here in the UK is marked a month earlier than the rest of the world) the kids' school invited people to come "dressed as a word". As usual, the kids and teachers participated along with only around two other adults. But of course I was one of them. This year, I was "magical".
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If you enjoy a bit of "cable gore", let me introduce you to the fusebox cupboard at my house, with its plethora of junctions, fuses, breakers, switches, timers, and cabling everywhere! Banana for scale. Read more →
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I guess installing a sign was cheaper than retraining the helpline operators not to shout at everybody.
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Hot on the heels of my victory over Wonder Boy 35 years after I first played it, I can now finally claim to have beaten Golden Axe, 25 years after I first played it (with some help from a 7-year-old).
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Found GCADXC6 Tour de France
My very first “ski-o-cache” was 9 years ago, down in La Tania: this was my second! Found the host easily at the coordinates and found the cache in the third hiding place I tried. It’s quite stiff and hard to extract right now! Needed to wait to return it while some other skiers took pictures […] Read more →
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