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.

  • Did I Cheat?

    I solved a puzzle geocache in an unconventional way: by writing a program to permute all the possible solutions and check them for me. Was that cheating? I can see arguments either way... Read more →

  • A Random List of Silly Things I Hate

    Just a list of eleven random silly things that I hate, to various degrees. Read more →

  • A Hundred Inconveniences

    It's F-Day plus 31, and our flood-disrupted lives have become defined by the hundred or so daily inconveniences that are imposed by our accidentally-nomadic lifestyle. Here's hoping we can sort-out some more stable accommodation sometime soon! Read more →

  • Why Security Engineering needs a Hacker Mentality

    Security engineering is about a lot of things, but the best security engineers show the 'hacker mindset' characteristics of curiosity and imagination. Here's an example of how I found an XSS vulnerability in a forum, mostly by accident, and how curiosity was the key. Read more →

  • Ten Weird Games

    This blog post's been sitting incomplete in my drafts since last decade. I think it's finally time to share with you... ten weird games (and game adjacent media) you should see. Read more →

  • Cold Giraffe

    My mum painted a cold giraffe onto a postcard and sent it to me. Read more →

  • Subverting AI Agent Logging with a Git Post-Commit Hook

    I keep hearing from developer friends who are 'expected' by their employer to demonstrate that they're using AI, even for tasks at which the AI is demonstrably a suboptimal choice. So - as a joke - I came up with a git post-commit hook that makes it look like they're doing so, even when they're not. Read more →

  • What can you do with a software privacy polariser?

    Samsung's 2026 phones will feature a dynamic privacy filter, blacking-out parts of the screen selectively from shoulder-surfers. I'm so curious about the capabilities of (and API for) this technology: what could I make it do? Read more →

  • F-Day plus 12

    It's been only twelve days since our house flooded (it feels like a lot longer!), and progress is slow on getting damage assessments and medium-term accommodation planning sorted. Read more →

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

  • Found GC79ZK3 Wootton Word Wall

    This morning, the younger geokid and I came out for a walk with the geopup. After a little difficulty getting a GPSr fix we eventuality found a good-looking host, and after a few laps we had the well-camouflaged container in our hands. A good sized, well maintained container and an interesting puzzle, even if the way we solved it might be considered by some to have been cheating! Read more →

  • Reply to: I'm OK being left behind, thanks!

    A reply to Terence Eden's post about not buying in to every cryptocurrency or AI fad, but being happy to 'wait and see'. Read more →

  • Post: F-Day plus 35

    It's F-Day plus 35, and I'm spending a few hours working in the habitable part of our flood-damaged house while I'm "between" two AirBnBs.

    The dog, who doesn't normally get to come upstairs, is sitting with me on the landing. Except she also wants to keep an eye on what's happening downstairs.

    The result? Her back legs are sitting and her front legs are standing as she peers blepfully down the stairs.

  • Somebody should make a tea cosy but to fit a cafetiere.

    That sounds like a great idea.

  • Wrote note for GCADCWF Treasure island

    I first found this cache last summer while cycling a circuitous route from Witney to Stanton Harcourt. I happened to be walking the dog nearby, this morning, and so I figured I'd check up on it. The outer container continues to deteriorate and could do with some TLC, but otherwise this cache looks to be okay. Read more →

  • Hint Line 93

    Hint Line 93 is an amazing interactive exhibit about the experience of working on a computer games hint line. It's a deeply-researched, immersive, and clever piece of art... and even though the real experience is in a Australian museum, you can play an approximation of it via the Web. Awesome. Read more →

  • Questionnaire - Plain Text

    Over on my other (even sillier) blog, I answered Ellane's questionnaire about how and why I use plain text. In plain text, of course. Read more →

  • You don’t have to disconnect

    Derek Slivers' post about being online only for an hour or two, every few days, inspired a lot of people. But I'd like to share Rishi Dass's rebuttal, and add my own thoughts about the importance of finding your own solution to some of the distractions and stresses of the always-online world. Read more →

  • Found GC4MJR8 R’n’R #2 Skinny & Boney

    Coming across from Finstock via R’n’R #9 (we’re absolutely doing this series in the wrong order!), the geokid, geopup and I made a poor choice by hugging the tree line rather than cutting out of the field and coming up the road: it was super muddy in the field at the points at which the […] Read more →

  • Found GC4MJY0 R’n’R #9 – Thumper

    The younger geokid and I had a plan, this morning, to drive out from our temporary (post-flood) accommodation in New Yatt, park at St. Peter’s in Wilcote, and then walk the dog around the area between Wilcote and Ramsden while we collect a few more caches from this excellent series.Unfortunately our plans were scuppered early […] Read more →

  • Post: Chapattidilla

    Wanted a quesadilla. Didn't have any tortillas, so substituted chapattis.

    It went... only okay. The earthiness of the chapatti pairs with mature cheese less-well than the cornflour-sweetness of a tortilla does.

    I tried it, so you don't have to!

  • How far back in time can you understand English?

    Colin Gorrie wrote an excellent blog post last month, in the style of a travel blog but where every couple of paragraphs the blogger jumped back a hundred years in time, switching to an earlier dialect of English as they do so, until they become gradually unintelligible to most readers. Fascinating. Read more →

  • Note #28497

    A lot of things are hard right now. But I appreciate that Spring has come and I can enjoy a cheese & pickle sandwich and a fake beer for lunch in the sun. All to the sounds of the birds singing... and, somewhere behind me, the dog excitedly demolishing a pile of pine cones.

    It could be worse, right?

  • Horse Gym

    My current temporary home - and, necessarily, office - is directly next door to some kind of "horse gym": a contraption a little like a huge revolving door to encourage one or more horses to exercise by walking around it.

    Every now and then my peripheral vision registers that there's a horse outside the window and, for the dozenth time, I look up from my work and glance around to barely catch it vanishing off on yet another lap. Read more →

  • Found GC4MJRJ R’n’R #3 – Not Quite A Well?

    Another quick find for the sharp-eyed geokid, once we found the right host. Three for three and that's time for us to turn about and go have our brunch. TFTC! Read more →

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