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.
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BeepAlive - keeping my soundbar from going to sleep
My dog ate the remote for the soundbar on my TV/media centre, and it keeps going into 'sleep mode'. So I wrote a software tool that periodically makes an inaudible noise to trick the soundbar into staying 'awake'. That's how a hacky engineer like me fixes a hardware problem with a software solution! Read more →
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(Feeling Fucking) Fabulous in Blackpool
This year, MEEK's Fabulous has been stuck on a loop in my head, but I only just got around to watching the music video. Which, to my delight, is shot in the region of what I reckon is Britain's gayest pub crawl. Let's take a tour together... Read more →
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Contactless Transport in London vs Paris
Paris is rolling-out contactless tap-in payments for its transport network. Sounds like London's... except that Paris's includes a "convenience tax" that seems to disproportionately target short-term visitors. What might this say about each city's relationship with tourism? Read more →
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"You saved my life!" (or: how my kids briefly thought I was a superhero)
A misunderstanding by my kids this weekend briefly made them think that I'd pulled a stranger from a burning building... when in reality I only lent him a mobile phone charger. Read more →
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Hashcard #2
I received my tenth "postcard from the Internet", which also happens to be my second geohashing "hashcard". How lovely! Read more →
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The secret API I used to tell LeShuttle about different outbound and return passengers
Channel Tunnel operator LeShuttle's website wouldn't provide a working UI to specify that I'd have different passengers in my car for the outbound and return journeys. So, obviously, I reverse-engineered their API and pushed the information to their database directly. Read more →
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How I (Don't) Collect Blog Statistics
I used to collect analytics information about visitors to my website, and I've tried a lot of different ways of doing it over the course of a couple of decades. But nowadays I don't collect any at all, and I think that's better. Read more →
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Recreating a 1990 Book Cover (in HTML + CSS)
This weekend, I became briefly obsessed with the graphic design of the cover of a manual of a piece of software released in 1990. So I re-created it in HTML + CSS, as you do. Read more →
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My piano came home from the hospital
Five months ago, my house flooded. This week, the first completed repair work has been completed: fixing the upright piano that filled with water. The piano's back with us, in our temporary accommodation, and I couldn't be happier about it! Read more →
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More articles →
(articles are traditional long-form blog posts) -
Found GC6QTWA #13 RUTA PELS VOLTANTS DEL MAS DE SALORT
Finding the cache was easy. Reaching around to pull it from its hiding place was harder! But soon I had it in hand. This has been a lovely morning walk.Now I should have some breakfast and make my lazy children get out of bed!TFTC/GLA. FP for the series in general (as experienced so far). And […] Read more →
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Found GC6QV11 #15 RUTA PELS VOLTANTS DEL MAS DE SALORT
I was glad if the shade provided by the trees along this delightful footpath. Working up a bit of a sweat out here! Had to break from the footpath and kick through some undergrowth to reach the GZ this time, but the coordinates were spot on and I soon had the cache in hand.Logbook has […] Read more →
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Found GC6QTVF #9 RUTA PELS VOLTANTS DEL MAS DE SALORT
A quick and easy find once I spotted a likely hiding place. Starting to feel like I should have had breakfast before I set off! TFTC/GPA, and greetings from Oxfordshire, UK. Read more →
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Found GC6QTVM #10 RUTA PELS VOLTANTS DEL MAS DE SALORT
My family and I are on holiday staying nearby. I came out this morning to explore and try to find a couple of local geocaches while the children were still asleep. This was the first.I needed to walk around the GZ a few times before I saw the cache, with its vantage point over this […] Read more →
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They love RSS
unstory claims that people who, like, me, announce their love of RSS in footers etc. don't actually love RSS, and couldn't handle operating the protocol 'by hand'. unstory is wrong, at least in my case. Read more →
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Found GCB1918 Peggy Bedford's blocked gate
I’m staying in the Thistle Hotel around the corner before a flight in the morning, and stepped out to find this cache – and some supper – before bed. Sorry to hear about your muggle troubles, but this current (new) container is a good one: needed to say the hint out loud a few times […] Read more →
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Geohashing expedition 2026-08-07 51 -1
A successful expedition to a hashpoint in a field, while travelling to Heathrow Airport on a Friday evening! Read more →
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Normal F***ing Sunglasses
DuckDuckGo have gotten into the smart glasses game, and they've come up with a pair that, dare I say it... I would actually buy! Read more →
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You're Pronouncing JPEG Wrong
Fighting about the correct way to pronounce GIF is so last decade. Let's fight about how to pronounce JPEG. Read more →
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No green and only two black wine gums in this bag? Feeling robbed.
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Sainsburys grapes confuse me.500g of white grapes are £2. 500g or red grapes are £2.20. So you’d expect 500g of half-red, half-white grapes to be… £2.10, right? But no, that’s £2 too.So buying 500g of white grapes and 500g of red grapes is cheaper if you buy the mixed packs and then separate them. Why!? […] Read more →
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I want to write a successful YA fiction where all the characters are boats. Just ‘cos I want to see people ‘shipping ships.Also, one of my characters will be called Slash. Read more →
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Apparently, zero of the imagineers building this Disneyland Paris cafe conceived that “Chuck Wagon” sounds like what a cowboy would call a wheeled vomit trough. 😂 × Read more →
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Reply to: This blog is written in en-GB
Terence Eden's blog is (like mine!) unapologetically in en-GB. But maybe his particular cultural references need to be slightly more-specific still? Read more →
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An unexpected start to the kids’ and I’s glamping weekend last night when the static caravan behind our dome burned to the ground. We spent most of our night half way down a field watching the fire crews tackle the blaze. (Nobody was injured; the residents were able to escape out of a window.)× Read more →
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More posts →
(of all kinds:
articles, 
checkins, 
notes, 
reposts...)