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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Vanity Nameservers (White-Label DNS) in 2026
Back in 2006, adding vanity nameservers to my personal domains was just something I did as a matter of course, but - like most of the Internet - I don't bother any more. Until today, when I switched danq.me's nameservers to four subdomains of danq.me. For the sake of nostalgia! Read more →
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A Postcard from Tony (who the heck is Tony‽)
I received another Postcard From The Internet; this one's written on a very unusual medium, and that's not the only thing that's odd about it... another thing is that I can't work out who its from, beyond the first-name-only with which they've signed the card. Who are you, Tony? Read more →
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Boring Polyamory: Equality and Bedrooms
The other month, I described my polyamory as 'boring', which attracted lots of interesting questions and feedback. Let's address the first one - why does my partner not have a bedroom of 'her own', even though both of her partners get one? Read more →
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Three(ish) Weeks In Spain
With exceptions for those of us who had work to do at the start or end, my family and I just spent three weeks hopping around the East of Spain, featuring surfing, a theme park, exploring, dodging the heat, and - of course - a total solar eclipse. Read more →
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Geocaching.com Can't Count? (my 1000+ geocache finds!)
After finding over a thousand geocaches, I wanted to check my total with the largest of the geocache listing sites I use, and discovered that you can't get the same answer twice from it even if you ask it three times for an answer. Wot? Read more →
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Casa Ventola
I'm spending the week on the East coast of Spain, hoping to see the imminent solar eclipse. And in the meantime, I've been finding local geocaches (including my thousandth!) and exploring the local sights with my family. Read more →
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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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More articles →
(articles are traditional long-form blog posts) -
Found GC9BHWG Watercress beds
Despite immediately honing in on exactly the right host, it still took me an embarrassingly long time to find this cache. This, despite having found – and even hidden – cache contsibers of exactly this type before!My usual technique for lazily finding them, which involves swooping my phone through likely hiding spots with the camera […] Read more →
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Found GC8ZWZ3 Letcombe Bridges 1
QEF while passing through the village on a circular walk. TFTC! Read more →
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Wrote note for GC4H2MB Church Micro 4008…Letcombe Regis
Found the grave, but this is now the second offset I’ve found here that’s asked me to double-back on my walk. Nope! I’m just going to save the calculated coordinates for the next time I’m in the area! Looking forward to returning! Read more →
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Wrote note for GC9F5YC GIs in Letcombe
Found the clues and solved the coordinates, but I’ve JUST walked past the final location a while ago and don’t feel like doubling back today! A=How many letters in the word underneath Knoxville? B=A*2 C=Number of letters in place where “Beckett” came from. D=C+1 E=F Number of letters in the word underneath Knoxville divided by 2 […] Read more →
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Found GC9QWHD Plankton's cache
Like many before me, from the looks of things, I didn’t find the cache at the published coordinates but about 11 metres away at N 51° 34.086′, W 001° 26.441′. Possibly worth the CO checking if those coordinates work better for them, too, during their next maintenance visit. TFTC! Read more →
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Found GC93M2N Segsbury Fort
A challenging but worthwhile find during a walk along and around the Ridgeway.My initial attempt to collect the coordinates was way off because I misinterpreted some of the instructions and it yielded a point almost 2km away! My second attempt looked better, giving a likely-looking spot… but the checksum was out by one!I triple-checked all […] Read more →
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Found GC46RY8 It really is about the (2 millionth) cache
This morning I came up to explore the Ridgeway and escape from thinking about Life Stuff for a bit. (Although escaping from the rain wasn’t a possibility! It was real wet up here today!)I was wandering this path in a bit of a reverie when I spotted something unusual and thought it a good candidate […] Read more →
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Found GC39X1K GH #11 twisted tree
Found cache contents first, some of which I was only able to identify thanks to the photo in the previous log. Cache container, minus lid, was found a reasonable distance away, but this badly-damaged, nearly-destroyed cache is a goner, I feel.It’s seen no owner maintenance in most of a decade and CO doesn’t seem to […] Read more →
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Found GC39WVC G h # 10
A few attempts at hacking through the brambles to get near the hint location had me thinking that perhaps this was a wintertime only cache… before I realised that there was a different route by which I might approach it. Soon I was directly atop the coordinates and immediately sighted what I was looking for.Unfortunately […] Read more →
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Found GC4H2N6 Church Micro 4009 ... Letcombe Bassett
A quick diversion before a hike up Gramp’s Hill and along the Ridgeway. After collecting the required information I pressed on to the cache, meeting some friendly ponies and horses on the way.The coordinates were spot on, which surprised me as the location didn’t seem to be accessible! But it is, just a little overgrown! […] Read more →
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Found GCBX0JC Church Micro 12106...Standlake
After a walk out with the dog to claim the FTF on nearby GCBX0R7, I figured that I still had a little a few minutes on my hands before the code I’d been writing for my day job finished deploying and testing itself, so I thought I’d try to go two-for-two with this, a second […] Read more →
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Found GCBX0R7 War Memorial #???? ~ Standlake
After liaising with the CO to get the formula fixed following my previous effort, the geohound and I came out for a drizzly walk in-between the downpours to have a second attempt at the FTF. We’re living in Standlake temporarily while our house is repaired following a catastrophic flood earlier in the year, and while […] Read more →
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Did not find GCBX0R7 War Memorial #???? ~ Standlake
Well I feel especially thick right now. Probably I’ve done something stupid, but I rushed down here between-meetings in hope of an FTF, collected all the numbers, did the maths, and got… the same coordinates I started with! Wot?The checksum even works out with the original coordinates, too! Which of course can happen organically but […] Read more →
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The IndieWeb Is Punk Manifesto
Jim Mitchell shared The IndieWeb Is Punk Manifesto. And it's excellent. Read more →
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'Simplified'
Well ‘thanks’ for the ‘simplified’ statement, I guess? × Read more →
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More posts →
(of all kinds:
articles, 
checkins, 
notes, 
reposts...)