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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A Selfhosted Static Site Editor
Inspired by the way that Nekoweb's editor 'Nekode' works, I came up with a low-effort way to let my eldest get started with HTML and CSS editing, right from her browser, with the results selfhosted directly from the household NAS. Read more →
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F-Day plus 97
It's been 97 days now since we were flooded-out of our home, and repair and rebuild work hasn't really even begun. But it's getting closer, and I'm looking forward to later this year sitting back in my own house (and probably at the piano!). Read more →
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Wikipedia @ 25: Yousuf Karsh
Wikipedia is 25 years old this year, and in celebration of that I found my way via a Mercurial crater to the article about Yousuf Karsh, one of the most-important portrait photographers of the 20th century. Read more →
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Wikipedia @ 25: Necker Island
Today, thanks to Wikipedia, I learned a lot about a miniscule Hawaiian island with an interesting cultural and archaeological history... after I found my way there from a random page about a hip hop album! Read more →
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Wikipedia @ 25: Lake Baikal
Today's random Wikipedia article was about a kind of seal that lives only in Lake Baikal in Siberia, which turns out to be a really, really big lake. Like: it's got about a fifth of the world's fresh water in it; that's how big it is! Read more →
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Wikipedia @ 25: Yo-Yo
This year is Wikipedia's 25th birthday, and as part of the celebrations I learned who Marcus Koh is... but that wasn't remotely as interesting as learning about the long history of the yo-yo! Read more →
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Built In Obsolescence
Pagan Wanderer Lu's released a cover album of his own music, where the cover artist is... AI. Some of the songs have come out quite well, and it gives me cognitive dissonance to enjoy art while disliking what its process represents. Read more →
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Wikipedia @ 25: Rail transport in Indonesia
Wikipedia is celebrating its 25th birthday, and today I'm celebrating by discovering what the Argo Wilis is, along with a dive into a rabbithole about rail transport in Indonesia! Read more →
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Wikipedia @ 25: Wesley Merritt
Wikipedia is celebrating its 25th birthday, and somehow as a result I ended up reading about Wesley Merritt, who was the shortest-lived Governor-General of the Philippines! Read more →
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More articles →
(articles are traditional long-form blog posts) -
If the Romans played bingo, do you think the callers would have used 'bingo lingo'?
- Legs two
- Growing up the wall, four
- Seagull in flight, five
- Long-nosed dead man, nineteen
- Pornography, thirty
- Use your tongue, fifty-nine
- Smiling in a blindfold, a hundred and one -
Wikipedia @ 25: Jim Marshall
Today's random Wikipedia article was Jim Marshall (photographer). I enjoyed reading about him and even looked up some of the many photographs that he took of musicians in the 60s and 70s, but decided that because I was literally just writing about a photographer that I learned-about on Wikipedia, it probably wasn't the time to write about another! Read more →
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Bloomscrolling & Agentic Intelligence
Aquarion's written about using agentic intelligence and the role of LLMs in various tasks. The conclusion's pretty solid, and I agree with it 90%+. Read more →
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Wikipedia @ 25: The Bugler of Algiers
Today's random Wikipedia article, which didn't make it into a full blog post or podcast episode like a few earlier ones did, was The Bugler of Algiers. This 1916 silent film, based on a novel called We Are The French, has no surviving copies and it's no longer even known what role some of the billed cast played in it! Among others, it starred Kingsley Benedict, who would later go on to feature in Fast and Furious! No... not that one... the 1927 silent comedy (which you can watch on YouTube... it's... about three times as long as it needs to be, IMHO). Read more →
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Rubberdogging
Rubberdogging, verb: attempting to invent a solution to a technical problem by explaining it out loud to a pet. From "rubberducking", the practice of doing so to an inanimate object, and "dog walking".
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Wikipedia @ 25: Presto Card
The Presto Card is Toronto and the surrounding area's equivalent of London's Oyster Card. I enjoyed learning about it, but I don't think it justifies a whole blog post of what-I-learned. Read more →
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CSS or BS
Keith Cirkel's made a game where you have to identify if something is a CSS property or a convincing fake. How's your CSS knowledge? Read more →
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The first glimmer
Zach of The One and I wrote earlier this year about 'glimmers', which he describes as the opposite of 'triggers'. I love both the word and its concept, and I'm going to try to cultivate a better personal awareness of the glimmers in my life. Read more →
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Two Croissants
I woke up with this in my head and had to draw it. Read more →
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This plant has sonehow managed to grow through the atrtoturf lawn of our temporary home!
Life... uh... finds a way? -
Observation:
Media franchises attract fandoms, and many get their fair share of character 'shipping (especially of the attractive characters).
Soccer also attracts huge fandoms... but I don't think I've ever seen or heard of "soccer slash" (even of the attractive players). -
Why, when I change the temperature on the thermostat of my Renault Zoe does it change the fan direction, too? Is this a UI affordance for people who want their faces colder but their feet warmer? I don't understand!
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Coding Is When We’re Least Productive
Jason Gorman shares a wonderful anecdote about a workday in which he wrote only three lines of code, but that he considers productive because he took the time to understand the underlying problem he was working on. Read more →
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Found GCBPAKM Grab a seat and Take in the View
Sat in the shade with my panting pupper and almost immediately spotted this clever cache container. A great location and an imaginative container! Definitely worth an FP from me. Read more →
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Found GCBPAMZ Not the Twiggist of finds
A good hiding spot for this type of cache, which the geohound and I found while on a walk this sunny morning. TFTC. Read more →
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More posts →
(of all kinds:
articles, 
checkins, 
notes, 
reposts...)