@Dtl
You're not the first to mention that.
I think it is pretty good. And I'm not looking to make a career out of it, so that takes some of the pressure off.
🆕 blog! “Book Review: Red Side Story - Jasper Fforde”
★★★★⯪
Fourteen years ago, I read Fforde's Shades of Grey and my life hasn't been quite the same since. It was a magical tale, almost totally devoid of exposition, building in an fantasy world like no other. Fans have been clamouring for a sequel ever since. The first few chapters of the sequel do an excellent […]
By and large, the English language doesn't use diacritical marks. Even our loanwords are stripped of them; we drink in a cafe rather than the more pretentious café. This has a consequence for HTML and, by extension, eBooks. As a quick primer, modern computing gives us two main ways of displaying a letter with an […]
@Edent The second dimension to this is to find a font for your ebook that supports these natively. My reader does show the correct glyph but if it isn’t present in the actual font it uses some kind of default and that is jarring.
Today was quite the accidental milestone! I've edited OpenStreetMap over a thousand times! For those who don't know, OSM (OpenStreetMap) is like the Wikipedia of maps. Anyone can go in and edit the map. This isn't a corporate-controlled space where your local knowledge is irrelevant compared to the desire for profit. You can literally go…
@mw1cgg@Edent if you enjoyed that experience, check out the Treezilla project! Mapping trees all across the UK. I'm not addicted, I can stop any time...
🆕 blog! “When does Doctor Who meet historical figures who are alive today?”
In a recent episode of Doctor Who, we see a lovely sequence where The Doctor has a nice chat with Paul McCartney of The Beatles. Great larks! The Doctor often meets real people - Dickens, Shakespeare, Rosa Parks. But, crucially, all those people are dead by the time the episode airs. Macca …
What's the lowest amount you've paid for something using a credit card?
Went to the market the other day and paid for a £2 punnet of fruit using a credit card. Guy was running Square on his phone, showed me the screen, I tapped, done.
I remember when everyone was £10 minimum for card payments, even in large shops. Now sole-traders can take instant payment for low value amounts. Brilliant!
@OliverC
I imagine shipping is a major cost. Bananas in America will not have to travel as far.
Our cost of living isn't dramatically different once you account for the USA's expensive health costs.
> You must carry out your responsibilities in a way that is fair, just and equitable and reflects the Civil Service commitment to equality and diversity
🆕 blog! “Book Review: Fallen Idols - Alex von Tunzelmann”
"History is not erased when statues are pulled down. It is made." Some people celebrated when Saddam's statue was toppled in Iraq. Yet those same voices condemn the felling of Coulson, Rhodes, and a dozen other statues. Why? Alex von Tunzelmann has a knack for getting to the heart of history in an accessible man…
@Edent also beware -- if you're not presenting off your own laptop (I imagine at EMF you would be, but just in case) and if you share the google slides with someone else, and those slides have a private video in, you have to share the video with them too separately. It isn't shared along with the slides. This bit me half an hour before going on stage at a conference, meaning panickedly trying to fix it from my phone...
Less than a year ago, in August 2023, we installed a 4.8kWh Solar Battery at a cost of £2,900. Whenever I talk about the upfront capital costs of solar power, people rightly want to know what the payback period is. Well, after less than 10 months, the battery has given us 1MWh. To put that […]