Edent

Edent, 2 years ago to random Dutch

Falsehoods (American) programmers believe about timezones.

Edent, 2 years ago to random

Other than planting trees etc, is there a viable method of carbon capture for the home?

Edent, 2 years ago to Electronics

No, you can't save £30 per year by switching off your "standby" devices

Every few years, a dodgy stat does the rounds claiming you can save £££ if you switch off all your gadgets at the wall. The standby mode of your TV is bleeding you dry!!!

https://twitter.com/EnergySvgTrust/status/1447185187956211712

This is known as

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/10/no-you-cant-save-30-per-year-by-switching-off-your-standby-devices/

#/etc/ #electricity #electronics #energysaving #green #power

Edent, 2 years ago to random

Time to check out my Direct Message Request Inbox on The Twitter.

(Kudos to the person roped both me & Hilary Clinton into a massive spam thread. She didn't reply.)

Edent, 2 years ago to random

EBCDIC is incompatible with GDPR

Welcome to acronym city!

The Court of Appeal of Brussels has made an interesting ruling. A customer complained that their bank was spelling the customer's name incorrectly. The bank didn't have support for diacritical marks. Things like á, è, ô, ü, ç etc. Those accents are common in many languages. So it was a little surprising that the bank didn't suppor

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/10/ebcdic-is-incompatible-with-gdpr/

#/etc/ #gdpr #name #unicode

Edent, 2 years ago to Health

Where are the high-tech dental implants?

When I was a kid, I had two of my adult teeth surgically removed. As such, I still have two of my baby teeth. And, as I get older, they're starting to wear down.

At every dental check-up my dentist prods them, gives them a wiggle, and sometimes takes an x-ray. "Well," they say, "They're fine for now…"

The "for now" is getting closer with every

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/10/where-are-the-high-tech-dental-implants/

#/etc/ #health #teeth

Edent, 2 years ago to random

Found lots of graffiti in an underpass near a school.

This is a vicious insult 🤣

Edent, 2 years ago to BBC

TTSF (Text To Shipping Forecast)

The BBC Shipping Forecast is one of those strange bits of national tradition which, somehow, bridges the gap between infrastructure and folklore.

You can listen listen to the latest forecast on the BBC - read by professional newscasters.

But what if we wanted a robot to read it? If our speaker is sick, bored, or too expensive - how would we automate the audio

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/10/ttsf-text-to-shipping-forecast/

#/etc/ #bbc #robot #tts

Edent, 2 years ago to random

Fun Fact!
You can view a web page's HTML on Android using either Firefox or Chrome.
view-source:http://example.com/
No need for plugins, emulators, or 3rd party services.

Chrome showing a page's source.

Edent, 2 years ago to random

SlideShare is selling your old slides - here's how to stop it

Remember SlideShare? It's where we used to upload PowerPoints back in the day. It was easier than emailing them around. I think. No one really remembers. I think they got bought by LinkedIn? Anyway, they're now owned by Scribd.

If someone visits one of your old slideshows and wants to download it, Scribd will char

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/10/slideshare-is-selling-your-old-slides-heres-how-to-stop-it/

#/etc/ #slides

Edent, 2 years ago to android

Gadget Review: Seek Thermal Compact Infrared Camera

Winter is coming! And, as such, I want to check which parts of my house are leaking heat. So, the natural solution is to buy an Infrared Camera and point it at things!

The Seek Thermal is a curious beast. While you can buy Android phones with built in thermal cameras, and dedicated devices, this is a

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/10/gadget-review-seek-infrared-camera/

#/etc/ #android #gadget #PIR206 #review #seekthermal #thermal

Edent, 2 years ago to academia

Opting Out of TurnItIn

The web service TurnItIn is a "plagiarism detector". Lots of universities use it to assess whether their students are copy-n-pasting content which they haven't written.

I'm not a big fan of it. First, I'll explain how to opt-out your websites. Then I'll explain why I don't like the service.

Block Their Robot

TurnItIn scans the web and records everything on your websit

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/09/opting-out-of-turnitin/

#/etc/ #academia #msc #turnitin

Edent, 2 years ago to random

Magnetic chargers are the future

Apparently, Apple plans to make a port-less iPhone which only uses wireless charging.

This is something I predicted 7 years ago!

Qi - the wireless charging standard - is excellent. Put your phone down on a mat, or in a cradle, and it starts charging. Lovely! But there's a problem. You can't pick up your phone while it's charging. How many times have you lain on

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/09/magnetic-chargers-are-the-future/

#/etc/ #mobile #qi

Edent, 2 years ago to art

Turning an eInk screen into a monochrome art gallery

Previously on Terence Eden's Blog: I turned an old eReader into an Information Screen.

This time, I'm taking a different Nook, and turning it into a magic gallery. Here's what it looks like in action:

https://twitter.com/edent/status/1440788013236195335

Video

With the front light off:

With

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/09/turning-an-eink-screen-into-a-monochrome-art-gallery/

#/etc/ #art #eink #images #nook #php #tutorial

Edent, 2 years ago to random

Upcycled an old eReader into an art frame.
Displays a new black & white piece of art from Flickr every few minutes.
Full write-up this weekend, but pretty straightforward to do.

The same frame showing a moody photograph.
The same frame displays a black and white drawing.

Edent, 2 years ago to random Italian

Predictions of the far future!

Edent, 2 years ago to random

Tell me Google Maps was made by Americans without etc etc.

Edent, 2 years ago to Amazon

Alexa leaks your private wishlists

This morning, my wife noticed that Alexa was insistently flashing its little blue lights.

"Alexa... Notifications?"

"You have one notification. An item on your wishlist has dropped in price. The … is now only £…"

And that's how my wife found out what I planned to get her for her birthday!

What happened to cause this? I maintain several Amazo

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/09/alexa-leaks-your-private-wishlists/

#/etc/ #alexa #Amazon #privacy #ux

Edent, 2 years ago to webdev

How to add ISSN metadata to a web page

Inspired by John Hoare at the Dirty Feed blog - I've asked the British Library to assign my blog an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN).

An ISSN is an 8-digit code used to identify newspapers, journals, magazines and periodicals of all kinds and on all media–print and electronic.

Why?

Shut up.

OK. It turns out that lot

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/09/how-to-add-issn-metadata-to-a-web-page/

#/etc/ #html5 #metadata #schema.org

Edent, 2 years ago to trans

Book Review: The Transgender Issue - An Argument for Justice by Shon Faye

Trans people in Britain today have become a culture war 'issue'. Despite making up less than one per cent of the country's population, they are the subjects of a toxic and increasingly polarized 'debate' which generates reliable controversy for newspap

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/09/book-review-the-transgender-issue-an-argument-for-justice-by-shon-faye/

#/etc/ #bookreview #NetGalley #trans #🏳️‍⚧️

Edent, 2 years ago to CSS

-webkit-text-stroke and emoji

The CSS property -webkit-text-stroke is a curious beastie.

MDN gives a big scary warning saying "Non-standard: This feature is non-standard and is not on a standards track. Do not use it on production sites facing the Web."

And yet, it works everywhere. All modern browsers support it. Except on Emoji.

Here's how it work. -webkit-text-stroke: pink 1px; draws a pin

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/09/webkit-text-stroke-and-emoji/

#/etc/ #css #html #html5

Edent, 2 years ago to chrome

What's the window size of a background tab?

Whenever I open Twitter in a new tab on my phone, the page layout looks weird for a few seconds. It starts out looking like the desktop view and then, after a few seconds, it snaps back to the mobile view.

What's causing this?

Try opening this link to a window size detector in a background tab. Then visit tha

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/09/whats-the-window-size-of-a-background-tab/

#/etc/ #bug #chrome #css #firefox #html5 #javascript

Edent, 2 years ago to workersrights

Outdated Advice For Job Applicants

I was recently asked to look at some advice for new graduates entering the workforce. It was the usual mix of helpful, obvious, and trite. You know the sort - tailor your application to the job specification, make sure your CV is spelled correctly, don't give up, etc.

In the middle of it, was this doozy. "Put your application in a gold coloured enve

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/09/outdated-advice-for-job-applicants/

#/etc/ #cv #recruitment #work

Edent, 2 years ago to twitter

Visualising Twitter Conversations in 3D Space

Here's set of visualisation I've been working on. Last night, at #TapIntoTwitter, I demonstrated a fun way to view your Twitter conversations as a force-directed graph in 3D space. I'm going to show it off to you, then explain how it works. This is a designed as a "fun" demo. Here we go!

https://youtu.be/prLJNhatAWU

So, what's going

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/09/visualising-twitter-conversations-in-3d-space/

#/etc/ #data #twitter

Edent, 2 years ago to random

Book Review: The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race - Ayanna Thompson

The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race shows teachers and students how and why Shakespeare and race are inseparable. Moving well beyond Othello, the collection invites the reader to understand racialized discourses, rhetoric, and performances

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/08/book-review-the-cambridge-companion-to-shakespeare-and-race-ayanna-thompson/

#/etc/ #bookreview #race #racism #shakespeare