Because I'm a grumpy old man, I don't use Gutenberg or Block themes on my WordPress. Instead, I write everything in Markdown. When I write code snippets in Markdown, they look like this: ```php $a = 1; echo $a; if ($a < 5) { // Do Something return thing( $a, true ); } ``` But I want to render that with code highlighting. I was using the Prismatic Plugin. It is excellent and very…
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This has to be the most infuriating bug report I've ever submitted. I went to type in my 2FA code on a website - but no numbers appeared on screen. Obviously, I was an idiot and had forgotten to press the NumLock button. D'oh! I toggled it on and typed again. No numbers appeared. I switched to another tab, my numbers appeared when I typed them. So I was reasonably confident that my keyboard was…
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Oooh! This is an interesting slice of philosophical fiction. On the surface, it is a fairly standard story about a mysterious Victorian book which contains dark secrets and has since been lost to history. You probably know how it goes; our fearless heroine finds a long-lost copy, unlocks a weird world of intrigue, and is pursued by sinister forces. But then it hits the philosophy - and hits it…
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I've been using Android since before it was released in the UK. When I was working at Vodafone, I got a pre-release HTC device with an early version of Android on it. I've been pretty much in the Android ecosystem ever since. Recently, I treated myself to an upgrade - a Pixel 8 Pro. The biggest, fastest, fattest, AI-stuffed Android phone yet. It's pretty good! The camera is excellent, the…
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I want to make emoji bigger than the text that surrounds them. At my age and eyesight, it can be difficult to tell the difference between 😃, 😄, and 😊 when they are as small as the text. Is there a way to use CSS to increase the font size of specific characters without having to wrap them in an extra <span> or similar? Yes! Although it is a bit of a hack. This relies on 3 CSS features: src: lo…
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You can safely skip the first 45 minutes of this movie. It's the most clichéd Dead Poets / Breakfast Club nonsense I've seen in quite some time. As for the rest? Well… it is shot on film with a unusual aspect ratio. So, you know, that's cool... There's also lots of ✨acting✨ and quirky camera angles… The final third is your typical mismatched buddy movie. Isn't it funny that the old man and you…
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Recap - I want to build an NFC reader expansion card for the FrameWork laptop. So I've bought a couple of components. This is the ACR1251T-E2 - it's a USB pen-drive sized NFC reader with a side-out USB-A plug. Costs about £40. There's a recessed green LED which flashes to let you know that it is working. It doesn't beep or vibrate when it detects an NFC token. It is a little bit tricky …
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Recap - I want to build an NFC reader expansion card for the FrameWork laptop. So I've bought a couple of components. This is the ACM1252U-Z2 and Oh! It is a dinky little component! The only sign that it is working is a flashing green LED. There's no buzzer on the board. It really is a tiny thing. Side on it is almost invisible. Does it work with Linux? Oh yes! It has a Micro-USB port, so…
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If you got the chance to travel in time and space, with an immortal alien, and got to rescue the universe again and again - would you ever give up that life? Would you be content to go from unravelling the mysteries of the universe and fighting DALEKs to, I don't know, marrying a stranger or going back to your old life? The joy of Doctor Who is that we - the viewers - are the constant companion. …
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Humans are lazy. That's why we have computers; to do the boring work for us. I recently downloaded a file. The website said the file should have a SHA-256 hash of: ca978112ca1bbdcafac231b39a23dc4da786eff8147c4e72b9807785afee48bb So I ran sha256 filename on my machine. And then lazily compared the hashes. By which I mean "Yeah the first few characters match, as do the last few. It's probably…
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There are lots of one-man plays. There are a decent number of one-woman shows. Where are the one-girl stories? This is Rosie Day's attempt to fix that imbalance. The plot isn't particularly original (it is hard being a teenage girl!!!) but the way the story unfolds is magical. It is witty, irreverent, and cringey in just the right amount. Charithra Chandran has easily enough stage presence to…
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One of the most frustrating things in modern technology is the effort spent trying to artificially restrict abundance. Take, for example, this tale from museum-worker Aaron Cope: I was out with a friend who worked for Twitter and I asked them whether it would be possible for the museum to “create 200,000 Twitter accounts, one for each object in the Cooper Hewitt’s collection”. My friend looke…
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