Recently updated blogs

Where we started The first Government project I worked on was a licensing service, as part of the project, licence numbers were updated. That change stopped users from being able to log into a related service where they recorded their activity. In summary, our ‘service’ had broken someone else’s ‘service’. I’ve seen loads of examples of similar issues over the years. Usually the result of only designing parts of services …

This is a slight departure for Historical Ragbag, as I’ll be looking at a mythical figure. But it still involves research and a good story so I decided it still fit. In researching for my novel, it’s contemporary and with merpeople but based on Welsh history and mythology, I came across a figure who gets one tantalising mention in the Mabinogion. Dylan of the Wave. The Mabinogion is a series …

The fourth in the series about every year of Numberphile. Videos about Klein bottles, infinity, and coin flips.

Like a lot of you I first got interested in technology through audio equipment. More specifically, my Walkman. Growing up in a rural village being able to slip on some headphones and instantly transport myself to another world was magic. I was hooked as soon as I tried my mum’s Walkman. My parents gave me a cheap model of my own for my eighth birthday, and from that point I’ve …

Few alliance nations would ponder how the cadence of Netanyahu’s speech inside Congress put them under the spell of denial. This is akin to the Khmer Rouge (government in exile) that was invited to hold a seat in the United Nations until 1993. Continue reading »

Whether you're developer, DevOps engineer, SysAdmin, QA or in any other technical role, you're surely familiar with cURL - the command line tool and library for transferring data with URLs (as described in docs). Most of the time however, we all really only use curl for simple tasks, such downloading a file or checking if website is accessible, yet there's some much more curl can do! And in this article …

Making music on the Polyend Play+ with my new sample pack! TOY BOX - my sample pack!Check it out at polyend.com!

France, 1927: A rustic little cottageA 1.5-story house with a living/dining room, kitchen and a toilet on the first floor. The second floor contains two bedrooms.Maisons Pour Tous Vol. II - No. 12, 15 January 1927. (Paris, France) —from my library

Exploring different ways to make sense of OpenStreetMap data.

Reflections on my time as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Elon University, North Carolina. 1. Elon University · 2. Flora and fauna · 3. Teaching technology ethics · 4. The sport · 5. Being a Fulbrighter · 6. Life in the North Carolina Piedmont · 7. The national future. I try to arrive in the US as non-judgemental as possible, determined to reappraise America from first principles. Unrealistic perhaps, but …

This past weekend I was fortunate to be a participant in the “Relay FM 10th Anniversary Extravaganza”, a live show in London celebrating Relay’s decade of podcasting. Relay is the home of Under the Radar. We didn’t quite join at the start but have been part of the network for nearly 9 of those 10 years. This event got me thinking a lot about longevity, especially as it relates to …

I probably set up and configure (or reconfigure) at least ~5 computers a year for professional audio. A few years back I started configuring some machines to use Arch while continuing to mainly setup and use/support KDE Neon. The two Linux OSes share a lot (and can be functionally equivalent), but differ quite a bit… The post A New Computer appeared first on s c o t t e r …

More than 30 earths could fit between the earth and the moon. Our elementary school models of the solar system really undersell how big space is. The problem is, space is too big and human brains are bad at exponentials. Logarithmic charts like this one are technically accurate, but my brain has a hard time contextualizing it. To get an idea of how big space really is, let’s imagine that …

Laura Biagiotti's iconic Laura, with its aqueous character, has been so characteristic of its era that 30 years later it still springs forth in our minds as a 1990s staple, alongside L’Eau d’Issey (1992), L’Eau Par Kenzo (1996), Aqua di Gio (1996), Escape For Men (1993),and Eden by Cacharel (Indeed, I recently wrote a dedicated fragrance review & homage to Cacharel's Eden). Perfumer Anne