Shellsharks Blogroll - BlogFlock

Gamifying Snacking with Snacker Tracker - Kev Quirk

2026-08-19T14:39:00.000Z

So one of the things I've been trying to do as part of my journey to lose weight and get fit is sort my diet out. As the saying goes, "you can't out-train a poor diet". And the worst part of my diet is definitely snacking in the evening.

The routing generally goes:

Have dinner.
Put the kids to bed and settle down with my wife on the couch.
Crave snacks out of habit.
Get snacks and eat them!

I'm the type of person who finds an arbitrary thing to aim for very motivating. It's not enough to just want to stop snacking in the evening, nope. That shit will fail pretty quickly. But if I have a streak I have to maintain - now we're talking!

So I decided to build a simple little tool that I called Snacker Tracker. It's just a tap of a button every evening to say whether I've snacked or not, and it maintains a streak. Here's what it looks like on my phone:

Free pass & design

I decided to implement a free pass into the site as well. So I'm allowed to have 1 evening per calendar week where I can snack and it won't affect my streak - after all, I want to be able to have some fun!

I thought about bundling Simple.css in to make it look pretty, but I decided to have some fun with the CSS and went with a neo-brutalist aesthetic, which I think looks great. So much so that I'm thinking about re-designing this site in a similar way, but I've managed to hold off on that...for now.

Retrospective log

Snacker Tracker also has a way of adding days retrospectively, so if I forget to log a day, I can easily go back and do it:

I've only been using Snacker Tracker for a few days, but it's making me pause when that inevitable pang happens in the evening. I'm finding that instead of instinctively raiding the cupboard for some crisps or a chocolate bar, I'm thinking "don't screw up your streak" and not doing it.

I know I'm not hungry during the evening, it's just a habit. My hope is that with time I'll re-train my brain to not expect sugar in the evening, and the pangs will go away. Until then, I'm gonna continue tracking my snacks with this fun little site in the hope that it makes me form better habits.

But Kev, why don't you be a proper grown-up and just use your willpower?

-- All the internet people

Because, Internet Person, it's a habit that I don't even think about, and this forces my to think about it. Yes, I know it's arbitrary and rather childish, but it's working, so what's the harm?

Will you be releasing Snacker Tracker so we can try it?

-- Another internet person

Maybe. I threw it together pretty quickly and the code is rough. A lot of my spare time is focussed on Pure Blog and Pure Comments at the moment, so I don't think I'll have the time to clean the code up to the point where I'm happy to release it any time soon I'm afraid.

Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️

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Asymmetric Agents - Terence Eden’s Blog

2026-08-19T11:34:52.000Z

One of the promises of the AI-filled future is that we'll all have highly capable autonomous ~~servants~~ "agents" to work for us.

Even back in the 1990s, it was a common trope in future-gazing to insist that a person's personal ~~slave~~ agent would negotiate on their behalf. Ask your ~~meek digital pal~~ agent to find you a restuarant in town, tonight, for a hot date, catering to your dietary preferences, and within your budget. The little ~~butler~~ agent scurries off and, without your intervention, finds the perfect place, negotiates with the restaurant's ~~house boy~~ agent and books you a slap up meal.

Marvellous! You can tell your ~~manservant~~ agent to buy you clothes, reserve a flight, do the grocery shopping, or buy your wife flowers without having to lift a finger.

But, of course, there's a fly in the ointment. Not all ~~valets~~ agents are created equally. You're sending your Rasperry Pi powered ~~peon~~ agent against the full might of Amazon's bazillion datacentres.

Can a low-complexity ~~serf~~ agent be bullied, outwitted, and manipulated by a more capable ~~henchman~~ agent? It seems obvious to me that the answer is yes. Humans have a set of cognitive biases which render us susceptible to advertising tricks. AI may have different biases but will still be vulnerable to hypnosis and hacking.

Perhaps having my ~~secretary~~ agent negotiate with your PA agent to find a suitable meeting time for our Q2 KPI Deep Dive doesn't carry this sort of risk. But I'm sure that ~~scumbags~~ advertisers everywhere will be salivating at the thought of waylaying my innocent ~~footman~~ agent on its way to market.

A future where we delegate responsibility to ~~stochastic imbeciles~~ agents is one where we accept that we have no control over their susceptibility to more powerful and malevolent ~~thugs~~ agents.

Site and product updates - Johnny.Decimal

2026-08-19T09:44:52.000Z

Originally sent to the mailing list on Wednesday 2026-08-19.

Hey all. It's been a while; we've been busy. Rather than overload this update, I'll send a couple of short(er than usual) updates over the next few days.

Site changes

I've been tweaking the site homepage again.

The previous home and product pages had that 'sales page' thing going on. Large text, not a lot of it, kinda shouty. It was a new approach – for most of the site's ten-year life it's had a predominantly-text homepage: 2015, 2018, 2020, 2024, 2026. I'm glad I tried 'the shouty thing', once. Because now I know that I hate it and don't have to do it again.

Design is hard. I have no design training. I opted out of every art class at school in favour of science. I like to think that I have taste – I know nice when I see it. But knowing it and making it are two different things.

Thankfully, inspiration hit me in the form of Are.na's wonderful new homepage. Charles wrote about it here. I'm a big fan of their ethos and of his writing – I quote his Personal Business piece often.

Seeing their page it hit me, instantly: that this shouty page that I'd designed just wasn't me; wasn't us, Johnny and Lucy, this 'personal business'. The old page was my attempt at being a Big Company – something I don't want to be!

It's gone; blessed relief. In its place is a page that I hope helps you find the place you're looking for. I hope it's useful to the newcomers, who don't know what this thing is, and the long-timers, who know just what they're looking for.

I particularly like the new user flow. The page subtly changes when you go from signed out, to signed in with a free account, to signed in with access to products. Same place, same feel, slightly different story.

I'm proud of it. It feels like me. Let me know what you think.

Product name updates

We've updated the names of our products. So if you look in your new account page you might see unfamiliar words. Nothing has actually changed other than a name.

What was 'Life Admin System' (and then, very briefly, …(pack only)) is now a Personal membership.

What was 'Johnny.Decimal University' (then, briefly, 'The Life Admin System') is now a Pro membership. This better reflects what we're doing with it – there's a fledgling API you can use, and most of the AI tools (see below) will require a Pro account. I want to keep adding useful stuff – if you're Pro, you'll get it all.

And what was 'Small Business System' is now a Business membership. It includes everything in Pro.

What hasn't changed is that 'membership' doesn't mean 'subscription'. Pay once, access and updates forever. Nor have any of the prices changed.

Lifetime is back

For a while we sold a Lifetime membership option. Then I couldn't figure out where it should sit, so I removed it.

Enough people ask how they can support us, so I've put it back. You'll find it there on your account page. As with all of our products, it'll discount anything you've already paid.

For this extra money you get … not much, honestly! You get our eternal gratitude and love. You get everything we make in the future, but I can't promise what that'll be, if anything.

Our Lifetime members make a huge difference. When I say love, I mean it. Thank you all.

AI content coming

The next update will be about exciting stuff I'm doing with AI. I think it's really cool – but I know some of you aren't into it. There's a new button on the homepage. If you don't want to hear about AI, turn it on. I'll do my best to filter it out of the site (still some work to do, bear with me).

Do that in the next ~36 hours and I should be able to filter you out of AI-specific email. I haven't coded that up yet so no promises but I don't see why not. I should also be able to create an AI-free version of the RSS feed. I'll drop a post in the feed when I've done that.

Until next time,
j.

AI-free features now available - Johnny.Decimal

2026-08-19T09:39:21.000Z

For those of you not into AI, there are a handful of new features. There's a setting on your new homepage that, when checked, will hide most AI content on the site.

I'm not promising that you'll never see the letters 'AI'. But posts and pages that are predominantly about AI will be hidden. These posts are also hidden from your search results.

AI-free RSS feed

That setting doesn't carry across to the public RSS feed, so if you want the AI-free feed, resubscribe to https://johnnydecimal.com/rss-no-ai.xml.

Organising my blog categories - James' Coffee Blog

2026-08-19T00:00:00.000Z

My blog categories page has, until today, been designed with a functional mindset: the purpose of the page was to list all of the categories I use on my website. But, this week, I started thinking about how I could improve the page, to make it more of a hub to explore different parts of my site, and to elevate the different kinds of writing I do most.

One of my main design goals was for the page to be organised into groups, each group representing a different topic about which I write. As I started to work on this goal, however, I realised there were many more mini tasks waiting for me: some category pages were being overwritten by static pages I had made, I had a few pairs of categories that were identical (or almost identical) in purpose, some categories had not been used in years and their contents could be moved elsewhere. This led me to start reorganising posts in my categories. These tasks were broken down into:

Creating new categories that I have wanted for a while (i.e. Nature for my nature posts, Monostich for my monostich poems, SSGs for my static site generator posts, Quizzes for my quiz posts).
Consolidating categories (i.e. all the posts in the Programming category have now been moved into Coding, Designs and Design, which had been created with subtly different intents but were never used that way, have been consolidated into Design).
Removing categories that had been unused for a long time and could fit into a bigger category, and assigning new categories to posts under the category that had been removed. I only removed a handful of categories.
Adding new categories to posts that already had a category where the post content may be represented well by two or more categories (i.e. my HTML Day posts now have the Events category).
Changing categories that had been used by accident on a post.
Moving pages that were not really posts into different parts of my site (i.e. I had entries that I used for Breakfast and Coffee, a Webmention-powered wiki I made a few years ago, in my post list, even though they were written as wiki pages; these have been moved to be individual pages, rather than posts. I preserved the publication dates of the pages and made sure the old URL redirects to the new one).
Miscellaneous website changes that were required as a result of stumbling on old web pages (especially interactive ones) that were not working as expected. ¹

All of this work was manual, but it was worth it. I can’t go as far as to say I have organised my website, but my blog categories feel a bit more navigable than they were before. I still have a lot of work to do on backfilling posts into the Nature category, but at the very least I am glad that I have it ready for when I need it.

When I removed categories, I added a redirect to the category into which most or all of the posts had been moved. This ensures that any links to the old category do not break.

As I made these changes, I also worked on my aforementioned main design goal: to organise my category page into groups. I came up with a few super-categories that could serve as section headings under which related categories could be listed. These are:

Life, Art, and Writing, which includes categories like Life, Moments of Joy, Stories, and Poetry.
Web, which includes categories like IndieWeb, Web, and Advent of Bloggers.
Technology and Design, which includes categories like Coding, Ideas, and Technical Writing.
Coffee, which includes categories like Coffee, Coffee Interviews, and Steampunk Coffee.
Miscellaneous, which includes categories like Music, Book Review, Fun with Words.

Items in this list appear in order of the type of writing I do most at the moment and have the most fun writing. Categories within each super-category are ordered by the number of posts in the category. Importantly, more than one category can be assigned to a post, although I don’t do this often. This means that the page doesn’t represent a count of all posts on my site; a post may be tagged Life and Nature, and so appear in both of the respective category counts.

Here is a screenshot of the page as it is today:

ALT

The top part of my categories page, showing the supercategories "Life, Art, and Writing" and "Web" with the accompanying child categories below each heading.

As part of making this page, I did an experiment where I was going to show an asterisk next to the post count for categories to which a post had not been added for at least a year. I ended up removing this because it felt like the kind of design pattern that might make me feel bad for not writing in a specific category.

Separately, I also added an Uncategorised category (and a redirect from /uncategorized with a “z” to /uncategorised with an “s”, given that, even during development, I got them both mixed up, and will likely in the future). This lists posts without a category. Adding this category helped me find several posts throughout the history of my site that were never given a category. I have now added categories to those posts.

Right now, all the posts in the Uncategorised category are my announcements for episodes in my Wonders of Web Weaving podcast. I hadn’t assigned a category to those posts because I wanted the main list of episodes to be on the podcast website. I may make a category though since these I am unsure the extent to which having a separate category page would be a problem since all the posts related to the podcast already link to the main podcast website.

As I mentioned earlier, there is more work to do, but my category page feels like it is in a much better place than it has been before. As a result of the new design, I have added a link to my categories page with the anchor text “Explore” in the left sidebar of my website. If you have any feedback, do let me know by sending me an email.

One of the bigger changes I made was replacing all instances of my email address in a blog post with a link to my /email page, which lists my email address. I made my /email page a while ago to be the canonical page with information on how to contact me, but I hadn’t updated my old blog posts to use it until today.

[↩]

Breakfast and Coffee blog categories Coding Design sending me an email Events 1 [↩] Monostich Nature Quizzes SSGs Uncategorised podcast website

Now (August 2026) - Robb Knight • Posts • Atom Feed

2026-08-18T18:46:21.000Z

This update has been way too long - January was the last one. I kind of let weeknotes take over but they don't include the now part of a now page so I'm going to make an effort to update the now page every month while continuing with weeknotes in the sporadic fashion that I have been.

Doing...

We went to 4 Kingdoms which feels a bit more run down that some other places we've been but the Knightlings had a great time.
Baby Knight the second is starting at a new nursery next week which means both the Knightlings will be at the same place — this will make lunchtime pickups much easier.
I ordered a physical copy of Umbra because I want to try out a solo RPG and the idea of drawing a map as part of that really appeals to me. Had to order a mystery set of dice too, of course.
I want to do more (and get better at) drawing and incorporate that into my online things. Practice is the thing I hear that works. Sounds like a propaganda to sell more practice.
Prepping for the Relay and St Jude fundraiser with Adam. Sticker designs are coming along nicely, here's a peek at mine.

Making...

A new website design. This is taking a lot longer than I'd like because I just can't nail down the colour scheme.
A handful of small, single use tools similar to Doodle Scan and Favicons to Go.

Listening...

Connor Price and Nic D.
Lauren Sanderson's latest album, Lauren.
Zebrahead - O EP

Watching...

Superstore for the second time.
We just finished Paradise.
Up next on the list: Grey's season 22, Daredevil, Reacher season 4, and the new Futurama season.

Writing with...

Pink Lemonade TWSBI Eco 1.1 inked with Diamine Lady Grey
Pilot Prera stub nib inked with TPA Fire on Fire
Pilot Parallels

The Smell of AI - Kev Quirk

2026-08-18T17:26:00.000Z

The Smell of AI

by Kevin Wammer

Kevin talks about his opinions for various use cases for AI and LLMs.

Read post ➡

I started reading this post and thought to myself "oh here we go, another piece about how awful AI is..." but as I got further into it, I found myself nodding along.

While I don't feel as strongly as him about AI generated images I do agree with the premise of everything he said. It's refreshing to see some pragmatic opinions on AI and its uses as a tool.

Ended up being a good read.

Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️

You can reply to this post by email, or leave a comment.

Land of Eem returns, and Hunter x Hunter too - W33 - Joel's Log Files

2026-08-18T01:51:05.000Z

A lot of things have happened this week, the rain has been calming down again, the plumber finally fixed the issues that caused my shower to floor, so rain is no longer annoying. Let’s see how things went from August 11 to 18, 2026!

🍦 My sister is visiting! She’s the reason we got burguers last week. I can’t bother to explain the timelines of which siblings visit when or whatever, it’s summer and people come and go. This week we just went out as a family to get some ice cream together and shopping around in the local places, just chilling more at home.
🕵 Should also say, a couple days ago… my sister’s boyfriend—who I had never met before—arrived to visit too. I have been keeping an eye on the guy to see if he’s worthy, or else…
🧹 Did a pretty torough cleaning of my bedroom once again! This time it’s sticking, I hope.
🌮 Even though we didn’t go out, my dad did order some Tacos al Pastor to enjoy at home! This has been really tasty and I always get extra tacos for lunch tomorrow, which I’ve thoroughly enjoyed.
🥣 My mom has been buying these oatmeal packs that you just put on a bowl with hot water and maybe add some fruits to the mix and that has been my dinner for most of these past couple weeks. I must admit I don’t mind at all, the fruits are nice.
🎮 Ended up making another purchase for another Nintendo Switch Metroivania, this time it’s Nine Sols, which seems to be focused on having a pretty cool story and combat with parry mechanics. I hope I get good at it!
🎲 It happened! We returned to Land of Eem at last! One of the players from our first session was left behind, and a new one-time participant joined—the boyfriend—but most of the party was the same. We decided to do the adventure found in the Core Rulebook. I will definitely do another write-up about how it went.

An italiana (frappe), Nine Sols, a panel from HxH, Fire Emblem Awakening, my XTEINK X4 and an ongoing session of Land of Eem

Gaming

Fire Emblem Awakening - I am still in Chapter 19 of the story, that has a pretty steep level difference, but I actually managed to complete the Paralogue 13 with the Two Armies at last, after grinding for level ups in some challenge battles. I believe that, after another paralogue I unlocked (the 9th one), I will be able to progress on the story at last!
Donkey Kong ‘94 - I completed all of the Airplane levels, that was one of the most creative worlds so far, I enjoyed the puzzles with the air drag and the converyor belt platforms. I really had to see some things through a different perspective to get it. I finished all of it in a single sitting. I’m yet to do the next course.
Super Smash Bros Ultimate - I had a lot of fun getting a 6-player match of this going yesterday, it was super chaotic and actually challenging, with my sister’s boyfriend putting up quite the fight.
Outer Wilds I have been exploring more of the galaxy here, made an extremely important discovery and found some extra clues as to the mystery of it all…
Heavy Outer Wilds spoiler talk
- I found the cave shard and figured out "Quantum Entanglement" turning off my flashlight (I sadly got spoiled oops)
- I retroactively searched for the Lakebed Cave and found the original tutorial for Quantum Entanglement
- I avoided all the Ghost Matter and made it to the Eye Shrine in Sunless City too
- I went to the deepest level at the Sunless City leading to the High Energy Lab!

Reading

Started

The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hogdson - Chapters 1-8. Since mentioning it on my post about book translations, my interest was enough I thought I’d give it a go. I am actually reading this in both Spanish and English based on my mood and the paragraph, going through both translations and switching when some description gets confusing.

The book itself is one of those “lost book” types, where two men find this old journal that belonged to some old man in his solitary house. This work inspired H.P. Lovecraft and the cosmic horror genre, and it took me on an dreadful interdimensional voyage in less than two chapters. I recommend listening to the soundtrack of videogames like Resident Evil as you let the pages get a hold of your mind.

Ongoing

Hunter X Hunter - Chapters 397-401. I finally returned to this awesome manga since I didn’t realize they have started to release new chapters at last. I have to admit though, the story is getting a bit convoluted and I had to backtrack a few chapters to remember what was going on. There’s a lot of characters doing a lot of things from multiple perspectives, genuinely like a dozen people protagonizing different parts of the plot. I enjoy seeing these characters again though, Kurapika is awesome.

Completed

Clarkesworld Magazine #211 by Neil Clarke - I finished reading all of the stories, and all of the non-fiction (interviews, essays and such) and thoroughly enjoyed this. It’s the only Sci-Fi magazine I’ve read, but I already enjoy the format. My review is already up on my website.

Around the Web

No actual descriptions this time around, I am a little late posting these! You should check out all the posts though.

Blog Posts

I Was Always a Paper Person - hurray!
I Quit Mastodon - it happens sometimes.
Workspace and workflow - I love the old school illustrations.
You Really Should Read The Expanse - I’ll do a post like this soon.
Going viral is kind of scary - Hacker News is yes.

YouTube

If Star Wars had a $10 Budget - Full Movie - yep it’s the full movie.
Hulk Hands: A Cultural Autopsy - I always wanted these as a kid.
So…Where Did the Double Jump Even Come From? - a question I didn’t know I had.
A new fan’s perspective on the NES Final Fantasy games - Laura played these before I did RIP.
Third places won’t save us. - cool interesting essay I guess.

This is day 20 of #100DaysToOffload and day 15 of #Blaugust2026

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Wonders of Web Weaving, Episode 15 - James' Coffee Blog

2026-08-18T00:00:00.000Z

The fifteenth episode of Wonders of Web Weaving is out:

In Episode 15, I chat with Zoe, the author of zoeloukia.bearblog.dev about, among other things, writing on personal websites, making art from whatever is around, zines, and more.

I hope you enjoy the episode!

Wonders of Web Weaving also has an RSS feed you can use to follow along from wherever you get your podcasts.

The fifteenth episode of Wonders of Web Weaving is out Wonders of Web Weaving also has an RSS feed Zoe zoeloukia.bearblog.dev

And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway - Terence Eden’s Blog

2026-08-17T11:34:24.000Z

In early February 2011 Egypt was in the middle of a political revolution. One morning, everyone's phones suddenly pinged with an alert.

The Armed Forces asks Egypt's honest and loyal men to confront the traitors and criminals and protect our people and honour and our precious Egypt.

A series of messages arrived all ostensibly from the network provider Vodafone. All pro-regime and all with the undercurrent of violence.

Why did Vodafone send these messages? Earlier in the week, all Internet access was cut off now phones were blasting propaganda to the masses.

After the network went down, Vodafone issued a statement saying:

It has been clear to us that there were no legal or practical options open to Vodafone, or any of the mobile operators in Egypt, but to comply with the demands of the authorities.

Do you have to follow orders? Do you have to obey the law even when it is unjust? Should multinational corporations instruct local executives to be loyal to their parent company or the rulers of the country they live in?

After the messages came in - including promises that "The Armed Forces cares for your safety and well being and will not resort to using force against this great nation" - Vodafone Global, safely ensconced in the UK, put out another statement:

Under the emergency powers provisions of the Telecoms Act, the Egyptian authorities can instruct the mobile networks of Mobinil, Etisalat and Vodafone to send messages to the people of Egypt. They have used this since the start of the protests. These messages are not scripted by any of the mobile network operators and we do not have the ability to respond to the authorities on their content.

Vodafone Group has protested to the authorities that the current situation regarding these messages is unacceptable. We have made clear that all messages should be transparent and clearly attributable to the originator.

Statements - Vodafone Egypt

A few years later I was at a networking event chatting to a guy. We'd both previously worked for Vodafone. Me in the UK, he in Egypt. I asked him about the incident - he talked about how they built the SMS infrastructure, what they did to secure it, how they prevented spam, and how one day armed men arrived.

I suspect most of us have seen a movie where some flunky in an office refuses the baddies demands to open the safe, and then gets shot in the head. Perhaps you think that's a noble death? He lived with honour and refused to yield! But, in every movie I've seen, the guy's subordinate opens the safe anyway and gets to live.

But we're technologists, right? We can build fail safes and cryptographic proofs and simply build infrastructure that can't be abused.

And then the men with guns come and tell you what to do.

I've written before about Civic Hygiene - it's the idea that we should be mindful of the ways that our technologies could be misused. The term was coined back in 2010 by the technologist Bruice Schneier

It's bad civic hygiene to build technologies that could someday be used to facilitate a police state.

But what do we mean by that?

We don't want backdoors in security products - lest hackers break in or evil governments get elected. But we want a way to access our beloved ones' data after they die. It's important that we know that photos haven't been manipulated by propagandists and saboteurs. But we want to send funny memes about that politician we don't like. We don't want police stalking ex girlfriends' cars - but we want dangerous drivers prosecuted.

We want to be alerted about imminent threats, but don't want Governments to use that power for ill.

Way back in the early 2020s, I had a minor role in the UK Government's adoption of Common Alerting Protocol the technology which powers cell-broadcast emergency alerts.

Even back then, one of the discussions was around whether the utility of being able to send an unavoidable push notification was worth the risk that someone would send an inappropriate message. Fresh in everyone's minds was the false alarm saying missiles were heading to Hawaii.

Too many safeguards means that a genuine alert doesn't get sent in time. Too few safeguards and you can blame "Human Error" for any mistakes.

I don't know which safeguards are in place for the UK's system - and most details are exempt from Freedom of Information requests. But it is both easy and fun to speculate on how such a system might be designed.

The Government generates an alert. It specifies where and when the alert should be sent. It sends that message to the network operators via a secure and private channel. Perhaps they also do some out-of-band verification like having the network operator call a pre-determined phone number to check the message's validity.

At which point, the operator can choose to send the message or not.

Or can they?

In August 2026, the UK government instructed network operators to send this message:

Did the networks have to send that message? If they thought it wasn't serious enough, could they have refused? As far as I can tell, the law only talks about the fact that operators can disregard "spam" laws in order to send a mass message:

A relevant public communications provider (P) may, for the purpose of providing an emergency alert service, disregard the restrictions on the processing of data relating to users or subscribers set out in paragraph (2) if the conditions set out in paragraph (3) are met.

[…]

(3) The conditions are—

(a)P is notified by a relevant public authority that—

(i)an emergency within the meaning of section 1(1) of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 has occurred, is occurring or is about to occur;

Statutory Instrument 2015 No. 355

I'm no expert, but I can't see anything in the spectrum licence nor in the Wireless Telegraphy Act which compels operators to process these messages.

The usual British way is to ask people to play nicely and threaten them with regulation if they don't.

Could the networks have refused to send the message about wildfires - or indeed any other message? If your least favourite politician gets their hands on the emergency alert system and tries to abuse it, would you want the networks to stand up to them?

What if the network refuses to send the message because they're worried alerting people about a hurricane will lower the company's profits?

What if armed thugs are sent in and the choice is send the message or die?

I don't know what the answer is here. I think most people agree that it is broadly sensible to have a way to alert the population of emergencies. There's no mass media any more, we're not all listening to a single radio channel, or reading newspapers, or even on the same social media platforms. Sometimes there are emergencies and the Government has a duty to alert people to them.

How would you design a system that simultaneously achieved all these goals:

Rapid sending of messages
Careful checking of the content of messages
Ability to quickly target a specific geographic area
Inability to mistakenly send a test message
Requiring strong proof that the message is authentic before sending
Resilient enough to work after significant damage to infrastructure
That networks have the ability to vet and ignore
That networks are compelled to send
Which can only be used for good
And cannot be used for evil.

In truth, having experienced fire-starters, I'm not bothered about the contents of this latest message from the UK Government. Given the overstretched fire service and the imminent threat across most of the country, my personal opinion is that it is proportionate.

But it is easy to see why some people feel this might open the gateway to messages which, at best, are irrelevant and, at worst, are similar to the insidious propaganda which appeared on the phones of Egyptians:

To every mother-father-sister-brother, to every honest citizen. Preserve this country as the nation is forever.

Perhaps you can think of a way to design an alerting system which cannot be abused - but I can't.

Favicons to Go - Robb Knight • Posts • Atom Feed

2026-08-17T11:11:08.000Z

The final thing I always do for a project is make the favicon and open graph image but finding a site not riddled with ads to generate these has always been a bit of a challenge. I've mostly been happy with RealFaviconGenerator although there's just too many options for my liking. I've long^[1] had a todo item to try and make my own version that runs entirely client-side and asks the bare minimum of questions. I've now made it and it's called Favicons to Go. Thanks to Zoe for helping me with the name.

I wanted to make it as easy as possible to go from "I made an icon" to getting all the files I need without too much fiddling with options. Having said that, the site does have options for filling the background of transparent icons, generating an open graph image by centering the uploaded icon, setting the app name (used when saving web apps to your home screen), as well as choosing theme and splashscreen colour. All of this is stored to local storage so you can have your own defaults. Download gives you a zip of the files to put into a project. All done client-side.

From the code side, the icons are rendered to hidden canvases, then converted to png on download. For the favicon, I had to adapt a node script to build it manually. Most of the uploading and local storage code was ripped from DoodleScan. The zip generation is done with fflate.

Try Favicons to Go here.

I remember looking at this idea during lockdown in 2020 ⤾

2026-08-17 11:29: I regularly get marketing emails off the back of this site. "Here's a free license... - Kev Quirk

2026-08-17T10:29:00.000Z

I regularly get marketing emails off the back of this site. "Here's a free license for our tool" or "can we put a link to our service in a post?" At least back then they were slightly human.

Now all I get are AI generated shitty emails with no personality whatsoever. Not bashing AI, I'm bashing the lazy marketeers.

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I gave Claude my Johnny.Decimal index (video) - Johnny.Decimal

2026-08-17T07:16:29.000Z

Claude now hooks into my index via my skills and a config file. Everything talks to everything very naturally – I barely have to say a word. I'm about to refresh these skills and I'm building an MCP server. More soon.

I’m Old Fashioned by Ben Paterson - James' Coffee Blog

2026-08-17T00:00:00.000Z

Ruben and I are doing a writing challenge where we each gave each other three songs and we picked one to write about. From Ruben’s list, I chose “I’m Old Fashioned” by Ben Paterson. You can read about the song that Ruben chose from my list on his website.

The cover of the album on which Ben Paterson’s “I’m Old Fashioned” features, That Old Feeling is what first stood out to me before I started listening to the song. The cover depicts a pianist sitting with their back to the camera, playing a grand piano, in what I think is Washington Square Park in New York City. I visited Washington Square Park two years ago or so but when I was there I didn’t see many people. Whereas in the cover, the park is full: of people, of music. This makes me think about how a place can come alive at different times of day; how, even when a place is quiet, there may be music and life at different moments.

The song itself is delightful. Starting with a piano for the first ten seconds, Paterson then starts singing. The line “I’m old fashioned” sticks in my mind. I found myself singing the line in my head after I had heard the song. The lyrics take up only a small portion of the overall track, but the words all leave a strong impression. I found myself thinking about how I, too, am a bit old fashioned in Paterson’s definition: I love the moonlight and the sound of rain.

After the opening lyrics, there is an instrumental where the piano is the most prominent instrument until around 2:30, where the strings that had previously been in the background take over. At 4:00, a double bass (?) comes in, performing short solos and exchanging the stage with the piano. Then, toward the end of the song, the same lyrics that were sung at the beginning are sung again. I really enjoyed this structure of an opening instrumental, lyrics, a long instrumental, and then lyrics again. The song has a great rhythm throughout, to which I found myself bobbing my head many times.

I usually listen to pop music, and so Ben Paterson’s “I’m Old Fashioned” was a bit outside of my comfort zone. With that said, the song was terrific, and has me thinking about what other old fashioned things I do, and the things I have learned to do and know I should practice more. Indeed, from the title to the lyrics to the rhythm to the imagery on the cover, this song is full of things to analyse.

I’m Old Fashioned Ruben You can read about the song that Ruben chose from my list on his website

Finished reading The Palace Job - Molly White's activity feed

2026-08-16T15:13:56.000Z

Finished reading:

Rogues of the Republic series, book 1.

The Palace Job

by Patrick Weekes.

Published 2012. 438 pages.

Started July 17, 2026; completed August 16, 2026.

Who am I reading during Blaugust? - Joel's Log Files

2026-08-16T14:35:52.000Z

There is a huge list of people participating for Blaugust and you can go to Andreas’ website if you want a full OPML file to simply import to your RSS Reader.

Personally, I haven’t added too many new people to my feed, but there have been a few which I’ll share!

Fyr.io - Matt seems like a pretty cool guy! he is not super active or posting daily, but he’s definitely posting plenty of interesting things. The one post that caught my eye this month is the one about patient gaming.
Kelson Vibber - This guy with a cool name has plenty of thoughts on tech and life, similar to mine. His post on planned obsolescence vibed with me. He also reads lots of sci-fi, many works I don’t even know of too!
WC Robinson - This is a pretty big website with lots of posts and when I saw their series about the games that shaped them I guess I just had to add them to my RSS feed. Good taste!

Admittedly, I am not following a lot of new people here, and I haven’t even reached out to all of these yet. I hope they see this post though and I’ll probably send it to them too.

Of course, I am also keeping an eye on some of the friends I have already. Such as:

Syl, who continues to share her awesome thoughts on gaming and other shenanigans like music and gaming, as well as life updates I enjoy to read.
OrbitalMartian is taking a slower approach, but has plenty of variety regarding tech, software and random life shenanigans.
Ariadne, who keeps sharing her notes on productiviy and tech, plus plenty of music and book recommendations, who end up in my backlog.
Sam from The Tangent Space is a favorite of mine, sharing his history with gaming, weekly digest updates and the like, very good stuff!
Jedda, despite the difficult moments on her life, has taken this event as a personal challenge, and she is doing fantastically.
Naty, a great friend who is passionate about a lot of things and documenting her journey learning about blogging and the indieweb!

There’s plenty others I follow, but I’m running out of time today. So here’s another short list with a few more!

Enough already, go read those if you don’t have enough with my own posts ;)

This is day 19 of #100DaysToOffload and 14 of #Blaugust2026

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2026-08-16 14:35: Working great 👍🏻 - Kev Quirk

2026-08-16T13:35:00.000Z

Working great 👍🏻

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2026-08-16 14:22: Last November I replaced my oldest son's PC with an £88 iMac that was so... - Kev Quirk

2026-08-16T13:22:00.000Z

Last November I replaced my oldest son's PC with an £88 iMac that was so successful that I'm now doing the same thing again for my youngest son!

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Thoughts on visiting the Edinburgh Fringe as a newbie - Terence Eden’s Blog

2026-08-16T11:34:21.000Z

This was my first ever time at The Fringe™. Here are some scattered thoughts looking at the good, the bad, and the annoying aspects of this madly extravagant exhibition of talent. We saw 23 shows together, and one separate show each. There were more hits than misses, but the frustration of wasting your time on a bad show is rather heavy when there are literally hundreds of other shows on offer.

Price

Everything is too expensive. We found student accommodation which was a "mere" £220 per night. I guess that wasn't too exorbitant considering the gouging going on elsewhere - and it did come with a decent breakfast. It was about a 20 minute walk from the Royal Mile, with several performance venues on the way.

The 46 tickets we bought cost us £550 in total - which included a few donations at Free Fringe shows. So an average ticket of £12, which isn't too bad, I guess. You can certainly do things cheaper by only going to free shows and running away when they ask you to pay - but that's a dick move.

£20 for a single hour of stand-up feels like kind of a rip off at times - especially with the mandatory £1.50 booking fee for every ticket. Some shows are a bit cheaper, and Monday/Tuesday has 2-for-1 offers. But it's easy for a couple to spend well over a hundred quid per day seeing 3 or 4 shows.

Festival food and drink prices are inflated - but there's no shortage of supermarkets if you want a meal deal. Restaurants were usual city centre prices. The bars at festival venues were fully taking advantage of their captive audience, but the pubs aren't much cheaper.

The App

In theory, the app / website is good. In reality they're both a bit frustrating to use. Every time I ticked the box saying "remember my credit card details" and every time it forgot them. Both app and website frequently timed out, failed to add tickets to baskets, and were a bit shonky. The one thing this needs to do is reliably take my money and give it to performers - but it felt like a battle every time.

We missed one show because we couldn't buy a ticket in the app despite being in the queue. The door staff didn't have the ability to sell us a ticket (although some venues can) and directed us to a box office which was dealing with a bunch of people who were bemused that they couldn't pay in dollars.

Inexplicably, the app doesn't have the ability to see show reviews, even though they're present on the website.

There's a good "Nearby Now" feature which is handy when you're exhausted and don't want to trek far. By contrast, there's no easy way to see what's on near the next venue you're going to.

Searching for shows often returns events which are cancelled or sold out.

I wish it were possible to see which shows had undersold and were starting soon. I loved taking a punt on an unknown act who only had half-a-dozen people in the room. Sadly there's no way to grab last-minute deals.

This isn't helped by the total collapse of mobile signal in Edinburgh centre. I tried with a variety of SIMs but frequently only got a trickle of data.

What To See

The FOMO is real! Every show's poster makes it look amazing. The earnest performers desperately handing out leaflets for their own shows are so enthusiastic. Everyone you speak to in a queue has a "must see" which is probably sold out.

We mostly avoided seeing big names. They'll be on telly soon enough or tour down in London. I don't think that act who was big in the 1990s needs my coin as much as some up-and-comer.

You could easily fill a week seeing nothing but Shakespeare in a variety of styles. Or just watch middle-aged white guys have mental breakdowns on stage because they're on their 3rd divorce. Or, as it turns out, fill your boots with Heated Rivalry shows.

We did the tasting menu and had a little bit of everything. It was mostly pretty good with only a few duds.

Reviews

Even the worst show we saw had a couple of people who declared it the funniest thing ever five stars lol. You can't account for someone else's taste.

I enjoyed writing my reviews - and I hope they were useful to others - but you're mostly on your own when it comes to what's good. I suppose if you wait until later in the festival there will be more of a consensus about what to see.

My philosophy is to take a punt on basically anything that doesn't look too abhorrent. Even if it is shit, there's be something else along in a minute which will be better.

Distance

You'll get your 10k steps in before lunchtime - Edinburgh is a delightfully walkable city. With a bit of planning you can walk a straight line from show-to-show. We didn't plan and traipsed back and forth like the little lost tourists we were.

Venues are mostly well sign-posted. Again, the app is a bit crap at pointing them out, but it'll open your mapping app to navigate you there.

Many of the venues are in historic buildings, so don't expect lifts or escalators. Stairs all the way, baby!

Harry Potter

Edinburgh seems like an inclusive and trans-friendly city. Half the acts on the Fringe proudly stated their LGBT+ credentials and most venues we went to had gender neutral loos.

And then every other shop proudly boasts it is 100% definitely where JKR got the inspiration for Harry Potter. Tourists are schelpped between "Diagon Alley" and probably-the-cafe-where-she-wrote while slurping down dayglo butterbeers.

Truly the duality of life!

Comfort

There's an ancient Edinburgh byelaw which prohibits cushions on seats. No chair may be wide enough to accommodate anything other than the skinniest arse. It also places a moratorium on legroom.

Ok, some of the venues were more comfortable than others, but prepare for a bit of backache.

Toilets are plentiful in most venues, and theres no shortage of pubs to pop in to if you need refreshment or relief.

Scotland isn't known for its heat, but some of the venues desperately need air-conditioning in their foyers and auditoriums. A few were handing out free water to the swealtering punters - but probably best to bring your own

Would I Come Here Again?

Yeah! I reckon so! Probably not next year, and probably with more of a plan about which "must sees" I wanted to see.

Staying closer to the centre is more expensive, but might have made it easier to see some if the shows later in the night.

There is so much talent, so much variety, and so much joy in the city that it becomes rather infectious.

If you can afford the train fare, hotel costs, tickets, booking fees, pints, chips and all the other people desperate to stick their hands into your wallet - then it is a great adventure.

Inspiration from physical artefacts - James' Coffee Blog

2026-08-16T00:00:00.000Z

This evening I was on a wonderful call about websites where, at two points, I reached for books that were around me as a visual reference. One of the books was “Mini Louvre”, a gift given to me that contains images and information about various artworks in the Louvre. We ended up talking about how there should be more picture books for adults. This led me further to think about my use of Mini Louvre in the last week.

I was looking for inspiration for a blog post and I decided to flick through the Mini Louvre book. I didn’t go in with any aim in particular, rather I wanted to skim the pages and see what I could find. I do this sometimes with poetry books too. The way I decided on the poem “Repeat that, repeat” for the collaborative challenge I did with Ruben was that I opened some of my poetry books, flicked through, and chose one that was short and seemed approachable in terms of analysis. I loved the practice of flicking through the book and seeing what stood out, almost as if I was wandering aimlessly through a world of poetry – and, in the case of Mini Louvre, of imagery and art history.

This has me thinking about what a “reference” book means. I have thought for the longest time of reference books as being more text-heavy, and more technical. Dictionaries, style guides, compilations of quotations, domain-specific references, and more all fit into this. But for me, poetry anthologies have been useful for reference, and, further, inspiration. So too was Mini Louvre; my perusing didn’t lead to any particular work, but it did give me a moment with art where I noticed something that was relevant to an idea I had. In a way, I was doing research without really realising it.

Earlier this week, I was looking through an art magazine I had lying around, and a particular work of art in a photograph in an advert stood out to me. My interest in the piece took me down a rabbit hole that led to me learning about an art collection I didn’t know about, and was quite a fun adventure. I loved how flicking through a magazine led to something of an adventure.

I am wondering whether I should add a few more art books to my shelf for when I want to flick through and see different images. I find the web a bit overwhelming for this purpose, both in terms of imagery and poetry; there are so many things to look through, and it is so easy to scroll. Whereas in a book I can open the work at a random page, look at what I see, and sit with it without feeling the pressure of having to keep going as I do when I am perusing an online image gallery.

I have three books about art that aren’t textbooks: a book of Monet’s work, Mini Louvre, and a book made for the Art of Manga exhibition that the de Young Museum in San Francisco held. For the latter book, I didn’t go to the exhibition but it looked so cool that I knew I wanted to have a physical artefact I could read. The print quality is delightful, and I have greatly enjoyed looking through and reading it. The book hasn't inspired me in a specific way, but it did satisfy my curiosity, and I love that it is there on my shelf whenever I want to learn a bit more about manga design.

I have been thinking too how it would be nice to have more zines also for creative reference. I would love to make zines and think it would be helpful to see how more people do them, just as I surf the web and explore websites to see how other people are using the medium of the web. I have a few handwritten zines in my collection which I love but I am also curious if there are zines of typewriters, or zines that are all images, or zines that are collages.

I am curious: do you collect any physical artefacts – books, zines, maps, exhibition guides, or whatever is relevant to you – for future creative reference? If so, I would love to hear your stories! Feel free to email me with your thoughts.

Mini Louvre email me Art of Manga exhibition that the de Young Museum in San Francisco held