Shellsharks Blogroll - BlogFlock

Mead Update - Cool As Heck

2025-11-08T21:46:48.000Z

If you've been reading this blog or following me on Mastodon, you'll know I've been making a watermelon jalapeno lime mead and a pumpkin pie mead.

I had my wife taste the watermelon one yesterday and she gave me the OK to go ahead and bottle it, so I did that today.

Photo: 6 bottles of golden watermelon jalapeno lime mead

I tasted the pumpkin pie mead today. The spice extraction seems to be pretty good at this point so I put that jug in the fridge to cold crash it and drop the spice particles so I can rack it into a new jug on Monday and back sweeten it with some clover honey. Hopefully the extra sweetness brings out the pumpkin flavor more and complements the spices nicely.

With those two jugs off the shelf, I decided to run over to the market and grab a jug of peach cider to make a ginger peach cyser. That's a half gallon of peach cider, 2lbs of orange blossom honey, and some EC-1118 yeast. After primary fermentation, I'll reach it and add a couple slices of frozen ginger in a brew bag for a few days, tasting it frequently as the ginger can easily overpower the peach flavor. I got a bottle of organic peach syrup to use as a back sweetener and for some extra peach flavor.

Now (November 2025) - Robb Knight • Posts • Atom Feed

2025-11-08T20:53:53.000Z

I'm hunting for the best pink ink to match with my Funky Town Estie. As always, Mountain of Ink is an incredible resource for such things and there was some good suggestions on episode 690 of the Pen Addict.

We're organising Baby Knight II's first birthday party because the passage of time comes for us all and she's nearly a year old somehow which means it's nearly Christmas. wtf.

Perpetually thinking about redoing my website, but I want to find the perfect body font before I start.

I'm trying out Bloom as a Finder replacement and I want to find some time to see how Affinity works for vector work now it's free. Pixelmator is good, but isn't really built for it.

We've been rewatching a bunch of Marvel movies while we're a bit short on new shows to watch but we did start Pluribus today.

22.00.0165 Find the hidden option - Johnny.Decimal

2025-11-08T09:00:00.000Z

Find the hidden option

I was trying to book a flight from Rome (FCO) to Bristol (BRS) yesterday. That's where we'll be at Christmas: my sister lives there. Lovely city, worth a visit.

easyJet flies the route, which is handy. Their advertised fare is €70. Not bad. So 2×€70 is about AU$250. Bearable. Within our budget.

Not so fast, of course. We'll need to upgrade our baggage as easyJet's default allowance is basically a bag of crisps. This is the first screen that you see after adding the base flights to your cart.

Figure 22.00.165A. easyJet's bundles.

That's … not as cheap any more. The middle column is what we need: it's the addition of the 'large cabin bag' I'm looking for. That's another €70 per person.

And we only need one of these upgrades: we can fit our larger stuff in Lucy's bag, and mine fits the 'small under seat cabin bag' constraints. But this screen is all-or-nothing. Two, or none. Double the cost.

AU$500 is no longer bearable. That's wonder-if-we-can-get-the-train-instead money, or the dreaded what-if-we-flew-to-Heathrow-and-caught-the-bus option.¹

We started looking at options. And then I thought…

Always look for the trick

These companies employ people whose job it is to design these 'dark patterns'. Be smarter than them.

I selected that leftmost column, 'get light'. No extras. And lo-and-behold, what happens in a handful of screens?

Figure 22.00.0165B. easyJet's baggage options.

Well he-llo there, an option to add a bag to a single passenger for a mere €42! That's €100 less than what we were initially presented. A massive difference to us.

This sort of thing is really common. But if you see the first option and think, that should be illegal! -- well maybe it is. Maybe you just have to find the hidden option. Always look for it.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

Normally I'd love the option of taking the train from Rome through Italy, France, and under the Channel, but the week before Christmas? Nah, let's not mess about. ↩

Published on Citation Needed: "Issue 96 – Redefining solvency" - Molly White's activity feed

2025-11-07T19:29:52.000Z

Published an issue of Citation Needed:

Issue 96 – Redefining solvency

Sam Bankman-Fried makes his case for a retrial and aspiring crypto banks hit roadblocks

Rockbox for Innioasis Y1; or, a ramble on installing stuff - Joel's Log Files

2025-11-07T18:00:00.000Z

I’m still playing around with the Innioasis Y1 music player, and I thought to installing Rockbox on it might be a worthy endeavour.

Rockbox is an alternative software that works on lots of music players, most commonly used with modded iPods. It fulfills a similar function to what KOReader does for Kobo, Kindle and other e-readers. It’s free, more powerful, more compatible, and more customizable.

This is not a tutorial—here’s a decent one from Reddit—just some thoughts and observations about the whole thing thus far. Yes I am aware the tutorial tag is there.

The community developed Innioasis Updater—a fork of the MTKclient for this specific device—which let’s you flash the official firmware, or Rockbox, or both at once!

One of the most interesting things to me when it comes to installing random programs like this is the barrier to entry. Specifically, how installations methods differ between operating systems.

I was reading some of the comments across a few reddit posts, from people who clearly come from Windows, saying things about drivers not working, or how some step went wrong or how themes don’t show up.

I must admit I chuckled a bit. The installation method for Linux is not officially supported, it basically consists in following the instructions from MTKclient’s repo: Install some dependencies, run a command or two, setup a python virtual environnment (or just run pip as is), then run python ./updater.py, and you’re golden, the updater interface will show up and the process from there is self-explanatory.

I sometimes like to think Linux is usable for most people, but it’s weird at moments like this, because it kind of represents how many basic things I take for granted that a normal computer user might not—even worse when people barely know how their phone works nowadays.

A newcomer would not understand what the venv command does (to be fair, I don’t know either, but I get the idea), or why they can’t find the .rockbox folder in their file manager.

In a way, Linux encourages you to learn how a computer system works. I now know what packages are, I can uninstall or install them with a simple command, they will go to a certain location and can be called in a script and be depended upon by other programs. I also know hidden folders are a thing, and that most file managers on Linux display them with a simple Ctrl + H or a checkbox in a right-click menu (or just an ls -a in the terminal of course).

I’d say it was worth learning and doing that. Even if it is more complex at first, it’s better than dealing with Next, Next, Next install wizards and drivers that will do who-knows-what on who-knows-where in my computer. Those easy installers and countless drivers can end up being a pain. Same goes for trying to remember where the File Manager settings are, a panel (which looks straight out of 1998 as well) with a bunch of tabs and checkboxes to go through, all just to show hidden folders or file extensions.

And yet, that second option is what most people do and deal with.

What is easier then?

Obviously I am biased towards Linux. I guess I just like to bring suffering to myself or something.

Back in college I remember installing stuff like LabVIEW, MATLAB or Code Composer, it was absolute torture, so much so I chose to dual-boot for many years because of some of those programs—although I got some working on Linux at some point.

However, while the install on Windows was fine enough, they were also super bloated. LabVIEW would ask me to install some stuff from National Instruments, driver after package after plug-in. And I could not uninstall any of it from the control panel because they had to be removed from a package manager that got installed too.

When I eventually figured out how to use LabVIEW from Linux—a couple distro-hops later or so—I was happy that at least every single thing I installed was inside the /opt folder, and the script was a simple uninstall.sh that was very pleasant to run once the semester was over.

I guess that at this point I just prefer to maybe have a harder time, while also understanding what is going on behind the curtains.

Back to Rockbox, the install went well, although I’ve not been too happy with the 240p version, it is recommended because it has a lot of themes, but it is too blurry or pixelated for my liking. Besides, many themes are not looking right for some reason, gotta learn some more I guess.

I think I’ll install the 360p version instead, less themes but at least they’re good ones, I want to try Adwaitapod, which seems to work fine. It looks like 82Mhz contributed to it back in the day? Cool stuff.

Anyway, installing stuff is more fun when you are actually able to learn and understand what’s going on and you can have a sense of control on everything. Wether you use Linux, Windows or Mac, you can still learn anyway. I’m only a bit annoyed at how much the younger generations are missing out in the current technological landscape.

Seriously, a lot of them don’t even know what adblocking is anymore, they are just accepting advertising as something normal, even as a feature, because “that way I don’t need to look up what to be interested about” or whatever.

I’m gonna end it here, because I can feel the rant incoming, but this is plenty enough for a day. The Innioasis Y1 is fun to thinker with! Next time I may end up doing some hardware mods to it for some reason. Whatever happens, it will.

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Review: BENFEI Wireless USB C to HDMI ★★★★⯪ - Terence Eden’s Blog

2025-11-07T12:34:39.000Z

The good folks at Benfei have sent me another gadget to play about with. This one comes in two parts. The first plugs into an screen's HDMI port, the second beams video from your device's USB-C port across the airwaves. Here's what it looks like:

But how does it perform? Plug the HDMI into your TV and its USB-A end into a suitable power source (my TV had one nearby).

After a few seconds, my TV displayed this splash-screen.

The QR code appears to be vestigial. It tells you the Wi-Fi details of the device, but the USB-C dongle is pre-paired. I plugged the dongle into my Linux laptop and, a few moments late:

Success! It works pretty damn well! The resolution was 1920x1080, stereo sound was clearly separated and was in sync, video quality was reasonably smooth.

There's a pass-through USB-C charging port on the side of the dongle. It will only do 40W - so you don't get ultra-fast charging, but it should be more than sufficient for your average laptop.

It claims a range of 30 metres. My house isn't that big. Once I was about 5m away, video and audio started getting stuttery. A message popped up on screen suggesting changing Wi-Fi channels. For basic presenting, it was absolutely fine while at the other side of the house.

Linux Compatibility

This worked instantly with Linux. Somewhat uninventively, it does not present as a USB-C device! You'll see nothing in lsusb - instead, it shows up as a screen:

As it is just another monitor, you can either extend your desktop to it or mirror your main screen.

Similarly, it presents as a generic audio device:

You can route stereo audio to it.

Android Compatibility

Android's DP Alt Mode support is still a bit shaky. Nevertheless, this Benfei dongle worked! The screen was auto-detected and I was able to play audio without any problems.

Screen mirroring worked - so I could view my apps on the big screen.

Note that if your screen isn't 16:9, you'll get black bars to maintain the aspect ratio. I think that's an Android limitation.

It is hard to take a photo of a TV and have it look good - but, please rest assured, the colours looked exactly as expected.

Playing video and audio worked fine.

Technical Background

The QR code it presents gives an SSID and a (base64 encoded?) password. It says it is a softap which makes me think this is ESP8266 powered. It also seems to advertise KOM.to - whose products come from EZCast.

The HDMI dongle presented both 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi networks - both with hidden SSIDs. Given the power draw of a typical USB-A port, they weren't overly powerful, but got the job done. There's no way to update firmware on it that I can see.

Downsides

These are some minor quibbles.

The dongle only has an LED on one side. It will work either way up, but you won't see the status light if you plug it in upside down.

While video quality is excellent, it is limited to 30fps. It will take a 60fps signal, but there's only so much data you can squeeze over a wireless connection.

The USB-C dongle gets warm during use. Nothing too hot - but it was surprising to me just how quickly it heated up. There are plenty of grilles on the casing to let the heat out.

The USB-A cable is a bit less than 1 metre. That's fine if your screen has a socket - but you might need an extension if not.

None of these are show-stoppers. Just something to be aware of.

Verdict

For slideshow presentations, this is excellent. No faffing around or software to install - just proper plug and play.

For watching videos, it is good enough. Perfect for streaming your laptop or phone to a hotel TV.

The Benfei Wireless USB C to HDMI kit retails at around £56. I think that's fairly reasonable for a bit of kit like this. It comes with its own hard-shell carry-case to protect it. It is light enough to throw in your bag as a "just in case" item. If you're regularly presenting on other people's monitors, you'll know what a pain it can be to get right - this simplifies everything. USB-C means no looking for adapters on your side, and every monitor seems to come with a USB-A socket for power.

Thanks to Benfei for the review unit.

22.00.0164 🎁 Holiday season 2025: Buy one, gift one - Johnny.Decimal

2025-11-07T09:00:00.000Z

🎁 Holiday season 2025: Buy one, gift one

This holiday season, give the gift of organised. Buy anything from JDHQ, and we'll gift the same again.

Just sign up for anything. Your welcome email will include a link: fill in the form, tell us who it's for, when you want them to receive it, and add a message.

Whatever you signed up for, we'll send them an invitation for the same. Simple.

Life Admin System
Johnny.Decimal University
Small Business System
or the bundle, or Lifetime membership.

I'm already a member, what about upgrades?

It won't be automatic (I'd have to build it; too hard) but if you upgrade your account while this offer is on, just drop me an email and I'll look after you.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

Weeknote #1973 - Robb Knight • Posts • Atom Feed

2025-11-06T21:30:26.000Z

It's been a while since my last weeknote and it's fine - this is why I'm not committing to doing them weekly.

We are hurtling towards the end of the year and I realised I haven't been taking notes for my year in review post so I've hastily thrown some notes together but I'm sure I will miss something important when I eventually write it.

I don't have McDonald's all that often but I tried the garlic & black pepper nuggets last week - they were pretty good. I also had the Sakura Cherry Blossom × Sprite which was delicious.

On a note of better food, I've been trying to branch out a bit from the ten or so meals we always cook. I've been watching a bunch of Sip and Feast videos and tried out a couple of recipes, the first of which was this garlic butter chicken. The videos on Sip and Feast are really good, easy to follow and all the recipes are also on their website which is handy.

This has led me to assess my saucepans, frying pans, and other kitchen stuff and I am ready to replace everything with stainless steel - most of what we have is fairly cheap and some of it is falling apart. Pro Cook is the top candidate right now but I'm going to their shop at some point to have a proper look at it before I buy anything.

A few interesting videos I watched while on this food kick:

Is Chipotle a Waste of Money? - ignore the clickbait title, this is an interesting look at the cost of food when you include the cooking and travel time.
The Pantry Staples I SPLURGE on (and the Ones I DON’T).
How to Cook With Stainless Steel

I have a big list of EchoFeed features and bugs to deal with that I will get to as soon as I have time so if you're waiting for a response from me, I apologise.

Links

Les goddams is "an obsolete ethnic slur historically used by the French to refer to the English, based on their frequent profanities". History is fun.

Multipotentiality is a new word I learnt. Not sure when I'd ever use it though.

This collection of Hair Band letterings and logos is great.

Visconti Maze fountain pen is bonkers and I love it.

This pizza sticker is amazing via Nic

Top 80 Greatest Guitar Intros. Best or not, this is an impressive show of skill by this guy.

Little Link is "an open source DIY Linktree alternative". Handy.

This story about a snail "farmer" is wild.

I don't know how I'm going resist this font duo. Just look at it.

Finished reading Mage Tank 2 - Molly White's activity feed

2025-11-06T17:52:51.000Z

Finished reading:

Mage Tank series, book 2.

Mage Tank 2

by Cornman.

Published 2025. 694 pages.

Started October 21, 2025; completed November 5, 2025.

Anitya Live At The Civic - The Weblog of fLaMEd

2025-11-06T12:21:46.000Z

What’s going on, Internet?

This past Saturday my wife and I got to see Tom Scott perform his new album Anitya in full at the Auckland Civic Theatre.

Anitya is the first project Tom has released under his full name. Everything else before this — Home Brew, Average Rap Band, @Peace, Avantdale Bowling Club — sat under a group or alias.

This album is a deeply personal one. The first half is about breaking up with his ex-wife, the second about falling in love with his new partner, with a track in between dedicated to his son.

I pre-ordered the album during October’s Bandcamp Friday and listened to it the following week when it dropped, then again a few days later.

Because of how personal the project is, I probably won’t return to it often. That said, seeing and hearing Tom perform it live (technically my third listen) gave me a new appreciation for it. It’s far removed from his previous releases, and that’s okay.

The show itself was incredible — entertaining, emotional, and raw.

It opened with a clever setup: a fictional pub in Avondale where local personality Dai Henwood played the karaoke host. Tom and a few mates, beers in hand, sat around a bar leaner waiting for the night’s entertainment. Over the next hour we were treated to local talent performing covers, including Tom’s partner Sarvi and one of my own favourites, Great South.

Once the karaoke wrapped up, we had a short break while the stage was reset. When we came back, the theatre was packed. The next hour and a bit was the full Anitya album performed live, split into two halves with some Home Brew sing-alongs in between. I’ll always cherish the moment of belting out the chorus “Drinking in the Morning” with the crowd during this performance.

Tom had a full band behind him — no backing tracks. This is what live shows should be when the venue allows. Some of the karaoke performers even returned to play parts during the main set. It was a fantastic show.

When the album ended, Tom joked that everyone on stage could leave (they did). Then he launched into the Fuck the System Freestyle, a reworking of his verse from “Listen to Us” on the Home Brew album. This updated version called out the current government and even took a shot at Luxon, describing him as a “peeled cucumber-looking motherfucker.” The crowd went wild cheering, clapping, fully on board. A powerful way to close the night.

I’m so glad we got to experience this once-in-a-lifetime performance. As for the album, it won’t be in regular rotation, but I’ll definitely set aside some time in the future to sit down with a drink and spin it on vinyl.

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Archive or Delete? - Kev Quirk

2025-11-06T11:45:00.000Z

Archive or Delete?

by Chris Coyier

When it comes to email, are you an archiver or a deleter? Chris talks about his approach, and some of what others do. I thought I’d add my approach to the pile.

Read Post →

When it comes to email, I’m extremely anal. I’m a zero inbox kinda guy - my inbox is a place for emails to temporarily live before I deal with them. Once they’re dealt with, they either get archived or deleted.

Right now I have 5 emails in my personal mailbox, and 7 in my work email. I treat it as a kind of living to-do list. I get tonnes of email, especially in work (hundreds a day), so to anyone who says they get too much email to do inbox zero, I call bullshit.

Anyway, I digress, this post isn’t about my love of zero inbox. That’s a post for another day. After reading Chris’ post, I dropped him an email with my thoughts, but I decided to write them out here too.

Personally, I do a combination of both. I probably delete around half of the email I receive, but for the other half, I do one of two things:

Archive it.
Move it to my Keep folder.

Long-term solution

I have a clean up of my mailbox at the end of every year. Everything in my sent items and archives get moved to a sub-folder by year, then the oldest year gets deleted. I only keep 3 years of mail in my mailbox.

The exception to this is my Keep folder. Stuff in there is considered important and kept indefinitely.

I host my email with Zoho, where I get 5GB of storage space. Some people think that’s not a lot, considering you get 3x that with a free Gmail account. But 5GB is an absolute shit-tonne of storage when you consider that emails are basically text with the odd attachment.

With my 3 year archive, and decades of important email in my Keep folder, I’m currently using 1.19GB of the space that comes with my mailbox.

Sorry, I went off on another tangent there…clearly I’m very passionate about email and should probably write more posts about it. Maybe I should start a blog dedicated to email, just like Chris did! 🤔

So that’s my approach to archive vs deletion, what do you do? I hope you’re not one of those heathens who has tens of thousands of unread email in your inbox? If so, I’m not sure we can be friends.

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22.00.0163 /tmp is bad - Johnny.Decimal

2025-11-06T09:00:00.000Z

/tmp is bad

In recording the upcoming (soon, I promise) JDU series on task and project management, I'm switching out my real Things database with a test database so I can show some simple examples rather than all of my own actual stuff.

This is easy enough: just move a file from one place to another place. I'm using the 'leave Finder windows permanently open in a known place' trick to great effect: I have a new Finder window (not the usual one I have open in that video) with 2× tabs open specifically for this.

One tab is that ~/Library/… location as per the Things article. That's my live Things database. And the other is some other location where I'm storing copies of that database as I swap in my real file out for the demo.

My nemesis

So I rebooted, and that Finder window went away, and I had to set it up again.

Aaannnnddd … I didn't know where that second folder was. The one with the demo databases. There it is again, my nemesis: I don't know where a thing is.

Fortunately you can search for stuff, and you can search by file type, and in macOS this is quite intuitive.

That search field in your Finder window understands file types. So here I'm searching for Things Database, and when I select that item it shows me only those items. This quickly revealed the location I'd chosen, a few weeks ago.

`~/tmp`

I have a folder called tmp (not backed up) which is exactly what it sounds like. I use it for stuff I know you won't need forever, and it's excluded from backups so I don't send gigs across the wire unnecessarily.

That's where I'd put this stuff. 🤦🏼‍♂️ Why? I don't know. A quick, lazy decision.

Where should it be?

Where it belongs: in the folder for this project, which is 21.41. And a note in my JDex so that if I search there, it'll surface.

Beware of 'temporary' folders of any nature. Your Desktop and Downloads are temporary folders. Don't store things there. You'll lose them, or you'll be frustrated as you have to look for them.

Doing the right thing takes an extra ten seconds.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

Stop Explaining What Things Are - Kev Quirk

2025-11-05T13:53:00.000Z

Ever searched for a fix to a technical problem, only to get a 1,000 word essay on what the thing is? Yeah, me too.

You know the drill. You Google “how to fix a Git conflict”, and every result spends five paragraphs explaining what Git is.

Mate, I’m here because I already use Git. I don’t need a Wikipedia entry, I need the command that fixes my bloody merge.

It’s the same with every technical topic. SEO-stuffed filler drowning the one thing that actually matters — the answer.

Just give me the fix. That’s it. Please, stop explaining what things are.

</rant>

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Book Review: The Battle of the Beams by Tom Whipple ★★★★★ - Terence Eden’s Blog

2025-11-05T12:34:48.000Z

Well this is a treat! It is rare to find a pop-science book which does such a good job of actually explaining the science, rather than just using it as a background for storytelling. The Battle of Beams doesn't go too deep into the mechanics and physics, but gives a general overview with just enough detail to keep things interesting. It is also well illustrated (not a given in these sorts of books) which helps flesh out some of the trickier concepts.

How did radio-waves change the course of the war? Was RADAR solely the preserve of the British? What tactics were used to conceal developments? Was there an invisible war in the skies? Battle of the Beams takes a technical and social look at how physics became the forefront of attack and defence. It dives into the people who set their brains to work on the problem, and those who were determined to stop them.

The book honest about the problems of referencing contradictory source material. Some of the work published after the war is obviously biased towards the writer's personal successes - which don't always tally with reality. Similarly, there's a good overview of what both sides were doing in technology. We often only hear about ENIGMA and Britain's attempts to crack it - it's rare to read something from the other side. Here we get to experience both sides as they attempt to tame the radio waves, discover how they are being used against them, and the countermeasures both sides took.

The book is pacey and leaps back-and-forth across the channel, giving a real sense of drama to the sometimes baroque nature of physics research. There is a little touch of the "boys-own-adventure" what with daring fighter pilots and exciting raids - but it never strays into the hagiographic.

As ever with histories of the second World War, you're left wondering how it was the Allies succeeded. The book is full of infuriating little anecdotes like:

The report was filed and then forgotten, seen by some officials, understood by fewer, and then left in the archives of Whitehall. Britain continued for at least a year to believe that it, alone, had mastered this new wonder weapon of radar.

Similarly, a daring piece of espionage was fatally undermined when the defector was imprisoned and then:

through an astonishing cock-up the film he had gone to so much trouble to smuggle in had been sent to be processed at the post office, and most of it had been destroyed.

Gah!

Nevertheless, a fascinating look at how technology develops and how systems react to change.

22.00.0161 Work log - Johnny.Decimal

2025-11-04T09:00:00.000Z

Work log

I'm trying to get better at leaving myself a log so I know what I was up to when I come back to a piece of work.

Whenever you do a thing and put it down unfinished, to return to later, you're sure you'll remember exactly what you were doing. But who knows, it might be days until you return to it.

A simple work log in your JDex can help.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

Published on Citation Needed: "Trump says he has “no idea” who he just pardoned" - Molly White's activity feed

2025-11-03T22:50:58.000Z

Published an issue of Citation Needed:

Trump says he has “no idea” who he just pardoned

President Trump reacts to condemnations of his recent pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao by claiming he doesn’t know who he is.

No JavaScript necessary - Posts feed

2025-11-03T21:21:00.000Z

One of my ongoing efforts in building this site has been to embrace progressive enhancement and make it every bit as functional without JavaScript as it is with JavaScript. This has become much easier now that I've rebuilt the site using Laravel.

Whether you're disabling JavaScript for security or performance reasons or are visiting using a tool that does not support it, every feature of the site should work without it. What this looks like in practice, is this:

A submit button will be rendered with search and results will be paginated.
Pagination will still use a select element to allow you to choose a page, but a button will be rendered alongside it to submit the pagination form and route you to the appropriate page.
Code snippets embedded using a web component I've written will, instead, link to the dedicated page for the snippet.
Videos I host on bunny.net will fall back to using the native video element.
Videos I've embedded from Youtube's https://www.youtube-nocookie.com TLD will instead link out to the video.

That's largely all there is to this. Much of what's dynamically updated is handled on the server and sent over the wire. JavaScript is not required and, ideally, it should not be.

Political Experiments - Terence Eden’s Blog

2025-11-03T12:34:41.000Z

Many years ago, in another lifetime, I was presenting our team's work to a rather senior politician. Here's how I remember it:

"We want to provide value for money," I said, "so we propose that running five small pilots of [thing I still can't talk about]. We know there are multiple technologies which could work. But we don't know which one will work best."

"How will running something five times save the taxpayer money?" They asked, quite reasonably.

I replied, somewhat smugly, "Big technology projects often fail because they get very far along before a critical flaw is discovered. If we run some pilot programmes, we hope to discover those problems before we go too far down the wrong path."

"But running five pilots will cost more money?" They replied, with a smugness born of a thousand encounters like this.

I had the uneasy feeling I knew where this was going. "Yes, in the short term, it will cost more."

"Why don't we just run the pilot with the technology which will work best?" They asked earnestly.

I had one of those "Pray Mr Babbage" moments and took a moment to compose myself.

I gently explained that we wouldn't know in advance the results of the experiment and, without going too far into The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, falsifiable hypotheses were probably the best way to discover the truth.

Apparently their PPE degree was worthwhile because they accepted my arguments - albeit only with funding for 3 pilots.

From their point of view, it was perfectly rational to reject experimentation. Each failed experiment is a waste of taxpayers' hard-earned money. How do you look your constituents in the eye and say "80% of our budget was spent on failure"? It is political suicide.

Which leads me on to this brilliant blog post by Mark Sewards MP. In it, the MP describes the process of setting up an "AI" counterpart to answer his constituents' questions.

So far, so zeitgeisty. But rather than just slap a label on an LLM and call it a day, the MP for Leeds South West and Morley actually spent time thinking about what he and his team wanted out of this experiment. They didn't just launch and bugger off; they tested and refined.

The experiment was a success. Not because it reduced his case-load and allowed a tech company to profit from misery. But because it taught him (and others) the limitations of technology. It shows exactly what doesn't work. If a person can't understand where the boundaries are, they'll never learn how to successfully master anything.

As Mark said:

What didn’t it do? It didn’t save any time. I read every single transcript to ensure we didn’t miss any questions from constituents. I can see this technology working alongside a casework team, but it needs a lot of refinement. I took this leap to understand what AI might be capable of and what it isn’t yet. I understand why some dismissed the model out of hand, but I think the potential is real, even if that’s all it is for now – potential.

Experimentation is hard because it leaves us vulnerable. It shows that we don't know everything and that humbles us. We need to loudly celebrate politicians who try something new and are honest about where it goes wrong.

There is so much more to be learned from failure than success.

22.00.0160 An anti-distraction trick - Johnny.Decimal

2025-11-03T09:00:00.000Z

An anti-distraction trick

I fall in to the YouTube or Reddit rabbit-holes sometimes. Not that they're all bad all the time: I love watching a good music video with my headphones in. (That track is slow to start but seriously: watch it all the way. I dare you not to love it.)

But being sucked in to Shorts? Lazy-scrolling the Reddit feed? I know that's not how I want to spend my time.

Well it turns out all of these things leave a trace, and you can use that trace to reveal your bad habits. I find this confronting. It causes me to change.

The trick is easy: just open your browser history, and search for the site you don't love.

22.00.0160A. War on Drugs and chickens. Pretty standard.

In Safari, hit Command+Y to bring up your history, then type in the search field. Here, I have 571 hits for YouTube. That's okay: most of them are music videos.

But when I did this for Reddit last week, well … shame. So shameful, I deleted them. Command+A to select all, then Delete. So I can't show them to you.

This is particularly revealing for YouTube Shorts, each one of which leaves a record. I've only binged there once, because seeing that record later was honestly enough for me to have never done it again.

There's your life, scrolling away. Do something better.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

readme - Hey, it's Jason!

2025-11-03T01:11:03.000Z

Shellsharks Blogroll - BlogFlock

Mead Update - Cool As Heck

Now (November 2025) - Robb Knight • Posts • Atom Feed

22.00.0165 Find the hidden option - Johnny.Decimal

Find the hidden option

Always look for the trick

Footnotes

Published on Citation Needed: "Issue 96 – Redefining solvency" - Molly White's activity feed

Rockbox for Innioasis Y1; or, a ramble on installing stuff - Joel's Log Files

Review: BENFEI Wireless USB C to HDMI ★★★★⯪ - Terence Eden’s Blog

Linux Compatibility

Android Compatibility

Technical Background

Downsides

Verdict

22.00.0164 🎁 Holiday season 2025: Buy one, gift one - Johnny.Decimal

🎁 Holiday season 2025: Buy one, gift one

I'm already a member, what about upgrades?

Weeknote #1973 - Robb Knight • Posts • Atom Feed

Links

Finished reading Mage Tank 2 - Molly White's activity feed

Anitya Live At The Civic - The Weblog of fLaMEd

Archive or Delete? - Kev Quirk

Archive or Delete?

Long-term solution

22.00.0163 /tmp is bad - Johnny.Decimal

/tmp is bad

My nemesis

~/tmp

Where should it be?

Stop Explaining What Things Are - Kev Quirk

Book Review: The Battle of the Beams by Tom Whipple ★★★★★ - Terence Eden’s Blog

22.00.0161 Work log - Johnny.Decimal

Work log

Published on Citation Needed: "Trump says he has “no idea” who he just pardoned" - Molly White's activity feed

No JavaScript necessary - Posts feed

Political Experiments - Terence Eden’s Blog

22.00.0160 An anti-distraction trick - Johnny.Decimal

An anti-distraction trick

readme - Hey, it's Jason!

`~/tmp`