Nine years later and I'm still bitter - and that's an unhealthy emotion. So I'm blogging as a form of catharsis. Back in 2012, I was taking the fledgling "QRpedia" project to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. We had a cool little invention - stick a QR code on a museum exhibit and when a visitor scans it, they're automatically taken to the Wikipedia page in their native language. Nifty, huh? The project was still in beta, but was gaining traction with museums and galleries around the…
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Recently, one of the accounts I follow on Twitter was hijacked. It was turned into a PS5 giveaway scam. The people who hijacked the account changed the name, avatar, and deleted all the previous Tweets. Here's how I found who the original owner was, and managed to contact them. A Twitter account has a screen name. Mine is @edent. It is possible to change your screen name. Each Twitter account has a unique user ID. This is a numerical code that the API uses to keep track of users. Mine is…
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Matt Webb has a whimsical blog about buying unused TV advertising space. There are a bunch of shows on streaming services which have ad-breaks unfilled. Mostly, I assume, because everyone hates adverts and no one can afford to buy anything right now. Matt proposes that he hyper-targets his friends and family with fun little messages. I think that's a nice idea. The cost of TV advertising has plummeted. So, naturally, my mind turns to mischief! How much would it cost to buy a 30 second spot…
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I've been a vegetarian for 21 years. And, last year, I became (mostly) vegan. Because my bum kept falling off. I'd been getting frequent stomach cramps and "gastrointestinal distress" which culminated in a nice man from the NHS shoving a camera up me to see if my guts were rotten. They were not (aside from a couple of small polyps). After various food diaries and testing exclusion diets, my worst fears were confirmed - I was lactose intolerant. No more cheese for me! (To be clear, I haven't…
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This is an entertaining, useful, and thoroughly tedious book. Imagine your time machine went wrong and you were stranded in the past. How could you "invent" the technology needed to improve the world, At its heart is a potted history of every piece of technology required for modern civilisation. Short and entertaining chapters which discuss everything from leather tanning to electromagnetism. It's written in a folksy and engaging style - with daft digressions in copious footnotes. But every…
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The novelisation of the TV series! OK, OK, the book was written nearly 40 years before the Netflix miniseries. But it is uncanny how close the two are. Most adaptation are really "creative reimaginings" of the source material. Taking liberties with the source material, introducing new, relatable characters, and monkeying around with the plot. But the series is almost beat-for-beat the same as the book. Except where it isn't. It's curious how the TV series ignores the themes of racism and…
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I don't have a great memory. I often meet people who remember me, but I don't remember them. I've had whole conversations with people who clearly know me, but on whom I've drawn a blank. My phone's address book has a "notes" field, and mine is peppered with little aide memoirs about the people I've met. Things like this: And, I guess we've all got a contact like this, right? (Sorry, Geoff!) But there's no way to do that on Twitter or LinkedIn or any other social network I'm aware…
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Texas is under a mountain of snow. As the energy grid struggles, the law of supply-and-demand kicks in. Electricity prices climb ever higher. The wholesale cost rises. And doesn't stop rising. Some people signed up to "Griddy" a service which charges users the wholesale rate for electricity. In normal times, that might be a good deal. Cut out the middle-man and get access to market rates. But this week it led to some homes receiving bills for tens of thousands of dollars. Griddy's prices…
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(A hastily written and grumpy post.) Another day, another Blockchain Bullshit project. Someone "claimed" one of my Tweets and added it to the Blockchain. I'm not particularly happy about that. Nor am I happy with the hoops I had to jump through to contact the company and remove my work. You can read the whole sorry thread on Twitter. But, mostly, I'm unhappy with this whole scammy "industry". Now my Tweet is an "NFT" - Non-Fungible Token - tradeable with other people for cold-hard-cash. …
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This is either the greatest time-travel novel ever - or a load of monkeyshine. And I'm not sure which! What if Quantum Leap was an Agatha Christie novel? That's the basic plot - but, in this, Sam is only leaping between characters in the same story. The whodunnit plot is brilliantly worked out - and has the requisite number of twists-and-turns. But the quasi-time-travel requires the reader to keep an extravagantly large cast of characters in their head and flip back and forth to make sure…
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As part of my MSc, I'm reading a lot of "Leadership" books. They're all pretty bad - but they have one common thesis; it is essential to improve your company culture. I'm not sure if I agree. I feel completely divorced from most forms of company culture. I find the way that these books talk about changing people is pretty creepy and disingenuous. That's my problem, not theirs. I prefer to look at processes and systems. Here's an imperfect analogy. What's more effective - teaching people the…
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So, farewell Christopher Plummer. This might be one of the most bizarre role he's ever played, in this charming - but flawed - production of the stage classic. I met my wife at a University production of Royal Hunt of The Sun. As an anniversary gift, she got me the DVD. The film is incredible - the DVD is terrible. So this review will be in two parts. The Film Would your lust for gold drive you to kill god? Is divinity a reality or a coping mechanism? RHoTS asks us to watch men sacrifice…
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· mwc mwc12 qrpedia · 2 comments · 900 words · read ~450 times.