Been working on a new website for MrsVark's current passion project... https://burntwoodspoonies.uk/ The domain and nameservers seem to be taking a while to sort themselves out, so been dev'ing it at http://theaardvark.co.uk/bwoodspoon/

My longest ever run* 🎉 and I'm too tired to do the maths, but that 1km pace could be terminal velocity when in free fall from 🛩️ (* Run, stop, walk, hobble, question life choices, be grateful I was running that one moment my wife drove past) #running #marathontraining

I know we all know this, but using 'AI' [that is, LLM predictive text] replies to email are just so awful I despair. If there is an advantage for suggesting a reply (EG we used to call pre-prepared answers 'Canned Responses') then surely the logic could be […] [Original post on mastodon.me.uk]

Mastodon seems like somewhere that would appreciate a good second-hand book sale. If you're near Chelmsford, Essex next weekend 1st Broomfield scouts host an epic one. I know we don't like Facebook but the event page is linked below […] [Original post on mastodon.me.uk]

@tg I just read (and loved) your essay about Phantom Oblications. You put into words several thoughts and feelings I've been dwelling on. It inspired me to add a different type of RSS reader to a project I'm working on. It won't be ready any time soon, but I thought you'd like to know that your […]

Question for my #email nerd friends. I'm writing an update to a guide on mail rules and forwarding. Is it generally true that for true automated rules they need to be setup server side? Do modern email clients (e.g. Outlook, Thunderbird, Apple mail) sync their rules back to the mail server, or […]

@snaptophobic I think you mentioned annoying Mac upgrade prompts? If so, this just popped into my feed https://mstdn.social/@rgriff/115911291324085543

@snazzyq I think you mentioned annoying Mac upgrade prompts? If so, this just popped into my feed https://mstdn.social/@rgriff/115911291324085543

Evening! I'm looking for a small favour.... The first track from my new #aardhd project has an official release on 19th Jan, but the YouTube video is up on a private listing ahead of that date. I'd be really grateful if some of you could go and give it a play so it already has some numbers on […]

@mattblaze What's really funny to me is this 1853 book that Ches and I quoted in the first edition of "Firewalls", about whether it's proper to discuss vulnerabilities in locks.

Maybe it's me being cynical, but Trustpilot saying 'we're all about human content so we sell AI to companies to write their replies' seems a little a contradiction. However, I'm sure it's true and it's way faster than copy/pasting from a set of time built […] [Original post on mastodon.me.uk]

Ahh, that feeling when fault finding a server and your internet search returns: Your own question on a forum post 3 years ago 😂

"The Internet routes around damage" Ah, you sweet summer child. #cloudflare

How to tell the longevity of design software: discovering a graphic for a Windows XP SP2 CD Also - teletext in Italian. It looks like this was a screen grab from 2006 This made me smile as I work through a room design.

Range anxiety? What range anxiety?

The thing about immortality is the perspective; over the course of eighty billion years we watched the universe expand and thin, dimming as more and more galaxies accelerated beyond the visible horizon. Those of us who didn’t give in to ennui or retreat into simulations eventually saw the words […]

Spent the day staring at frequencies and arguing with maths to make a song. The result is 8 minutes of 87 BPM downtempo stuff in A minor. It's supposedly for focus, but mostly it was an exercise in seeing if I could create a tune with binaural beats embedded throughout without my brain melting […]

Help please @hacks4pancakes I hope you don't mind me asking, I've searched your past posting and can't see you've mentioned it, so, would you have any advice/recommendations for a small business doing own IT and deciding whether to renew EDR/Antivirus please? In the past we were Eset/nod32 […]

75 years ago today, European nations signed this Convention, so the Holocaust could not be repeated. Beware those who want this to end.

The problem of reaching some moderate level of fame and success is that everyone thinks you’re great✨, all the time. Your life must be glamorous. Nobody ever checks on you. Nobody ever compliments your work. You’re never the award or prize winner. Nobody mentors you. Never again. You must be✨super.

"That's no ballroom"

LOL. Thames water pouring tons and tons of raw sewage into rivers and sea: that’s OK. A lady pouring some coffee down a drain: a criminal offence. What a ridiculous country this is sometimes… https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg435gg66gpo

I made a thing called Wellness Ping because someone I care about went silent and it took too long for anyone to notice. You get regular check-ins via email. If you don't respond, your emergency contacts get notified. Built it for anyone who might go missing and needs someone to notice […]

A sign I'm getting old: I appreciate the flurry of added #2fa #security when logging into websites but I'm also feeling the annoyance of waiting for said SMS/email to confirm that it is me and I can log in.

As I #repair my #framework laptop a 2nd time (I dropped it, and the battery is now growing too) I think the #sticker set they include with parts should have the equivalent of old air force kill markers. Let me show off how many times this laptop has had its […] [Original post on mastodon.me.uk]

Another small victory today. A salesperson had almost convinced a client to move their email from 365 to Google because "they hold all the cards now". I stepped in and suggested they keep their email on servers that they control instead. The salesperson almost mocked me, treating me like a […]

Manager: "And just a reminder to download Megahappyfunproductivityapp if you haven't already done it. It's really important in helping us to stay on top of our deadlines and work together effectively." Me: :Downloads the stupid app: Notification: "You have a message!" Notification: "Here's […]

TIL the "lid closed" sensor on some laptops can be tripped by ... stacking one laptop on top of another laptop. https://community.frame.work/t/responded-keyboard-randomly-stops-working-not-os-but-not-hardware-either/26480/16

#iss just passed over kent Not a great picture by me though ... :-)

Hey #dell, Windows 10 support ending is not an excuse to send marketing to an email address that hasn't been used in >10 years. Even if you do call it a transactional email, it's clearly #spam advertising 🤦‍♂️

It also makes the ability to scrape and store YouTube videos crucial for democratic oversight. Which is sad because it’s a violation of its T&Cs. The downstream tools are great, and this dependency is not their fault - but we need something so much better.

Over the last week I’ve become aware that lots of infrastructure depends on local government, school board, etc, meetings being posted on YouTube. That’s quite a scary dependency & a potential vector for harm. We need to get to a world where these meetings are stored & shared in a more aligned way.

I have don’t care HOW boring it is working C-shift at Tactical, you NEVER run ‘apt upgrade’ outside spacedock. #tootfic #microfiction #poweronstorytoot

Sigh. I really don't like it when suggestions to "fix potential security problems" is really just a way of saying "security only matters if you pay us more money" Example: This regular email for #google Workspace #GoogleWorkspace #security

I would love to criticise how out of date the bank's marketing is (best in 2009 eh?), but then I remember there is lots of out date messaging in my small business, like the old logo on the cup on my desk and that I only took the fax number off our order […] [Original post on mastodon.me.uk]

> Fan upgrade made my system run faster

I grew up hearing about the Rainbow 🌈 Rainbow Warrior but had never seen it. Then here it is off the north #kent coast

Always read the whole product spec! If you don't, you could get caught out by this: "lifetime Guarantee: 7 years"... ok, but what does that cover? "We are so confident in these products that we guarantee they will function as intended with no loss of […] [Original post on mastodon.me.uk]

I was just searching for an acronym used when I teach #RAF #AirCadets and found this, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ministry-of-defence-acronyms-and-abbreviations a *402 page* PDF of acronyms used in the MOD. Acronyms are tough, I particularly […] [Original post on mastodon.me.uk]

This is incredibly beautiful storytelling.

Speaking of Military Parades? Ants do it better. Here is a chapter from a story that I was working on two years ago "The Planet of the Ants" it's very different from the Book I am working on now but this was my favorite chapter: "The War Memorial Parade of the Ants" I was going for a more […]

"A busy, busy day at the airport."

Don't you just love #xero accounting? Especially the way that any bug you report becomes a feature request. This old bug reported by others Jun 23 just bit me. "When importing bills from a csv file, Xero will currently treat all lines with the same invoice number as one transaction, even if […]

Love this. In his “I Agree” installation Dima Yarovinsky-Yahel took the content from terms of service statements for companies like Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Tinder and printed them out on A4 paper with a standard font size for legal contracts to demonstrate the length of these agreements.

Skeleton Art (23 Photos): https://streetartutopia.com/2025/05/18/amazing-skeleton-street-art/ - By ItSkeletal.

Dear Internets, can you please help me learn something? Let's say you are running a big event. You have some headlining guests. Someone is assigned to see that they are where they are needed and make sure they are taken care of. What is the job title of the person doing all that looking after?

My #backup routine just saved me. I unintentionally deleted 2 months/300GB worth of source video files that I thought I had already moved off my laptop and onto my storage server. My routine: bvckup2.com app $50 several years ago syncs laptop to network every 3 hours and keeps deleted files in […]