App Showdown - Zapper 🆚 MusicMagpie


It is time for me to have a clear out. I've got hundreds of books which I've replaced with eBook, CDs which I never listen to, and DVDs I'm ashamed to own. Selling them individually on eBay or Amazon sounds like a lot of hard work... That's where Zapper and MusicMagpie come in. Both offer […]

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What Time Is It?


For a bit of light reading, I've been going through some of the documents published by Sir John Chilcot's Iraq Inquiry. There are thousands of Telegrams, eGrams, Teleletters, and other miscellaneous communications. For those unfamiliar with the jargon, the inquiry have helpfully published a guide to reading the evidence. In it is this delightful titbit […]

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Debuffs, Enchantment, Equipment, and Players - an RPG Player's Guide to User Stories


If you've spent any time in a modern design environment, you'll be familiar with the idea of User Stories. As a first-time user, I want to log in with Facebook, so that I don't have to set up a new account. Fairly easy, right? Stick enough of those up on a wall and you've got […]

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Scaling Is A Human Problem Too


This morning I received an email which made my heart sink. In order to co-ordinate things better, we'd like to invite you to our exclusive Slack Channel! A variety of rude words danced around my brain. I think this makes the, what, 9th? 10th? Slack that I'm part of. Don't get me wrong, I like […]

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Should you open your WiFi during a disaster?


Graphic from the Italian Red Cross urging people to open up their WiFi.

There has been a terrible natural disaster in Italy. A huge quake has broken a city. Rescue teams race to the scene to try to save lives and stabilise the situation. During the rescue efforts, the Italian Red Cross sends this tweet: #Terremoto, per favorire comunicazioni e operazioni di soccorso vi invitiamo a togliere la […]

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Technology Preview - The ReSpeaker


We're entering a golden era for small-batch artisinal hardware. Anyone with an idea and a modicum of talent can build hardware and get it shipped around the world at a reasonable price. Enter "The ReSpeaker" - an open source alternative to Amazon's Echo. It promises ultimate hackability, speech recognition, and IoT control, wrapped in a […]

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Review & Teardown: Oittm Bluetooth Headphones RE-E01


This is a sponsored post by LOPOO UK who've asked me to review their Oittm Bluetooth Headphones. There's a lot of technology packed in for £19.99. Bluetooth 4.1 - compatible with Android and iPhone. cVc noise cancellation - for improved call quality. A physically tiny 70 mAh battery - good for around 3-6 hours of […]

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Easy ways to add watermarks to images and videos in Linux


Mostly notes to myself 🙂 Here is a quick way to add watermarks to photos and videos. All Linux command line based - so perfect if you've got a lot of images you want to manipulate. Here is a delightful photo I've taken of a bee covered in pollen. I want to add a little […]

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Reducing the filesize of complex 3D .OBJ models


Loading large 3D Models in the browser is extremely resource intensive. 2D images are trivial to resize and resample with negligible loss of perceived quality. 3D resizing is complex. As part of my "Pirate Museum" I wanted to display 3D scans of statues using WebVR. The only problem is, these files are huge. Take The […]

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