I'm Dan Q. I've spent the last 25+ years creating and writing on the Internet.
I work at Automattic and volunteer with Three Rings. I live with my partner, her husband, two kids and a dog. I can sometimes be found out geo*ing, cycling, or performing magic.
I believe in open source, open relationships, and opening doors to marginalised groups.
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Council Disenfranchisement
West Oxfordshire District Council seem to want to disenfranchise me by requiring that I bring photo ID to a polling station with a different name on it than the photo ID that they themselves issued. Read more →
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Reversing Sandwiches
Userscripts are awesome, and you should be using them. Let me rotate some sandwiches for you to demonstrate their versatility! Read more →
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My Geo*ing Limits
Let's use some self-data-mining plus a convex hull algorithm to plot a convex polygon onto a map that optimally encircles the entire corpus of my successful geocaching/geohashing expeditions! Read more →
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April Features!
The start of April's a perfect time for a "Spring refresh" of a personal website. This year, I'm enabling a handful of experimental new features; visit DanQ.me and you might randomly be selected to try one out! Read more →
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Quickly Solving JigsawExplorer Puzzles
A fellow jigsaw-hating geocacher, familiar with my work on Jigidi, challenged me to find a way to bypass JigsawExplorer too. Here's what I came up with... Read more →
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Oxford's Area Code at OGN 57
At next month's Oxford Geek Nights I'll be talking about why Oxford's telephone area code makes no sense... until it does! But that's not why you should attend: you should attend because of the five far more-talented speakers I'll be sharing the stage with! Read more →
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Home Page, 50% Off!
By optimising a few bits of my homepage I've halved its size, which incidentally takes me up from the third to the second league of 512kb club members! Read more →
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My Favourite Video Game Easter Egg
My favourite video game Easter egg is Alorik's crystal ball from 1993's Ultima Underworld II, and I'd love to tell you why. Read more →
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The Stupidest CSS
Yesterday, I wrote the stupidest CSS code of my entire web development career. The code itself wasn't the stupid bit; my misinterpretation of the designer's wishes was what caused the problem! Read more →
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AI isn't useless. But is it worth it?
The ever-excellent Molly White has wise words to say on the subject of generative AI: specifically - it's actually pretty useful for some tasks, but she's not sure it's worth the cost. This mirrors my thinking so closely I wish I'd written it first! Read more →
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Me? Underprepared? (He says, literally writing his presentation in the bar at the event...)
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Found GC2W6AF Babel Fish
The younger child and I had an initially fruitless search in, under and around the nearby bridge before we had the sense to insert our babel fishes, after which the hint item became clear to us. A short search later the cache was in hand. SL, TNLN, TFTC!× Read more →
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Found GC51F07 Knapwell one and a half
The second of two caches found on a morning walk from the nearby Cambridge Belfry Hotel, where some fellow volunteers and I met yesterday for a meeting. This cache looked so close, but being on the other side of the A428 meant that my route to get from one to the other side of the […] Read more →
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Found GC10ZT3 Off Yer Trolley! (Cambourne)
Even early on a Saturday morning, after a volunteering event the previous day at the hotel across the road, this highly-exposed GZ made me feel vulnerable! It’s not as though anybody were actually watching me as I stood around nonchalantly at the GZ waiting for an opportunity to make a search: a couple of shop […] Read more →
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Found GC8TNPE Incy Wincy
The elder child and I are staying nearby and couldn't resist coming to a nearby cache with so many FPs. The name gave us a bit of a clue what we would be looking for but nothing could have prepared us for for this imaginative and unusual container! Read more →
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you are a printer we are all printers
In an effort to work-around Google Search's obsession with everything having to be "new" to be searchworthy, Nilay Patel of The Verge reiterates his previous article about the joy of Brother printers, and it's excellent. Read more →
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A Proper Cup of Tea
This "choose your own adventure"-style game about making the perfect cup of tea is just... excellent. If you lack the imagination to understand how a game like this could have dozens of possible endings, you desperately need to play it. Read more →
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Sometimes you just gotta have exactly the right prop for a presentation... Read more →
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Aberystwyth 1984
A promotional video for Aberystwyth University, made in 1984, could almost pass as being 15 years younger than that. Aber never changes, I guess. Read more →
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What they say: "This site works better in our app."
What they mean (optimistic): "We couldn't be bothered to make a good website."
What they mean (realistic): "We can track and monetise you better if we can coerce you into installing this." -
The Road (Segment) Less Travelled
I live near two junctions at which I can join the A40 trunk road. When I drive East, I use the Easternmost; when I drive West, I use the Westernmost; but I almost never drive the stretch of A40 between them!
It's inevitable I suppose that there should exist a "road (segment) less-travelled" right on my doorstep, but it still feels strange. Maybe I'm missing out on something great! Read more → -
Found GC2BHX9 C-130J Hercules
Found by the geohound and I after a brief battle with the first stinging nettles of the season. Owie! She and I came over from Stanton Harcourt this morning – from which we see plenty of Brize Nortons’ Hercules! – because many of our favourite local walks are waterlogged. Things are somewhat drier underfoot here, […] Read more →
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Did not find GC6Q3A1 Cur.Bri.Lew 11
The pup and I unearthed a few likely hiding places without success here. Not sure what we’ve missed: feels like we lifted every hint item in the vicinity!
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Found GC6Q39R Cur.Bri.Lew 10
QEF for the geopup and I on this strangely springlike morning. Cache container is damaged almost beyond recognition, as others have observed, and is desperately in need of replacement. TFTC.× Read more →
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