Latest posts
- Who are the actors in the UK's 2015 passport?May 31, 2026@edent
I got nerdsniped by a bloody Reddit post! In 2015, the UK Government launched a new passport design. It immediately attracted negative press for its designers' "sexist" decision to feature more men than women. The government has been accused of sexism over the new UK passport design, which commemorates the achievements of two women but seven men. It's true that there are only two named women -
- The UK Government's Low Value Purchase System is a Waste of TimeMay 29, 2026@edent
It can be hard running a small business. If you want to sell to a large organisation like the UK Government, there are forms to fill in, checks to comply with, tenders to bid on, and a hundred other things. Luckily, there's the RM6237 Low Value Purchase System to make everything better. If a department wants to buy something below a certain threshold, they can contact any of the registered…
- Gadget Review: Chuwi Minibook X N150 + Linux ★★★★☆May 27, 2026@edent
I needed a small and light laptop to take travelling. Something with a larger screen than my phone so I can use the Big Internet™. Nothing too expensive and something that uses the same USB-C charger as everything else. So I settled on the Chuwi Minibook N150. It's literally small enough to fit in my cargo-short pockets. For the price (around £300ish) it is basically fine. There are a few ni…
- PHP - simple way to send HTTP headers before a script endsMay 25, 2026@edent
Suppose you want PHP to keep processing after it has sent back an HTTP response. Normally, this doesn't work: <?php header( "Location: https://example.com/" ); // Long operation. sleep(10); die(); Try it yourself. You'll have to wait 10 seconds before you get back < HTTP/2 302 < location: https://example.com/ There are some complex ways to fix this - they usually involve…
- Which age-gates should be skill-gates and vice-versa?May 23, 2026@edent
In the UK, it is illegal to buy alcohol if you are under 18. Similarly, in most countries, you cannot vote until you have reached a specific age. These are age-gates. You do not need to prove your competence to drink, vote, smoke, or get married; you just need to be old enough. Some things have skill-gates. If you want an amateur radio licence in the UK, you need to pass an exam. You can be…
- Whale FallMay 21, 2026@edent
Somewhere, in the endless blue ocean, a gigantic mammal shudders as it takes its last breath. Thanks to science, we know that all dogs go to heaven, but all whales descend through the murky depths until their carcasses litter the seabed. Imagine a giant dying. You can't. They are huge and endless. A towering presence which, so it seems, has always been part of our world. They dominate and are…
- [RSS Club] Let's meet up AFKMay 20, 2026@edent
Shhhh! This post is only available to RSS subscribers like you 😊 My wife and I are preparing for a big Interrail journey through Europe. Whenever we go on holiday, we like to meet up with friendly locals to have a drink and chat. We did this on our last journey and it was great. So, if you're a member of RSS club and fancy showing some tourists a cool bar, awesome restaurant (with vegan op…
- Book Review: Terrible Worlds: Destinations by Adrian Tchaikovsky ★★★★★May 19, 2026@edent
What's better than one Adrian Tchaikovsky novella? Three Adrian Tchaikovsky novellæ! Or is it "novellii"? Either way, a delightful triptych of stories on a common theme. On the surface, they're about travelling to a new destination (Space! The Future! For-Copyright-Reasons Not Narnia!) Except, deep down, they're about loneliness. No matter how far or fast we run, no matter where or when we go, …
- GDS weighs in on the NHS's decision to retreat from Open SourceMay 17, 2026@edent
Within the UK's Civil Service you occasionally hear the expression "being invited to a meeting without biscuits". It implies a rather frosty discussion without any of the polite niceties of a normal meeting. In general though, even when people have severe disagreements, it is rare for tempers to fray. It is even rarer for those internal disagreements to spill over into public. Which is what…
- UK Government Kicks Out PalantirMay 15, 2026@edent
The UK Government, for all its faults, is pretty good at publishing contracts it has awarded. That's why I get depressed when I see rage-bait nonsense about how companies have been award "Top Secret" deals. Right now you can go to https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk and search for whichever bête noire has you riled up. You might want to argue that the company is corrupt, incompetent, or …
- Stupidly Simple SVG SparklinesMay 13, 2026@edent
A sparkline is a little line-graph with no axes or other unnecessary details. They're useful for getting quick understanding of what the data is showing. They're also really easy to create programmatically. This uses the SVG "polyline" which takes a list of x,y co-ordinate pairs. But can you spot the small problem? <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 1024 124"> <polyline
- Find blog posts with missing featured images - and missing alt text - without a pluginMay 11, 2026@edent
WordPress has the concept of "Featured Images". They are the images which show up when you share a blog post on social media or, on some themes, as the "hero" image. How can you quickly and easily find any posts which don't have a featured image? For this, I use WP CLI - it allows you to run complex WordPress actions and queries using the command line. After you have installed WP CLI you can…
- [RSS Club] A Sneak Preview of Upcoming PostsMay 10, 2026@edent
Psssst! This top secret post is only available to RSS subscribers! As a little thank-you for being a member of RSS Club I thought I'd show you some trailers for upcoming blog posts. I use the brilliant Editorial Calendar Plugin to organise all my scheduled blog posts. Here's what you can expect over the next month: I tend to write in bursts - rather than once per day - and then spread the…
- Book Review: The Names by Florence Knapp ★★⯪☆☆May 09, 2026@edent
This has an excellent narrative structure, some beautiful prose, and I just didn't enjoy it. The story is Sliding Doors meets Same Time Next Year mixed with a distressing amount of domestic violence. A mother faces a difficult choice. Should she name her child after her abusive and violent husband? In one strand she does, in another she doesn't, and in the third she makes a compromise. We…
- I've found just the right paper for my Bottom Hole problemMay 07, 2026@edent
A few weeks ago, I went on a mad quest to find the newspaper used in 1995's Bottom Hole TV show. During the episode, Eddie starts reading this newspaper: Obviously, the "Hammersmith Bugle" is not a real paper and they never ran a headline "No News Shocker". But judging from all the other shots, the prop is based on a real newspaper. So I decided to rip off Dirty Feed's shtick and find out…
- RSS Feeds Send Me More Traffic Than GoogleMay 05, 2026@edent
Yeah yeah, I know, data-point of 1. I recently read Susam's blog post where they said that "most of the traffic to my personal website still comes from web feeds" - I wondered if that was true for my site. I've been writing this blog for a while. I've never much bothered with "aggressive" SEO - I have a fairly semantic layout, all my reviews have metadata, and stuff like that - but I'm not…
- [RSS Club] Where are you from?May 04, 2026@edent
Psssst! This top secret post is only available to RSS subscribers! A little while ago I added some locally hosted, privacy first stats to my blog. Using an offline GeoIP service I can get a very rough idea of where visitors are from. It doesn't deal with people using a VPN, or their mobile roaming to a different country, or rapid changes in IP allocation - but it's good enough for my purposes.
- Vertically Aligning Roman Numerals in CodeMay 03, 2026@edent
I have a PHP function which uses Roman Numerals. It looks like this: $romanNumerals = [ "Ⅿ" => 1000, "ⅭⅯ" => 900, "Ⅾ" => 500, "ⅭⅮ" => 400, "Ⅽ" => 100, "ⅩC" => 90, "Ⅼ" => 50, "ⅩⅬ" => 40, "Ⅹ" => 10, "Ⅸ" => 9, "Ⅷ" => 8, "Ⅶ" => 7, "Ⅵ" => 6, "Ⅴ" => 5, "Ⅳ" => 4, "Ⅲ" => 3, "Ⅱ" => 2, "Ⅰ" => 1 ]; The problem is, the
- NHS Goes To War Against Open SourceMay 01, 2026@edent
The NHS is preparing to close nearly all of its Open Source repositories. Throughout my time working for the UK Government - in GDS, NHSX, i.AI, and others - I championed Open Source. I spoke to dozens of departments about it, wrote guidance still in use today, and briefed Ministers on why it was so important. That's why I'm beyond disappointed at recent moves from NHS England to backtrack on…
- Let's Get Digging!Apr 29, 2026@edent
As part of my quest to try new things I decided to dig for treasure in my local park. The wonderful folks at DigVentures allow members of the public to assist with archaeology projects in their local area. We arrived on a sunny Thursday to find a couple of areas of Lesnes Abbey cordoned off, with the turf taken up, and a set of tools waiting for us. After a suitable health-and-safety briefing