On holiday now until next year. Needing the break as tiredness and health haven’t been great the last few weeks. Looking forward to a lazy recharge over the next couple of weeks.
General Election 2019
So clearly many people spent last Thursday kicking children and pensioners into traffic as well as voting Tory. Since then the Labour Party have imploded, the LibDems have disappeared and lost their leader while the SNP are pushing Scotland to independence much like Wales and Ireland. Hard to see there being a United Kingdom by 2025.
Moment of the night was Swinson losing her seat and Sturgeon celebrating. Some will say its unbecoming of the FM. Bullshit. Show’s the cut throat business of politics.
Clearly Brexit was the issue. Some of the other reasons and demographic breakdowns behind the vote are interesting. The split between old and young in this election is telling. No wonder the Tory’s don’t want 16-18 to vote. The Tory’s have been voted in on half a manifesto but were the only (serious) ones to say they will deliver Brexit. As ever, Marina Hyde sums up how many are feeling.
So we end this year/decade on a downer in my opinion. The worse off in our society will be further penalised while the have’s feel less of the impact of Brexit. What a mess.
Greta Thunberg – Time Person of the Year
Time’s person of the year is often controversial but hard to argue with this years choice – Greta Thunberg. Her story is remarkable and she’s had a massive impact on the conversation around climate change even if it’s not delivered a material difference yet. The difference in a year is striking.
Simone Giertz
Loved this profile of Simone Giertz in Wired. She’s went through a lot of health issues and I’ve loved her videos on YouTube for years – nice to read she’s moving on to more ambitious builds and goals. If you’ve not seen anything from Simone before start with her Truckla Tesla mod.
Passwords
Everyone hates passwords. This article proves that almost half of users iterate their passwords. No surprise in this day and age of complex passwords, three out of four characters, number, symbol types etc. We need to do away with forcing users to change passwords every x days and help and support with alternative methods or allow them to set a complex password but not enforce the frequent change – we’d be far more secure.
Doddie Weir
Watched Sports Personality in tears last night seeing Doddie Weir receive the Helen Rollason award. He’s been fighting MND for a couple of years now and raised awareness and money to find a cure. The BBC have more on Doddie here and a great documentary now on iPlayer. To donate visit the My Name’5 Doddie Foundation website.
LEGO cartography
So geeky but so good – a Lego map of Scotland. It’s expensive at £1500 but I want one.
The Decades best Gadgets
The 2010’s have seen some great gadgets and The Verge has a nice top 100 round up. Stand outs for me from the list – iPhone 4, DJI Phantom and the iPad. That iPhone 4 design is such a classic.
The Deep Sea
Almost my new favourite thing, The Deep Sea is a great website that you must visit. Just keep scrolling….it goes on for a long time.
AI Dungeon
This is amazing. AI Dungeon popped out of nowhere a couple of weeks ago. Years and years ago text adventures were all the rage. However they were limited by the path the developer wanted you to take – think Bandersnatch. Not so with AI Dungeon. You can ask it to do anything you can in written language and it has scope and scale to grow according to your commands. Give it a go while you still can – it’s costing the dev’s $65k a month to host.