andrewducker | Recent Entries

You can find more info on my userinfo page - but this is just here to say that I'm very happy to be friended by anyone that wants to read me. I rarely post friends-only, and that only tends to be about things that mention work, so if I don't friend you back you're not actually missing much...

If you do friend me, this would be a good place to leave a comment introducing yourself, and letting me know how you found me!

I have lots of awesome friends - if you want to make a few more then take a look at here for Dreamwidth, add a few people, and leave comment so people can add you too.

The links posts come from my page at Pinboard and are posted to DW via a web app which I wrote and runs as a daily PowerShell job on Azure. You can grab it to run yourself from here.

A note on correcting people's grammar in the comments.

Official Spoiler Policy.

A friend reported that it was taking him 20 seconds to load my journal (as opposed to only a couple of seconds for other people's). Other people's journals weren't slow, just mine. And only when logged in.

Can anyone replicate this? (I'm putting in a support request to DW over it, and it would be good to know if this is something special about him, or a more widespread problem.)

And before anyone asks, yes, we've replicated on multiple browsers, multiple devices, and multiple networks.

Edit: Support ticket raised

Today we went to Berwick Upon Tweed, to a friend's birthday.

I didn't know exactly when we'd want to come back, so I bought an "Open Return", thinking that this would mean we could return on whichever train we wanted. That being my memory of how they worked. Only to discover that because we'd booked to go there on a Transpennine train, the return trip also had to be on a train from the same operator. Which, as there were only trains at 16:09 and then nothing more until after 19:00, we could either leave early, or be stuck there with the kids until very late.

I am completely baffled by this. There seemed to be, as far as I can tell, no way of getting an actually flexible return trip.

Anyone with experience of the train setup want to tell me if this is how it's now supposed to work?

About 6 weeks ago I noticed that I was out of contract with my ISP, and they'd put up my price by inflation, to just over £40 for 300Mbit..

So I checked, and discovered I could go back in to a 2 year contract for £39. And that they no longer had a 300Mbit contract, that was for 500Mbit. So I cut my price and got 50% more bandwidth.

And then a couple of days ago, I noticed that they had an offer on - to sign up for 900Mbit for the cost of 500Mbit. So now I have 900Mbit internet for the same price I was paying for 300Mbit in May.

(I could be even cheaper with a different provider, but Zen have awesome customer service, and we both work from home, so I want someone who fixes things fast when they go wrong.)

What boggles me slightly is that I now have 100Mbit upload. Which is how fast my home's internal network was until about 2 years ago.

Good morning from windy Scotland, where the children were sitting in their car seats in the front drive waiting to be picked up and taken to Portobello beach, where the parents of one of their friends are looking after them today.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

1. Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to much of federal government’s regulatory structure: (tags:USA law doom )
2. Palantir Acquires Pentagon For $800 Billion - (The Onion): (tags:business war funny satire )
3. Brand new 'Bricktastic Beasts' trail opens at Edinburgh Zoo for summer: (tags:lego zoo edinburgh )

1. White working-class children 'failed by schools system' (more support needed for reading, more apprenticeships needed): (tags:uk class Education )
2. NHS trust defies Supreme Court ruling to respect trans patients' identities: (tags:lgbt transgender GoodNews uk bigotry law )
3. A personalized vaccine for melanoma cut the risk of cancer returning after five years: (tags:cancer vaccine viaKenny )
4. Astronauts returning from six-month missions describe a persistent 'observer' sensation — the feeling of watching their own lives from a half-step outside the frame, weeks after they're back on the ground: (tags:space psychology )

Having read some of the proposals by Andy Burnham on devolution, I'm not a fan.

This is largely because everything depends on Mayors. And I have a strong dislike of the "Everyone votes for a single mayor, who power then flows down from" approach.

Scotland doesn't really have mayors. Scotland has provosts. And the provost is the head of the town council. And they don't distribute power - they help organise. You vote for your local councillors, and then *they* get together and work out between them how they want to manage things, and that person is then the point of coordination. They're a manager, helping make the process of decision-making between the councillors you chose run as smoothly as possible.

And that, frankly, is the kind of government I want. A somewhat messy one that has to argue, compromise, and work things through, rather than one where The Big Guy In Charge runs roughshod over everyone.

*who, thanks to the council voting system in Scotland, are much more likely to actually be someone who want representing you, and you don't get a single party in charge nearly as often. Of the 32 councils in Scotland 3 are majority controlled, and in one of those the majority are Independents.

1. Windows 10 quietly gets one more year of support and updates: (tags:windows support )
2. Gaza Dissidents Plan Mass Rallies Against Hamas: (tags:Gaza protests )

Last day of P1/P3
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

Very cool, if true

Recent Entries

Sticky: Welcome

Anyone finding my journal slow?

Interesting Links for 07-07-2026

Interesting Links for 06-07-2026

Interesting Links for 05-07-2026

Train annoyances

Interesting Links for 04-07-2026

Interesting Links for 03-07-2026

Internet Go Whoosh

Photo cross-post

Interesting Links for 02-07-2026

Interesting Links for 01.07.2026

Interesting Links for 30-06-2026

What I don't like about Andy Burnham's plans for devolution

Interesting Links for 29-06-2026

Interesting Links for 28-06-2026

Interesting Links for 27-06-2026

Interesting Links for 26-06-2026

Photo cross-post

Interesting Links for 25-06-2026

Interesting Links for 24-06-2026

Profile

July 2026

Syndicate

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Active Entries

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags