1. bex edmondson: my (girls) high school's highest computer-related qualification was HALF a GCSE, a qualification taken aged 16 - i had about 12 of them, and ONE HALF was computer-related. half my grade was a POWERPOINT. i asked for them to start an a level - they said no IT WAS 2010!!!!!!!!!!!!https://twitter.com/alicegoldfuss/status/1096142571837960192

    I feel the pain :/ I was already freelancing when I took my GCSEs and was forced to do the ICT BTEC you’re probably talking about. It ended up being my worst grade overall because I got so angry with it halfway through and tried (but sadly failed) to fail it on purpose. Plan was that if a job interviewer asked why IT was my lowest grade I would take great pleasure in ripping the course content to shreds.

  2. Brian Suda: digs around in an old NeXT box used by CERN to build the first graphical browser. Looking through the source code, this really was a grand experiment.pic.twitter.com/KpDDz3h1FI

    Please tell me that’s the original “this is a server, do not turn off” sticker?!

  3. Aitor García Rey: Today I Learned the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 provided £20M for compensation payments to British Empire slave-owners. British government financed this massive amount (~5% GPD) w/ a £15M loan (banker Rothschild). It was not fully paid back until 2015! Bankers, we always win

    just imagine how long it would have taken if they had compensated the slaves :/

  4. Aitor García Rey: For a long time I felt dumb (or even betrayed!) helping people both professionally & personally and not getting love or recognition back. A few years ago I decide to change that. Now, I’ve *zero* expectations for anyone, I expect nothing. Literally. I just try to help. Period.

    @_aitor I mostly reached a similar place and it’s very relaxing. I occasionally have to remind myself that I’m helping purely because I chose to. The help might be ignored or even rejected, and that’s fine. Might have an impact on whether I chose to help that particular person in the future, though…

  5. emma winston: For someone who complains bitterly about everything I sure am easily pleased by rain/thunderstorms

    oh man, I go wild in thunderstorms and high winds. I have yet to find somewhere with both, Iceland had great wind but no thunder, central europe is the other way round.

  6. holy indifference: I have not! Will keep a look out. The Centrotrans drivers are my besties though.

    Their website vectortours.de is one of the most confusing I’ve ever seen. A German domain with a weird mixture of Albanian and German text. Most of the phone numbers don’t work, and when I tried calling the German number and asked in German about their lines from Macedonia to Montenegro, they were dumbfounded and had no idea what I was talking about. Some of the ticket desks in Skopje firmly denied the existence of the company, until we eventually found one who gave us a ticket. Then, by chance, we ended up staying in a hostel in Prizren which was literally next door to the Vector Tours office, which was adorned with three completely different logos! I think some other weird stuff happened which I forgot, but in total this was enough to cement them as a semi-legendary entity and permanent in-joke.

  7. holy indifference: I have a whole four upcoming long distance bus trips this month and ~none~ of them are with @Flixbus. What uuuuuppp finally I'm seeing other people. [...] https://rhiaro.co.uk/2018/05/upcoming-bus #travel

    Have you ever traveled on a “Vector Tours” bus? They became something of a personal legend after my Balkans trip

  8. Aaron Parecki: TIL booting to OSX "safe mode" disables the touch bar completely, so there is no way to press the escape key in safe mode

    did someone already create a USB keyboard with just the esc key on? What’s one extra dongle to a modern macbook user anyway?

  9. Blaine Cook: Apparently personal use is exempted. Wasn't clear to me reading through, but makes sense.

    AFAIK the big questions for the “personal use” exemption is exactly where the boundary is between personal and commercial usage. Most of the stuff I read about it so far agreed that it’s vaguely worded.

  10. Brian Suda: works on a simple iOS action extension to get you word count, reading level and (more to come) hard core writing statistics. This should work in any writing app so you never need to change your workflow. Scratching his own itch is the best kind.pic.twitter.com/JfErA0uktB

    @briansuda what on earth is “Gender: Weak Female”?!

  11. Brian Suda: Dear Lazyweb, does anyone know someone who is an expert in Art History, specifically portraitures. The, would they be interested in chatting about a potential project based on some of his crazy ideas. Mainly looking into the future of how we see ourselves based on the past.

    @briansuda clarerosehistory.com is a friend of mine in the UK. Website is mainly focused on textiles, but IIRC she also knows a lot about portraiture

  12. Edward Randell: @BarnabyWalters Thank you for posting the lyrics from Moondog 2! (https://waterpigs.co.uk/notes/4mT1N/). I have all the rounds transcribed (music notation-wise) but had been unable to decipher some of the words – was so happy to find your blog post :-)

    @edwardrandell glad you found it useful! I got stuck on some of them and found the lyrics elsewhere but wanted to have them all in one place. I'd love a copy of the notation if you'd be willing to send it to me! Might be worth transcribing to ABC and adding to the lyrics page as a complete reference