Based on an original blog post at: https://danq.me/2025/09/04/the-beer-token/

Thanks to the success of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy, we can never forget quite how much beer you used to be able to get for a fiver (plus an exceptionally-generous tip). Nowadays, it'll get you one pint, if you're lucky... and that offers us an exciting opportunity...

00:00 Intro

00:37 The Beer Token

01:17 Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy, extract from Chapter 2

03:17 1979: The price of a pint of beer

05:12 1990: The price of a pint of beer

06:17 1998: The £2 Coin, or Original Beer Token

08:00 2023: Beer now more likely to be £5 than £4

08:30 An opportunity

09:10 The £5 Coin, or a New Beer Token?

10:20 Would a politician support this?

10:45 Outro

Based on an original blog post at: https://danq.me/2025/08/28/hexagonal-cheese-scones/

A poem about the shape of a scone.

00:00 Intro

00:30 Hexagonal Cheese Scones

01:13 Outro

Based on an original blog post at: https://danq.me/2025/05/21/google-shared-my-phone-number/

When people started calling my personal mobile number with questions about a voluntary organisation I'm involved with, I was confused: we weren't sharing that number. It turns out that Google had decided to take the number I used to verify my identity for Google Business some years prior and start putting it in Google Search results. WTF, Google?

00:00 Intro

00:31 Google shared my phone number!

00:53 [Self-ad!] Plug for volunteering opportunities at Three Rings CIC

01:08 Unexpected phone calls

02:06 "Where did you find this number?"

02:33 Finding myself on Google

03:25 How Google first got my phone number

04:47 The second time this month a company leaked my PII!

05:02 "Did I click the wrong button on a popup?" and sarcasm

05:42 Outro

Based on an original blog post at: https://danq.me/2025/03/29/delivery-songs/

In the UK, ice cream vans are perhaps the only delivery service with their own jingle. Turkey and India are WAY ahead of us in this regard, and I've got a few ideas about how we fix that...

00:00 Intro

00:20 Ice cream vans

01:14 Water, propane, and vegetables

03:37 Other delivery services?

06:34 Outro

Based on an original blog post at: https://danq.me/2025/03/14/work-slippers/

Last month, the dog ate my slippers, and in the week it took me to replace them my work productivity took a dip. Coincidence? Nope! They were my 'work slippers', and it turns out I needed them!

00:00 Intro

00:21 Work Slippers

00:58 Routines are important

02:19 Work slippers as part of my routine

04:10 A new pair of slippers

04:28 My 100th blog post of this year!

05:07 Outro

Based on an original blog post at: https://danq.me/2025/02/28/ai-vs-the-expert/

Inspired by an 11-year old comedy sketch, I asked a GenAI to solve an unsolvable programming problem... and (for at least some models) it failed in exactly the way I anticipated: claiming to be able to solve it and delivering code that just... didn't. What does this teach us about AI trustworthiness for problems that might be solvable, but for which the human operator doesn't have sufficient comprehension to verify?

00:00 Intro

00:21 AI versus The Expert

02:45 gpt-4o's attempt

04:52 Claude 2.7 Sonnet's attempt

06:25 What's the point of all this?

08:16 Outro

Based on an original blog post at: https://danq.me/2025/02/27/a-psalm-for-the-wild-built-by-becky-chambers/

While I've been ill I read A Psalm for the Wild-built by Becky Chambers, which had been on my reading list for a while. It's a comforting and compelling story about purpose and identity in an environmentally-conscious utopia, and it's flipping awesome.

00:00 Intro

00:25 Micro-review of A Psalm for The Wild-Built

05:20 Outro

Based on an original blog post at: https://danq.me/2025/02/06/gods-adviser/

When I was a young child I took part in a school nativity play, and was so insistent about picking holes in the theological inconsistencies implied by the script that I had to be expelled from the classroom. Here's how it went down.

00:00 Intro

00:23 Nativity Plays

01:51 Adorable or Unbearable

02:48 A Different Spin on The First Christmas

04:17 The Meteor Strike of Bethlehem

04:27 Adviser #1

05:09 Theological Absurdity

06:17 Biting on and not letting go

06:51 Thrown out of class

07:09 Outro

Based on an original blog post at: https://danq.me/2024/12/05/ivd-2024/

It's International Volunteer Day, and thanks to being on sabbatical I got to spend most of the day volunteering with Three Rings. I liveblogged everything I got up to in a series of notes to try to shine a light on what volunteering (in a developer/devops role) with Three Rings can look like; this post is a summary of all that liveblogging, plus a few extra thoughts.

00:00 Intro

00:31 International Volunteer Day

02:31 Bugfixing mail merges

04:08 Code reviews

04:45 New server infrastructure

06:16 Sorting the post

07:09 Contact form improvements

08:13 A new feature

11:10 Sabbatical joy

12:24 Outro

Based on an original blog post at: https://danq.me/2024/11/29/stuck/

About twenty years ago, I spent three hours playing I-Spy in a broken-down elevator. And in doing so, I learned two things about my friend Fiona.

00:00 Intro

00:25 Stuck In A Lift

01:36 How to break/brake a lift

02:08 Getting stuck in a lift with my friend Fiona

03:35 What reminded me of this anecdote?

04:03 A four hour wait...

04:28 Discovering that Fiona is mildly claustrophobic

04:51 "...something beginning with N."

05:34 "...something beginning with S."

07:03 Three hours later, and the arrival of our rescuer

07:46 A second discovery about Fiona

08:25 Karma

08:36 Outro