h2g2bob @h2g2bob@mastodon.dbatley.com

I’ve built a daily geography quiz. Pin five world cities on a map with no labels, then answer three questions about each. How close can you get? https://knowwhereconsulting.co.uk/quiz/cities/

🗺️ Thank you, Land Talks!

Big thanks to Henry Morris and Francis Irving @frabcus for having us last week. Kate Swade took the stage to talk about the need for communities to have a better understanding of who owns the land and buildings in their area. She also shared stories about how community groups and campaigners are using LandExplorer to bolster their campaigning and investigations.

We’ve added the slides to our website, which is linked above!

#HousingJustice #LandExplorer #HousingOrganising #DataForGood

I didn't have "replace charging connector on your laptop" on my todo list today, but here we are. It's not even #MaintenanceMonday!

Not the prettiest fix, but was using the only socket I had to hand, and it'll do until I can source one the right size.

Laptop is back charging nicely.

It's #mathober day 3, and the prompt is PERMUTATION. Here's a little zine I made about different kinds of permutations! PDF: https://katiesteckles.co.uk/mo3

Saw that Digger movie. You are advised to ignore whichever critics did not dig it.

Did you know that I make brief notes about AND RENDER ULTIMATE JUDGMENT UPON every movie I watch these days? At that letterboxd site. Eg: https://boxd.it/gAXWVp

The last four digits of 16¹⁶ https://aperiodical.com/2026/10/the-last-four-digits-of-16%c2%b9%e2%81%b6/

I made a thing: it's called the DNS Museum, and it's because I kept joking at the start of my talk, "Bizarre and Unusual Uses of DNS" that a lot of the things weren't alive anymore - so it was more like a museum of DNS and I was the curator. Anyway, I'm on holiday right now so I finally got around to doing something about that joke.

Consider this a first draft, I have way more notes about other things to add at some point. It's also a little bland, but one thing I'm not is a designer. Let me know about any issues - AI was used to help create the site, but of course I'm responsible for any mistakes. It's on GitHub too, so PRs are welcome.

https://dns.museum

For my birthday, my brother-in-law gave me a 4992-digit hex number that, when used as a seed for Python’s random number generator, makes it so that printing a sequence of “random” ASCII characters actually prints a birthday greeting.

I find it rather amazing that this is possible!

This is the program he sent with the seed:

with open("seed.txt", encoding="ascii") as handle:
seed = int(handle.read().strip(), 0)
r = random.Random(seed)
pending = ""
while True:
character = chr(r.randrange(128))
if pending + character == "\x1e\x1f":
break
print(pending, end="")
pending = character
print()

Huge updates to my transmission constraints dashboard!

✨ An entirely new layout
📊 Loads of new charts
⚖️ Comparison stats
📈 Cumulative data
🔥 Turn-up volume by fuel type

And much, much more…

https://renewables-map.robinhawkes.com/curtailment

🔥 Annual reminder for Northern Hemisphere inhabitants. Test your central heating before it gets really cold! 🔥
Bleed the radiators, top up the boiler and run a test for an hour.

The price of diesel is now effectively £2/litre so it costs about £140 to fill my tank which at 46mpg gives me a range of 700 miles: 20p/mile

Assuming an average electricity cost of 26p/kWh and a Polestar 2 with efficiency of 287 Wh/mi, that's about 7.5p/mile.

The cost of fuel and maintenance on the fully deprecated 'bangernomics' ICE car is now heavily outweighed by the EV savings, even with a higher purchase price.

Trump is doing a great job killing the oil industry long term 😀

World Standards Day and World Standards Day 2026 #Standards https://improbable.com/2026/09/26/world-standards-day-and-world-standards-day-2026/

Bird migration is changing. What does this reveal about our planet? – visualised | Birds | The Guardian.

This is a really beautiful and fascinating article about bird migration, following several different species around the globe.

#birds #nature

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2025/oct/16/bird-migration-is-changing-what-does-this-reveal-about-our-planet-visualised-aoe

"If I'd had more time I'd have written less code"

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/

This year's Geoguessr World Championship final is absolutely incredible

https://youtu.be/BU6rXYv726I?t=30917

Happy 50th Anniversary to The Muppet Show! Jim Henson's groundbreaking puppet variety show began airing on the United Kingdom's ATV Network on this date in 1976 ahead of its US debut later that month.

*** New blog post ***

The second post of my tour around Zeeland in the Spring of this year:

https://therantyhighwayman.blogspot.com/2026/09/ive-seen-things-you-people-wouldnt.html

The 2026 Ig Nobel Prize winners were introduced at the 36th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, in Zurich, Switzerland, on September 3, 2026. Each winner has done something that makes people LAUGH, then THINK. #IgNobel https://improbable.com/2026/09/03/the-2026-ig-nobel-prize-winners-are-announced/