h2g2bob @h2g2bob@mastodon.dbatley.com

Happy birthday to us!
7 years ago today the nonsense that is https://vole.wtf went live

Very cool.
https://www.andrewt.net/dithered-qr-codes/ @andrewt

🗺️ ‘What Do they Talk About.’

A #Map based guide to conversational gambits in 1951 #Britain.

#FestivalOfBritain

Our new Amsterdam servers are live. The EU can now be the primary home for Fastmail data, and like our US locations, it's our own hardware, racked and run by our own people. Nothing rented from a big cloud provider.

Already a customer? Switch regions in your settings. Thinking about it? You choose your region at signup.

Our CEO Bron's post walks through exactly what lives where, because we figure you'd read the fine print anyway.

https://www.fastmail.com/blog/fastmail-offers-eu-data-region

#Fastmail #Email

The unique (and quirky!) magnificence of Jean Berko Gleason. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5afexlm2o7E

Italy and Austria united beneath the Alps 🏔️

⚒️ With over 220 tunnel kilometres excavated, the completion of the EU co-funded Brenner Base Tunnel is one step closer! 🇦🇹 🇮🇹

Miners have now connected Austria and Italy via two main railway tunnels.

The BBT will better connect Italy and Austria while boosting rail transport connections between northern and southern Europe upon completion in 2032.

This is EU cooperation and engineering at its best. 🇪🇺

© Schnittraum Tirol

This is cool: https://dnsisbeautiful.com/traceroute/tbray.org

(I mean, it’s still always DNS, but cool nonetheless.)

h/t @Quinnypig

Beautiful alternative to the periodic table created in 1975 by James Franklin Hyde

I made some #Strudel starter cards to tuck around our #emfCamp EMOM tent.

They're intended to give people a starting point for play, offering a spoonful of inspiration without getting too bogged down in detail.

Feedback welcome and I can host the lot (12 of them so far) somewhere if anyone would like to download them for use or to improve them [as long as you share updates back!]

#livecoding #algorave

The Last MPEG-4 Visual Patent Has Expired

If you are looking for a reason to celebrate today, the last of the MPEG-4 Part 2 patents expired today...
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Last-MPEG-4-Patent-Expired

In the summer edition of Highways Magazine, I get back to basics and look at getting vehicle crossings right.

Too many highway authorities are not doing their job right here.

Digital issue available online (signup needed).

https://www.highwaysmagazine.co.uk/

Crossposted with @openvibe

Herman Chernoff, who invented Chernoff Faces, has died. Chernoff faces are an unusually human way of representing statistical data. #Statistics https://improbable.com/2026/07/15/herman-chernoff-who-invented-chernoff-faces-has-died/

Jurassic Park Computers in EXCRUCIATING DETAIL

https://fabiensanglard.net/jurrasic_park_computers/index.html

#UNIX #IKNOWTHIS #SGI #Sun #Mac #Workstations #movies #films #JurassicPark #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing #computinghistory #tech #vintagetech #entertainment #blog #photo #nineties

Under Over Over

Despite its name, the London Underground isn't always underground. This was taken at West Hampstead, where Underground trains pass above the London Overground.

I've made it a mission to find every spot in London where this topsy-turvy railway quirk happens.

Some git things that I've learned in the last 3 months, having used git for over 17 years 😆 :

`git commit --amend` - with staged changes. Instead of running `git rebase -i HEAD~2`. Found this by accident.

`git branch --merged` - lists merged branches that are ready to be deleted.

`git worktree` - I think I'd heard of these before, but I've started using them for real. Very useful for some of our Thunderforest stylesheets when variations (e.g. dark mode) live on long-lived branches.

This is awesome: Someone actually made a truetype font encoding QR codes, including reed-solomon encoding!

https://qr.jim.sh/

Cryptic clue from the Guardian: "Roots of Riemann zeta: only minus evens and half + imaginary included - that's where roots come from! (7)"
https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/29890

Excellent piece by Alex at mySociety on reforming the whip in the UK Parliament.

- Define the whip – give a clear scope and bounds to acceptable and unacceptable approaches

- Co-produce the whip – involve the parliamentary party in shaping the party line

- Publish the whip – produce clear public justification for voting instructions

https://www.mysociety.org/2026/07/01/reforming-the-whip/

#ukpol

Happy to announce, against a backdrop of shitty news, that we have a small antedating for the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction for "non-genre", denoting mainstream fiction, from 1975 to 1973:

https://sfdictionary.com/view/1538/non-genre

Don't forget! `air_conditioning=yes/no` is the tag you can map now!

When you walk into a shop/cafe/restaurant do you immediately notice the cold air? You should be happy for 2 reasons! You can cool down, and now you have something to map into OSM!

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:air_conditioning

#OpenStreetMap #OSM #aircon #climatecrises