My website and blog were hosted by Google, which tracks people on an industrial scale. So I've now moved to GitHub Pages using a site that's statically generated using Pelican. GitHub Pages have better privacy than Google, but the deeper point is that a static site stored in a git …

Trailing slashes

According to RFC 3986 the following two URLs are not necessarily equivalent:

• http://gigask.foo/organizations/3
• http://gigask.foo/organizations/3/

But most users would think the two were equivalent. What's to be done? I think the RFC should have said that the first should be normalized …

Customer service is expensive. If you want good customer service then you pay a higher price. Most people (me included) want cheap stuff, so we put up with poor customer service.

Incidentally, with a citizen's allowance, labour costs would drop and so you'd get better customer service at the same …

The thing is that once you've committed in Mercurial, the idea is that it stays there forever. In Git, the idea is that commits only become immutable when it's made public.

That means that with Git you can look back over the history and change it so that it makes …

I haven't a clue what it supports, but you're welcome to it.

Told in the first person by a 30 year old recounting the experiences of her 12 year old self, Light On Snow skilfully manages to evoke deep emotions and maintain a narrative tension, using simple language and and everyday thoughts and activities.

Perhaps all the characters were 'good people'. It …

A short list of stuff this time. This Teach Yourself C++ book was great. It must have been after uni that I got into it. I don't think I made it through all 21 days. I prefer to learn as I go on a real project.

This was my post-uni …

Following on from my earlier post about Sky sending me junk mail when I was a signed up to the MPS, I've heard from the MPS that I'm not actually registered at all! Ooops, I thought I had but it looks like I owe Sky and apology. Sorry Sky.

It's good when people recommend books, because you get to read something that you wouldn't otherwise have read. So it was with Girl With A Pearl Earring. This is a historical coming-of-age story, that carefully describes a young woman's thoughts and emotions as she is employed in the Vermeer household …