By @edent · avif HowTo HTML · 450 words · read ~293 times.
AVIF is the hip new image format. It is born out of video compression technology. Modern video streaming services have a complicated relationship with multiple resolutions. A video is usually encoded several time - for high, medium, and low bandwidths. When you start streaming, your playback device usually picks the lowest quality stream to start […]
Continue reading →By @edent · beer gadget review · 20 comments · 1,150 words · read ~11,823 times.
Do you like beer? Do you like cider? Would you like to brew your own? Would you like a frustrating experience? Well, gang, do I have a treat for you! This is the Pinter from the Greater Good Fresh Brewing Company. It promises to introduce you to the wonderful world of beer and cider brewing. […]
Continue reading →By @edent · football sport tribalism · 7 comments · 500 words · read ~256 times.
Florentino Perez says we may need to make football matches shorter than 90 minutes 😳 pic.twitter.com/wvxbIFdp5c — ESPN FC (@ESPNFC) April 20, 2021 On the face of it, I sort of get it. Viral football clips of sporting prowess (or failures) do Big Numbers™ on social media. Casual fans love them, and even non-fans might […]
Continue reading →By @edent · Book Review climate NetGalley science · 1 comment · 450 words · read ~104 times.
Maybe it's the weirdness of the weather. Maybe it's another way to pour scorn on politicians. Maybe the steady stream of headlines about fires, floods and droughts is finally starting to get to us. Whatever it is, for more and more of us, climate change is shifting from a shadowy fear in the backs of […]
Continue reading →By @edent · Book Review NetGalley science · 2 comments · 450 words · read ~153 times.
From atomic structures to theories about magnetic forces, scientific progress has given us a good grasp on the properties of many different materials. However, most scientists cannot measure the temperature of steel just by looking at it, or sculpt stone into all kinds of shapes, or know how it feels to blow up a balloon […]
Continue reading →By @edent · football MSc · 2 comments · 750 words · read ~183 times.
As part of my MSc, I'm reading MoneyBall. OK, I just watched the film! Cut me some slack! The basic thesis of the book is this: Our baseball team doesn't have much money to buy new players Which baseball players have the best Statistic X for the lowest price? Buy undervalued players which increase your […]
Continue reading →By @edent · hacking sport · 4 comments · 600 words · read ~377 times.
This is a two-part blog post about rewriting the rules. I hated playing sports as a teenager quelle surprise. In a vain attempt to get me to love the beautiful game, a PE teacher once made me team captain for a kickabout. My rival? Sporty Dave. Head boy, house captain, and conqueror of puberty. The […]
Continue reading →By @edent · excel nhs ux · 7 comments · 450 words · read ~580 times.
About a million years ago, my wife's work sent her on a training course optimistically titled "How To Use Excel As A Database." We were both horrified. Excel is a perfectly good spreadsheet program - but it is categorically not a database! OK, it has rows and columns which sorta look like a database table. […]
Continue reading →By @edent · twitter · 3 comments · 200 words · read ~199 times.
Twitter's trending topics are... inflammatory. Probably deliberately so in order to drive engagement. It's a mix of "who shall we hate today" and lowest-common-denominator "celebrity" gossip. I hate it. There are various ways you can block content on the web - but they usually involve installing a plugin to your browser. Here's a simple hack […]
Continue reading →By @edent · wfh · 10 comments · 400 words · read ~338 times.
(This blog post is going to be UK specific, and biased towards jobs that I've personally done.) How much does it cost to go to work in a physical office? I'm going to try and list all the things I have to pay for just in order to be able to show up. This ignores […]
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