Reconnecting Facebook on IFTTT

A few days ago, Facebook became disconnected with my IFTTT applet, which takes the Tweets made on the Lucire account (which themselves are fed through another service) and reposts them to Lucire’s Facebook page, so that none of us have to visit either.    IFTTT is good enough to send an email to tell you […]

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Cellphone? What cellphone?

It’s true. I spent time on business development, answering emails, doing tech stuff on our sites, and generally kept on top of things. I often wonder if I would have become an active Facebooker or Tweeter had they been invented and come into my orbit in, say, 2002. We all may have been too busy […]

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Social media produce some terrible clairvoyants

I see Billie Eilish is singing the next James Bond title song, and it sounds pretty good.    The last one, ‘Writing’s on the Wall’, wasn’t one of my favourites and while I didn’t mind Sam Smith’s composition, I felt a female voice might have suited it better. On a Bond music forum on Facebook […]

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Asus ROG Strix Evolve: a gaming mouse for a non-gamer

My early 2000s Microsoft Intellimouse 1·1 is still the perfect shape for me. After getting the second-hand one into service last year, I thought that I needed a spare. I’ve several other mice, including no-brand ones, that are a decent size, but I got used to having the forward and back buttons on either side. […]

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Five stars for Dell’s P2418D monitor

Working at night: the making of this blog post I had to put in a good word for Dell’s P2418D monitor (earlier post here) after the multiple negative reviews left by one person.    If I had to write something negative, it would be about their website blocking me from submitting my positive review by […]

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Human-centred peripherals should be the norm

I’ve had a go at software makers before over giving us solutions that are second-best, because second-best has become the convention. While I can think of an explanation for that, viz. Microsoft packaged Windows computers in the 1990s with Word and Outlook Express, it’s harder to explain why peripherals haven’t been human-centred.    I thought […]

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Sticking with 24 inches, but going to QHD: a pleasant upgrade

The Dell P2418D: just like the one I’m looking at as I type, but there are way more wires coming out of the thing in real life   Other than at the beginning of my personal computing experience (the early 1980s, and that’s not counting video game consoles), I’ve tended to have a screen that’s […]

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Social media sheeple don’t know they’re sheeple

Andrew R. Tester/Creative Commons It’s pretty hard to deactivate one’s Facebook. When I ceased posting in 2017 and reduced my activity to client stuff and group management, I made sure that I had no more Facebook sign-ons left. But it turns out that Lucire’s Twitter-to-Facebook page script relies on my account.    I did look […]

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Twitter also tracks your preferences, even after you opt out of ad customization

As with most platforms, I selected, on Twitter, that I didn’t want my advertising to be personalized. I don’t mind them making a buck, but I do mind them tracking my preferences, just as I did with Google and Facebook.    Google lied about its advertising preferences from 2009 to 2011 till yours truly busted […]

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History of the 2010s: a look back at the decade that was

When I first wrote a satirical look back at the decade, which ran on this blog in December 2009 (on the old Blogger service, as I was helping a friend fight a six-month battle with Google to restore his blog), it was pretty easy to make up little fictions based on reality. This one, covering […]

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