Decent Newsroom

May 7 2026 · Edited May 7, 2026

I've found just the right paper for my Bottom Hole problem

A few weeks ago, I went on a mad quest to find the newspaper used in 1995's Bottom Hole TV show. During the episode, Eddie starts reading this newspaper: Obviously, the "Hammersmith Bugle" is not

by Terence Eden’s Blog

May 5 2026 · Edited May 5, 2026

RSS Feeds Send Me More Traffic Than Google

Yeah yeah, I know, data-point of 1. I recently read Susam's blog post where they said that "most of the traffic to my personal website still comes from web feeds" - I wondered if that was true for

by Terence Eden’s Blog

May 4 2026 · Edited May 4, 2026

[RSS Club] Where are you from?

Psssst! This top secret post is only available to RSS subscribers! A little while ago I added some locally hosted, privacy first stats to my blog. Using an offline GeoIP service I can get a very

by Terence Eden’s Blog

May 3 2026 · Edited May 3, 2026

Vertically Aligning Roman Numerals in Code

I have a PHP function which uses Roman Numerals. It looks like this: $romanNumerals = [ "Ⅿ" => 1000, "ⅭⅯ" => 900, "Ⅾ" => 500, "ⅭⅮ" => 400, "Ⅽ" => 100, "ⅩC"

by Terence Eden’s Blog

May 1 2026 · Edited May 1, 2026

NHS Goes To War Against Open Source

The NHS is preparing to close nearly all of its Open Source repositories. Throughout my time working for the UK Government - in GDS, NHSX, i.AI, and others - I championed Open Source. I spoke to

by Terence Eden’s Blog

April 29 2026 · Edited Apr 29, 2026

Let's Get Digging!

As part of my quest to try new things I decided to dig for treasure in my local park. The wonderful folks at DigVentures allow members of the public to assist with archaeology projects in their

by Terence Eden’s Blog

April 27 2026 · Edited Apr 27, 2026

Theatre Review: Hadestown ★★★★★

Anaïs Mitchell has created something magical. I felt like giving a standing ovation after every song. Just pure theatrical joy delivered by a cast who know how to squeeze every drop of emotion from

by Terence Eden’s Blog

April 25 2026 · Edited Apr 25, 2026

You can parse an .env file as an .ini with PHP - but there's a catch

The humble .env file is a useful and low-tech way of storing persistent environment variables. Drop the file on your server and let your PHP scripts consume it with glee. But consume it how? There

by Terence Eden’s Blog

April 24 2026 · Edited Apr 24, 2026

Does Mythos mean you need to shut down your Open Source repositories?

Much Sturm und Drang in the world of Open Source with the announcement that the "Mythos" AI is now the ultimate hacker and is poised to unleash havoc on every code base. So should you close all your

by Terence Eden’s Blog

April 23 2026 · Edited Apr 23, 2026

Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts

I'm grateful that my blog posts attract lots of engaged, funny, and challenging comments. But any popular post also attracts spammers. I use Antispam Bee to automatically eradicate a couple of

by Terence Eden’s Blog

April 22 2026 · Edited Apr 22, 2026

[RSS Club] How do you preserve an RSS feed?

Psssst! This top secret post is only available to RSS subscribers! I was sent this thought-provoking blog post called "The Necessary Pain Involved in Blogging (if you want your work to be preserved

by Terence Eden’s Blog

April 21 2026 · Edited Apr 21, 2026

Better TTS on Linux

The venerable eSpeak is a mainstay of Linux distributions. It is a clever Text-To-Speech (TTS) program which will read aloud the written word using a phenomenally wide variety of languages and

by Terence Eden’s Blog

April 20 2026 · Edited Apr 20, 2026

Book Review: Up - A scientist's guide to the magic above us by Dr Lucy Rogers ★★★★★

My mate Dr Lucy Rogers has written a book! This is a charming and thought provoking exploration of everything that goes on above our heads. This isn't an impersonal and imperious manuscript, it's a

by Terence Eden’s Blog

April 19 2026 · Edited Apr 19, 2026

Reprojecting Dual Fisheye Videos to Equirectangular (LG 360)

I still use my obsolete LG 360 Camera. When copying MP4 videos from its SD card, they come out in "Dual Fisheye" format - which looks like this: VLC and YouTube will only play "Equirectangular"

by Terence Eden’s Blog

April 17 2026 · Edited Apr 17, 2026

Book Review: How To Kill A Witch - A Guide For The Patriarchy by Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditozzi ★★★⯪☆

After reading The Wicked of the Earth, I wanted to understand some of the history behind the stories. Why were women accused of being witches? What really happened in those trials? What are the

by Terence Eden’s Blog

April 16 2026 · Edited Apr 16, 2026

RSS Club for WordPress

What if I told you there was a secret social network, hidden in plain sight? If you're reading this message, you're now a member of RSS Club! RSS Club is a series of posts which are only visible to

by Terence Eden’s Blog

April 15 2026 · Edited Apr 15, 2026

Why is it so hard to passively stalk my friends' locations?

I feel terribly guilty when I visit a new city, post photos of my travels, only to have a friend say "Hey! Why didn't you let me know you were in my neck of the woods?" Similarly, if I bump into an

by Terence Eden’s Blog

April 13 2026 · Edited Apr 13, 2026

Android now stops you sharing your location in photos

My wife and I run OpenBenches. It's a niche little site which lets people share photos of memorial benches and their locations. Most modern phones embed a geolocation within the photo's metadata, so

by Terence Eden’s Blog

April 11 2026 · Edited Apr 11, 2026

Cheapest way to keep a UK mobile number using an eSIM

I have an old mobile phone number that I'd like to keep. I think it is registered with a bunch of services for 2FA by SMS, but I can't be sure. So I want to keep it for a couple of years just in case

by Terence Eden’s Blog

April 10 2026 · Edited Apr 10, 2026

[RSS Club] Why do you use RSS rather than Atom?

This post is exclusive to feed subscribers. Enjoy! This whole experiment is called RSS Club - but perhaps it should be called "XML-based distributed feed club"? I've been playing about with