Notices by Dan Q (dan@m.danq.me)

Apparently Automattic are laying off around one in six of their workforce. And I'm one of the unlucky ones.

Anybody remote hiring for a UK-based full-stack web developer (in a world that doesn't seem to believe that full-stack developers exist anymore) with 25+ years professional experience, specialising in PHP, Ruby, JS, HTML, CSS, devops, and about 50% of CMSes you've ever heard of (and probably some you haven't)... with a flair for security, accessibility, standards-compliance, performance, and DexEx?

CV at: https://danq.me/cv/index.html

#note #work #automattic #job #memorable #employment

Via: 🔗 https://danq.me/2025/04/02/redundant/

It's been a long day of driving around Ireland, scrambling through forests, navigating to a hashpoint, exploring a medieval castle, dodging the rain, finding a series of geocaches, getting lost up a hill in the dark, and generally having a kickass time with one of my very favourite people on this earth: my mum.

And now it's time for a long soak in a hot bath with a pint of the black stuff and my RSS reader for company. A perfect finish.

#note #geohashing #ireland #sabbatical #travel #drinking #beer #alcohol #bathroom #geocaching #castles #mum #rss #memorable

Via: 🔗 https://danq.me/2024/11/24/guinness-in-the-bath/

How did I never think of accessing Gemini (the protocol) on my Gemini (portable computer) before today?

Of course, I recently rehomed my Gemini so instead I had to access Gemini on my Cosmo (Gemini's successor), which isn't nearly as cool.*

* Still pretty cool though. Reminds me of using Lynx on my Psion 5mx last millenium...

#gemini #geminiprotocol #geminispace

My thoughts on #WPEngine and the recent #WordPress drama -

1. WP Engine certainly act in ways that are unethical and antithetical to the spirit of open source

2. @photomatt calling them out at #WCUS2024 muddied the waters between ethical, moral, and legal issues, and probably didn't get his point across as well as he'd have liked

3. I'm not qualified to comment on the legal merits of the trademark case, but I've certainly witnessed people be confused by WP Engine's marketing

Disclaimer: I'm an @automattic employee; but these are my personal opinions.

🔗 Full thoughts: https://danq.me/wp-engine

@terry Absolutely fantastic. Good to see that somebody's willing to teach the Internet the proper way to make tea.

My micro-review: https://danq.me/a-proper-cup-of-tea

@hj Folks have sometimes asked me - and which they choose says quite a lot about them, I find - "Q? Is that like Q from Star Trek, or Q from James Bond?"

My response: "No, it's like Q, the set of all rational numbers."

Source: https://danq.me/q

British Gas's programmers don't believe that a surname can be only a single character.

Their customer service agents worked around this by adding a parenthetical note to my record.

The result is hilarious postal mail that tries to reassure me that my surname really is what it is:

@babe Exactly! It doesn't matter if you're using Debian, or MacOS, or even an Amiga; it's all just Linux. I think some people write it BSD/Linux to preempt @nohillside's argument though.

@stavvers I approve of the effort, but in my experience they just try to fob me off with a reading list (or more often nowadays, a list of videos I "should look up on Rumble"). Maybe I should push harder at trying to get THEIR answers.