Notices by Terence Eden (edent@mastodon.social)

🆕 blog! “Stupidly Simple SVG Sparklines”

A sparkline is a little line-graph with no axes or other unnecessary details. They're useful for getting quick understanding of what the data is showing.

They're also really easy to create programmatically.

This uses the SVG "polyline" which takes a list of x,y co-ordinate pairs. But can you spot the small problem?

<svg…

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/stupidly-simple-svg-sparklines/
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#svg #tutorial

Long shot - are there any Frank Sinatra fans on the Fediverse?

I'm looking for a specific track from his 1981 concerts at Carnegie Hall.

Does anyone have a copy of this record https://setaim.netmoon.shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=540104

Or a bootleg of the 9th of September concert?

#FrankSinatra #Sinatra

For fans of entirely spurious numbers, the UNIX timestamp is about to hit 17777777.

Hold on to your butts!

🆕 blog! “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 dozens of departments about it, wrote guidance still in use today, and briefed Ministers on why it was so…

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/nhs-goes-to-war-against-open-source/
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#government #nhs #OpenSource #politics

This is the reason I wish Mastodon supported geotagged posts.

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/04/how-do-you-decentralise-emergency-alerts/

This is perfectly valid PHP.

If your programming language doesn't support emoji, it is going to be left behind.

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/04/where-you-can-and-cant-use-emoji-in-php/

Trying out a new design & layout for https://openbenches.org/ but I hate the colour scheme I've chosen.

Can anyone suggest a palette which looks clean, modern, and is accessible?

Any and all suggestions welcome.

The redesign of https://openbenches.org/ is now complete!

Mostly.

Please have a click around and tell me if you encounter any bugs, accessibility issues, or other general weirdness.

Cheers gang!

Thanks all. Going to use the colours in the logo. Not the final design - but much happier with this.

This is a lovely article about the missing #DoctorWho episodes, and about film archival in general.
https://www.doctorwho.tv/news-and-features/how-missing-episodes-from-the-daleks-master-plan-were-found

*sigh*

Looks like Android is stripping GPS EXIF from photos whenever they're shared.

Affects QuickShare / Bluetooth - https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/485307531
And the web photo picker - https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/40287342

Basically the only way to get geolocation is using USB transfer.

Like, I get the privacy aspect, but it is so annoying to explain to users of @openbenches that they can't upload via the mobile website any more.

#Android #EXIF #Privacy #Geolocation

Getting rather frustrated that the latest Android strips location EXIF from the web file picker.

Doesn't seem to be any workaround that'll let you pick a photo and have a web browser see the geolocation.

Like, I get the privacy issues, but it is rather frustrating for location-based web apps.

(Before reply-guying, please test if the code you found on a 4 year old StackOverflow post actually works on modern Android, thanks.)

#Android #EXIF

Anyway, if you think the web should have a way to get the *full* photo a user uploaded - including geolocation metadata - please leave a 👍 reaction on this request https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/11724#issuecomment-4192228562

Fuck! I think something is wrong with my blog. Is https://shkspr.mobi/blog loading for anyone?

@example Haven't you always wanted a #🙊

This isn't your normal "looking for work" post.

I've decided to shut my business and do more volunteer / community work.

If you know of an organisation which could use a board member with strong digital skills, extensive experience in open source and open standards, or cybersecurity please let me know.

Nothing full time. Personal recommendations preferred. Feel free to share.

If you're part of the SmolWeb or like IndieWeb stuff, please don't forget to CABOOM!

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/03/caboom-comment-anywhere-bring-onto-own-media/

#IndieWeb #POSSE #SmolWeb

I did the `human.json` thing!

If you're a blogger who I've met in person, and you're not using AI or LLMs for your content, let me know and I'll add you to my list.

https://codeberg.org/robida/human.json

Brilliant news! The UK's Labour Government are going to make "plug in solar" legal.

Grab some panels from Lidl, hang them off your balcony or out your window, plug them in to your mains. Done!

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-go-further-and-faster-in-becoming-energy-secure

#Solar

🆕 blog! “How Can Governments Pay Open Source Maintainers?”

When I worked for the UK Government I was once asked if we could find a way to pay for all the Open Source Software we were using. It is a surprisingly hard problem and I want to talk about some of the issues we faced.

The UK Government publishes a lot of Open Source code - nearly everything…

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/03/how-can-governments-pay-open-source-maintainers/
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#government #money #OpenSource