I'm Dan Q. I've spent the last 25+ years creating and writing on the Internet.
I work at Automattic and volunteer with Three Rings. I live with my partner, her husband, two kids and a dog. I can sometimes be found out geo*ing, cycling, or performing magic.
I believe in open source, open relationships, and opening doors to marginalised groups.
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Icebreakers - Heraldry and Compairs
For my team meetup, I developed a couple of icebreaker games - Heraldry and Compairs - and I'd love to share them with you, if you're interested! Read more →
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Water Science #2
For the second time, the kids and I had an outing to do some "citizen science" experiments on a local watercourse. Read more →
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Automattic Switch
Fire, my team at work, has been extinguished and I've been moved to Team Desire. I've struggled to find my feet, but I think I'm settling in now. Read more →
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Council Disenfranchisement
West Oxfordshire District Council seem to want to disenfranchise me by requiring that I bring photo ID to a polling station with a different name on it than the photo ID that they themselves issued. Read more →
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Reversing Sandwiches
Userscripts are awesome, and you should be using them. Let me rotate some sandwiches for you to demonstrate their versatility! Read more →
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My Geo*ing Limits
Let's use some self-data-mining plus a convex hull algorithm to plot a convex polygon onto a map that optimally encircles the entire corpus of my successful geocaching/geohashing expeditions! Read more →
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April Features!
The start of April's a perfect time for a "Spring refresh" of a personal website. This year, I'm enabling a handful of experimental new features; visit DanQ.me and you might randomly be selected to try one out! Read more →
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Quickly Solving JigsawExplorer Puzzles
A fellow jigsaw-hating geocacher, familiar with my work on Jigidi, challenged me to find a way to bypass JigsawExplorer too. Here's what I came up with... Read more →
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Oxford's Area Code at OGN 57
At next month's Oxford Geek Nights I'll be talking about why Oxford's telephone area code makes no sense... until it does! But that's not why you should attend: you should attend because of the five far more-talented speakers I'll be sharing the stage with! Read more →
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Found GCA7Q4A Elephant Parade
Big thanks to the cache owner for their note. Somehow I'd not seen the obvious route. Followed a family of ducks and soon found the cache location. FP awarded in part for the lovely cache but mostly for the attentive CO who posted a note so promptly. TFTC! Read more →
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Found GCA1JJ5 Gemaal Mercatorstraat
After failing to find nearby GCA7Q4A "Elephant Parade" owing to construction work, I was hopeful of a find here. The coordinates put me exactly on top of a likely hiding place, and with a little exploration (and some pretending to tie my shoes!) I had the cache in my hand. SL, TFTC. Listened for water pumping but couldn't hear any over the traffic noise, I'm afraid! Read more →
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Did not find GCA7Q4A Elephant Parade
Finding the elephant and the numbers was easy. But some construction is happening at the GZ and I couldn't see a safe/permitted way to get close. 😢 Read more →
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Found GCADMXH Rembrandt park #3
I've recently changed team at work, so my new team and I have gotten together - from the UK, France, Poland, India and South Africa - here in Amsterdam to meet up in person and do some work "together" for a change: normally we work entirely distributed. After our day of work we did an escape room together, then on our way to dinner I dragged them out of their way a bit to find this geocache. Read more →
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Found GC7B9CP Platform 9 3/4
Even on a Monday morning the muggles are lining up to hold the trolley. Not me. As an actual magician, I’ve no need for such frivolities. Instead, as I’m passing anyway on my way to a train to an entirely different magical land (The Netherlands), I just snapped a selfie with the sign visible in […] Read more →
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Found GC1TK6P Narrow Minded
QEF while out hunting for some breakfast this morning between trains on my journey from Oxford to Amsterdam for a work meetup. Lovely thematic cache container in a great spot. FP awarded. TFTC. Hey, this is my 100th post of 2024! Neat! Read more →
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Found GCAP4K8 Village Hall Series 1573 - Standlake
FTF! Can’t remember the last time I got one of those; it’s been a while. I woke up this morning thinking about an errand I need to run today that would take me near Standlake when I saw the notification that new cache had appeared.Spurred into action, I opted to do my chore first thing… […] Read more →
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I saw a variation of an email from back in the day, which provides a Mad Libs style approach to formulating a country & western song. When I was reminded of it today, I adapted it for Perchance. Give it a go! Read more →
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AI isn't useless. But is it worth it?
The ever-excellent Molly White has wise words to say on the subject of generative AI: specifically - it's actually pretty useful for some tasks, but she's not sure it's worth the cost. This mirrors my thinking so closely I wish I'd written it first! Read more →
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Me? Underprepared? (He says, literally writing his presentation in the bar at the event...)
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Found GC2W6AF Babel Fish
The younger child and I had an initially fruitless search in, under and around the nearby bridge before we had the sense to insert our babel fishes, after which the hint item became clear to us. A short search later the cache was in hand. SL, TNLN, TFTC!× Read more →
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Found GC51F07 Knapwell one and a half
The second of two caches found on a morning walk from the nearby Cambridge Belfry Hotel, where some fellow volunteers and I met yesterday for a meeting. This cache looked so close, but being on the other side of the A428 meant that my route to get from one to the other side of the […] Read more →
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Found GC10ZT3 Off Yer Trolley! (Cambourne)
Even early on a Saturday morning, after a volunteering event the previous day at the hotel across the road, this highly-exposed GZ made me feel vulnerable! It’s not as though anybody were actually watching me as I stood around nonchalantly at the GZ waiting for an opportunity to make a search: a couple of shop […] Read more →
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Found GC8TNPE Incy Wincy
The elder child and I are staying nearby and couldn't resist coming to a nearby cache with so many FPs. The name gave us a bit of a clue what we would be looking for but nothing could have prepared us for for this imaginative and unusual container! Read more →
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you are a printer we are all printers
In an effort to work-around Google Search's obsession with everything having to be "new" to be searchworthy, Nilay Patel of The Verge reiterates his previous article about the joy of Brother printers, and it's excellent. Read more →
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