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Alex Chan

@alexwlchan.net

408 followers 51 following 401 posts

Posts Replies Media

Alex Chan @alexwlchan.net · 09/09/2026

Lord Butterhead has entered the chat.

Count Binface (formerly Lord Buckethead) standing outside Parliament with a butterhead lettuce instead of a head.

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Alex Chan @alexwlchan.net · 08/08/2026

A close-up head shot of a ginger cat with curly fur and short whiskers looking pensive, probably contemplating who he’s going to bite next.

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Alex Chan @alexwlchan.net · 24/05/2026

“You’ve forgotten to leave a space for the door,” said Big-Ears. “How are you going to get in? And, oh dear, I’m just as bad—I’ve forgotten the window on my side!”

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Alex Chan @alexwlchan.net · 22/02/2026

@jonnelledge.bsky.social Spotted in a bookshop next to London Bridge yesterday!

A photo of Jonn’s excellent book “A History of the World in 47 Borders” on a bookshop shelf, with a “staff pick” insert that reads “A lateral history with an abundance of fact (always a winner) and an equal abundance of anecdote. Elledge's easy-going style is informative without being dense, and refreshingly jovial for a genre that is too often parochial. In short, one of those rare, quite marvellous history books, from which you will take away as much as you could possibly hope to learn, and a great deal more you did not expect to.”

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Alex Chan @alexwlchan.net · 21/01/2026

maybe you need some characters who are printable but not printed

A crude hand-drawn sketch of an e-reader device with two characters on screen. The characters both have Chinese names above their heads.

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Alex Chan @alexwlchan.net · 04/12/2025

Sounds like a diplomatic plate, eg this one from Bosnia and Herzegovina www.licenseplatemania.com/landenpagina... What colour were the letters? Spaces or dashes between groups?

A sky blue number plate with gold lettering “13-A-059”

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Alex Chan @alexwlchan.net · 20/11/2025

Okay, so let’s go read that law. A “motor vehicle” is a motor vehicle with (a) at least four wheels (b) at least 400kg or a 15kW engine (c) used for passengers (d) is not a motor caravan www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2001/27...

In this Part, references to a “motor vehicle” are to a motor vehicle with or without a semi-trailer which—

(a)has at least four wheels;

(b)has an unladen mass exceeding 400kg or an engine with net power exceeding 15kW;

(c)is used for the carriage of passengers; and

(d)is not a motor caravan within Class L(a) or Class L(b) specified in Part III above.

Sub-category M1
Class M1(a)
A motor vehicle which comprises no more than eight seats in addition to the driver’s seat.

Class M1(b)
A motor vehicle as defined in Class M1(a) which is drawing a trailer.

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Alex Chan @alexwlchan.net · 03/10/2025

@jonnelledge.bsky.social Spotted in St Pancras Waterstones 👀

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Alex Chan @alexwlchan.net · 18/08/2025

The idea of cats roaming to get dinners in multiple households was the subject of one of my favourite books when I was a child, I am delighted as an adult to discover this is founded in reality

The cover of “Six Dinner Sid”, by Inga More. The cover is an illustration of a black cat with yellow/brown eyes, smiling towards the viewer, and next to him is six small bowls in a variety of bright colours and patterns.

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Alex Chan @alexwlchan.net · 25/07/2025

Psh, that looks simple. Now this? This is peak British bathroom design.

A crude sketch of a bathroom featuring two sinks with separate taps, connected to different looking controls labelled “S” and “T”

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Alex Chan @alexwlchan.net · 18/07/2025

A crude sketch of a gnome with a distressed looking t-rex in its mouth.

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Alex Chan @alexwlchan.net · 11/06/2025

Recreating a bird animation: alexwlchan.net/2025/swift-b... I learnt a bunch about animation on the web by reading the Swift.org source code, like: ✨ Using a dash pattern to draw partial paths ✨ HTML5 Canvas and globalCompositeOperation ✨ Anime.js ✨ MutationObserver ✨ prefers-reduce-motion: reduce

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Alex Chan @alexwlchan.net · 30/05/2025

A crude, out-of-focus, hand drawn sketch of a potato

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Alex Chan @alexwlchan.net · 05/03/2025

A digital file picker showing “Cold Shoulder”, where the word “Shoulder” has clearly been photoshopped into the file to replace a different word.

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Alex Chan @alexwlchan.net · 15/01/2025

actually the world was plotting against you yesterday when it led me to realise you’re on bluesky and I should follow you here and then see this post today

A handwritten note: “Wow, sounds like a 阴谋 (conspiracy)! More literally, a sinister (阴) plot (谋). There are clues in the characters – 月 is the Moon radical and is associated with shade and dark, while 讠is the speech radical and often associated with information.”

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Alex Chan @alexwlchan.net · 31/12/2024

1. You can scroll back past 1AD to what is presumably BCE, but the interface doesn’t update to reflect it, you just have to trust I got that far back 2. It looks just like a regular month, alas

Screenshot of the macOS Calendar app showing a year titled “45”, which is really 45 BCE. All the twelve months look like they have the normal number of days.

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Alex Chan @alexwlchan.net · 23/05/2024

Preserving pixels in Paris: alexwlchan.net/2024/preserv... Last month I went to France for a conference about archiving the web, and I’ve posted some of my thoughts and photos.

Looking up towards the ceiling of a large oval room. There's a large oval window at the very top of the ceiling, then smaller circular windows around it. Above each window is the name of a city; below it is an archway with bookshelves filling the archway. Each archway is wide, enough to hold six bookshelves.

A window display with old video gear tastefully arranged -- including a VHS player, various tape cassettes, a large reel-to-reel film projector, and a few video cameras.

A densely-wooded area full of green trees, and in the background are two towers which are shaped bit like a capital L. The towers are mostly glass and metal, with shorter glass and metal buildings extending from the towers and into the foreground.

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