iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

It is important what shows up in the web server logs. REST suggests you should use appropriate HTTP status codes for the situation. So you use 404 for "product not found". But then you can't tell the difference between that, and a routing problem.

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

Robots.txt by Jonathan Coulton, from his album "Solid State".

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Jeffw @jeffw.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

If this time travel experiment works, I should be able to go from here and now and reappea—

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

What chance the Labservatives contesting the next election?

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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 12/01/2026

This was originally published in 2010, so it is not in fact based on the current resident of the White House, no matter how well the title might fit him. Also, the White House in the story is run rather better than the one we have at the moment. Read the story here: reactormag.com/the-presiden...

reactormag.com

The President's Brain is Missing - Reactor

The question is, how can you tell the President's brain is missing? And are we sure we need it back?

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

Do not ask an LLM why it did something. It will just generate another string of bullshit. It is designed to appease its user with a plausible string of text output, but I wouldn't call it an "answer".

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

Nothing changes. I was saying the same thing about the code that Visual Studio's "Wizards" generated for Microsoft Foundation Classes, 25 years ago. The difference is in the vastly greater amount and variety of code that AI generates.

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 30/12/2025

I think we had one that looked a little like this when we changed part of the system from generating a hundred or so stored procedures on first startup after install/upgrade, to generating them offline as files and committing them to source control.

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 27/12/2025

This wasn't a Christmas present but I encountered it at about age 9 or 10.

Cover of Mastering Machine Code on your ZX Spectrum, by Toni Baker

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

Aww. I wanted the two arrows to be an analogue clock. Well, I suppose they are, in that they're effectively second hands that each go round once per minute, just that one goes clockwise and the other anti-clockwise. But I'd assumed that the outer one represented hours and the inner, minutes.

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

I have a very weird relationship with XSLT in the browser. 15 years ago my colleague decided to use XSLT in a .NET app as a template language to produce price labels. The output was "plain text" rather than XML/HTML - actually fragments of printer control language for mobile label printers (CPCL).

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

I think this used to be Lakeland in Ipswich. Walking around this store was amazing when we visited back in 2019. The juxtaposition of brand new kitchen equipment and the heritage features was amusing - but some of the features were amazing. Sadly it doesn't look like we took that many photos.

Standard shop rack shelving in front of Tudor wood panelling

Fresco of angels, demons and winged beasts, surrounding and continuing onto a historical wooden door. Covered by glass to protect it.

More kitchen/household equipment - here, ice cream making and heated clothes dryers - in a room with dark wood panelling and a moulded stucco ceiling

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 12/07/2025

I'm starting to feel like Wonko the Sane.

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Cable Contributes to Life @cctl.me · 30/06/2025

since it's the last day of pride month I figured I'd at least make one thing for it... i now unveil to you my greatest invention: color bars pride flag

An LGBTQ+ pride flag formatted in the layout of the SMPTE "color bars" test pattern used for broadcast television. The first set of columns use the colors of the gay pride flag, with the addition of the original SMPTE color on the final column. The second set of columns contains two pride flags - the pansexual flag horizontally, and the asexual flag flipped and horizontal. The final set of columns contains the three colors of the transgender flag and the two POC-inclusive colors, followed by the original bar gradient from the SMPTE ECR-1-1978 pattern.

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

Note to parents: If your child knocks out a tooth, you should (in order of preference): 1. Put it back in 2. Get the child to hold it in their cheek 3. Put it in a glass of milk 4. Put it in a glass of saliva 5. Put it in a glass of water Don't wrap it in a hanky! www.nhs.uk/conditions/k...

nhs.uk

Knocked-out tooth

Find out more about how to save a knocked-out tooth before seeing a dentist.

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Sarah O’Connell @sarahoconnellshow.com · 01/06/2025

I just got a Sky News alert saying “Britain has 'lost control' of its borders.” I couldn’t believe it at first, but I checked and the country is now shaped like a Ninja Turtle eating a pizza.

Map of the U.K. and map of a Ninja Turtle eating a pizza

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

Back in 2012 I worked with a UK retailer who wanted to put tablets in their stores, to allow staff to help customers place orders through their website. I think the use case was if the customer hadn't found what they wanted in the store.

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

Roald Dahl was a children's author, right? Wrong. Not for his whole career. And someone at my primary school didn't know that. And at around age 10, I picked up "My Uncle Oswald" from the school's bookshelf, and had something of a rude awakening.

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John Bull @garius.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Happy "Microsoft trying to force CoPilot subs" day in the UK for all who celebrate. (They just pinged me my renewal notice with it carefully worded to sound like a compulsory general price increase). 1) Go to your account page 2) Hit cancel 3) Change sub back.

screenshot showing choice of plans between Microsoft 365 and "lower cost without AI" option.

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

English and British kings didn't give up the claim to France until 1801. Upon the Act of Union with Ireland, King George III's official style changed from "King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland" to "of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland King"

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Ryan CrawCour @ryan.crawcour.social · 26/01/2025

This year I said I was going to run every day for 30mins, if I missed a day I'd add 30mins to the next day. It's working well so far, today I'm getting ready to go for a 2week run.

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

Quote with your first computer. Ah, the good old 48K Speccy. Built down to a price, and it showed, but a strong first computer. The limitations of its BASIC pushed me to learn Z80 machine code far earlier (aged 10!) than I probably would have on a different system.

Sinclair ZX Spectrum box, advertising "Free Software Six Pack with this Spectrum". It's an original rubber-key model.

The Spectrum Six Pack. Five games and one arguable app: Horace Goes Skiing, Scrabble, Chequered Flag, Make-A-Chip (the app), Chess, and Survival.

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 19/12/2024

How the fuck is this still happening? Shouldn't she have been given that money back? "Shann Brede said in that time running Goldsithney Post Office in Cornwall, she had paid more than £20,000 of her own money to correct errors made by the system." www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.uk

Goldsithney Post Office to close due to faulty Horizon

Goldsithney Post Office is closing because the Horizon computer system continues to make mistakes.

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

My 4yo daughter is learning to read using phonics. It is amazing to realise just how much of the language in even quite simple books isn't spelled phonetically. Each phonics book has a list of "tricky words" like "is" and "the" that aren't said how they're spelled.

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 03/11/2024

Perhaps Labour would be doing better if they actually tried implementing some of the "Change" that was their campaign slogan.

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Gemma Clark 🧿🕯️ @gemmaclark.bsky.social · 11/08/2024

Repost if you’re in the U.K. and not afraid that you’ll be jailed for inciting racism and violence due to the fact that you have not incited racism and violence.

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 21/04/2024

I've got a 32 MB SD card somewhere still. My old digital camera that I got 20 years ago, a Pentax Optio S5i, couldn't support anything bigger. Possibly it didn't understand "clusters" - allocation units larger than one sector.

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