iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

This map from the NLS website was revised in 1938 and published 1944. maps.nls.uk/view/1015678... It's not on the prior "Revised 1938 Published 1940" version.

maps.nls.uk

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Do you think Sadiq Khan will run again, or is it someone else's turn?

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Newspaper journalists are expected to put out dozens of articles per day. They readily regurgitate press releases as a source of content. Nick Davies described this in his book "Flat Earth News" over a decade ago. Nearly two decades in fact. He called it "churnalism"

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

To be fair I didn't have the experience in the tech stack they wanted (Kotlin+Jetpack Compose). The perils of using a weird stack: I have ten years of experience in Android development, but using Cordova, so the UI is all HTML+CSS with all logic in JS.

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

It has to be factored into salary. I applied for a job which involved travelling to central London twice a week. The extra travel would have cost something like 20% on top of my present salary after allowing for taxes. It put me right at the top of their salary range. Didn't get an interview.

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Minimum viable product. Stopping is in the next sprint.

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

A big expensive Land Rover is probably compliant if it is less than 10 years old. Diesel cars have to meet the Euro 6 standard which was mandatory from September 2015 for most new registrations. Petrol cars only have to meet Euro 4, which was introduced 20 years ago!

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

I believe DfT told them to paint them white so they could be easily vinyled into some other livery later, with the expectation that GTR would be split back into Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern once the post-"Thameslink 2000" timetable had bedded in.

Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Some of these will be promises made to potential challengers to get them to support Burnham instead of running themselves. Burnham very much wanted to be unchallenged, not least because if a vote had to be held among Labour Party members, they could have chosen someone else.

Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

I once had that on a Reading-Exeter journey at 7pm. When I walked back through that unit's diagram for the day, I found out that it had been a failure to couple at Swansea at 6am! To me it seems like a false economy if the infrastructure can handle 10 cars to Carmarthen.

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

How do you feel about trains splitting and joining in service? In my experience, the coupling frequently fails, or one of the units fails to arrive on time, leaving services short-formed. A 5-car 800 can be very overcrowded if it was supposed to be 9/10, and throws reservations out of the window.

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Gatwick Premier Inn (North Terminal) does, at least in Premier Plus rooms. We stayed there the night before we went on our honeymoon in August 2018. Parking is off-site in the airport short stay car park. We got dropped off by my best man so I can't say how busy it would be.

Members' dress - Erskine May - UK Parliament

"The Speaker has indicated that Members must not in principle have their face covered while voting in a division since they must identify themselves to the tellers." - erskinemay.parliament.uk/section/4889...

erskinemay.parliament.uk

Information on the 'Members' dress' section of Erskine May.

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Members' dress - Erskine May - UK Parliament

"The Speaker has indicated that Members must not in principle have their face covered while voting in a division since they must identify themselves to the tellers." erskinemay.parliament.uk/section/4889...

erskinemay.parliament.uk

Information on the 'Members' dress' section of Erskine May.

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"The wearing of military insignia or uniform inside the Chamber is not in accordance with the long-established custom of the House. "More relaxed standards of dress are accepted for Members simply going through the division lobbies in order to vote.

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

"Members should dress in business-like attire; this need not include a tie. A Member has been allowed to continue speaking on condition that clothing with inappropriate visual content is covered. Members are not permitted to wear decorations in the House.

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Turns out ASP.NET Core 6.0 controller routing does not like doubled slashes anywhere in the URL and decides it can't find the controller. Some devices were configured without a trailing slash, and worked. Some were configured with a trailing slash, and failed.

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.

Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

It was bloody hard if you didn't know anything about the history of the US, though! (But not quite on "monkey wrench" level - IYKYK.) A school friend and I took several weeks to solve the game. It took me way too long to realise that the layout of the 10 Purple Tentacles at the end was significant.

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Look up Shamima Begum. She was born in London, but left Britain to join Islamic State in Syria when she was 15. She has had her British citizenship removed, due to also qualifying for Bangladeshi citizenship through her parents. Bangladesh does not accept this. That leaves her stateless.

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

They were also 2nd cousins once removed. If you are from a different generation than the other person, the "nth cousin" is the number of generations between the closer one and the shared grandparents, while the "removed" is the number of generations between the two of you.

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Fifth cousins means they shared one set of great-great-great-great-grandparents. First cousin, one of your parents is a sibling of one of their parents, so they have the same parents, your immediate grandparents. The British monarchy is closer: Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip were 3rd cousins.

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

We last went to Denmark and Sweden over New Year 2019/20 - so pre-pandemic - and I think we came back with the same cash we went with. A lot of places were card-only!

Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

That JSON looks like you can mark up any piece of text as a link. Like, say, some completely different URL. Does anything validate that the text isn't a different URL?

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That was a physical model using hydraulics - fluidic logic - as an economic simulation.

Phillips Machine - Wikipedia

Economists love taking their models too literally. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip...

en.wikipedia.org

I've just come back from a week's holiday in Brittany, France with my wife and two kids (both under 6). We got €50 cash, split it €25 each between me and my wife. I've come back with €21.70. I can't recall what I spent the €3.30 on, but I think minimum card payment was usually €1.

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

I would say we probably now use coins vastly less than the Americans - but we also now use notes vastly less than the Americans. Nearly all my spending (UK) is done using Google Pay. It's rare that someone doesn't take card payments. I don't even have any UK cash in my wallet!

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

Probably switching every year when they ratchet the prices up. I've been with Uno for broadband since 2013. I don't recall them ever having increased the price. I'm paying £26.99+VAT for "Solo Pro" (FTTC, up to 40Mbps, unbundled to Vodafone). No landline (no point).

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The full amount of state pension is still less than minimum wage (if working full time), and also less than the income tax personal allowance. The difference between median worker and pensioner isn't coming from the state pension. It's inflation-linked annuities from private pensions.

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk

c. Take account of the impact on business, competitiveness, the labour market and the wider economy. assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/691f3e... This resulted in a 4.1% rise for over 21s, 8.5% for 18-20, 6.0% for 16-17 and apprentices.

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

The Low Pay Commission's terms of reference were: a. Ensure that the rate does not drop below two-thirds of median earnings for workers in the National Living Wage population. b. Take account of the cost of living, including inflation forecasts between April 2026 and April 2027.

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Every year the Low Pay Commission makes recommendations for the National Minimum Wage. The government is allowed to make their own decision, but have accepted the Low Pay Commission's recommendation every year since it was created in 1998. The Triple Lock is not automatic in law, it is policy.

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Wikipedia has a timeline chart of members. The only original one is William King, who originally played trumpet but has picked up other roles over the years. The other 3 current members joined in 2025. Cody and Colin Orange are the sons of former drummer Clyde Orange (member from 1972-2024).

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The Government did pay the interest ('coupon') on those bonds. But the Bank of England was then instructed to pay the interest back - minus an "administration fee", of course.

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We do what we did last time: print money via "quantitative easing". In the UK, the Bank of England (owned by the Government) was directed to buy Treasury bonds (gilts). Where did they get the money from? Nowhere! They just made it up!

We have to stop treating these groups as equivalent. We should be taxing the wealthy (pensioners or not). Concessions should be to those below the living wage, though that's hard to police.

Pensioners on final salary schemes can be fantastically well off. Their expenses have fallen - not commuting every day, paid off the mortgage, free or subsidised travel, entry to attractions, not paying national insurance contributions. And still getting state pension too!

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Mike Dimmick @mikedimmick.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

SOME pensioners have too cushy a deal. SOME pensioners are on the breadline. The triple lock exists because people receiving only the state pension are on the poverty line, and Cameron didn't want to increase the state pension in one go.

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Depending on how spicy you can tolerate, @kitrocha.com 's Mercenary Librarians series is great! The first book is called Deal With The Devil.