Kevin Boone's website

If you already own a smartphone, why would you use anything else to play music?

A simple way to control locomotive speed whilst playing realistic "steam engine" sounds.

We can do some pretty clever things with "xargs".

There was a time when a two- or three- year old, refurbished flagship smartphone was a good purchase.

Oops -- you ran an aggressive de-bloater on your rooted Android device, and put it into a boot loop.

What should we tell people whose commitment to de-Googling is wavering?

It isn't often that coding theory can be used to evaluate a claim of a UFO encounter.

TL;DR: AI slop is bad; human slop is worse

Many file formats are suitable for representing e-books, but most are complex, and many are proprietary.

I compare three privacy-sparing mapping apps which work on a fully-deGoogled Android handset

Oh, dear -- another server for the Gemini protocol.

It looks like the end for Lineage OS on Samsung handsets, at least in the UK.

For Internet-facing applications it's advisable to run Java server applications in a restricted sandbox.

Despite what "small net" enthusiasts might claim, HTTP is a pretty good protocol for document retrieval.

There's something to be said for maintaining Gemini content in Markdown and converting it, rather than writing it directly in Gemtext.

The risks and benefits of hosting your own on-line services

What goes around comes around.

Is it even possible?

We should at least try to be open-minded and responsive to the views of others.

I've written a lot on how to de-Google, and what to expect if you do.

The JGemini small-net browser is now Caztor, with a heap of new features.

Introducing version 2.0 of my simple graphical browser for "small net" protocols: back to the 90s -- in a good way.

Introducing a simple graphical browser for Project Gemini content; back to the 90s -- in a good way.

The small web is growing, and getting more active.

Spartan is a simple document retrieval protocol for small web/net applications, that deserves to be better known.

How to get a Gemini capsule with its own domain name.

An outline of some grass-roots reform movements that are trying to humanize the Internet

The modern World-Wide Web is broken.

The Gemini protocol has been around for over five years, but the world-wide web remains broken.

This site now supports webmention, so you can notify me easily if you respond to one of my posts on your own site or blog.

A mostly-forgetten icon of the motor industry.

Select a directory from a list, and play all the music files in that directory.

Why are we complaining about the smallness of the proportion of desktop computers that run Linux -- perhaps we should be celebrating instead?

Kagi and DuckDuckGo both provide reasonable alternatives to Google's and Microsoft's search services, without compromising your privacy.

What's going on with digital voice assistants?

If a podcast has an RSS feed, we can download it, parse it, and then download all the content into a single folder, which can then be played by any audio player.

Using a Garmin fitness watch without a smartphone or Garmin's services: how practical is it, and would you want to?

Decorative Christmas lights were better in the past.

This mostly-forgotten device was the very first commercially-available all-digital music synthesizer.

We're used to computing devices being electronic.

Nothing says '80s pop' like a DX7.

Denshi block kits were a unique way to learn about electronics back in the 70s.

These days, there are comparatively few up-to-date smartphones that can run a well-supported, non-vendor firmware.

There are good reasons why these handsets are so popular with de-Googlers, even if we have to grit our teeth and try to ignore the vendor.

Is this a minor irritation, or the end of Android as we know it?

Some guidance, mostly for science and engineering students, on how to write a scientific paper or technical report.

If you can't run an alternative, privacy-sparing firmware on your Android device, you can still assert a measure of control by disabling certain packages.

If you were worried about tracking cookies, you really don't want to know about browser fingerprinting.

How are these alternative smartphone firmwares similar and different?

Which is the easier way to get to a phone you can feel safe using, without your personal data being sent to goodness-knows-where?