Disqus - Latest Comments for badgergravling

Re: 15 Years Covering The Search Industry

Dan Thornton — Mon, 03 Dec 2018 06:21:59 -0000

Congrats, and keep up the great work. I don't know how many times I've utilised something from the site over the last 15+ years but it's a lot. I've gone from learning about SEO in my spare time whilst mainly working as a journalist to effectively combining the two and growing my own business for almost a decade now...

Re: Review: Razer Wolverine Ultimate

Dan Thornton — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 04:54:32 -0000

I'm really not sure about the current Wired obsession with wireless gaming. I've had lots of connection issues with the wireless headsets I've used - which is an issue Wired's last review of one ignored when I enquired about it in the comments.
And generally I'm playing sat next to an Xbox, with a charge cable plugged in, and looking to avoid any lag issues as far as possible. A wired controller is the best option for that. Sure, wireless is handy if you're looking to walk to the fridge between games without putting your controller down, but when you're actually gaming? Wired connection all the way...

Re: Review: Turtle Beach Ear Force Stealth 600

Dan Thornton — Wed, 01 Nov 2017 07:39:43 -0000

My question about any cheaper wireless headset is how fast it connects after being switched on - I've had lots of experience with my low-end Turtle Beach wireless headset not connecting for ages when I power up my Xbox One, or if I turned the controller off during a break. And then occasionally dropping out, which is particularly noticeable in racing games...

Re: Review: Velomacchi 28L Roll-Top Backpack

Dan Thornton — Mon, 30 Oct 2017 19:32:46 -0000

Looks alright, and I'd be interested in trying it. But a lot of the supposed innovations, like the big buckle to adjust straps and the cross-over fastenings have been around for more than a decade - for instance, in the Kriega range, which have been trusted by bike journalists for years... one of the few products motorcycle journalists will actually pay for...

Re: Pete North Politics Blog: I don't like this Brexit, but I will live with it

Dan Thornton — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 14:44:30 -0000

Right...

So no-one should assume you're a simpleton from what you're written, but it's fine for you to assume we're all 'typical elitists'.

The saddest thing is that this might undermine my enjoyment of Scrooged this Christmas, which is probably your most unforgivable crime..

Re: Pete North Politics Blog: I don't like this Brexit, but I will live with it

Dan Thornton — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 14:37:48 -0000

You mean an Irishman today who will be happily still part of the EU?

Re: Pete North Politics Blog: I don't like this Brexit, but I will live with it

Dan Thornton — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 14:35:43 -0000

Except that's demonstatably not true.

You ignore the fact that luck plays a part in every achievement, and the wealthier you are, the easier it is to get lucky.

Plenty of people worked hard and applied themselves and died in obscurity and poverty. It's just you don't often get to hear about them...

Re: Pete North Politics Blog: I don't like this Brexit, but I will live with it

Dan Thornton — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 14:32:42 -0000

Any nation state willing to sign trade deals etc will have to inevitably concede some of their supposed sovereignty to be able to agree on common standards for trade, for example.

If you want an utter sovereign nation, there's North Korea as an example, depending on how much you think they're controlled by China...

Re: Pete North Politics Blog: I don't like this Brexit, but I will live with it

Dan Thornton — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 14:31:04 -0000

You might want to extend that to Theresa May and David Davies, whose own Brexit White Paper acknowledged that we always had sovereignty 'although it didn't always feel like it'.

'Whilst Parliament has remained sovereign throughout our membership of the EU'
https://www.gov.uk/governme...

Re: Welcome to the Wikipedia of the Alt-Right

Dan Thornton — Sun, 08 Oct 2017 07:44:07 -0000

Thank you for the condescending reply. When our greatest scientists presented something contrary to received opinion , they changed opinion by outlining a hypothesis, and then proving that hypothesis to be correct through a series of experiments.

When you do that, it's not 'alternative science'. It's just science. That's what science is.

So if, for example, you want to provde the medical benefits of something, you set up unbiased experiments to prove it, rather than insisting that your alternative is right 'because reasons'.

Re: Border Wars: The Great DIY Remote Control Car Race

Dan Thornton — Sun, 08 Oct 2017 07:39:23 -0000

Nice article - brings back some happy memories of my own remote control car racing 20+ years ago. I recently dug out my old car and plan on getting it running again for my son to try out soon... I wonder if all the press about drone racing might also spark a bit of interest back into R/C cars again - the electric battery and motor versions are fairly cheap and still pretty quick...

Re: Welcome to the Wikipedia of the Alt-Right

Dan Thornton — Wed, 21 Jun 2017 18:26:48 -0000

It rejects 'alternative science' because most of it is opinion, rather than fact.

Re: Welcome to the Wikipedia of the Alt-Right

Dan Thornton — Wed, 21 Jun 2017 18:25:42 -0000

Well, several studies have shown that it's easier to promote false information to those with a right wing viewpoint, as backed up by the success of right wing fake news sites based in Europe. When the same Macedonians etc tried to create fake left wing news to game Adsense dollars it wasn's as successful.

It's also hard to take accusations of bias seriously when you're quoting a Youtube video from someone whose bias is clear.

Re: 5 Reasons to Organise a Digital Event

Dan Thornton — Thu, 08 Jun 2017 09:15:29 -0000

Great article. And one I can identify with a bit, after starting a meetup for techies and freelancers called Digital People in Peterborough. It turned into a monthly meetup with hundreds on the mailing list, and even organised a major STEM festival last year...

Couldn't agree more about involving the audience. The people who have done a far better job of organising and growing DPiP have been those who came along at some point and asked if we ever needed any help... And I then persuaded them to get more and more involved :)

Re: 3 Marketing Predictions of Christmas Past That Turned Out To Be Wrong

Dan Thornton — Thu, 08 Jun 2017 09:12:03 -0000

That's quite funny - especially as I was also quoted in the CMI article. Ironically, I was predicting Twitter would monetize, and people would starter to understand social media ROI more effectively (which took a little longer than expected in many cases).

I was probably a bit early in expecting video to take over... it took a few more years to really catch hold... But getting the timing right is always the toughest bit to try and guess....

Re: With Venom, Marvel’s Got Its Biggest Bad of All: Brand Dilution

Dan Thornton — Mon, 22 May 2017 07:08:17 -0000

I'm just happy to see a shout-out for Wolfpack. I loved that series when it first appeared, and remember it as essentially a John Hughes teen film in superhero comic form (I vaguely remember the wheelchair bound character having the name 'wheelz' in a suitably 80's disregard for people).
I'm tempted to dig out all my old issues, but suspect my memories may be better than the reality...

Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole and nobody noticed

Dan Thornton — Sat, 18 Mar 2017 19:41:45 -0000

It's an inevitability, but it's frustrating for those of us who either have older machines because we haven't been able to afford to upgrade, or because employers haven't invested in newer machines.

As much as I enjoy using web apps, my laptop has started to struggle more and more. Particularly combined with the relatively low bandwith available from a typical UK home wifi network (Unfortunately I can't have a wired connection right now, so I'm stuck)... That means running multiple tabs in Firefox and Spotify at the same time will start to slow things down fairly quickly, and adding any more web apps is a bigger problem...

Working online 24/7 I can't hold off investing in new hardware any longer, and I'll shortly be working from a new location with a wired connection again, but looking at family and friends, I'm not as much of an edge case as I might have thought...

And sadly, the Slack approach is a relatively rare one. Most apps inevitably get more and more bloated over time, as it's just the nature of business to add more and more features.

Re: How to Grow Your Instagram Following

Dan Thornton — Thu, 02 Mar 2017 10:56:11 -0000

Nice tips (As always) - the interaction can be time consuming, but I tend to enjoy checking out good photography anyway, so it's easy enough to like and comment on other accounts - and it definitely makes a big difference...

One thing I've definitely noticed on both brand and personal accounts is also that consistency can really help. It's not so much of an issue with most companies, but my personal account was a real jumble of things - by limiting my main account to a couple of subjects, suddenly I'm getting a lot more interest and improving my photography at the same time...

Re: The World Really Doesn’t Need an Apocalypse Now Videogame

Dan Thornton — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 04:45:33 -0000

Plus there were videogame conversions of Rambo, and Platoon... Although they didn't really attempt to tackle the weighty topics of the morality of war in the 8 bit days

Re: The World Really Doesn’t Need an Apocalypse Now Videogame

Dan Thornton — Wed, 25 Jan 2017 19:10:43 -0000

Didn't Battlefield Bad Company 2 Nam DLC feature Ride of the Valkryes as a selectable tune for tanks and helicopters? I can't remember for sure, as I always picked Fortunate Son...

Re: Children's Media Use - Only Dead Fish

Dan Thornton — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 07:13:15 -0000

There's no denying the dominance of mobiles and tablets, but I do think the lack of desktop connectivity may be partly correlation as well as causation.

If you're buying a device for a 7 year old, for example, it's more likely to be a tablet or perhaps a hand-me-down mobile, with mobile data turned off or limited - not a high spec laptop or desktop...

That does seem to change over time, particularly with the influence of gaming and Youtubers - certainly in my personal experience, my son has moved from mobile/tablet and games consoles to increasingly wanting a computer for both gaming and also to spend more time learning programming and interacting with robots thanks to the likes of Scratch becoming used in schools.

But that isn't necessarily going to impact the graph on social media - the best advice for child safety is to have a computer in a public place in the home, but social media is generally a more private activity.

And even as an adult, I'm increasingly switching from using my desktop to check social media to limiting it to my mobile, as it's easier to ignore until I want to take a break from work...

Re: Google Locks Account of User Who Moved Cities

Dan Thornton — Wed, 23 Nov 2016 06:46:44 -0000

Exactly. I use both local and cloud storage to provide backups for each other, so there's no single point of failure...

Re: Work less: Why I changed to a four hour day

Dan Thornton — Wed, 02 Nov 2016 12:11:09 -0000

I've gone for a more moderate approach - spending 4 hours or so per day on the things that require the most focus and concentration, and the rest of the day on more creative tasks or building my company...

Re: The New Dirk Gently Show Is Nothing Like the Books, But It’s Still a Blast

Dan Thornton — Sun, 23 Oct 2016 18:09:14 -0000

'aired on a minor UK channel' - known as the BBC (Well, BBC 4). Sadly despite being reasonably good, it was overshadowed by the success (and budget) of Sherlock... It actually did well for the channel it was broadcast on...

Re: A Nation of Embarrassed Landlords

Dan Thornton — Thu, 13 Oct 2016 17:52:59 -0000

Can't add any more to an accurate comment, except to say I agree.

I discovered recently someone I knew was a landlord and complaining about the new tax on landlords, which meant he was feeling guilty but had no choice to kick out a longstanding and good tenant from one of his several houses.

Surprisingly I didn't have much sympathy for him and don't associate with him anymore. In London and the South East rental prices are 60-80% of the average wage - basically if you're not earning above the average or cohabiting, you're basically priced out of the market and left possibly renting a room with several housemates...