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Republic of Rome is a great boardgame. Or at least I think it is -- I've never really been able to play a proper game. The rules are so complicated, and so badly written, that I've never really felt I understood them. So, I decided to write a cheat sheet. One …

The UK's Digital Economy Bill will introduce the concept of orphan works which may effectively abolish copyright on most photographs. Is this a foretaste of the future copyright in general?

The bill allows commercial use of a photograph if a search fails to identify the author. So a newspaper can …

confused.com is a price comparison web-site. They gather lots of information about you, and offer no way to cancel your account. They also take the opportunity to spam your e-mail address with lots of unrelated offers.

Avoid.

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/PowersofArrest/

I've just added double-glazing film to the windows in our hall, landing and living-room. It's fantastic!

The windows in our house are the original single-glazed wood frames. We've kept them for three reasons - we like them, they're in good condition, and all the advice suggests that new double glazed windows …

I've decided that I hate Wordpress' multi-widget "API", so I've written a cleaner interface for it: class MultiWidget

Damon Timm added multi-widget functionality to Event-Calendar. He did a fine job, but I was horrified by the hoops he'd been forced to jump through. The barely-documented "API" is so …

The Monkeysphere project looks interesting. It basically integrates ssh authentication with the OpenPGP web-of-trust. So a server admin can create an account for a new user with only his OpenPGP identity - basically just an e-mail address. There's no need to have a separate ssh public-key - the PGP public-key is used …

I've just uploaded a new version of libhex, my library for manipulating and drawing hexagonal grids. It's available in C++, Python and JavaScript.

[docs, source, examples: C++, Python, SVG]

I've redesigned the SVG output interface. The crazy templates are gone. It's now just a set of simple functions. SVG output …

I've been using (and testing) my new hex-map library. Here's a map of England.

It was generated by a little program that uses NASA's SRTM data as input. The light brown hills are just high ground, but the dark brown hexes are both high and hilly - my program samples the …

I've just uploaded the first draft version of libhex, my library for manipulating and drawing hexagonal grids. It's available in C++, Python and JavaScript.

[docs, source, examples: C++, Python, SVG]

The library comes in two parts. First, there's a geometry section, which describes abstract models of Hexes, Areas, Paths and …