Dave Cross
@davorg.davecross.co.uk
Geek. Lefty. Atheist. Skeptic. Rationalist. Secularist. Humanist. Republican (UK Meaning!). Music lover. Writer. Genealogist.
For the next week or so (and then, to a lesser extent, for the rest of August), there will be a lot of Edinburgh Fringe content here. standup.co.uk/2026/08/04/e...
Edinburgh Fringe 2026 is about to begin
The Edinburgh Fringe starts on Friday. Here is what StandUp.co.uk will be covering, the key Comedy Awards dates and our tips for making the most of the festival.
standup.co.uk
More AI nonsense. I've made my first full-length music video for one of Oneirina's older songs. Made with a combination of Suno, Veo and CapCut. It's a work in progress, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Wq5...
Oneirina - Waterloo Sunrise
YouTube video by Dave Cross
youtube.com
The 2026 Mercury Music Prize nominations were announced on Friday and I've finally had time to add them to Mercurial Albums. mercurialalbums.com
Mercurial Albums - Mercurial Albums — Mercury Prize shortlists and winners
Mercurial Albums - Mercurial Albums — Mercury Prize shortlists and winners
mercurialalbums.com
I thought a little more deeply about the NMS support request I received earlier this week. perlhacks.com/2026/08/the-...
The Future Isn’t Evenly Distributed - Perl Hacks
"The future is already here — it's just not evenly distributed."— William Gibson I was reminded of that quote this week when I received a support request for a Perl CGI script I helped write about twe...
perlhacks.com
Sometimes I wonder if I spend too much time working on what is, after all, a silly little AI music project. oneirina.com
Oneirina
Oneirina makes cinematic, nocturnal pop shaped by London streets, half-remembered nights and the stories we tell ourselves on the way home.
oneirina.com
Public funding in the UK is controlled by Philistines and Vandals. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Jodrell Bank's Lovell telescope faces axe in science cuts, BBC understands
Astronomers warn it would tear the heart out of UK science, and leave a generation untrained.
bbc.co.uk
Do you remember when Internet Explorer could run Perl? perlhacks.com/2026/07/reme...
Remember PerlScript? When Internet Explorer Could Run Perl - Perl Hacks
Every now and then I'm reminded of a technology from the early days of the web and wonder if I imagined it. This week, it was Mohammad using WebAssembly to run Perl in his browser. Which led to me thi...
perlhacks.com
I haven't seen "The Odyssey" yet. All this "see it as Nolan intended" marketing is starting to annoy me. I live within walking distance of one of the three cinemas in the UK that can show the preferred format, but that's sold out until early September.
In another life, I was pretty involved in the London stand-up comedy scene. I went to the Edinburgh Fringe a few times about 25 years ago. I'm going back this year, and I've been perusing the program... standup.co.uk/2026/07/12/e...
Eleven Edinburgh Fringe comedy shows I want to see in 2026
From Ahir Shah and Nish Kumar to Kristen Schaal and the breakout stars of SNL UK, these are the Edinburgh Fringe comedy shows at the top of my 2026 list.
standup.co.uk
This morning, as I was playing Spotify through my Nest Audio speakers, the volume kept dropping for no reason. I was convinced someone had hacked into my home network. Someone who was not a fan of Polk County Pagan Market.
How and why Perl School has just published its first paperback. perlhacks.com/2026/07/perl...
Perl School Goes Paperback - Perl Hacks
Back in 2020 I gave a pretty definitive statement of my position on physical books. When brian d foy interviewed me for perl.com, I said, among other things: "I do like a real book. But they take up t...
perlhacks.com
The paperback version of "Design Patterns with Modern Perl" is now available through Amazon. If you buy a copy, please leave a review. (And, as an aside, over the last week I've discovered that Claude Cowork makes a pretty good publishing assistant.) perlschool.com/books/design...
Design Patterns in Modern Perl - Perl School Publishing
Design Patterns in Modern Perl shows how classic object-oriented patterns look in today’s Perl. Using core Perl, Moo and Object::Pad, Mohammad Sajid Anwar builds real, tested examples, helping you cho...
perlschool.com
It's "checking out proofs" day here in Clapham. Real books available through Amazon imminently (probably later this week).
On me demonstrating that my networking knowledge is sketchy at best. perlhacks.com/2026/07/how-...
How One Pull Request Took App::HTTPThis to Version 1.0 - Perl Hacks
Back in January I wrote about App::HTTPThis, the tiny web server I seem to reach for whenever I need to share the contents of a directory over HTTP. It's a deliberately simple tool, wrapping Plack::Ap...
perlhacks.com
The cover needs a few tweaks. But the first physical Perl School book is getting excitingly close.
I've had a few emails recently from people who were looking for a different Dave (or David) Cross. So I've started compiling a list :-) davecross.co.uk/wrong-dave/
Looking for the Wrong Dave?
Web Development and CI/CD Engineer · Author / Publisher · Digital Mentor
davecross.co.uk
My take on a question that has been debated in the Perl community this week. perlhacks.com/2026/06/choo...
Choosing the Right Database Abstraction - Perl Hacks
A question came up recently in the Perl community asking whether, in a Mojolicious application, it's better to use DBIx::Class or a Mojolicious-specific module like Mojo::Pg. It's an interesting quest...
perlhacks.com
A little bit of tech nostalgia (or maybe nightmare flashbacks) for the older web developers amongst us. tedium.co/2026/06/22/m...
Matt’s Script Archive: The Scripts That Reshaped The Web
The high schooler who developed everyone’s forums and guestbooks in 1996 didn’t really think about security. But Matt’s Script Archive was more than exploits.
tedium.co
I've pretty much stopped doing politics in public, but I've been asked about Keir Starmer, so I wrote a thing. davorg.medium.com/why-did-keir...
Why Did Keir Starmer Resign?
[I really don’t consider myself a political pundit, but a few (ok, two) people have asked for my opinion on this, so I thought it was worth…
davorg.medium.com
The BBC speaks on the future of Doctor Who (includes the cancellation of the previously announced Christmas special). www.doctorwho.tv/news-and-fea...
doctorwho.tv
Writing this blog post was not how I expected to spend my Saturday afternoon 🙂 perlhacks.com/2026/06/publ...
Public Identifiers, UUIDs and a Tiny SEO Fix - Perl Hacks
Public Identifiers, UUIDs and a Tiny SEO Fix A recent question from my friend and colleague Mohammad got me thinking about the way we identify data in web applications. While working on the DBIC compo...
perlhacks.com
I wrote in more detail about how and why I added MCP support to the Line of Succession site. perlhacks.com/2026/05/teac...
Teaching AI About the British Monarchy with MCP - Perl Hacks
One of the more interesting additions I've made recently to the Line of Succession website is support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP). If you've spent any time around AI tooling recently, you've ...
perlhacks.com
The first Oneirina song I created (and the one that instantly crystallised her sound for me) was a glitch-waltz about quantum physics. open.spotify.com/track/6qpsF4...
The Quantum Waltz
Oneirina · The Quantum Waltz · Song · 2025
open.spotify.com
The project I mentioned this morning is live. It's rather silly. you might like it. austenpunk.dev
Austenpunk
Classic literature for modern software teams
austenpunk.dev
When you make a throwaway comment in reply to a LinkedIn post and an hour later you have a new domain and a plan for a project to implement this afternoon :-)
What I love about vibe coding is that you can go from a silly conversation to this in about ten minutes. Previously, I wouldn't have known where to start. davorg.dev/space/ (Honestly, I have no idea how accurate it is)
Which Way Am I Moving Through Space?
Find your current bearing and inclination through space, combining Earth’s spin with Earth’s orbit around the Sun.
davorg.dev
This afternoon's project has been to add an MCP server to the line of succession site. It's pretty basic so far, but now I have a skeleton in place, it will be easy to extend it. lineofsuccession.co.uk/mcp
This is the MCP endpoint for Line of Succession. MCP clients should send JSON-RPC POST requests to:
lineofsuccession.co.uk
Today I have walked over 20,000 steps (almost 9 miles) all over the City of London while taking 190 photos of Livery Halls. I'll be adding them to the site soon (but it'll take a day or two, as I used a DSLR and I need to process the RAW images). liverycompanies.co.uk
Livery Companies of the City of London
A map-based guide to the Livery Companies and their halls.
liverycompanies.co.uk
Getting back to a project I first started about 20 years ago, when I was working in the City of London. liverycompanies.co.uk
Livery Companies of the City of London
A map-based guide to the Livery Companies and their halls.
liverycompanies.co.uk
I was asked to explain how I cross-post and share my blog posts. Inevitably, it turned into a blog post. dev.to/davorg/how-i...
How I Cross-Post Blog Articles (Without Making It Complicated)
Someone asked me on LinkedIn recently how to cross-post blog content from a GitHub Pages site to...
dev.to