Tangled, hire a front-end accessibility expert Not me, this is just friendly advice from a struggling user. Alongside Codeberg I’d consider Tangled to be a real GitHub replacement. We desperately need to leave GitHub behind. It’s difficult to recommend any tech these days. I used to spread the gospel of Proton and that backfired. From what I’ve seen, Tangled seem to be saying and doing the right things so far. I have trepidations about their venture capital funding (see Deno’s demise) but pessimism is no fun. Tangled’s recent blog post on federated code forges piqued my interest. I self-host Forgejo and a big downside is that no one else can participate easily. Forgejo federation is under development. Maybe the two can co-exist? But that’s not what I’m here to discuss. Tangled’s new look In the same post Tangled revealed their new UI design. We’ve redone the UI on top of our new architecture (described further below), in Svelte. Things should now be quicker, visually consistent and prettier! The keen eyed of you might’ve also spotted that we’ve swapped out Inter for Timeless Sans. The federated code forge - Anirudh (Tangled CEO) I quiped on Bluesky: “keen eyed? eagle-eyed maybe!” — the new font size is exceedingly tiny. It’s coded as 12px with 16px line height. Tangled is practically unusable for me at this size. It was small before but I could zoom in. The way the new front-end is designed and built doesn’t leave much room for personal remedy. This is not just a subjective opinion there are real accessibility failures here. Font failure Below is a screenshot from Tangled’s new user interface design. Visit tangled.org and experience the new UI yourself. 12 pixels is too small for any meaningful text (which is typically all text). Maybe you feel the size is totally fine? That’s fine for you. But it’s not fine for a significant number of people. You won’t find any accessibility expert happy with that size. (Low-DPI displays may even struggle to render the font legibly.) WCAG 2.2 accessibility guidelines don’t recommend a minimum font size. 1.4.4 Resize Text does require that text can be resized up to 200% “without loss of content or functionality”. Tangled uses pixel units in CSS for font size†. That means the UI won’t adapt to the browser default setting. I can force a minimum 16px font size and look what happens. † Correction: I was wrong about pixel units everywhere (I misread the computed values), it’s font-size: 16px on the element that blocks the relative units from scaling properly with browser settings (an easier fix). Text lines get too close for comfort. Characters are starting to get clipped. See the “g” descender in “Tangled” for example. And if I force a 200% resize at 24px this happens. Oh dear! Text that is “clipped, truncated or obscured” is a failure. Remember that the WCAG guidelines are a floor. Nothing can be perfectly accessible, but a 12px font size and basic front-end failures are a concern. A proper audit would reveal other issues (e.g. with how media/container queries adapt to font size). Expect better I’m not posting this to seek employment myself or to provide answers. I want to remind readers that accessibility concerns affect everyone. Serious projects should seek professional expertise. It’s disappointing to see yet another tech start-up fail the basics. I’ll provide two suggestions for free though: Use relative units for font sizes Use unit-less numbers for line height (Edit: see correction above, the fix is even easier.) Frankly, what Tangled’s redesign suggests to me is that nobody involved with the process gave accessibility enough thought (if any) (edit: that part was unfair, there was some effort but far from adequate testing). That may sound harsh but it’s usually the reality from my experience. Whatever the case, Tangled must do better in this area. If I may answer a few predictable but hypothetical comments. This is just v1. Things will improve. I’m sure they will and maybe even pushed by my criticism. The struggle is that accessibility concerns must be integral to design from day one, not an afterthought to patch. It’s open source, where’s your merge request? Sorry, once a project crosses the line into venture capital “open source” takes on a different meaning. If people want to contribute that’s their prerogative. Personally, I’m not in the habit of giving away professional expertise for free to a for-profit business. Such expectations are especially a problem for accessibility specialists (of which I am not). Aha! What about this accessibility failure on your website?! That’s a bit embarrassing, but thanks for the heads-up! It’s far easier to hire an accessibility expert before you ship but it’s never too late to retroactively make improvements. I’ve been making accessibility improvements on my own website for decades. I like Tangled and I want to see it do well. Maybe someone will share a milkshake duck or they donate to fascist Linux and I’ll eat my words. I really hope not! I hope Tangled improves so that those lingering in GitHub’s slop graveyard have fewer excuses to hang around. Thanks for reading! Follow me on Mastodon and Bluesky. Subscribe to my Blog and Notes or Combined feeds. https://dbushell.com/2026/11/01/tangled-accessibility/ #tangled #font #accessibilityexpert #text #maybe #wcag #below #resize #timelesssans #alongsidecodeberg #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Danse Macabre My recent detour into Japanese detective fiction and the captivating mysteries of locked-room whodunits reminded me of popular BBC series Jonathan Creek. The show ran for three seasons between 1997–99. It returned with season 4 and 5 in 2003 and 2014 respectively. A few feature-length specials were scattered between seasons with a final one in 2016. Fond memories led me to the only reasonable action: binge the entire lot in a fortnight. The original 90’s episodes remain the best. They’re decidedly camper than I remember. Later seasons took a sombre tone and lost some of the charm. The theme tune is based on the violin riff in Camille Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre (YouTube) — a certified banger from 1874. Hence the title of this post, and as it happens, my favourite Jonathan Creek episode. Before that, there’s a moment in season one that I think explains everything. The matchbox A matchbox magic trick is used to illustrate what makes for a good or bad illusion. I’m sure these were found in children’s magic sets in the ’90s. Kids today aren’t allowed to play with magic. Probably for the best. The trick — if my fancy image comparison web component (original source) doesn’t make it obvious — is that a full drawer of matches is pulled out the left-hand side, and then an empty drawer out the right. Ta-da! Where did the matches go? Expand for massive spoilers! The matches are still in the box, obviously. You really needed a spoiler? But how do we know? If we give this far more thought than it’s worth, deductive reasoning tells us that it’s impossible for the matches to have left the box. Only the youngest of children are baffled by this trick. As Creek says: It can’t be baffling, there’s not enough scope for the imagination. There’s only one possible explanation: the matches stay in the box and the duplicate drawer comes out. Jonathan Creek (season 1 episode 3, 1997) What if we add “scope for the imagination”? Suppose we perform this trick with more razzle-dazzle. Maybe we place the matchbox under a handkerchief and say a few magic words; make a few magic noises. Would the big reveal be more impressive? No, probably not. Inductive reasoning now suggests the matches were removed from the box, because that’s the sort of thing magicians do. Audiences expect sleight of hand. This assumption, even if wrong, makes for an arguably less impressive trick. With a gimmicked matchbox the problem space is too small and the variables are too narrow. Either solution is obvious; no imagination is necessary. Does that mean complexity is what makes for a good puzzle or illusion? Actually, no. I’d still argue the opposite. Complexity does expand room for imagination but that alone is not fun. Complexity compounds and quickly overwhelms the imagination. Suppose you can make the matches vanish without an obvious gimmick? That would not only subvert expectations, it’d also present an impossibly simple problem space. Simplicity forces the imagination. Captures it even! Solving the “impossible” by discovering a hidden variable is far more rewarding than tediously unraveling a complex series of events. If the solution is never revealed then one is left forever baffled. A matchbox is too small, but a classic locked-room mystery is the quintessential example of my hypothesis that simplicity is everything. Spooky skeleton Season 2 episode 1 of Jonathan Creek — aka Danse Macabre — is the most satisfying, in my professional TV watching opinion. It’s a locked-room that defies logic. I’ll outline and discuss the events of the episode but spoilers are hidden. If available to you (hint: it’s probably on YouTube), watch the first half and see if you can solve it before reading on. The lead up to Danse Macabre’s locked-room mystery is as follows: Someone in a skeleton costume commits a murder During the escape the skeleton knocks a women unconscious A man witnesses this and guns are drawn in a standoff The skeleton attempts to flee carrying the unconscious body The skeleton is forced at gunpoint into the open garage The skeleton places the body on the garage floor The skeleton closes the garage door remaining inside The witness stands guard waiting for the police The police arrive and open the garage Only the women is found inside We’ve just witnessed two people enter a “locked-room” and only one person leave. That’s impossible! Where on earth did the murderer go? The problem space is narrowed by an investigation confirming that the floor is solid concrete, the walls impenetrable brick, and the roof equally impassible. The only entrance was watched the entire time and when opened there was nowhere inside for a person to hide. The spooky skeleton alone makes this the best episode. It genuinely scared younger me when it first aired. That aside, the simplicity is genius. Reasoning leaves us stumped. The murderer surely could not have escaped? Could they? Logic hits a dead end based on what we just saw. Our imagination is forced into a higher gear. Eventually, if we are to progress, we must think creatively. Below are three hints that get progressively more spoilery (be warned!) Mild spoiler: hint one It seems impossible for anyone to have escaped the garage. We know that for a fact but accepting the truth doesn’t make sense. We stubbornly look for a solution that cannot exist. That line of thinking leads nowhere. Spicy spoiler: hint two If what we witnessed seems impossible, there are hidden variables at play we are missing. What is the one unequivocal fact we’ve identified? Nobody escaped the garage. For that to be true we must question a conflicting assumption. Massive spoiler: hint three For the fact to hold true, how many people must have entered the garage? Did you figure it out? I won’t spoil the entire episode. You’ll have to watch it! That’s far more entertaining than reading my attempt to transcribe. Jonathan Creek has several locked-room episodes but Danse Macabre is easily the most clever. Simplicity is key to its brilliance. The problem space is narrowed until it breaks our interpretation of events. This theory of simplicity extends to puzzle games. Key is push When a game can hide a solution in a small and seemingly understood problem space, it’s highly satisfying to solve. If a game merely keeps adding new variables and extending the level size to increase complexity it becomes a tedious and less skilful affair. The puzzle genre is littered with trash but an occasional gem shines through: Order of the Sinking Star Stephen’s Sausage Roll The Talos Principle Patrick’s Parabox Baba is You Filament Portal These games all explore mechanics that mostly keep individual puzzles small but ramp up the challenge in other ways. The most memorable puzzles are the smallest ones. The purest distillation of the game design that still leaves the player baffled. Baba is You is especially good at this. Two levels have stuck in my memory. If you manage to solve the level “Floaty Platforms” you’re hit with a bonus: “Floatiest Platforms” (warning: YouTube solutions linked). You must play this game to appreciate how it works but at least you can see the two levels start almost identical. There are two differences: A single rule has been narrowed; “Key and Door is Push” is now “Key is Push”. The layout of the level has been boxed-in tighter. The second difference was optional. It doesn’t affect the solution, rather it’s a sly visual metaphor for the narrowing of the rule. (Baba enjoyers may note the layout change does present a bit of a red herring, but that’s not worth getting into.) What was already a tricky puzzle just got trickier. As a player our brain is primed with the previous solution. We naturally explore the same avenues only to get stuck. Like the Danse Macabre locked-room, our preconceived notions foil us here. Unlike Danse Macabre, we can’t just question what we know, we have to clear it from our mind entirely. The solution to Floatiest Platforms is entirely different than Floaty Platforms. Most level-based puzzle games, notably found atop mobile app stores, start small but quickly escalate in size. The core mechanics don’t allow ingenuity, so complexity is the only difficulty adjustment. At some point these games become a chore. Harder levels have too many permutations to track leaving only guesswork and luck as a guide. Filament is a bit of a hidden gem in this genre. Each area has a set of simple rules you’re shown before being presented with scenarios to test your understanding. The game has a real knack for punishing assumptions. Several times I got stuck because I imposed rules that didn’t exist. For a game to achieve this fairly without cheap tricks is an impressive feat. Exceptions There are of course exceptions to the rule of simplicity. Complexity doesn’t always mean quantity over quality. Two notable puzzle games that come to mind are Return of The Obra Dinn and Blue Prince. Pen and paper and many hours are necessary to reach a conclusion to those mysteries. These games work because progress is clearly defined. Although the player is required to recall a lot of information, they’re not memorising meaninglessly complex level design that serves no other purpose than being difficult to remember. Plenty of stories in books and film offer a sprawling, mind-bending mystery. Time travel movies lend themselves to this category. The Prestige, Predestination, and Primer can all be seen as complex who-or-how-dunit mysteries. In these cases we can sit back and enjoy being confused, knowing that we’re not meant to understand until the end (or ever). For me though, nothing beats the elegance of a simple puzzle or illusion. Make the matches vanish without any hint of misdirection and I’ll be astounded. This being the spookiest month and all, I have a book recommendation for you: Death Among the Undead (2017) by Masahiro Imamura. It’s of the shin honkaku genre which I am still obsessed with. Think murder/detective mystery, with zombies. If you’d like to learn about how these ideas apply to B2B marketing, follow me on LinkedIn. If you solved Danse Macabre immediately and think I’m dumb leave a smarmy comment. Thanks for reading! Follow me on Mastodon and Bluesky. Subscribe to my Blog and Notes or Combined feeds. https://dbushell.com/2026/10/28/danse-macabre/ https://dbushell.com/images/blog/2026/danse-macabre-matchbox-1.avif https://dbushell.com/images/blog/2026/danse-macabre-matchbox-2.avif https://dbushell.com/images/blog/2026/danse-macabre-skeleton.avif #dansemacabre #jonathancreek #complexity #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

How not to migrate from Cloudflare DNS So you’ve been shamefully using US Big Tech giant Clownflare for DNS? It’s time to find an inopportune time to migrate away to a “European alternative”. You absolute must not follow these steps on a busy weekend when you must leave for hours on short notice. Just remove it Step 1: Just remove your domain name from Cloudflare. Step 2: When the “are you sure?” modal pops up you’re forced to type the domain name. How patronising! Show them who’s boss by copy and pasting the domain name from the field label. Don’t fire a single neuron to consider which domain you’re deleting. Congratulations, you’re off Clownflare! Backup nothing It’s probably too late to backup nothing so make sure you’ve already done this step. Step -1: Don’t visit the DNS records page for your domain name. Navigating around Cloudflare is too hard after their latest UI shuffle. It remains a mystery whether that “Export” button allows you to backup records in the industry standard BIND zone file format. Unlikely. Step 0: It’s imperative that you don’t even consider first adding the DNS records to your new service provider. Why would you do that? Wait for alerts You’ve already saved precious minutes by ignoring best practices. Now you’re ready to exploit the system further. DNS providers hate this one trick! Step 3: Some hours or days later you’ll be informed about a missing DNS record. Go ahead and fix that at your leisure. If you can’t remember a record and don’t get a warning, it probably wasn’t all that important anyway. Bonus step The final step can take “up to 48 hours” so there’s no rush. Step ?: Sign in to your favourite meat-themed domain registrar† and edit the authoritative nameservers for your domain name. Clicking one of two pixels will open a dialog with a single textarea. Try comma-separated values and if that fails use a new line. Document nothing You’ve already migrated from Clownflare, what’s the point of taking notes now? It was easy! Go make a smug skeet on Bluesky, you’ve earned it — oh shit your atproto handle is failing DNS verification… † Why does every registrar have UI like it was designed 20 years ago? Can anyone suggest a good European registrar that has 2FA and reasonable prices? Thanks! Thanks for reading! Follow me on Mastodon and Bluesky. Subscribe to my Blog and Notes or Combined feeds. https://dbushell.com/2026/10/20/how-not-to-migrate-from-cloudflare-dns/ https://dbushell.com/images/blog/2026/cf-remove-domain.avif https://dbushell.com/images/blog/2026/cf-remote-confirm.avif https://dbushell.com/images/blog/2026/cf-dns-menubar.avif #cloudflaredns #step #bigtech #clownflare #backup #european #bluesky #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Cloudflare killed Deno and look I’m on TV! “Didn’t you already say goodbye to Deno? Get new material!” I know, I know, but not even a week after declaring my friendship over with Deno they actually killed Deno! The runtime is going away, and sorry call me pessimistic, but I highly doubt a community fork of any value will survive for long. We will support the Deno runtime for another year with monthly releases containing bug fixes and security updates. After that year we will end our development of the Deno runtime. Deno is joining Cloudflare - Ryan Dahl There’s even a Fireship video on YouTube! Guess who gets a namecheck? I’m not going to risk embedding Google cookies so here’s a link: “The runtime wars are over… and Node won” (YouTube). I also found my way into the lead story of JavaScript Weekly. It’s sad but telling that negative opinions and news around Deno has received the most attention. I have nothing new to say (until my Cloudflare exposé) but I do want to look back on my journey with Deno. Hatorade People who’ve only read my recent posts on Deno assume I was just a hater. Far from the case! I was all-in on Deno and wanted it to succeed. While it’s true that my disdain for what the tech industry has become leaked into my criticism, I’d say it was fair and accurate. The Deno runtime was truly ahead of it’s time. It felt like using Node from the future (now Node today). The runtime was forgotten in favour of whatever tech start-ups do. My doubts grew by mid-2024 but I regained brief optimism with the Deno 2.0 relaunch. I didn’t realise I’d written this many posts: Built with Deno (Mar 2021) Deno Builds on Netlify (Jul 2021) JSR: First Impressions (Feb 2024) JSR: Second Look (Mar 2024) The Deno Package Paradox (Aug 2024) JSR and Deno: Final Review (Aug 2024) Hey! Deno 2 looks fun! (Oct 2024) Deno’s Decline (6 Regions and Falling) (Apr 2025) JSR & Deno One Year Later - Malware?! (Jun 2025) Ditching Deno KV (Jun 2025) 404 Deno CEO not found (Mar 2026) Friendship ended with Deno, now Node is my best friend (Oct 2026) You may have noticed my interest in Bun in my earlier writing. That was before I learned it was not a serious project. We don’t use vibe-coded fash-tech in my house. Deno projects Deno was my platform for fun side projects (and Advent of Code). I experimented with many silly ideas. A few turned into something practical that I still use today. Deno Stream Deck (Oct 2022) The one where I used Deno’s foreign function interface to manage a USB peripheral. SvelteKit and Deno with OAuth and Deploy (Jun 2023) The one where I built and maintained a Deno Deploy SvelteKit adapter. Get in Line, Deno! (Oct 2023) The one where I used Deno’s streaming APIs to efficiently seek lines. Git Granary (Jul 2024) The one where I built a git large file storage server that I still use today. HTTP Tunnel and Proxy in JavaScript (Oct 2024) The one where I piped two streams together to create a simple HTTP proxy. I Let The Emails In (Sept 2025) The one where I wrote a bare bones SMTP server with Deno. The SMTP adventure was a disaster, but technically it worked! My private git LFS server has been rock solid. I actually found a use case for the HTTP proxy (blog post to come). For reasons (sigh), I’m losing interest in publishing open source code and writing tutorials. My self-hosted journey has stalled because I can’t afford anything anymore. Tech sucks now. But I’m finding enjoyment in fighting for an open web (for humans). I’m having fun too blogging more non-technical topics and getting back into design. I am no longer a JavaScript bro and that’s probably a good thing! Thanks for reading! Follow me on Mastodon and Bluesky. Subscribe to my Blog and Notes or Combined feeds. https://dbushell.com/2026/10/16/cloudflare-killed-deno/ #deno #oct #jsr #denodeploy #ditchingdeno #denobuilds #denopackage #look #mar #jun #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

D-Bus Hell The time has come to address the elephant in the comments. Whenever my blog hits a place with a comments section the most predictable comment I see — besides some variation of “this idiot is utterly delusional!”† — is this one: lol I read the domain as “D-Bus Hell” Random commenter I’d prefer if they focused on my actual blog content but I can’t get annoyed at people for seeing the wrong words. There’s a reason experts-exchange.com has a hyphen, and who can forget Susan’s party? I’d probably read “D-Bus Hell” myself, if I forgot my own name. † Why is Hacker News like that? But for the sake of the record I would like to point you to your nearest WHOIS tool: $ whois dbushell.com Domain Name: DBUSHELL.COM Creation Date: 2004-05-14T22:51:48Z Don’t ask me what I was doing at ten minutes to midnight registering a domain name. Is there a more appropriate time? The significant point is the date: May 2004. That was 22 years ago. Now if I may direct your attention to the D-Bus project Wikipedia page: Release November 2006; 19 years ago D-Bus - Wikipedia I rest my case. The D-Bus project doesn’t even have it’s own domain name, for crying out loud! So next time you see a post about D-Bus, maybe drop a comment saying: “reminds me of that dummy with a blog and a giant logo spelling out his full name!” Or something to that effect. (I’m joking, don’t do that.) What’s in a name To date I’ve resisted the siren call of nominative determinism so I can’t answer to whether D-Bus is actually hell or not. I considered writing a D-Bus review as a joke, but then I decided to watch paint dry. I’ve never heard Linux nerds express any strong opinions on the topic (for which they’re prone to do; see Systemd, Wayland, etc.) I did go down the Wikipedia rabbit hole of cognitive psychology and linguistics. There’s an interesting read on Rebracketing where a word like “Hamburger” becomes “ham + burger” which was altered from the origin: “Hamburg + er”. This is a form of Folk etymology where words can change due to unfamiliarity. Etymology My surname could simply come from “bushel”. An imperial unit of volume still favoured by fantasy novels, before the Trollocs attack and shit gets real. “Bushel” dates back to Middle English with origins in the Old French word “boissel”. At the risk of being part French, I’m inclined to believe an alternate theory that my name derives from “Bossall” a hamlet in North Yorkshire. But that would make me part Yorkshireman. I’m not sure which is worse. It’s not a very common surname. If this Geneanet heat map has any credibility, the name favours the south of England. That might support the French theory? Liverpool has the highest number of Bushells though. Bushells is also an Australian brand of tea founded by tea dealer Alfred Bushell in 1883. Alfred was born in Worcestershire, England (pronounced: Wrcstrshr). Interestingly, Wikipedia notes: After the Norman conquest of England; the Domesday Book noted in 1086 that in seven of the twelve hundreds covering Worcestershire, the Crown had no authority. Worcestershire - Wikipedia The Domesday Book always references Bossall (the Yorkshire hamlet) as Boscele or Bosciale; names that are Anglo Saxon in origin. When I say “Bushell” over the phone my pronunciation is often mistaken for saying “Buchel”. Some sources say they’re from the same Anglo Saxon origin. These distribution maps for Bushell and Buchel cast doubt on that idea (if Forebears data is accurate). “Büchel” also has different origins if you stick an umlaut on it. I suspect I’m dealing with multiple different names of Anglo Saxon and Norman origin. There are many spelling variations of “Bushell” and similar names in historic records (though few have survived). Most people were illiterate until recent decades so spelling variations are not surprising. It seems probable to me that whenever families adopted a spelling, a variation from the wrong lineage could’ve been written due to phonetic differences. Even if I traced my ancestry back hundreds of years, I’d likely reach a moment when a scribe wrote “Bushell” in some form and my ancestor just shrugged because he couldn’t read. The etymology of “David” is well known despite being much older. Its roots are Hebrew meaning “beloved” and has found its way across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. D-Bus is “Desktop Bus” if you were too lazy to click the link. What’s in a domain name Domain names are a strange system. They’re temporary URIs that are leased and inevitably lost. I’ve spent half my life publishing content on dbushell.com. I started using it seriously once I had a design portfolio. If you’re curious you can see past versions at: legacy.dbushell.com In hindsight if I knew I was going to build a career around my website I’d have chosen something more memorable. Imagine all the common words that were still untouched in 2004? dave.co.uk wasn’t taken until 2005! I don’t actually go by “Dave” myself but like the “D-Bus” thing it’s not my choice to make. For a brief moment I did consider moving to another domain. I would have had to maintain redirects forever. It’s not a sensible “SEO” manoeuvre either, if that matters anymore… Now that I’m running my business from valleyfold.co.uk I’m happy I stuck with dbushell.com for my personal space. Anyway, next time you spot the “D-Bus” comment please direct them there! Better yet, take up this blog challenge: write about the etymology behind your name and domain name. Thanks for reading! Follow me on Mastodon and Bluesky. Subscribe to my Blog and Notes or Combined feeds. https://dbushell.com/2026/10/11/d-bus-hell/