• Atomic Tragedy — Photos
  Previously unreleased photos taken in the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing. Hugely moving photos that convey the human cost of the atomic bomb. Should be in every history textbook, under the heading “there can be no excuse”.
  (tags: history photography death Hiroshima War)
• Boris Johnson Facts
  “Not even twelve pygmies have the strength of a single Boris Johnson.”
  (tags: list facts)
• random($foo): Web 2.0 Expo Presentation Rundown
  Well, that’s half my evenings this week gone. Some of these sound fascinating. (The other half, like total waffle-shop bilge, but let’s focus on the positive, shall we?)
  (tags: web2.0 presentations conference video)
• Alan Moore’s Outbreak of Violets
  Given away at the MTV Europe Music Awards in 1995, the postcards with text by Moore, and art by a number of utterly splendid illustrators now change hands for absurd sums. Or you could just read them on-line.
  (tags: alan_moore comics)
• The New Yorker profile of Grant Achatz
  A really compelling account of the effect that his battle with mouth cancer, the experimental treatment he got, and the effect it has had on his life, and his cooking.
  (tags: food science cancer)
• CR Blog » Blog Archive » Designs on Your Money
  Interview with the guy that came up with the designs for the UKs new coins. Insteresting insight into the design process, and how some of the initial ideas were refined and improved (or even just unworkable).
  (tags: design money interview)

I start to understand why there are so bloody many web application frameworks out there. I need to get a really basic website up and running fast. I have two choices: spend some time evaluating various frameworks that are actually about 70 times more complex than I need, learning how they work, and getting really pissed off at their various quirks, or run up my own really stripped down basic framework just as part of coding this custom app.

On the one hand, my own app isn’t going to do fancy scaffolding, or take much of the grunt work out. Hell, it doesn’t even do nice URLs yet. It’s not a lot more than an really basic ORM class that still needs work to make sure it does proper escaping of inputs. (Another couple of hours over the weekend, and it will do both those things, mind you.)

But on the other: it’s light, it does exactly what I need, and after 90 mins work, is already shaping up into things that will be included in the finished app. 90 mins into trying to use Cake, the off-the-shelf PHP framework I know best, I gave up, because I couldn’t get the fucking scaffolding to work even close to right. The sheer feature-completeness of it defeated me. Yeah, if I was planning a six week project, I’d probably use it. But I want this thing coded up in under 35 hours of work, if I possibly can, so 90 mins starts to be a significant chunk of time.

Anyone want to bet me that once I’ve done this site, I’ll turn to the same tools the next time I need a quick custom app? Anyone want to be that that I’ll improve them again and again? Anyone want to take part in a sweepstake about how long it’ll be before there’s yet another framework on the market?

OK, it’s unlikely I’d ever release it, because there are loads of other out there, and I have no interest in supporting something like that. But still, it’s pretty obvious how these things start.

• Stripped: a minimalist WordPress theme
  Nice job of being ultra, ultra minimalist, while still clearly having thought given to the layout and typography. I really like this one.
  (tags: design wordpress theme)

• Clay Shirky on the cognitive surplus
  And what gin and sitcoms have in common. Fascinating thinking.
  (tags: future thinking)
• Bernardo O’Higgins – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  The 2nd supreme director of Chile. Bookmarked for superb name zombie purposes. Don’t ask.
  (tags: gaming awesome_name)

• Jack Parsons
  How have I never turned up this man before? Pioneering rocket scientist and a Crowley devotee who would invoke Pan before every rocket launch…
• Hunter S. Thompson – Wikiquote
  HST on Breakfast. No reason, other than that it made me smile and wish I was in a position to begin each day like that.
  (tags: quote hst)

• Covering Conflict | Magnum in Motion
  An absolutely superb photo essay about war photography. Requires sound for the commentary.
  (tags: photojournalism magnum bbc)
• Vous Pensez – The geekiest pants… ever?
  Is it bad that I would wear these without shame?
  (tags: geek fashion design)

• Amazon.co.uk: Rough Guides – World Music
  On the one hand, this sort of compliation CD seems, I dunno, faintly patronising – to take an entire musical culture, and bung it on one sampler CD. On the other, you’ve got to start somewhere, and there’s loads of music here I know *nothing* about.
  (tags: music)