Links for Thursday November 20th 2014

  • Russell Davies: Inevitable
    If you work in marketing or comms, this is a mandatory read.
  • Alan Moore – This Is Not A Dream – YouTube
    Alan Moore's history of the CIA, "Brought to Light" appears to be available in full on Youtube. No idea if it's legit, and it's not his best audio work by any means, but it's still worth a listen as a history of the CIA.
  • Let’s Encrypt
    Technical level incomprehensible bollocks to most of you, but the short version is that if this works like it says on the tine, then summer next year cannot come soon enough. This represents a massive improvement to one of the more frustrating tasks on my plate at work *and* means that in theory *every* website should be able run encrypted, even just little stuff like personal blogs. Which is actually really important, these days.

Links for Monday October 27th 2014

  • The Open-Office Trap – The New Yorker
    I absolutely loathe open plan offices. I have never been more productive than in the brief, halcyon period early my career where I had my own office. Or, I guess, when I work from home. Both of these things enable me to manage the terms on which I engage with colleague's requests for help. (Which isn't to suggest I don't wish to enage, merely that I want to do it in a planned and productive manner, not to be forced into it by someone saying my name…)
  • TOMW8S – ‘Donkey Kong Variations’ | Buddy Peace
    8-bit remix of Tom Waits classic Mule Variations. Really interesting to hear Waits stuff done like this.

Links for Wednesday October 15th 2014

  • Lockheed says makes breakthrough on fusion energy project | Reuters
    I… don't know what to make of this. If it's true, this is *huge* news. Just enormous, on a sort of I-can't-quite-believe-this scale. But this isn't "mad scientist with basement lab makes mad claims" like we've seen with fusion before, this is a major military industrial player that is apparently seeking partners to actually *build* the thing! I really hope this is true. Wow.

Links for Monday September 29th 2014

  • Yahoo Directory to close down
    I am internet-old enough to remember when the Yahoo directory was the best way to find websites on the internet. A hand-categorised-by-actual-humans list of the most useful websites on many topics was superior (for a while, anyway) to what was produced by the early-stage search engines. I used it pretty much daily. A significant chunk of my first ever internet job was devoted to making sure that our client's sites actually got listed in the Yahoo directory. I am, therefore, wiping away a little nostalgic tear.

Links for Friday September 26th 2014

  • ntlk’s blog: Why can’t you track periods in Apple’s Health app?
    As this article makes clear: there probably isn't a good reason why not, and there are loads of reasons why it would be useful. I would home this is an oversight that will be rapidly corrected.
  • 15 Lessons from 15 Years of Blogging – Anil Dash
    I sort of wish I had kept up the habit of writing "proper" posts on this site, or any other. I'm not even honestly sure that I can point to when I stopped. Honestly, I'm not sure I ever really started – I've never had a topic to explore, never tried to set my blog up as about anything – it's just, y'know, an agglomeration of stuff. Which explains why it has a double digit audience on a good day. But then, it's really not for the audience, so that's fine – it's an aide memoire for me. Anyway – some solid advice here.