• 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.

• 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.

• Mom’s Evangelical Christian Rewrite of Harry Potter CANNOT Be Real
  "Thank you very much for your concern, sir, but he does not need your religion, he has science and socialism and birthdays." Sadly, other bits of it are considerably madder, but that bit made me laugh. And it is now my new personal statement.
• Raiders of the Lost Ark as a silent B&W film
  Steven Soderbergh has made this cut of Raiders available as a means of focusing on the staging of the film. I want to take the time to sit and watch this. When I'm not at work.

• Just how much information can be squeezed from one week of your metadata? | Naked Security
  This is a) proper interesting and b) proper scary. I encourage the reading of it. And then the purchasing of tinfoil hats and faraday-lined cases for phones and tablets. Because I think we're at the point where nothing else will keep us private.

• Unstuck — How to work like a human
  Good advice for times when you are under pressure.

• What if Steve Jobs had been running Apple’s Event on Tuesday? – Jiggity’s Essays
  I don't agree with the article's presupposition that Steve's way would have been better, but I will say that I think that the write has very neatly nailed to difference between Jobs' keynotes, and the modern ones, and he has nailed something very important about Steve's way of explaining these things – the emphasis on the human connection, on what these devices will let us do to enrich our lives, rather that the technical specification and Jony Ive's design-porn angle.

I’ve been noodling about in odd moments with a bit of writing with the working title “The Death of Retrofutures” – about how we don’t imagine the future in the same way we used to, and how I think that’s a shame.

Today, I see that BERG is closing down.

I am incredibly sad to see this. BERG are, or were, one of the touchstones I use to describe the best sort of work there is to be done down the internet mines, the sort of work that I really seriously admire, and, on my better days, aspire to do. They were a firm concerned with invention, with taking these technologies that shape our lives, interrogating them, and really thinking about how to use them to do something that actually improves people’s lives in some small way. They really did get on with the job of imagining the future, and we’re all poorer for them not being in operation.

I wish all those employed there every success in their future endeavours – I can’t imagine anyone on that team will have any trouble finding something new and interesting to occupy their time.

• 100 Actual Titles of Real Eighteenth-Century Novels
  Many of these are brilliant. I think we should bring back eighteenth century style naming for fiction.
• How London’s Rivers Got Their Names | Londonist
  Just in case you're curious.

• 10 Evil Crimes Of The British Empire – Listverse
  Just, you know, in case anyone was wondering why I'm not a fan of our current administration: they appear to take as read that the times in which Britain did this were some kind of halcyon age. Also noted for future reference purposes.
• Papa Parse – Powerful CSV parser for Javascript
  I suspect this will be very useful for a number of things.

• Met Police encourages Twitter pile-ons (with images, tweets) · anyabike · Storify
  Mildy horrifying behaviour from the police. I mean, sure, it's "just" twitter, but then, so were the complaints. Why set a pile-on on people who are "just" complaining on Twitter, if it's not important?