Links for Monday July 2nd 2012

  • Parliamentary train – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    I'd never heard of these before today. Noted and filed, to be used later.
  • Unusual Words Rendered in Bold Graphics | Brain Pickings
    I have learned words, and seen pretty pictures.
  • PHP solves problems. Oh, and you can program with it too!
    I am a PHP coder. It is, in truth, the only programming language I'm any good at. Well, OK, maybe javascript, too. I got into it because I wanted to get things done, and PHP maybe it very, very easy for me to do that. I'm not the sort of person who learns new languages for fun, so PHP is where I've stayed. But the reason I've stayed is because I've never found anything I wanted to get done that I couldn't do in PHP. Which suggests to me that the hate it gets from "proper" programmers is basically, so much bullshit. So I liked this article.
  • "Obamacare" explained very well. via reddit.com
    Just in case anyone reading this is confused about what the healthcare reforms in the US mean. Basically, if you read this, and are still opposed to them, then I can only assume that you are someone who would like more people to die. In which case, perhaps you could help the rest of us out by setting an example.

Links for Saturday June 30th 2012

  • The Strongest Woman In America Lives In Poverty
    This is really saddening. While I don't this sporting prowess should automatically equally riches, the simply fact is that this is an inequality – other olympians can and do get plenty of sponsorship. Her achievement is no less remarkable, and yet it's pretty clear that the reason she doesn't get sponsorship is because her sport means she doesn't conform to a beauty standard. (Bet male weightlifters don't have the same problem.)

Links for Friday June 29th 2012

Links for Thursday June 14th 2012

  • The care and feeding of software engineers (or, why engineers are grumpy) | NCZOnline
    I would absolutely kill to be certain that from 1:30 to 5:30pm I would not be interrupted by anyone, and could just get on with work. If I could implement just one recommendation from this (very resonant) article at my company, this would be it. Hack days, meeting free days, these would be lovely, but the really big one would be interruption free time.