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I knew that JSON wasn't ideal for large data blocks, but I'd never have guessed that something as simple as a custom data format and a split() function would be so much faster.
Humans Against Dead Humans
A glance at my housemate’s blog informs me that April is genocide prevention month. I shall of course, be doing my part, by suspending my usual genocidal activities next month. I urge you all to stop your wholesale slaughter of entire races of people in the month of April as well.
More seriously, I had a look at what they suggest one might do to help, if one is against genocide. Out of the 30 things they list, over 20 are “visit X website/read X book/watch X movie” so that you know more about various genocides. Most of the ones that aren’t are “educate other people about genocide”. And notably, not one of them is “write to your elected representative asking them to raise questions about/support measures against” any of the currently ongoing genocides. Not one is “organise a march/protest”.
Look, I appreciate that it’s possible I’m just a well-informed individual, and I know these people mean well, but seriously, perhaps step one in stopping something that I think we can all pretty uncontroversially agree on might be actually doing something, rather than just educating yourself and others. I mean, seriously, how much education about genocide does one need? Can we not assume that we all agree that people killing other people is bad, and proceed directly to doing something about it?
Attention Creatures Of Toronto
I’ll be in your town, drinking your booze from the 7th to the 15th of May. Suggestions for places to eat, drink and take photos of neon signs are required.
Extreme Sheep-herding
No, really.
Links For Wednesday 18th March 2009
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This one's worth circulating far and wide – police using the various powers they've been given over the last while to suppress a peaceful protest.
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There's plenty of non-geek stuff in today's pile of links. Just skip past this one.
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Highlight " Because as software becomes a medium through which the city is accessed and made social, the paired need for both open software and hardware is clear. The design of the open public space is dependent on the design of the open software which is, increasingly, dependent on the design of open cities."
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Might be handy in future projects – one of the first things I almost invariable do it set up a user class to handle logins and similar rubbish, and it'd be nice to have a handy boxed-up model to do all that with.
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Matt Jones identifies the really interesting thing about yesterday's Iphone 3.0 announcement, and it's not copy-and-paste.
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This looks like a fairly decent starting point, anyway. Of course, that's probably just what the government wants me to think.
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Today is "everything you didn't need to know about intelligence, and weren't afraid to ask" day.
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Fascinating espionage-related stuff I had never heard of before now.
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I probably don't need the little finger on my left hand, you know…
Links For Tuesday 17th March 2009
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Scary looking maths for doing user-ratings based ranking that doesn't fall into a couple of common traps.
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Insight into why password security may be a flawed model for websites.
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How to take a simple sentence, and turn it into something that reads like David Foster Wallace.
Links For Monday 16th March 2009
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Very pretty means of searching Flickr.
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Sit down, shut up, and listen to the greatest living Englishman.
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I think I may have to get along to this.
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A little slice of the future that will be incomprehensible/irrelevant to most of you. It's an app hosting environment for RoR developers that pushes the apps out into a computing cloud rather than relying on single/multiple servers. If there was a PHP version, that was as easy to set up, I'd be signing up right now.
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Yes, it's true. Newspapers are fucked. Hardly radical thinking, but a very cogent summary of exactly why they're fucked, and what we might, maybe, get instead. But here's the key bit: "When someone demands to be told how we can replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution." You could replace "newspapers" with "the music business", "the TV industry" or even just plain old "copyright" and still be on the money.
Invisible Cities
Anyone want to confess to having my copy? I haven’t seen it in a while, and I kind of miss it.
Links For Friday 13th March 2009
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Programmable coffee maker *with a built-in grinder*. Gimmegimmegimme.
Gervais and Elmo
I am not a fan of either of them. But put them together, and there is a very special magic.