- 13-Year-Old Makes Solar Power Breakthrough by Harnessing the Fibonacci Sequence | Inhabitat – Green Design Will Save the World
I wish I'd been that clever when I was 13. Hell, I wish I was that clever now.
I’d Sell Your Heart To The Junkman Baby
This has made my morning 382% better. Absolutely superb editing.
Links for Thursday August 18th 2011
- Scripting Languages: PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby – Hyperpolyglot
Likely of no interest to non-webdev-nerds, but potentially of enormous value to me, in terms of learning new languages. I sort of vaguely know Ruby, but this direct translation from PHP to Ruby would speed what little ruby hacking I do. - It’s Sexy A-Levels!
A blog exploring the hypothesis that UK newspapers believe that only attractive girls in low cut tops do A-Levels. - fleet street fox: More pictures like this, please.
A counter-argument: it is excellent that at A-level results time, the papers fill up with photos of attractive young women. Less sexist that you think. - Tetrapharmakos – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I stumbled across this set of 4 simple maxims for a happy life, and really like it. - Up, up and away into near-space in a beautiful bloon
Statement of intent: I will do this before I die. - Special ed student raped by classmate, forced by school to apologize to him, then raped again, lawsuit claims (UPDATED) – Boing Boing
I wanted to link to this not because it's directly relevant to me (other than, y'know, as a human being with an ounce of compassion somewhere under a rock in here), or even because it's an exceptionally horrible story (it is, but the plain truth is that worse things happen every day, and I don't link to news about them), but just because it strikes me as a very, very stark reminder of how, even in the "developed" world, we still have such a very very long way to go before we can call ourselves civilised.
Links for Tuesday August 16th 2011 through Wednesday August 17th 2011
- OMG Posters! » “Wish You Were Here” Art Print by Dan McCarthy
This is an absolutely brilliant print. You wouldn't believe that glow-in-the-dark paint could actually move you, but you only have to look at this to realise that yes, yes it can. - Your awful dates, in 140 characters – storify.com
Rhodri Marsden has been collecting people's dreadful 1st date stories. Read them if you want to feel better about your dating life (no matter how bad you think it's been, I promise you, it isn't as bad as these stories) or even if you just want a few cheap laughs. - England riots: pair jailed for four years for using Facebook to incite disorder | UK news | guardian.co.uk
There has to be more to this than there seems, right? I mean, we don't jail people for most of fours years for writing things on the internet now, do we? Particularly when those things don't result in riots? I mean, that's what they do in Egypt and all those other barbaric regiemes. - The Daily Mail knowingly and commercially used a bloggers photos despite the blogger denying them permission. – Wonderland
This short of shitty behaviour probably isn't a surprise to anyone any more, particularly not from the Daily Fail, but still, I'd be fucking livid and instructing a solicitor, were it me, so y'know…
Links for Monday August 15th 2011
- The Magistrate’s Blog: Contempt
This one is worth flagging up, for those of my friends who are shocked and appalled at the actions of Wandsworth (and other councils) in their attempts to evict the families of those who are convicted in connection with the riots. Broadly speaking the message is this: don't worry, it isn't going to happen. The courts quite literally cannot allow it to happen. So: spread the word about that, because the only think this tactic is for is bullying and scaremongeriing, and that's easy to stop with information. But other than that, expend your energy on other matters, because this one's sorted.
Links for Friday August 12th 2011
- Designersgotoheaven.com by @andreirobu How the Dead Live
Absolutely brilliant cover design for an absolutely excellent book. - Imaginawesome
This is brilliant – kids drawings, redone by a professional illustrator. Absolutely superb.
Links for Tuesday August 9th 2011
- Not by the Direct Method., Cheering myself up with the pulp ideasplosion.
Just go and read these. And then tell me you don't want to read at least half of them. I cannot express just how much I'm looking forward to Jess' Enyclopedia of Pulp Heroes.
Links for Friday August 5th 2011
- Ghostery
An ad-network and spyware blocker for most of the major ad networks. May ad-blockers just stop the ads from displaying. This one can stop them from spying on you, too. Nice. - danah boyd | apophenia » “Real Names” Policies Are an Abuse of Power
An excellent summary of the what the "real name" policy Google are attempting to enforce is, basically, Evil. Me, I'm absolutely in favour of real names being used on-line, and I certainly insist on it in forums I moderate. But those forums tend to be small, relatively closed membership things, formed with the intent of supporting offline in-the-flesh interaction. That's a very different use case to massive social networks, where the ability to feel comfortable using one's real name is a privilege that all sorts of people don't possess for all sorts of reasons. - One tweet takes a journalist on a voyage of discovery | Media | guardian.co.uk
Here's a thrilling example of our lack of privacy in the 21st century. There really not a lot that's going to be done about it,I'm just linking because I think this is good illustration of how the world work now. It's probably not an earth-shattering revelation to most of you, but nonetheless, it's interesting background in these days of phone hacking…
Links for Thursday August 4th 2011
- Simon Spurrier: A Serpent Uncoiled: LAUNCH DAY
I tweeted about this earlier, but tough. Simon Spurrier's "Contact" was one of the best novels I read last year. "A Serpent Uncoiled", his new weird crime novel shows signs of being the best novel I'm going to read this year – I haven't finished it yet, having only bought it this morning, and the year isn't done yet, but so far, I'm fucking riveted. It is out now and both dead-tree and electronic editions for Kindle, and on the iBooks store, so you really don't have an excuse for now buying it at once. Get to it. You won't regret it. - Open the Future: Sword of Taxation, +5
You may or may not have heard/give too hoots about Diablo 3, but if you have, you might also have heard about their plan for an in-game auction house, where players will be able so sell the in-game items they acquire for real world cash. Leaving aside the fact that is going to take gold-farming to a whole new level of third world sweatshop labour, Jamais Cascio makes an excellent point, here: because these items will have a directly-measurable real world value, they will be be taxable in the US, the UK, and other places. Not taxable-when-you-sell-them, you understand. Taxable when the game randomly gives them to you. This could get very interesting, and I'm certainly going to think twice about playing – I just don't need the paperwork. - The Robot-Readable World – Blog – BERG
Absolutely 100|% mandatory reading for anyone interested in the future-present. If this doesn't spark at least six exciting ideas in you, then I fear you do not understand when you are living. Also of interest: the Louis Vutton QR code. Suddenly, there's space for design in a barcode.
Links for Wednesday August 3rd 2011
- Planning a photography exhibit
This has been on my to-do list for a few years now, and this article has a useful checklist of stuff that would be required.