- Gentleman’s Dictionary and Usage: Breakfast
This is a tremendously civilised guide to making breakfast. I strongly advise following it.
Links for Wednesday January 19th 2011
- Horoscoped
Meta analysis for horoscopes, via Andrew. I may spend some time writing a horoscope generator at some point. For fun. Yes. Fun. - HIDDEN HAWAII DIGITAL – MP3 Download – £ 7.99 / Cinematic Drum’n’Bass Vol. 1 by Various on DubKraft Records
Sounds good, may need to purchase later.
8 Rules For Writing Short Fiction
Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 rules for writing short fiction (as listed in Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction) were:
- Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
- Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
- Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
- Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
- Start as close to the end as possible.
- Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
- Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
- Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
Were this one of those newfangled blogging systems that the kids all use, this would be listed as a “reblog” from Matt Webb, who has returned to blogging at Interconnected.org, which is good news. I’m not just linking to Mr Webb’s post, because I want to fix these rules firmly in my memory, and in order to be certain that I can find them myself at a later date, unimpeded by the vagaries of the intertubenets.
Links for Tuesday January 18th 2011
- Scraping for Journalism: A Guide for Collecting Data – ProPublica
Handy set of guides for getting useful structured/meaningful data out of websites. - Will the ConDems allow the disabled to live? | Blogeration
Another one I imagine you've already seen. Some absolutely splendid writing on the subject of the cuts, and how grossly unfair it is to ask the disabled to bear the size of cuts we're talking about.
Links for Monday January 17th 2011
- DeDRM AppleScript for Mac OS X 10.5, 10.6 « Apprentice Alf’s Blog
I would not, of course, ever think of doing such a thing myself, in order to read my legitimately purchased ebooks on whatever device I wished. - Stupid legal threat of the young century – Boing Boing
I'm sure loads of people will have done something like this, and you're bound to have seen the link, but essentially, lawyers for a website called Academic Advantage are sending websites that contain the words "academic" "advantage" and "scam" cease and desist letters claiming "There is absolutely no helpful reason for the website to have the words 'Academic,' 'Advantage' and 'Scam'". I disagree. There's a very helpful purpose – letting people know when the lawyers they retain engage in legal bullying that is completely groundless, and bring their client's name into disrepute. - Top Ten Typefaces Used by Book Design Winners | The FontFeed
Just in case I ever need to to design an award winning book. Or something. Oh, just go look at the lovely fonts, will you?
Links for Friday January 14th 2011
- Confused by Constellations? Find out about your new star sign!
You may have seen reports on the internet about some sort of change to star signs caused by some kind of science, and you may be wondering what this means for your horoscope. Because I am a basically helpful person, I have put together this site, to help people who are confused by the whole thing. Please spread this link far and wide, as I would hate for people to be confused by astrology.
Links for Thursday January 13th 2011
- A List Apart: Articles: A Simpler Page
Discussion of laying out text for ipads (or similar) on the web, and a library to to the rendering. Particularly like the three modes – bed, knee and breakfast pretty neatly describe all the ways I use my device. - Come out of your comfort zone, disability living allowance cuts are relevant to all | Society | guardian.co.uk
An excellent article on the cuts to DLA. Cannot quite believe that even this government of utter shits would essentially say "one in five people who have previously been assessed as needing help now won't get it". And yet they are. There's no suggestion that the previous tests were flawed. There's no (credible) suggestion that fully one in five of disabled people are OK, really, and just scrounging. They're hiding behind "we can't afford it". Which makes my blood boil. Surely, even in a time of national austerity, the one thing we should bend over backwards to afford, the one thing we should scrap all manner of other things to pay for, is caring for the most vulnerable members of our society.
Links for Monday January 10th 2011
- The Best Cover Songs of 2010: #50-41 » Cover Me
I've been meaning to get round to checking these out, but I don't suspect I'll get there any time soon, so I'm just noting this so I can come back to it later.
Links for Friday January 7th 2011
- IndieGames.com – The Weblog – The Best Of 2010: Top 10 Indie Games
A ten second play of their game of the year has me wanting to go back for more. One to check out when I'm not at work. - russell davies: Ted Hughes on thinking
Ted Hughes was a man who knew about thinking. And dead pigs. Well worth a listen. Russell's observation re: YouTube is also trenchant and a pleasing thing to think about. - How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed — Deer 342 — bmj.com
This needs to do the rounds in a very big way. You know all those vaccine scares that are picked up by the easily swayed, and used as an excuse to endanger the rest of us through lack of vaccination? Well, it's not just the case that (single) study they're based on is a bit fringe – it's an outright, deliberate falsehood perpetrated by a man with malicious intent and a profit motive. If you know *anyone* who has a small child and is contemplating not vaccinating it, you need to make sure they see this. - 2010 Year Lists – Fimoculous.com
Haven't had time to go through this yet, but want to get around to it. - Michael Caine’s impersonation of Michael Caine
Absolutely superb.
Links for Wednesday January 5th 2011 through Thursday January 6th 2011
- The Tearoom of Despair: Last night The Invisibles saved my life (24-month countdown remix)
If you have not read the Invisibles then you should have. If you have read the Invisibles then you may enjoy this reminiscence of the experience of reading it for the first time. - Ninth Art: for the discerning reader
Minor pleasure of the day: getting 9A back on one of it's original two domains. If the person who jumped on ninthart.com the instant that ISP incompetence cause it to lapse is reading this: please can we have it back? There's still hundreds of links pointing to your site that are dead. I will buy you the domain of your choice in exchange? - Android Isn’t About Building a Mobile Platform | TightWind
Solid analysis of Google's behaviour and strategy in respect of Android and the bigger picture. It's why I tend to call bullshit on their mantra a bit re: their evilness, because I would prefer to be the customer, not the product sold. I will admit that for a company set on selling me as a product, they provide a much better service than most in exchange, but even that's not all good, as it means they tend to blow away paid-for competition that does stuff (or might do stuff) better than they do.