Idly Wondering
Is anyone reading this an iphone developer, who might be willing to work for free if I could convince you the project was sufficiently interesting? Comment or drop me an email…
Bookmarks for September 30, 2010
- Murray 4 Mayor
Because Toronto deserves something nice. There are a number of Torontonians around these parts. I urge you all to vote Murray, in the strongest, tenderest possible terms.
- Newly discovered planet may be first truly habitable exoplanet – UC Santa Cruz
And yet we're still not funding space travel properly. What's up with that?
- 50 years of cyborgs: I have not the words. | Quinn Said
This ones doing the rounds, and with excellent reason. A bit of writing on posthumanity that encompasses all the usual stuff and cyborgs and tool using and modern infrastructure, and goes to some fascinating and non-generally considered places beyond that. For example: "a cyborg revolution was happening the same year Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline coined the term. A hostile environment was being tamed by a newly and artificially capable people. It escaped notice and critique though, because the modified weren’t men, and then environment wasn’t space. The modified were women, and the environment was men. The women of the 60s were the first to modify and control their uteruses."
- The ecstasy of influence: A plagiarism, By Jonathan Lethem (Harper's Magazine)
An absolutely superb essay on influence, creativity, and copyright. The absolute best writing I have read on this subject, anywhere. And with a truly superb sting in the tail…
- Subtraction.com: The Only Thing a Router Is Good For
This is one of those "so simple it's obvious" things, that clearly, no-one has ever thought of. I have one (semi-)regular physical interaction with my internet router, and I bet it's the same one you do. I turn it off and on again. That's the only thing I ever do with it. And yet, the switch to do that is hidden at the back, and there is absolutely no reason why this should be so. No reason at all.
Bookmarks for September 29, 2010
- Incredibly Depressing Mega Millions Lottery Simulator!
Do you play the lottery? Here's a little tool that will simulate playing a reasonably normal lottery for you, twice a week, for 10 years, so that you can see just how much money you're flushing down the toilet for what kind of reward.
- How to build a web widget (using jQuery) – Alex Marandon
Most of you can safely skip this one, as it'll be incomprehensible tech bollocks. Unless you're interested in good coding practice when developing Javascript for other people to deploy of their websites. No, didn't think so.
- A user’s guide to websites, part 1: If it wasn’t broken why fix it? « Rev Dan Catt's Blog
Have you ever complained (or thought about complaining, or generally just grumbled to yourself and your friends) when LJ, Facebook, Twitter, or any other large website you use changed something? Have you ever wondered "why didn't they give us the option to keep doing it the old way, if we wanted to?" Well here's a good post explaining why.
- Wrestling legend Mick Foley explains how Tori Amos changed his life. – By Mick Foley – Slate Magazine
Yeah, I know it sounds unlikely to the point of absurdity. But seriously, read this. I don't care if you don't give a shit about one of both of them are – unless you have no idea at all who both of them are (in which case, I congratulate you on waking from your 20 year coma, and welcome you to the future) they I promise you, you'll love it. It's absolutely brilliant.
Bookmarks for September 28, 2010
- IMac 2000 vs iPhone 2010
I'm not posting this as an Apple fan – Apple are a long, long way from being the only example of this kind pace of technology, and probably aren't even the best. But they're a well know, very recognisable one. As you look at this though, I invite you to consider the following: you didn't even notice that change happening, did you?
- Now Shipping: ThinkUp Beta 1 | Smarterware
Need to grab this and get it running somewhere – on the one hand, most of my stuff is inconsequential crap, on the other hand, I don't like not having my own copy of data I generate, so something that auto-archives my socialmeeja crap is handy, especially if it'll let me produce stats on it.
- Lessons of the Chewbacca Incident « Binary Bonsai
Some data on the behaviour of users who were referred by to a site, split by the site that referred them – for example, users referred by BoingBoing stay longer, but read less extra pages that this initial linked one than those who arrive via Bleeding Cool or io9. I'd be cautious of putting reading *too* much into the data, but it's still interesting.
Bookmarks for September 27, 2010
- This is a news website article about a scientific finding | Martin Robbins | Science | guardian.co.uk
A savage, brilliant deconstruction of the problems with the way science is reported in the press. Please note carefully the section toward the end (for maximum take-away, you understand) where fringe lunatics and cranks who don't understand how science works (or how to tie their own shoelaces, a lot of the time) are given their say.
- Scaryduck: On Destroying Bagpuss
I loved Bagpuss. I also love this. The Thomas the Tank Engine (linked within) one is pretty good, too. Well, it made me laugh, anyway.
Bookmarks for September 22, 2010
- Dan Ariely » Blog Archive Humans and the slime mould «
Even slime mould can make decisions, it turns out. Sounds like it may be smarter than some humans.
- jorno – folding bluetooth keyboard
Is there anyone in the US who I can paypal cash to, who would be willing to order to have them order one of these and post it on to me?
- Printable version: How French Laundry's chefs reach for the stars
Of interest to a few folk around here, I'd imagine – a day at The French Laundry, a look at how they work, and how their ever changing menus are put together.
The End Of Summer
Yes, OK, you can have a bit of time off the Sunsets. But don’t think I’m done yet. I’ve got more…
Bookmarks for September 21, 2010
- Politics of storytelling – Laurie Penny interviews China Mieville
This is food for thought. Key quote: "Storytelling is clearly an extremely important function of societies, but it's nonetheless unproven that to be human is to be a storytelling being. Even if it is the case that human beings are completely intrinsically storytelling animals, it doesn't follow that that's something to celebrate, any more than we should celebrate the fact that human beings are defecating animals."
There're a number of obvious counter-arguments, that can essentially be lumped in as "the power of art to bring about change" but it's still a point of view worth remembering.
- I was wrong about veganism. Let them eat meat (but farm it right) | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian
I think I'm going to have to pick this book up. A lot of the numbers around the environmental impact of livestock farming have seemed off to me particularly in relation to arguments about grain (because, well, what's wrong with grass-fed?) and water (because invariably, the numbers seem to assume that any water fed to a cow never leaves the cow, which is pretty self-evidently wrong). It's nice to see that someone's actually taken the numbers apart and proved them wrong/fallacious, and done so in a way that convinces even a big hippy like Monbiot.
- Alex Payne — The Very Last Thing I'll Write About Twitter
A clear and sensible statement about the need to decentralise services like Twitter, Facebook, and really, almost any service, if you want it around for the long (decade+) haul. Idle thought: Someday, someone will figure out how to massively decentralise search, and than things will get really interesting. (Google have, of course, effectively done this internally in that their search architecture is spread over cluster after cluster, but that's not the same as true decentralisation…)
- Diaspora Developer Release
I really want this to succeed – once it's out of beta, and at the more-or-less easy to install stage, I'll probably put some time and cash, into setting up a Seed. I absolutely know that there are people I've lost touch with since leaving Facebook, and I know my social life has suffered for it. I've felt quite disconnected from many of my friends this year, and it's bugging me quite a lot of late. I'm not blaming anyone, you understand and I'm not going to be one of those arseholes who think that it's everyone else's fault – I knew what I was doing when I walked away from Farcebook – I'm just a little sad that people don't seem to use any other contact medium any more. So as soon as I can, I'll help offer a better alternative…
Sunset I
Told you there were a lot of sunsets coming. Hope you’re not too bored.
I’m about to wrench my arm patting myself on the back with this one. You see, the way I know that this is good shot is that I’ve just been through a massive variety of settings and balance tweaks to produce different versions, and aside from the obviously fucked options where I crank one slider up all the way and destroy the shot, there’s not one of them I don’t like – the shot shines through in all of them. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s not a highly original shot, but today, I care less about that than I do about having taken a really nice photo that brings me immense pleasure. I hope you like it, too.
This version’s my favourite, but I’m going to upload the unaltered original, too, so you can see what choices I’ve made in developing this. You can see the original here, if you’re curious.
Bookmarks for September 20, 2010
- Make Games – Finishing a Game
Applicable to just about any creative endeavour, and there are a number of things in here I could do with remembering more often.
- Looxcie Wearable Camcorder: Capture Unexpected Moments
Mildly tempted by this, if they produce an iphone version. It's a bit deep geek, but that's never stopped me from doing anything before. (Not so much interested in it from a sharing-with-the-world POV, more as a personal outboard memory tool – the ability to clip the last 30 secs of my life is potentially useful in a number of contexts.)
- How to get search engine (Google, Yahoo, MSN) referal keywords using PHP, php, Steven York.com
Reasonably trivial task, but once I'm going to have to do at work soon, I imagine. No sense re-inventing the wheel, and this looks like some decent code snippets to build into what we'll need.
- DarkPatterns.org
A listing of intentionally bad design patterns – tricks websites use to get you to do things that they want, or that cost you money. I'm happy to say that most of our clients don't ask us to do these, and those that do are usually dissuaded by us. But still, this is a good list of tricks to learn, so you can be aware when various sites might be trying to use them on you.
- A working hypothesis – Charlie's Diary
I had been blaming the decade long rise of extremism and authoritarian clampdowns on some kind of post-millennial fallout – the calendar ticks over, and nothing changes, and all that pent up stress has to go somewhere – but the idea that a significant chunk of the population of the planet might actually be suffering from future shock hadn't occurred to me, but it's an idea worth acknowledging, I think. (And playing connect the dots with – qv. Clay Shirky's Gin and Sitcoms ideas about cognitive surplus as an exacerbating factor.)