Alasdair Watson – Page 86 – Unreliable information since 1972

Bookmarks for May 4, 2010

Find is a beautiful tool – Eric Wendelin’s Blog
I invariably wind up doing something convoluted with needless scripts when I am trying to do some of the things find allows. I am bookmarking this to remind myself that find exists, and I should use it.
Slyck News – The Effort to Save Duke University's Usenet Server
The original Usenet server is shutting down. I can't imagine anyone will notice – anyone still using Usenet probably has a very specific form of brain-damage, and in any case, this isn't killing Usenet, just a bit of it's history – but still, it's an event worth marking, in the same way that Tim Berners-Lee's first web server is now a museum piece.

Tags: history, internet, usenet
Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art – Stephen Walter's The Island
This is a brilliant map of London, that I would like on my wall. Failing that, I shall just content myself with spending hours zooming in on different bits of it…

Tags: maps, london

Thoughts on Flash by Steve Jobs
Abridged: "Will you stop fucking whining? If your product was useful to us, we'd support it. It's not, so we don't. That's business for you. Go develop something useful, and we'll talk."

Tags: apple, iphone, flash, adobe
Cook Your Meat in a Beer Cooler: The World's Best (and Cheapest) Sous-Vide Hack | Serious Eats
Why did I not think of this?

Tags: food, cooking

TotalFinder brings tabs to your native Finder and more!
This is what I have been missing from Mac OS. I am so ludicrously happy to see it, it's untrue. It's just a little thing, but it's going to make such a difference to my working life…

Tags: software, osx

jQuery Masonry · David DeSandro
Nice JS framework that makes some more interesting web layouts possible.

Tags: javascript, development, css, layout, grid
Frameworks for citizen responsiveness, enhanced: Toward a read/write urbanism « Adam Greenfield’s Speedbird
Adam Greenfield has some notes on the future integration of technology and the city – city as development platform.

Tags: software, design, future, cities, ubicomp
Geocities-ised ala.sda.ir
A timewarp all the way back to 1997. It's the spot on music that really sells this one, I think.

Tags: meta
Stages of a Photographer
Well, I've never fallen in the HDR hole – I think it's a cheap effect, a way to get around weaknesses in technique, or a substitute for an actual idea – but on the other hand, I've taken so few photos I like in the last year, it's ridiculous. But that is less about my ability, and more about the fact that I haven't been carrying a camera enough, or taking enough pics. Time to do something about that.

Tags: humor, photography

Another one from Brighton. I experimented with a load of different colour versions, before deciding that this looked best in black and white.

YouTube – The iPad DJ: @ranajune
I know there are a couple of DJ types reading this. And a few people who would *like* to be DJ types, but are having cost issues with some of the kit required. Check this out.

Tags: music, ipad, dj

antumbral: dear lj: plz to stop being dicks, kthx
LJ are doing the link re-writing thing again. As this post makes clear, the reason it is bad (even if you don't care about money, like I don't) is essentially because a third party company will get info about what links to external websites you are clicking, if you are clicking on them when they've been posted by people who haven't opted out of this scheme. I have, and absent LJ being total arseholes about it and ingnoring the opt-out (at which point, I will be shutting up shop on LJ) links clicked from my journal should always be safe. Do me a favour, and leave a comment if you've similarly opted out, so I can try and track whose links I am happy to click?

Tags: privacy, livejournal

YouTube – Iron Man Punches Hugh Grant
A daft little video that tickled my funnybone in a disproportionate manner.

Tags: funny, video, iron_man, iron_man
This Is Apple's Next iPhone – Iphone 4 – Gizmodo
"Whoops" say Apple. "We've accidentally generated a load of hype for the product we were pretty much ready to announce in a matter of a couple of months. Oh dear."

Tags: apple, iphone, gadgets
Penny Red: There's just no pleasing some people.
I skate in just ahead of the group that Penny Red is talking about here – a decade older, with fractionally more financial security, I can afford to rent a place on my own, although not do anything as extravagant as *buy* somewhere, but the sense of political disenfranchisement she's talking about is bitterly familiar.

Tags: politics, uk

YouTube – Alice for the iPad
Let's see the Kindle do this. Kids are going to love reading this….

Tags: books, ipad, interactive

Economist/YouGov polling: This week's Economist/YouGov poll | The Economist
I would love to see a similar poll conducted over here, because I bet it would get similar results. No one I know is in favour of cutting funding to the NHS, Education, Social Services, Pensions, infrastructure, or really, anything. And yet, we look like we're going to elect people who are going to do that.

Tags: politics, statistics, government
If you're looking for class war, you can find it – in David Cameron's policies : Johann Hari
I try and be tolerant about people who fall in different places on the political spectrum to me, I really do. But as this article makes clear, David Cameron is poised to declare economic war on me, my friends, and those less well off than us.

Tags: politics