- Lost Bomber – Techbelly
Mentally link this with the story of the woman the other week who was looking to put her disabled daughter into care, because she couldn't cope with the cuts. Futher thoughts: anecdote != data, but anecdote is useful to understand and connect with data.
- Ben Bashford – Notebook of Things – Emoticomp
Interesting idea to bear in mind when designing apps/systems – how to give it an emotional face, that it is consistent, and ideally, compelling.
Tag: history
Bookmarks for December 1, 2010
- Spacelog
The stories of early space exploration from the original NASA transcripts. Now open to the public in a searchable, linkable format. Well, this will eat chunks of my time…
- The Foundation
There's a short film competition happening here. Prize is a grand, and, well, it's a bit thin on the ground for entries. I'm just sayin' that if anyone fancied making a short film, they'd stand a decent chance of winning cash.
Bookmarks for November 19, 2010
- MY PHONE IS OFF FOR YOU
I'm reminded of reading someone's new definition of cool "If I'm hanging out with you, I never see your mobile phone". I know I'm, ah, less than faultless with this, but then, I've never claimed to be coo (althought I've tried to do better since reading that particular article). Still, getting one of these might be a good start. Although, reflecting on it a bit, there's a fine line between signalling to someone that they're important to you, and acting like you want brownie points for simple politeness…
- Abandoned Communities
No idea what I'll use this stuff for, mind. But I bet I will at some point.
- BBC News – The secrets of Britain's abandoned villages
I imagine that I'll find a use for this information at some point.
Bookmarks for August 17, 2010
- BBC – Dimensions – Index
BERG produce a site that helps you understand the scale and distances of things in the recent, and not so recent past. If the Apollo 11 astronauts had landed at your front door, could the distance they walked have enabled them to buy a pint of milk? How far away from your parents house would the German trenches have been, if WWI had happened where you grew up? And so on, and so forth. Nice!
- BookBook for iPad – BookBook for iPad – Twelve South
If I didn't have my Dodocase, or if, god forbid, anything should happen to it, I'd want one of these, I think.
- rejectamentalist manifesto
China Miéville has a blog. I believe this may be relevant to our interest
- Science Digestive: My application for a job as a Homeopath
In case were weren't aware NHS Tayside are offering a £68,000 a year job for a fucking homeopath, despite having laid off 500 people due to the current round of cuts. The level of angry this makes me is hard to fucking describe – it is a near perfect example of the counter to the "well, it can't hurt, and it might help some people" argument that others put forward. Anyway, setting incandescent fury aside for a moment, here is an amusing read: A qualified neuroscientist applies for the job.
- Washington, We Have a Problem | Politics | Vanity Fair
interesting article on the daily routine of the Obama presidency, and the difference between the media now, and the media of a decade ago.
Bookmarks for August 16, 2010
- The Pac-Man Dossier
This has been doing the rounds, so you may well already have seen it. But in the event that you haven't, here's a fascinatingly in-depth look at Pac-Man – you may think it's a very simply game, and it is, but its very simplicity masks an awful lot of very subtle design decisions that are key to understanding the tactics required to win.
- The Photojojo Store! – the Most Awesome Photo Gifts and Gear for Photographers
I haven't looked in the photojojo store in ages. There is a truly staggering amount of stuff in here that I really want. Just sayin'
- BBC News – Superheroes 'poor role models for boys'
Something that's been at the back of my mind recently: good fictional role models for boys.
- Voogle Wireless
Someone has dug up the add in support of net neutrality that Google produced 4 years ago. Now, I'm the first to admit that that what was true 4 years ago isn't automatically true today, and that people who can't change their minds about things in response to changing circumstance and new arguments are stupid people. But: I don't see that the circumstances and arguments in this particular case have shifted in that period.
Bookmarks for May 19, 2010
- ReclaimPrivacy.org | Facebook Privacy Scanner
If you're staying on facebook, I thoroughly recommend that you use this, to be absolutely sure of what your settings are. Remember, if you don't set everything correctly, you friends can share information about you without your knowledge, so do make sure to check…
- People are walking architecture, or making NearlyNets with MujiComp – Blog – BERG
Yes, someone at BERG has done a thing, and I'm linking to it again. What this thing is is a short exploration of bottom-up ubicomp, and how it is making our cities come alive. Cleverness is basically the art of drawing useful connections that others don't, and Matt Jones is bloody good at it, skating here from Archigram to Clay Shirky via Muji and Guy DeBord, and laying out a way of bringing on the future of our public spaces. Plus, I love the idea of the porch being the point where the public and the private mesh. Much friendlier that the computer-nerd term DMZ, much more useful.
- Museum of London – Street Museum
Nifty little app for visually mining the history of London while out and about.
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.
- 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…
Bookmarks for December 18, 2009
- Apparent Software blog » Blog Archive » “Is PayPal good for your microISV business?” A short PayPal horror story
Just a thing worth noting, should I ever be required to set up a service that needs payment processing with Paypal. Shitty behaviour.
- Auschwitz sign stolen | The Jewish Chronicle
Weird, and sick. I cannot fathom a motive to do this that doesn't leave me faintly nauseous.
Bookmarks for November 12, 2009
- YouTube – The Open Road London (1927)
This one's done the rounds a lot, but I'm going to want to look it up ater, I know I am, so here's yet another lnk to it. Colour video footage of London from 1927.
- Illegal movie download forces shutdown of free Wi-Fi | coshoctontribune.com | Coshocton Tribune
MPAA shitweasels decide that they're jsutified in fucking over an entire town's municipal internet facilities in revenge for a single download. This should not be legal. This is what the RIAA, the BPI and any other organisation that is still fighting for the now-outmoded implementation of copyright that we currently have wants the ability to do with three strikes laws, and DCMA notices and all the other apparatus of enforcement that they are accreting to themselves by lobbying – to place the risk to their profits over the common good.
Bookmarks for September 28, 2009
- Mitch Horowitz: What is the occult? – Boing Boing
Interesting definition supplied. I like the term "occult" because it's admirably woobly-woo resistant, when correctly understood (something far too many "practicioners" fail to do). As I'm sure most of you know, it means "hidden". And what is hidden may be revealed with science when we work it out. It's a lot better than "supernatural", which is a term I don't like – there is no supernatural, merely the natural that science has not fully explained yet.
- Chord by Conrad Shawcross
Must remember to book tickets to see this.
- re:vision recycled camera lens bracelets – Oye Modern. Unique, funky, limited edition jewellery.
Beautiful, and I kinda want one, but much, much too pricey to be worth it.
- MediaPost Publications Judge Orders Google To Deactivate User's Gmail Account
This sort of combination of abuse of power and utter moronic stupidity by the courts and major institutions makes me incandescent. There are far worse things that happen in the world every day, and I know it, but this sort of thing is a particular hot-button for me, because it's so self-evidently unjust and unreasonable that I cannot fathom how any sane person could conceive of it as a decent or sensible thing to do.
- Dyatlov Pass incident – Wikipedia
Well, this is crying out to be recycled into some nasty bit of horror/mystery fiction or something.