- Everything Easy is Hard Again – Frank Chimero
A description of what it feels like to build web software, after 20 years building it. There was a point, a few years back where I thought I'd achieved, well, definitely not mastery, but at least a certain level of expertise. These days, I feel like I'm constantly running to keep up, and just getting further and further behind. And there's really no reason this should be the case.
- Oxford Comma Dispute Is Settled as Maine Drivers Get $5 Million – The New York Times
If ever you wonder if the Oxford comma really matters, then the answer is yes, sometimes it matters very very much.
Tag: web
Bookmarks for April 1, 2015
- Making ‘A barrow by a beacon’ | Matthew Sheret
This gentleman has made a rather pretty little storytelling project for himself – the link to the actual project is in the article, but I'm actually more interested in his notes on the making of. Mostly just as a reminder to self, and to others: none of this stuff is voodoo. If you would like to build a web page, you can learn to build a web page. Any kind of web page. It's really all just a bunch of typing, and nothing to be scared of.
Bookmarks for January 20, 2014
- Cthuvian Ipsum Generator
Lovecraftian Lorem Ipsum Generator. Exactly what I need.
- Have I been pwned? Check if your email has been compromised in a data breach
Handy website for checking if any of your commonly used usernames/email addresses have been leaked with password details attached recently. Happily, I have only been (ahem) "pwned" once, and I already knew about that and took steps. If you haven't checked, you should, and insert all the usual computer security advice here.
Bookmarks for June 18, 2013
- Adactio: Journal—Battle for the planet of the APIs
Superb article on the importance of a technology that most users don't care about, and never use – RSS. It's only really important to developers. But that, in itself, can be indicative. Modified quote: "It might be that RSS is the canary in the coal mine for my data on the web. If [a service doesn’t] trust me enough to give me an RSS feed [of my own data], why should I trust them with my data?"
Bookmarks for November 11, 2011
- Node.js on Dreamhost | respectTheCode
Handy tutorial for getting node.js running on one of my webhosts.
- A Simple Blog with CouchDB, Bogart, and Node.js – How To Node – NodeJS
This is a bundle of technologies that I've been meaning to put a little time into learning for a while now. So I should sit down and implement this somewhere, when I get a little time.
- [this is aaronland] the unbearable finality of pixel space
If this matures a little, I'll be a happy man. Right now, it's a complete pain to get working out of the box, unless you're starting from a position of installing everything from scratch on an Ubuntu box, but if someone turns out a quick version that'll run on a basic PHP/MYSQL/Apache install on my webhost, I'll be a happy man. (Yes, I could spend a day or two making it run myself, but my photos are already well backed-up, ta, so my incentive to do it is limited. I quite want an easy minimalist portfolio site, but not enough to spend days building it.)
- A List of Things That Plugins Don’t Work With
Look seriously, if you're building a website, and thinking "Hey, I know, we'll do this bit with a plugin" – and it doesn't matter which one – Flash, Sliverlight, fuck, even Quicktime – then really stop, and think again. They're broken, and they don't do anything you can't do with modern web-standards based technology.
Bookmarks for February 8, 2011
- Adactio: Journal—Erase and rewind
The BBC it seems, refuse to learn lessons from their own history. I'm usually one to defend the BBC against a lot of the flak it gets, but this is just plain stupid. Archiving these sites should be a matter of maybe an hour's work each, at most.
- Isotope
Tech bollocks. JS (specifically, jQuery, my new best friend) library for doing all sorts of very nice layout/sorting tricks. Bound to be handy.
- Woke Up, Got Out of Bed, Dragged a Comb Across My Head – morning routine food | Ask MetaFilter
I have been reflecting of late that I could do with adjusting my morning routine a bit. A lot of what's in here is moderately standard hippy crap, but the annoying thing is that I know quite a lot of it works, if one sticks to it. So I should probably get on that.
- To us, it's an obscure shift of tax law. To the City, it's the heist of the century
If you live in the UK, stop what you're doing and read this, assuming you haven't already. This is somewhere between absurd and terrifying, and I simply don't understand how anyone in Cameron's position can contemplate it. Well, I do, but the only way it makes sense to me is active malice and contempt for other people, which is a motivation I find hard to ascribe to any human being.
Bookmarks for November 23, 2010
- boilerpipe
Web API for extracting clutter from web pages and just returning the content. Nice!
- New House Climate Czar | Talking Points Memo
Americans! Have you ever wondered why everyone hates you? It's because you elect people like this, and then apparently give them a chance of being in hugely influential of policy areas where they can fuck up the planet for people who didn't get a say in electing them, on the basis of some bullshit religious beliefs, that, in a civilised country, would disqualify them as a candidate for dog catcher. Seriously, America, please get on with reforming your political system and society to get rid of people like this. By force, if necessary.
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 August 25, 2010
- Cope » Every thing is a play thing
On the one hand: a nerdy deconstruction of the plot holes in the Toy Story 3 and their implications for the franchise is rather missing the point of the film, in that it's a work about emotion, and you're supposed to forgive narrative flaws if you notice them, because they're in the service of a emotional point. But I'm certain Wallis knew that when he wrote this. His broader point, though, is excellent: that all narrative is now interactive narrative, and that people will take any narrative, and find things in it the creator never intended, and invent new material in the vacant spaces of all stories, and that decrying that is pointless – we should be embracing it.
- russell davies: 5 things
I am particularly interested in the first two, and wish to remember to return to those ideas later.
- Silicon Valley's secret rock star – Fortune Tech
This isn't big news, or anything I'm going to need later, this just made me smile.
Bookmarks for May 7, 2010
- Introduction To Online Payments – TL;DR: It's A Total Bitch – Meat In The Sky Blog
Might be a useful reference to point a client at if they ask about online payment processing.