Links from 2009

Unofficial thesixtyone forum.

Every so often (Roughly every 1-2 months) the box searches it’s owners flickr account for photos that have been organized in some way and, picking one at random, prints the photo out internally using the small photo printer contained in the lid. You are free to search the box whenever you like but there may or may not be a photo waiting. If there is, there is no way of knowing what it will be.

A good/useful moan about Wordpress. Plus, Delta 9 is back. Yay!

"A PHP5 app that helps you follow several of Yahoo!'s Rules for High Performance Web Sites. It combines multiple CSS or Javascript files, removes unnecessary whitespace and comments, and serves them with gzip encoding and optimal client-side cache headers." Hubba, hubba.

"A general purpose script loader that aims to be able to effectively load any script resource(s), from any location, into any page, at any time. It loads them all as parallel as the browser will allow, but maintains execution order when you express the need to do so in the usage of the API, for keeping dependencies safe." Very pleased this has gone 1.0.

A method of data transfer which uses the FTP protocol to transfer data from one remote server to another (inter-server) without routing this data through the client's connection.

"Bring tech-heads into creative conversations early to color communication ideas with what's possible in web development." But don't call them tech-heads.

"Apple is not evil. iPhone developers are stupid. Their problems with the App Store approval process are entirely their own fault and they deserve no commiseration." Rather extreme viewpoint from PPK (with some merit, though).

Human conversation is the last area of communication to hold out against the relentless march of commercialisation and it’s our duty, as humans, to make sure it stays that way. So, screw consensus. And shame on me for starting to lean towards it yesterday. Give me ad-free conversation, or give me death.

The reason most often cited by technical staff for avoiding debt altogether is the challenge of communicating the existence of technical debt to business staff and the challenge of helping business staff remember the implications of the technical debt that has previously been incurred. Everyone agrees that it's a good idea to incur debt late in a release cycle, but business staff can sometimes resist accounting for the time needed to pay off the debt on the next release cycle. The main issue seems to be that, unlike financial debt, technical debt is much less visible, and so people have an easier time ignoring it.

James built bat boxes. Brilliant.

Bad title, interesting points. "I learned that introverts prefer to think before they speak, while extroverts tend to think /as/ they speak. I also learned what energizes introverts (solo activities) versus extroverts (social activities) [...] They seek out allies as trusted sounding boards and champions who can help spread the word about their quiet strengths."

Sometimes I put my log in information into the register fields.

Me too! I hate that not only do I feel stupid, I have to retype everything again.

Info on the new(ish) embeddable Fan Box for Facebook Pages.

Probably the best cover of Personal Jesus. Like, ever.

A "tiny .app [...] for taking Arduino sensor data and uploading to Pachube."

"We're working on the exact pricing model, but we'd charge for a day's paper, for a 24-hour sign-up to the Times. We'll also establish a subscription price as well." Good luck with that.

only the most well-made, free & open-source, @font-face ready fonts.

This makes me so happy. Bandcamp rock.

"This document aims to lay out the pros and cons of two popular web publishing platforms: The PHP-based Drupal content management system (CMS) and the Python-based Django framework." With a bit of Wordpress thrown in.

"A plugin for jQuery to help you display notices, dialogs, and modal windows in a web browser. It is flexible and tiny, akin to a "Swiss Army Knife", and makes a great base as a general purpose windowing framework."

I think that Piston hits a sweet spot for creating APIs. It has a lot of nice little features, and handles the general use case well. It is also abstract enough that it allows you to provide your own layer on top of it with ease.

Instead of downloading all Jquery-plugins, you might or might not need, Lazy downloads the plugins when you actually use them.

Lightweight Django store.

Satchmo's mission is to use Django to create an open source framework for creating unique and robust online stores. To provide maximum flexibility, Satchmo is licensed under the BSD license.

Another London-based booker.

"John Lewis maintained its third position while fourth and most improved was Boots." Yay and stuff.

London-based music bookers.

Useful for creating parent pages featuring thumb images from child pages.

Because Kingsbury is not a highly desirable area, most of Trobridge’s enchanting homes are not in the condition they deserve to be. After the war, Wembley council built a major housing estate, destroying most of Kingsbury’s historic buildings in the process.

"Among many fine photographs in the book is one of Highfort Court flats, in Kingsbury, north London, designed in 1936 by the architect Ernest Trobridge to demonstrate his Swedenborgian belief in symbolism (the building's chimneys are turrets, its entrance a drawbridge)." The Council Flats of Kingsbury?

This has lead to a problem that a lot of internet sites face, and I haven't found a good solution to the problem: how do I redirect users to a mobile site?

Not entirely sure I agree with everything in this but worth a gander.

The Reverse Geocache Puzzle ™ | Arduiniana

“Mounted into the lid, perhaps incongruously, are an illuminated button, a small display, and a mysterious module that sharp-eyed readers might recognize as a GPS…”

"How some of the traits we have as developers keep us from evolving and our market from maturing" plus some good stuff on YQL.

"The independent worldwide magazine of the crane industry. Come to us for the best writing about mobile cranes, tower cranes, lifting equipment and more." Would it be wrong to subscribe to this?

Google serve up the dirt they have on you.

Slides and pictures from the rather good masterclass run by Tinker.it! at dConstruct.

On Saturday, a new urban advertising screen was turned on in London. This one’s a little different to the norm though: it’s 176m above the ground, 60m wide and 5m tall. Oh, and it wraps around the BT Tower.

It's probably about time to replace Quicksilver. This looks like a decent alternative.

"If digital agencies excel at exploration, traditional agencies thrive on exploitation." No comment.