Links from 2013

<blockquote>A new design for Acko.net, fusing WebGL, CSS 3D and HTML at sixty frames per second.</blockquote>

Seriously impressive.

<blockquote>The more influential ministers in the coalition ache above all to radically challenge the role of the state, to achieve the reverse of the 1945 Labour government. Remarkably, given that they rule in a hung parliament, they have found the space to pursue their radical ambitions. Few in England voted for a revolutionary overhaul of the NHS, the near privatisation of universities, a further decline in the power of local government, a framework for education that paves the way for a return to selection and the introduction of profit-making schools, but that is what they are getting. In their fervent disdain for the state as a mediating agency, ministers focus with special energetic intensity on areas over which they happen to have no powers in Scotland.

As a result Scotland becomes more markedly different than ever. In Scotland the NHS is spared the haphazard revolution in England. The education secretary, Michael Gove, is powerless to impose his resolute will on schools in Scotland and the same applies to his other more evangelical colleagues moving England rightwards. Without doing very much Scotland becomes more different because of what is happening in England. The limited powers handed over to the Scottish parliament are precisely the ones that partly protect it from the ideological mission of the Westminster government. </blockquote>

A handy overview.

The clearest explanation I've found for git's subtree merge.

<blockquote>We offer secure email accounts including calenders and address books that synchronize to all your devices. </blockquote>

Some interesting ideas in here.

With difficulty.

<blockquote>Being an open source advocate who uses Apple products engenders the same ethical unease I felt as a vegetarian before going fully vegan: committing only partway because, dammit, I wanted cheese on my veggie burger.</blockquote>

But Linux on the desktop (or laptop, rather) still sucks.

<blockquote>Clean and simple Read Later. Powered by Pinboard.</blockquote>

<blockquote>A set of Ansible playbooks to build and maintain your own private cloud: email, calendar, contacts, file sync, IRC bouncer, VPN, and more.</blockquote>

For next time I need to add this to some standards docs

<blockquote>OpenDesk is a collection of simple furniture, designed to be cut by a CNC machine. Download and print it yourself or have it made for you by a local maker.</blockquote>

GitHub's deployment tool for local machine and development environment config. Shame it uses Puppet.

<blockquote>A virtual development server based on Stephen Hay's Responsive Design Workflow. Comes with all necessary tools installed: Pandoc, Dexy etc. Cooked up with Vagrant.</blockquote>

...and Ansible.

<blockquote>rbenv-bundler is a near-invaluable plugin that makes the rbenv shims Bundler-aware and alleviates you from needing to type bundler exec in front of every command. It is also easy to install straight from Github.</blockquote>

Very, very high level. But that's OK.

Ranking Linux package managers by freshness.

<blockquote>Insanely complete Ansible playbook, showing off all the options.</blockquote>

<blockquote>"Taking frequent, shallow breaths is inefficient, and tends to have a detrimental effect on performance," says McConnell. She suggests two to ensure that you are controlling your breathing. Firstly, learn how to breathe rhythmically during movement (more of that in a moment). And secondly, improve your inspiratory (inhalation) muscle function.</blockquote>

A mixed bag, mostly useful when VC-talk filter engaged.

Somehow missed this in the official docs.

<blockquote>"Termshows are purely text based. This makes them ideal for demoing instructions (as the user can copy-paste), making fail-safe "live-coding" sessions (plain text is very scalable), and sharing all your l33t terminal hacks."</blockquote>

Free plan looks like it could be handy for side project development, but then it gets fairly expensive fairly quickly.

Nasty.

<blockquote>These kinds of films aren’t entertaining anymore; they’re offensive. Yet they sit side-by-side among countless clones, bullets in the chamber, cogs in wheels in the monstrous Movie Marketing machine — operating within the supercolossal Entertainment Industry — which only cares about money and formula and self-protection. No wonder the industry is dying. For our parts, as moviegoers, we are partly culpable for legitimizing these projects, in which innovation, risk, and surprise are next to nil, by continuing to buy their tickets.</blockquote>

I'll probably watch it anyway.

<blockquote>One of my oldest friends is a consultant psychiatrist who I've actually seen practising in just this way, with preternatural flair and compassion.

In both their cases, however, I feel about them rather the way I do about the last archbishop of Canterbury: I consider Rowan Williams to be a wise and spiritual man mostly despite rather than because of his Christianity; and I think many psychiatrists are good healers mostly despite rather than because of the medical ideology of mental illness to which they subscribe.</blockquote>

A bit more about why I remain very optimistic about @foursquare, and what the company needs to do going forward: http://t.co/SOJo5g6Si6