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Technology
You wait for a packet of ideas, then two arrive at once
A look at the invention of the packet-switched network, and an interesting perspective on how an idea can spring to life in two places independently.
How copyright got to its current state
How did we get here?
Articles For Startups
How To Demo Your Startup
Advice on how to present your start-up and the rules of thumb that can help. I like the concise and quick demo, if you can't get the idea across quickly then it is most likely all is lost. My favourite one also works well in creative writing as well, "leave them wanting more", people try to cover everything but it is always good to not show all your cards leaving even more room to impress. This is a well thought out article that also touches on the best practices on presentation skills.
Zoho Founder Offers 5 Rules for Recruiting Well
Yet another article on how to recruit. Some good advice, but don't make it into a mantra or stand still or you wil find it starts to not work.
Tools Of The Trade
A couple of articles about what people use to get their job done. Always interesting from the point of view of whether there are some good ideas to improve my own workflow.
A Fresh Cup - My Tools of the Trade
Null Is Love - My Tools of the Trade
Cool Stuff
Space Invaders invades Tokyo retail
30-years old like me but I only put on weight, this game puts on merchandise.
Brendan McCarthy Gallery
One of the UK's most creative artists now has an online gallery.
PyCon UK 2008
PyCon UK is a convention for the Python programming language in sunny old Birmingham. This year it is from the 12th to 14th of September and it only costs £75 for all three days.
Now I am using Python every day I think maybe I should attend this year. Looking at the talks that are going on it should be an extremely interesting conference. For a start they have Mark Shuttleworth (of Canonical/Ubuntu fame) and Ted Leung to deliver the keynotes.
So far the talks scheduled are the tutorials one Friday which include PyQt4, Django, and Google App Engine. The Django talk will be hosted by Jacob Kaplan-Moss who is one of the benevolent dictators of the project (and creator) and he will be outlining version 1.0 (due in September).
The accepted talks can all be viewed here. It certainly looks like there is a lot of variety.
Last year Julian Todd did a talk on Public Whip and I believe an impromptu one on CAM development. It was a shame to miss those.
Links Innn Spaaace
Space effects, non-competes blown to smithereens, more mini-computers, a world where films are more entertaining, and something you should read about the history of the personal computer.
50 Photoshop Tutorials For Sky and Space Effects
Because you never know when you'll need a picture of the sky that looks better than the real thing.
State Supreme Court rejects noncompete clauses
Finally somewhere (California, USA) says non-compete clauses are unlawful. Brilliant. I hope that the rest of the world follows suit.
Tiny, 6-chip ‘open’ computer runs Linux
Mini-computers are all the rage at the moment. This one looks like a nice hackable platform (and it is yet another ARM based one).
The Parallel Universe Film Guide
It's a damn sight more entertaining than the real world of cinema (and is much funnier).
Carmack on Doom, Rage, EA and More
The one man programming army gives more hints about future Id products.
Forgotten PC history: The true origins of the personal computer
Shedding some light on the history of the PC and revealing some truths.
Plex - Media Centre For Linux
Plex have joined forces with Centerstage to create a comprehensive media centre solution. This means you now get a flashy UI with the X-Box Media Centre back-end.
WordPress WPTouch Theme
Helps to make blogs easier to read on the iPhone and also look pretty integrated.
WordPress Twitter Plug-in
Two way integration for WordPress blogs and Twitter which looks really useful. Maybe I should go that route for links?
BarCamb 2
A week ago I attended the second BarCamb (which is the Cambridge name for BarCamp) which is an interactive conference where the attendees create the schedule.
It was hosted at the Sanger Institute which is part of the very impressive Wellcome Trust Genome Campus.
The Chip With Potential
To be honest this talk was over my head but it was about a new way of testing blood at a much lower cost than traditional methods.
Panic-Driven Design
This was an interactive session, where ideas from the crowd got divided into Test-Driven Development and Panic-Driven Development. It did get sidetracked for a while when exploring the deficiencies of TDD, but it was much more fun to go into where development goes wrong.
SWIFT
Currently the Wellcome Trust use a proprietary system for genome analysis which has a number of shortcomings. So they embarked on a new system that is open-source and written in C++ to be as performant as possible. It sounds like it is a good step forward with such a large contribution in an industry that tries to be very secretive as to its methods. Sounds like it will save money and time when it is online.
It's Too Much Information For Me
Related tot he previous talk, this one talks about the output. The system currently used generates 11,000 PNG and text files for each run bearing in mind there are numerous simultaneous runs. You are ending up with 320Tb of data to sift through. This talk was a story of attempting to parse porrly formed data that people may not even want to look at. Then when the SWIFT system comes online most of this intermediate information will not be generated.
Talking About talks.cam
talks.cam is a website that aggregates the talks happening in Cambridge, both for the University and in general. This looks like a very useful resource. Some of the talk went into plans for the future including trying more integration with social networking for education.
The Wireless Epidemic
This was a talk from an academic paper looking into the propogation of data using only wireless devices. Basically the devices become routers and forward packets when they have the ability to do so due to proximity. Part of this was a study into the movement of data within a group rather than a completely random pattern as most of the simulations have used in the past. I think this is a related paper to do with pocket-switched networks.
Analysis Workflows
Using Rakefiles (Ruby Makefiles)
Coda Demo
A demonstration of Camvine's Coda system for digital content delivery (that I am now working on). This talk went really well and we let the attendees have access to the screens for the rest of the day which meant we had "about" screens for the talks from this point on. It even had my Feedburner API interface page to who the number of readers, unfortunately my blog showed zero subscribers 
The Cloud And The Community
Attempting to bring the community interaction online like Neighbourhood Watch. Unfortunately the take-up hasn't been too high possibly because of the technical ability of the members of the community.
Embedded Can Do The Internet Too
This was a really good talk about small computers that are used as microcontrollers. They can even support a webserver. Some of the applications were power monitoring and supplying the information via a webpage. Simon can sum it up better on his blog here.
What Bjork Has Done For Us (Tangible User Interfaces On The Cheap)
Since swishy multi-touch is all the rage, this talk was about hacking up a tangible UI for musical purposes (or chemistry purposes for laying out molecules). You can hack up the UIs using reacTIVision which is open-source.
Distributed Version Control With Git (Panel)
This was unfortunately the weakest talk of the day, but I think that happens when you choose a fashionable topic with a fashionable solution. I actually started daydreaming because I forgot to go on a rant about my merging problems of the week.
I also remember the talk about superimposing the government's statistical data onto Google Maps (unfortunately I forgot to write down the title) which was an excellent talk. It was interesting to see coloured maps of people's age ranges in the UK. Unfortunately the developer had to jump through a number of API and data hoops just to get what should be freely available Google Maps information (like polygon areas of the counties or parishes).
Overall it was a great day with a very high quality of talks and I am looking forward to next year's.
#barcamb
Creaking Under The Weight Of Links
Lots of links today...
Going Rogue
Why do people leave the safety of a regular wage to go into independent game development? Well, creativity and satisfaction are two good reasons.
TextMate Plug-in: ProjectPlus
Interesting plug-in for TextMate which provides extra functionality including some Git support.
Mozilla Labs >> Concept Series
Mozilla are attempting to generate more discussion for future directions with the Internet. The Aurora Concept is generating the most discussion from the design firm Adaptive Path.
2008 LLVM Developers' Meeting
Lots of presentations and videos from the LLVM development meeting. It's a great technology and is getting a good ecosystem around it, and when Clang reaches production state it will be very interesting.
Mystery Tales No 40
In Lost there was a brief glimpse of a comic from the 1950s. Some people got hold of it and have scanned it in and analysed it in the context of Lost. But I love Golden Age comics and the scans are fantastic. The creator credits can be read here and it features Steve Ditko's first ever work for Marvel (or Atlas as it was known then).
New "Watchmen" Posters Echo Originals
These posters are very good. Stuff like this makes me optimistic for the quality, but I can't get carried away.
Organize your PDF library with iTunes
I never knew you could organise your documents with iTunes...
15 Desktop Blogging Tools Reviewed
I've never used the desktop ones as the web interfaces have been typically more than adequate, and also switching to WordPress from Blogger was a big leap forward.
Designers on quest to build $12 computer
Hacking the Nintendo compatible keyboard computer looks like fun.
The $10 TV Computer Project - International Development Design Summit 2008
When $12 is too much.
Ars Technica Guide to Virtualization: Part I
A series about virtualisation and what it really means. It made me remember when my brain finally got the concept of virtualisation (see this old post).
Video of Cory Doctorow’s talk
His talk last month in Cambridge is well worth a watch. I definitely need to watch it again as it was so dense in content that I am sure I have missed something.
No, your code is not so great that it doesn’t need comments
I like rants that tell you to comment your code. Just because you can understand the intention it does not mean that others will interpret the information in the same fashion.
Features Planned for WordPress 2.7
Some interesting possible features for the next version of WordPress. Integrated one-click plug-in installs would definitely be nice, as well as comment threading.
What if Linux Took a Vista 'Mojave' Test?
An obvious question, but Mojave was a marketing tool rather than a clear scientific test.
Larrabee: Intel's biggest leap since the Pentium Pro
Interestingly it looks like the chip's debut will be as an add-in board (a GPU).
Firefox 3 features you may not know
The duplicate tab feature by dragging is something I wish I knew about before.
KDE 4.0 Style Theme for Firefox 3.0
Make Mozilla Firefox look more integrated into the new version of the KDE.
Resolution Independent GTK+
A patch has been submitted that adds resolution independence to the GTK+ toolkit.
Mozilla Qt Port is available for testing
A test for the embedding of Mozilla in Qt.
Songbird 0.7: Big Improvements for the Little Music Player
Songbird is a great little music player, and they are still adding loads of great features and have completely revamped the UI(!)
iChm - CHM Reader For The Mac
A good looking CHM reader for the Mac when you are stuck with Windows style help files.
Feedly For Firefox 3
Feedly attempts to make using your feeds even more fun. I am still playing with it but it looks nice and allows you to Twitter directly from the UI, unfortunately not for WordPress...
Microsoft Misses Windows Mobile Sales Target
Just because...
Get Your War On: The Watch List - Animated Series
It is so bizarre seeing clip-art come to life... I thought the comic series was great - I'm waiting with baited breath to see if some of the more extreme content makes it.
Fans spend over £30,000 on Transformers
I missed out n Auto Assembly this year because of visiting sunny and hot Barcelona but it sounds like it was a success. Congrats to the AA team.
Hand Drawn Map Association
I bet someone creates a plug-in for Google Maps to make it all look hand drawn.
Knights Templar to Vatican: Give us back our assets
Is 700 years beyond the statute of limitations?
Cthulhu fonts
Interesting fonts from The Old Ones.
Roaming Programmer Invades Barcelona
I spent an extended weekend in Barcelona and thought I'd share some photos...
You get quite a nice view from the Montjuic Park, and this is part of the panorama.
You only get PC City on the continent, whereas in the UK we get a whole PC World...
Apparently you also dunk coffee and not donuts...
Cloverfield also gets a much cooler name as I spied in a DVD shop in the airport. I don't know why but I always say Monstruoso with a Japanese accent.
And just because I thought it made an interesting pic.
All photos from the quaint little camera in the iPhone.
E-Ink Or Link?
Esquire to geeks: hack our e-paper magazine cover
Two pages of e-ink paper in one magazine for the normal price. The sponsorship will help pay for it, and I suppose if it works it could set a precedent. Now Esquire are challenging people to hack it into something else.
I bet that these magazines prove hard to get hold of, but I'll definitely be up for buying some and then doing some hacking (I'm sure Hackaday will have some interesting posts when the time rolls around). I wonder if it would be easy to connect one to a network...
Feedburner Are Looking Into The Zero Subscriber Problem
I thought I was going mad looking at massive fluctuations on Feedburner (although most of the time it stayed at zero). Fingers crossed this gets solved soon.
Ballantine Books to Publish Book Inspired by the Webcomic Garfield Minus Garfield
Jim Davis deserves a pat on the back for embracing rather than litigating, a thoroughly modern approach.
Massive blogging growth in UK
One in 84 website visits is to a blog, and blogging shall inherit the earth. It's probably the frequently updated content that helps, but when does a magazine news site become a blog and vice-versa.
Watchmen #29 In The US Top Selling Books
Not bad for a twenty-odd year old "comic". It's undeniably brilliant and the book deserves the exposure it is getting.
TARDIS MAME cabinet makes even Daleks swoon
MAME + TARDIS = Double-Plus Good
Delicious Rolls Out Version 2.0
Delicious rolls out its new URL and swish new look, and it does indeed look good.
Microsoft FrameIt Turns Web Pages & Feeds into Framed Images
Delivering content to photo frames by Microsoft.
Links 2 – Hyperlink
First look: Ars reviews Firefox 3.1 alpha 1
An early look at Firefox 3.1, particularly of note is the built-in tab switcher preview which previously was only possible using some add-ons which weren't particularly snappy.
John Carmack planning a "graphical tour-de-force" for the iPhone
What can he come up with? I bet it'll be ahead of the curve.
Pure debuts ONE Elite DAB / FM radio
Pure make some great DAB radios that are extremely power efficient and this new one adds pausing and rewinding radio. They even have a USB port to update the radios firmware.
Top 10 Command Line Tools
These have more resonance for me now I am using the command line more extensively on a proper computer. sudo !! (bang bang) sounds like a gem.
Merging On The Mac
Because I'm a cheapskate even when someone else is paying I was trying to find some three-way merge tools for the Mac, unfortunately my Googling didn't turn up anything that doesn't appear on other platforms. Obviously you have things like ediff3 in emacs and erm....
One that I used extensively on Windows (also available for Linux) is KDiff3. It's a great graphical merge tool, and it works on the Mac. I followed the instructions to integrate it into Git (check out the useful post here) but I haven't had the mergetool successfully fire it up. When I load the files manually it seems to work fine. It'll require some more perseverance. KDiff3 is a great tool though and is a pleasure to use.
I decided to also look at Meld through MacPorts. Unfortunately it has to pull in half the universe like a gravity well, so it was still compiling the dependencies when I decided to call it a day. It looks like a good tool though with all the features you would want, but will no doubt need to run on the X11 platform. Also it is regularly updated which is a good sign. So if I can get it to work expect a post about that...
FileMerge built into the Mac is only a two way tool, and I did consider the Perform Merge Tool which is available for free. So I think I will persevere with the top two.
The House Of Flying Links
KDE 4.1 Released
The new version of KDE has been released with lots of new features making use of the core KDE4 libraries and technologies. Lots of shiny screenshots too.
Objectified - The Documentary
Gary Hustwit (the film-maker behind Helvetica about typography and graphic design) is making a new documentary about industrial design.
OMAP goes open-source with $149 board
The BeagleBoard single board development kit.
11 iPhone Apps That Will Clean Out Your Junk Drawer
Some useful and not-so-useful applications to replace those gadgets taking up drawer space.
CalDav Support Comes To Google Calendars
Makes syncing between various calendar applications almost painless.
Launchy - Windows and Linux
When I had to use Windows Vista I used Launchy instead of the built-in search and it was really good. There is also a Linux version, so Alt-Space becomes your shortcut to the world.
Tardis Ice Bucket
Because you can never own too much junk.
What I'm Doing...
- http://j.mp/c5NtYQ 2 weeks ago
- Awesome painted scifi. I'm sure the cover is the same as Psygnosis' Blood Money. http://j.mp/aiT6Ta 2 weeks ago
- @kumbunterland got all three books and they rock. Especially surfing a Dracula robot from the moon. in reply to kumbunterland 2 weeks ago
- Oh, and they sold the Samsung Wave as an Android phone when it blatantly isn't. AAAARGH! 3 weeks ago
- And that was in exchange of the hatefully bad LG Viewty Snap they had convinced her to get last time. 3 weeks ago
- I sent my wife into O2 expecting her to get a Palm Pre and she walks out with a Samsung Wave. They're actively discouraging people from Palm 3 weeks ago
- ProgrammersLog Update: Python is beautifully over-engineered http://blog.programmerslog.com/?p=459 3 weeks ago
- Whoops - I need to get a micro-SD card so I can upgrade my Android tablet to the latests 2.2 firmware. An oversight involving yet more money 3 weeks ago
- New toy - cheap Chinese Android tablet. http://twitpic.com/2e2gwl 3 weeks ago
- In web browser drawing http://bit.ly/b2Wg0m 3 weeks ago
- More updates...
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