January 2004
Jan. 1, 2004
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year to all my friends back in the UK. Of course, here in Kansas it’s only 6pm. Gotta love those time zones (Second worst idea ever. (See DaylightSavingTime) A nightmare from which we can never escape. Think JetLag is bad? TimeZones are worse, because we all have it, and they won’t go away after a few oddly timed naps.
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Targets for 2004
Looking back on 2003, one thing really stuck out for me: I didn’t learn a new programming language. The Pragmatic Programmers recommend learning at least one new language every year, and I’ve heard similar advice from other notable authorities; Ruby’s Matz made a similar point in an article published just the other day.
[... 208 words]MozillaZine Review of the Year 2003. A tumultuous year
Jan. 2, 2004
Grandparenting will never be the same (via) The video phone is finally here
Entering CasualSpace... (via) Virtual spaces with iChat AV
Jan. 3, 2004
OmniWeb 5 Preview (via) Tabs with thumbnails look cool, but might take up too much space
Jan. 5, 2004
WiFi Speed Spray. You’ll be amazed!
Jan. 6, 2004
AppScripting (via) The power of AppleScript with the less verbose syntax of Python
Decentralised social networking
I know I’m late to the party, but my recent experiments with LinkedIn and Friendster have got me all interested in the potential of software that bulids on top of people’s own social networks. There’s just one thing that’s been bugging me, best explained by this quote from Om Malik:
[... 258 words]digitalslr.org (via) Another excellent niche blog
Non-link element hovering in MSIE. A good summary of the latest kick-IE-in-to-compliance Javascript technique
I’ll take Social Software for $1,000 please, Alex. (via) More on the pros and cons of social networking software
CSS Fast Rollovers Without Preload—Updated (via) Now with a fix for an obscure IE bug
The people have spoken... the bastards. The highly amusing tail of an online/phone poll gone wrong
PaWS 2004
Here’s an interesting topic for a conference: PHP and Web Standards, to be held in Manchester from February 20th to the 24th. I’ve devoted a lot of time and energy to combining the two for this blog—it’s a shame I’ll be out of the country when the conference rolls around. I should be able to make it to SXSW this year though.
Mailio—email with training wheels (via) Webmail for kids, with a parent controlled whitelist
Continuations Made Simple and Illustrated (via) And I still haven’t quite got them figured out :o/
How to Make a Faceted Classification and Put It On the Web (via) Facets, facets, facets
The Free Software Community After 20 Years: With great but incomplete success, what now? (via) Richard Stallman sings Sargent Pepper
But what does it actually DO? People who write marketing blurbs for websites should be re-educated with a two-by-four
iPod mini. Todd thinks Apple blew it. I’m inclined to agree.
MacWorld. Matt Haughey thinks they blew it as well.
Give online news stories a relative importance rank. Some really interesting comments
Daring Fireball: A Big Garage. John Gruber thinks GarageBand demonstrates the essence of Apple’s target audience
Jan. 7, 2004
Paul Martin’s Blog (via) Canada’s prime minister has a blog—infrequently updated, no permalinks but it’s still a very promising precedent
Python Cookbook : FSList (via) A fun alternative to os.path and friends—a list subclass for directory access
Jan. 8, 2004
How to make a documentary. Peter’s advice on filming a documentary with a consumer mini-DV camera