Links
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BBC News - Davy Jones, signifier of modernity
Paul Mason on The Monkees and the 1960s: “If you watch just one episode of [The Monkees] … you will feel just a bit of what it was like before it all went wrong.” Lovely stuff.
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Main Page - CcmWiki
A wiki created by the CollectingCitadelMiniatures Yahoo group, cataloguing the 1980s figures. Internet is good.
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Shapecatcher: Draw the Unicode character you want!
Draw a shape and it tries to guess the Unicode character. It’s fun to draw a squiggle and find odd characters. Cow Face! (via Cal)
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Cyberdelia/django-pipeline
Good-looking thing for compressing and concatenating CSS and JavaScript files with Django. Good documentation, handles LESS, SASS, CoffeeScript etc. Nice.
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Create marker with custom labels in Google Maps API v3 | Uncle Tomm’s blog
This was handy for making markers on Google Maps with a custom marker image and custom text on the marker.
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jQuery Quicksand plugin
Nice animated, automated sorting of HTML elements. Seems a bit odd internally - it uses or makes a copy of everything you’re sorting, but the ultimate effect is nice.
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Brikis98/lilac - GitHub
“This project shows an example of how to use node.js to: Share backbone.js models between server and client; Share dust templates between server and client; Split up rendering between server and client.” (via LinkedIn Engineering)
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The Node Beginner Book » A comprehensive Node.js tutorial
A nice walk-through of basic Node.js stuff for a beginner like me.
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Don’t Make Me Steal
Very interesting. Some of the points annoy me (what is “cinema price”?, why on earth is “I can download nearly every movie ever made” a condition of not stealing one movie?) but interesting. (via @jamesbridle)
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Tumult Hype
HTML5 authoring tool, for making animations, interactive thingummies, etc. $50. Hadn’t seen it before, looks good for complex stuff. (via Daring Fireball)
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Maelstrom - Arion Games | RPGNow.com
I never played a game of this RPG but I remember really liking the system. It seemed somehow more “realistic” than a lot of RPGs. Now available as a PDF for $10.
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Interpreting Black and White, Part I
I really like the differences in how people treated the same black and white photo.
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Backbone.js Wine Cellar Tutorial — Part 1: Getting Started
Looks like a handy tutorial for using the Backbone JavaScript framework.
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Adventures (in code) - Alastair Coote • I had no idea how to make custom maps, so I learnt by doing. You should too.
Nice overview of how to get custom maps made with TileMill up and running. (via Infovore)
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‘Militant secularisation’ taking hold of British society, says Lady Warsi | World news | The Guardian
When an absence of something — a null-state, no religion, an appreciation of the world as it actually is — is branded as “militant secularisation”, you’re being a little crazy. I wouldn’t say you were a “religious extremist” but, well, you know.
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Trevor Kavanagh learns a hard lesson about human rights and due process « Richard Wilson’s blog
This is what I thought (only written much better) when I read about Trevor Kavanagh’s whining about the arrests of Sun journalists this morning. Live by the sword… (via @matlock)
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High Scalability - High Scalability - Tumblr Architecture - 15 Billion Page Views a Month and Harder to Scale than Twitter
Amazingly detailed description of how Tumblr scales. I don’t understand half of this but it sounds exciting. (via @simonw)
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Ralph Lauren Purple Label
Taking apart a $4,625 Ralph Lauren coat. Fascinating, and I’d love to read more things like this.
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Open Mike: Grumpy’s World
I love this exchange. It’s like dialogue from a play or movie that I would be enthusiastic about.
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Recliner Chairs | Scandinavian Comfort Chairs
These don’t look beautiful (scroll down for the varieties) but having tried one, they are very, very comfortable.
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A Case Against Using CoffeeScript ☃ Ryan Florence Online
I’ve never used CoffeeScript, but I just enjoy reading nicely-written articles about code like this. (via Dotcode)
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Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 211, William Gibson
I finally got round to reading this interview. Good stuff.
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Standing Ovation Model
A nice simple explanation.
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Threshold model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the references to Mark Granovetter’s model. Again, can’t find a good, simple explanation.
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Index of dissimilarity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
It’s proving surprisingly difficult to find good, clear, illustrated summaries of these things.
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Schelling segregation applet
Demonstration of the Schelling segregation model. (I am currently wading through a thicket of Java applets and it feels like the 1990s.)
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The Social Graph is Neither (Pinboard Blog)
From last year, a great read about how ever more closely modelled versions of our social networks don’t create as interesting a community as a simple forum (to drastically simplify the argument).
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Why French Parents Are Superior by Pamela Druckerman - WSJ.com
This crazy “French method” of parenting… isn’t it also known as “common sense”? if this is supposed to be eye-opening I now understand why so many small kids seem to do whatever they like. (via Kottke)
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Local councils have right to say their prayers, says Eric Pickles | Society | The Guardian
Wow, I had no idea lots of councils have (Christian) prayers as part of their meetings. Nuts. it’s like living in America.
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Vim anti-patterns | Arabesque
More handy little vim tips to try and lodge in my brain. (via Infovore)