Links
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Napster, Udacity, and the Academy
Clay on free online courses being to universities as file sharing was/is to the music industry. Even aside from that, worth it for making clear the variety and scale (ie, how tiny Ivy League is) of US higer education.
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Forum Software Timeline 1994 - 2012 | Forum Software Reviews
Rock Family Trees for web software genres.
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Apple’s design problems aren’t skeuomorphic « counternotions
A really good look at the more fundamental problems with iOS and OS X, how that compares with the old days when the Human Interface Guidelines were the law, and whether one person, Ive, can really keep on top of such a wide range of potential problems. (via Daring Fireball)
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The Magical Tech Behind Paper For iPad’s Color-Mixing Perfection | Fast Company
I do like this use of maths to make something “feel” right to users. (via Daring Fireball)
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“We started drive farming in November 2011. The reason was simple, the supply of the 3TB hard drives…”
Backblaze’s staff, friends and family buying hard drives in small numbers from many stores when the flooding in Thailand restricts supply. (via New Aesthetic)
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Dronestagram: The Drone’s-Eye View | booktwo.org
James doing a brilliant thing. So good.
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I, Anna Trailer - YouTube
Charlotte Rampling and Gabriel Byrne in a movie that seems largely set in the Barbican. Includes a scene in a lift with the blue “lift curtains” that are hung when someone’s moving in or out, to protect the lift. A nice cosy/claustrophobic touch.
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Announcing the Snarkmarket Seminar
I love this idea. Somewhere around a book group and a collaborative course.
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Ratchet
“Prototype iPhone apps with simple HTML, CSS and JS components.” Seems really nice. Less extensive than something like jQuery Mobile, but looks nice and simple to get something up and running quickly.
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addyosmani/backbone-fundamentals · GitHub
A book about using Backbone.js (click index.md to read it on one page). Looks good, and better explained than everything else I’ve read today. Wish I’d found this eight hours ago.
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Backbone patterns
One of the few useful and not-entirely-confusing or too-specific things I’ve found about Backbone.js today.
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What Makes Countries Rich or Poor? by Jared Diamond | The New York Review of Books
Diamond reviewing ‘Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty’. an interesting read. Social change etc. I love that stuff.
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The Loves of Lena Dunham by Elaine Blair | The New York Review of Books
I did enjoy this review of ‘Girls’, which I haven’t seen. Good on how samey most TV drama sex is, for example. I love TV reviews that are this thoughtful; common for movies, not for TV.
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Organizing Your Backbonejs Application With Modules - Bocoup
I quite like some of this description of how to organise Backbone.js-based JavaScript. (UPDATE: Seems very overcomplicated, without quite explaining why, or how to use its structure in practice.)
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On Being A Senior Engineer
A really good read. Could also be called “How to be a mature person to work with.” Or just “How to be a grown-up.”
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An Open Letter to E-Book Retailers: Let’s have a return to common sense | TeleRead
All sensible, and all things that have put me off ebooks. But mainly for: “If the button said ‘buy now’ and I clicked on it and I paid anything remotely resembling full retail price, I should *own* the book.” Yes. Who has ever said, “I’m going to buy a license to read that book!”
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Hereford’s top 10 budget restaurants and cafes | Travel | guardian.co.uk
For future reference.
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Foresight and Futures Studies Graduate Programs - Global List
I didn’t know there were so many these days.
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The rapidly increasing ideology of the US Republican Party
A chart showing the changing political positions of US political parties since 1789. I’d love to see something similar for the UK. (via Kottke)
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Night and the City • Articles • Xbox 360 • Eurogamer.net
A lovely description of exploring the 1947 world of ‘LA Noire’ with the author’s father who grew up in LA around then. (via Infovore)
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Over the Decades, How States Have Shifted - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com
Really nice visualisation of how different states have voted over time. (via The Functional Art)
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Our favorite computer bags
A good start for finding a decent bag. Plenty of backpacks.
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Timpulse - Who Works With ‘Creative Coders?’
Handy and interesting. A “list of institutions—both EU and Stateside—that are using creative coding”. (via @RandomEtc)
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Henderson - General - Henderson launches new plans for Smithfield Quarter
Description of plans for the west end of Smithfield Market. I am never optimistic about these things.
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James Meek · How We Happened to Sell Off Our Electricity · LRB 13 September 2012
Plenty of people linked to this at the time, but I forgot. Now I am. A good read on who now owns the UK’s power.
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The Gay Path Through the Courts by David Cole | The New York Review of Books
Subscribers only unfortunately. But I liked this for its descriptions of how the Supreme Court rules on things, and how cases that are ostensibly about a particular crime are used to force a decision on constitutional issues. Also about how the Court tries (ideally) to follow, rather than lead, society.
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Some pointers for Natural Language Processing / Machine Learning — Gist
Not sure I’ll ever need this, but Matt Biddulph has collected useful things he’s found while getting to grips with this stuff, and I love it when people share their learning like that.
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LED Light Review
Thorough reviews of LED bulbs. Doesn’t seem to do little spotlights though. (via The Wirecutter)
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Boris Johnson: brilliant, warm, funny – and totally unfit to be PM | Max Hastings | Comment is free | The Guardian
I did like Hastings’ article on Johnson. Although it doesn’t exactly hold out hope for there being any better politicians either.
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The Quietus | Features | Quietus Albums Of The Year So Far 2012
I’ve only heard of five of these 50 artists. I’m so, so out of touch. Still, more music to try. (via Beyond the Beyond)