Still, there’s nothing technically preventing you from using [mouse button] chording in your program. If you want to code it up, then more power to you. — Why is there no support in the window manager for mouse button chording?, The Old New Thing
Does not mean it is a good [...]
George Orwell’s 1984 is rightly a hugely famous novel of the twentieth century. His depiction of a totalitarian future was so griping and compelling that the words and phrases he coined in the creation of his vision have embedded themselves in popular language and culture. I wonder how many teenagers watching reality TV understand where [...]
The Complete Polysyllabic Spree Nick Hornby
This is the first work of literary criticism I’ve ever read, and after reading this I can’t see what everyone complains about. This wasn’t dry, inaccessible or self-involved at all. Well, actually, it was pretty self-involved, but in a highly engaging way.
Unlike some of my friends, I am something of a [...]
There is currently some discussion about the dangers of URL shorteners. Joshua Schachter points out that shortened URLs damage the web – the ‘hypertext as engine of application state’ part of it. David Weiss points out the security concerns – phishing and a single compromisable point.
In this conversation most people point out that URL shorteners [...]
RFC 2806: a URL scheme for describing phone numbers. A URL looks like tel:+1-312-555-4589. Cute. I didn’t know this existed. But Mobile Safari on the iPhone does. It seems more immediately useful than hCards (browsers already understand it!) But much more limited in scope: its scope is expended on standards for modem and fax calls. [...]
Slumdog Milionaire Vikas Swarup
A book club book. My reading has slowed down a bit recently: it seems that three out of my last four books by this stage have only been for the book club. It’s keeping me reading though. That seems worth it to me.
Slumdog Millionaire was a very enjoyable, easy read. I sat down [...]
Previously, I’ve mentioned that I’ve written a script that will show a Twitter user who they and another Twitter user both follow.
Well, a script isn’t much use to me or anyone else: you can’t run a script on an iPhone. So like all software wants to be, this script is now a simple little web [...]
Apparently I think of myself as some sort of web-type-person. Well, that’s a bit hard to maintain without my own home on the web. So, now I have one.
All my old blog posts have been brought across from the old Blogger blog. But also soon I’ll be using this to host some cute-slash-marginally useful applications [...]
I’ve been falling very far behind on my book reviews. I have actually been reading, I just haven’t been reviewing. And, well, once the backlog of books gets more than about four high it’s pretty hard to write proper reviews.
I’m cheating. I’m going to catch up by writing short reviews of all the books I’ve read in the last [...]
When you’re a Twitter’er you will often be in a situation where someone follows you, and you’re wondering, ‘Who is this person? Do I know them?’ Well, I can’t answer that question for you. But, I have found that one thing that tells you about your new follower is who they follow that you also follow. Follow?
I want to [...]