Letters Remain

Category: technology

  • Bill Gates on Windows Usability

    The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has been scouring Microsoft’s internal emails (released through various law suits) looking for an insight into Gates’ personality and to get a picture of his role at the top of Microsoft. From this epic email rant, it is obvious that even Gates himself isn’t immune. I am quite disappointed at how Windows…

  • List(s) of Unsolved Problems

    List(s) of unsolved problems in topics ranging from cognitive science to computer science; philosophy to physics. Got some time this coming weekend? Why not decipher an ancient writing systems or answer the P = NP problem and earn yourself $1,000,000.

  • Interaction Design Patterns

    The Yahoo! Design Patterns Library is what you could call a series of best practices for web interaction designers. Of particular note are the ‘Reputation’ Solution Patterns: A person participating in a social structure expects to develop a reputation and hopes for insight into the reputations of others, but each designed model of participation and…

  • 10 Essential (Software) Development Practices

    Ten Essential Development Practices is an article from Perl.com (O’Reilly) based on Perl Best Practices, a book on Perl coding and development guidelines. Given how obvious the items on this list are, it’s surprising how this isn’t followed. Design the Module’s Interface First Write the Test Cases Before the Code Create Standard POD Templates for…

  • Google Street View, Cardiff, UK

    Yesterday I bumped into a Google Street View car while it was capturing images in Cardiff Bay (UK). Unfortunately I was initially confused at the strange vehicle, only realising the obvious when I saw the big ‘Google’ sign on the side of it. If it was actually capturing data as it passed me I’m going…

  • Hello Firefox 3

    For those of you who are interested, Firefox 3 has now been released and you have until 18:16 UTC to get it for your download to count towards the record. There’s a rather fetching and oh-so-meaningful ‘certificate‘ that you can get too! A great marketing ploy, and one that’s obviously working its magic with 5,045,577…

  • The Third Place – Joel ‘on Software’ Spolsky

    Building Communities with Software is an old article of Joel ‘on Software’ Spolsky’s that deals with social ‘third places‘: The social scientist Ray Oldenburg talks about how humans need a third place, besides work and home, to meet with friends, have a beer, discuss the events of the day, and enjoy some human interaction. These…

  • The Purity Scale of Science (xkcd)

    This is for those of you who aren’t subscribers to my favourite comic, xkcd – a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language. Today’s episode deals with different branches of science and their purity; that is, can they be distilled down to a ‘more pure’ science. Maths is classed as the purest of sciences –…

  • Geek Posters

    At least a couple of these amazingly geeky posters are derived from projects at VisualComplexity, the site taking on the task of visualising complex relationships from all walks of life. My favourites, or at least the most interesting, are those showing the evolution of various programming languages; starting with COBOL back in the mid-1950s. There…

  • The Singularity & The Meaning of Life. Again

    Last Friday I spoke of The Meaning of Life and how many believe it is highly coupled to the technological singularity. Now, in timely fashion, IEEE Spectrum has released it’s new issue, concentrating on this subject. Interesting reviews and quotes at kottke and Mind Hacks.