People are impressed by the Academy Awards ceremony, all the glitz and glamour, the celebrities and the recognition for their work. However there are much easier ways to pick up your own Oscar statue.

I got a lot done and with the ninety minutes I saved by not commuting I went to the gym, but there are problems with working from home…

It’s that time of year where all the papers, magazines and websites devolve into the best of the year articles rather than actually generate new content. I didn’t want to feel left out so here’s my contribution.

Of course “best” can mean any number of different things, so I’m going to pick a few top fives.

Here are the most popular pages viewed this year:

1. Installing Oracle 10g Express Edition on CentOS 4
2. Professionalism
3. Oracle 8i for Linux Installation HOWTO
4. Minolta Dual Scan II
5. Review: Belkin Wi-Fi Phone

It continues to surprise me how popular the Oracle pages are. They are now very old products and the pages have not been updated for quite some time now.

And here are the most popular pages that were actually written this year:

1. Professionalism
2. Canon EOS 50D
3. Bus Bench for Humans Only
4. www.cut
5. Why would you want an ID card?

Of course my personal favourites don’t always make the grade in terms of page views, so here are my choices (in no particular order this time):

• Blackroom
• Vienna
• Three
• Number One, The Larch
• Contrast
• Icicles

If there’s a theme here, it’s photography and the kinds of pictures that I don’t normally take.

WWDC 2009 Apple Logo

Ever since I’ve been “into” Macs, Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference has been a draw. As an iPhone developer this years was especially interesting to me. Unfortunately it’s not a full time job to me so it was hard to justify the time off work or the expense of the ticket.

I was, however, in the Bay Area just before the event and managed to have a quick walk around Moscone. I felt a bit geeky taking pictures of a trade conference, but I wasn’t the only one doing so and I didn’t have my nose pressed against the glass unlike certain people!

WWDC 2009 Icons

I took a look at all the icons outside. I didn’t see Yummy, though.

If you’re a regular visitor you will note that the ZX81 has an exciting new look and feel. It has never looked more like a real ZX81. It’s also about as usable as a real ZX81, though it does have more memory available and the wobbly RAM pack is likely to be less of a concern.

I’m currently running it as a one day trial but may extend if popular. Please let me know what you think.

Update:

Due to popular demand, I have reverted to the old look-and-feel for ZX81. People seemed to think the new visuals introduced yesterday was an April Fool…

If you missed it, here’s what this page looked like:

How ZX81.org.uk looked yesterday

Apparently today is “Atheist Pride Day.” You are supposed to “change your Facebook profile picture to the [Out Campaign Logo] And change your status to something like ‘I am an atheist’ (or whatever).” I’m not on FaceBook so you’ll have to make do with this little post.

Atheist Out Campaign

It turns out that the timing is quite good, too. Last night I went to a British Humanist Association talk by Daniel Dennett called “A Darwinian Perspective on Religions: Past, Present and Future.” It was chaired by Richard Dawkins. Here’s a fuzzy iPhone picture of the Q&A session at the end. (If only I’d brought my 50D!)

Dennett and Dawkins at the BHA

It was a fascinating talk about how successful languages and religions evolve over time. He covered a lot of ground in an engaging, entertaining and witty manner. Great stuff. What better way to show my atheist pride?