- The rise and rise of the cognitive elite – "It seems unfair that footballers, bankers and tycoons earn more money than they know what to do with whereas jobless folk and single parents struggle to pay the rent, notes Mr Saunders. Yet it also seems unfair to take money from those who have worked hard and give it to those who have not, or to take away the profits of those who have risked their life savings to bring a new invention to market in order to help those who have risked nothing."
- Jaguar E-Type turns 50 – Some designs can stand the test of time. The Jaguar E-Type is one of them.
- iOS Debugging Magic – Some great iOS debugging hints.
Tag Archives: history
My delicious.com bookmarks for January 15th through January 18th
- ‘should be cheaper than free’ – "I’m angry at the customers who send me nasty emails or reviews, threatening me with ‘telling Apple to remove it’ or rating it 1 star with a ’should be cheaper than free’ remark because after paying the ridiculously exorbitant 99c, they found it didn’t live up to expectations. "
- Hurdie Ho! – Maybe you had to be there and read the copy of Your Sinclair that this was originally published in, but this still makes me laugh.
- Museum looks at 2000-year history of the computer – The Computer History Museum was excellent even before this new exhibit. Recommended.
Nine Best Posts of 2010
I didn’t think that I had blogged very much this year, but now that I look back over it seems that I’ve done quite well. There have only been a few PhotoFriday challenges that I’ve missed and I’ve managed a fair few travel and even the odd technical blog.
None of this years blogs have done especially well in terms of page impressions but here are a few that I liked for various reasons.
In terms of travel, I had more than my fair share of problems. A trip to Turkey was cancelled at the last minute due to the infamous ash cloud. A strike very nearly meant that we didn’t get to New York for a wedding. And a heavy work schedule and a new job meant that my annual November trip was in jeopardy.
- Salisbury. Not quite as glamorous as Istanbul, but given the lemons of the ash cloud I thought we did pretty well with the lemonade of Wiltshire ((Not sure that works but you know what I mean.))
- Paris. I spent quite a lot of time in Paris this year so I had to include the post about it
- New York. Like Paris, I’d been to New York before. There’s something to be said for “hanging out” in a city that you (vaguely) know
For me there’s a thin line between “photography” and “travel” blogs but I do occasionally post images that are not directly connected to a trip.
- Early Snow. This year has been book-ended by heavy snow. I should be getting good at taking pictures of it by now…
- Corked. I like this because it’s very simple but effective, and not the kind of thing that I normally do
- The Perils of Working from Home. As with the above, I often get ideas but don’t find the time to actually implement them. This one took longer than you’d imagine but I thought it was quite funny. Yes, I should probably get out more
And, finally, there were even some slightly more technical posts.
- What is “polish”? I wish more people would understand that there’s more to a good iOS application that pretty icons and slick animations
- Delicious Debrief. This five part post allowed me to vent my frustration over Yahoo!s handling of some changes they implemented late last year
- Communication. I had this post in draft form for several years, but I couldn’t figure out how to finish it. I’m not sure this is the best post I’ve ever written but I include it here because I did eventually get it out the door!
I’d also like to add honourable mentions to my Sleeping Japanese and Saving State posts. And, finally, a big thank you to you for reading.
Japan
At the beginning of October I visited Japan for the first time. I landed in Tokyo, travelled out to Mount Fuji and then west to Nagano Prefecture, finally heading back to Tokyo via Kyoto and Nara. It was a lot to try to pack in to two weeks but it worked out pretty well all things considered.
Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be documenting in words and pictures my trip, focusing mainly on the locations but with odd entry about the things that seemed constant throughout my time there.
Speaking of constants, I picked the above image to front this series of posts because it seems to combine both elements of the historic and the modern, a motif that was present throughout the trip in many different forms.
My delicious.com bookmarks for August 5th through August 11th
- The origins of abc – "We will begin where civilisation began, meander through the Middle Ages, race through the Renaissance, and in doing so discover where our alphabet originated, how and why it evolved, and why, for example, an A looks, well, like an A."
- Icelander’s Campaign Is a Joke, Until He’s Elected – This is brilliant. "A polar bear display for the zoo. Free towels at public swimming pools. A “drug-free Parliament by 2020.” Iceland’s Best Party, founded in December by a comedian, Jon Gnarr, to satirize his country’s political system, ran a campaign that was one big joke. Or was it?"
My delicious.com bookmarks for June 23rd through July 20th
- MacPaint and QuickDraw source code – This is awesome: the original source code to two of the most important pieces of software from the 1980's.
- If I have two children, and one is a boy, what are the odds that – Where common sense makes no sense. Sometimes. Probably.
- June 23, 1912: Computer Pioneer Alan Turing Born – "He’s also a genuinely interesting figure, albeit a tragic one. An eccentric who liked to bicycle while wearing a gas mask and who occasionally wore pajama tops underneath suit jackets, he was also a prodigious and eclectic genius."