Autumn 2018 round-up
21-Dec-2018
A round-up of tweets, links and other gubbins
from the past few months (click here to read the previous instalment).
What I've been working on
After the last period was dominated by a single large phase of work, it was nice to enjoy a pic n' mix of smaller
updates to existing projects these past few months. Highlights include a raft of performance improvements for the
School for Good and Evil website - an interesting challenge to dig into
some PHP and MySQL after having my head buried in the .NET stack for so long; security hardening for a
site we build and maintain for Nokia, a new
Sitesuma release, and work on our perennial
in-house projects Another Read and Webtility.
What I've been reading
Before the Fall, by Noah Hawley
The Looking Glass War, by John le Carré
Artemis, by Andy Weir
What I've been tweeting
20-Dec-2018
It's almost Christmas! Panic buying a book for an urchin in your life, and struggling for ideas? Maybe our Another Read website will help you find something:
anotherread.com
15-Dec-2018
Are Pop Lyrics Getting More Repetitive?
pudding.cool/2017/05/song-repetition
If you enjoy these statistical essays as much as I do, check out loads more here:
pudding.cool
08-Dec-2018
I'm a bit obsessed with long-term data archiving, but this guy is next level:
www.gq.com/story/memory-of-mankind-time-capsule
01-Dec-2018
Sticking with the topic of data backups and long-term archiving - here are MIT's recommendations on managing data for long term access:
libraries.mit.edu/data-management
26-Nov-2018
Non-paying users of Flickr will soon have all of their photos exceeding the new 1,000 limit deleted. I have no problem with this, Flickr is a business, you get what you pay for. But it should serve as a reminder not to rely on a free cloud service to backup any precious data...
17-Nov-2018
"Routine maintenance" takes on a totally different meaning when you work on the International Space Station:
blogs.esa.int/luca-parmitano/2013/08/20/eva-23-exploring-the-frontier
10-Nov-2018
Leaving this here as a reminder to myself next time I'm bashing my head against a brick wall trying to fix one of our ancient command line build tools - "Everyone quotes command line arguments the wrong way":
blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/twistylittlepassagesallalike/2011/04/23/everyone-quotes-command-line-arguments-the-wrong-way
03-Nov-2018
Encouraging news for Cardiff-based software developers, less encouraging for Cardiff-based software recruiters (certainly chimes with issues we've had with recruitment lately). But a thriving local industry will surely benefit both sides in the long run.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-45891002
30-Oct-2018
One for all you UI nerds - a delightful visual feast of vintage control panels:
control--panel.com
23-Oct-2018
As someone who picks up new hobbies as often as I change my shirt, I relate to Tim Wu's assertion that the pursuit of excellence can really hinder the enjoyment of hobbyist activities:
www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/opinion/sunday/in-praise-of-mediocrity.html
16-Oct-2018
Recent Google+ data-leak news should serve as yet another reminder that no matter how big or capable an organisation appears to be, they can, and likely eventually will, expose your data. If you absolutely can't let this happen, then don't put it (unencrypted) on the internet.
02-Oct-2018
With CloudFlare throwing their (not inconsiderable) weight behind QUIC, could this be the beginning of the end for TCP?
blog.cloudflare.com/the-quicening
25-Sep-2018
It's been over a year, so must be time to tweet a link to some more glorious library porn:
www.massimolistri.com/en/catalogo/detail/13-Libraries