December 2008
“Every meeting is optional. In a ROWE, you have the power to ask what the outcome...”
– ROWE, ROWE, ROWE your company
A Pattern Language: Children in the City →
If children are not able to explore the whole of the adult world around about them, they cannot become adults. But modern cities are so dangerous that children cannot be allowed to explore them freely.
As part of the network of bike paths, develop one system of paths that is extra safe- entirely separate from automobiles, with lights and bridges at the crossings, with homes and shops along it, so...
“Bikes are cheap, healthy, and good for the environment; but the environment is...”
– A Pattern Language: Bike Paths and Racks
“On local roads, closed to through traffic, plant grass all over the road and set...”
– A Pattern Language: Green Streets
“Concentrated, cloistered universities, with closed admission policies and rigid...”
– A Pattern Language - University as a Marketplace
“The simple social intercourse created when people rub shoulders in public is one...”
– A Pattern Language: Market of Many Shops
“If you spend eight hours of your day at work, and eight hours at home, there is...”
– A Pattern Language: Work Community
“There is abundant evidence to show that high buildings make people crazy.”
– A Pattern Language: Four-Story Limit
“In a society which emphasises teaching, children and students- and adults-...”
– A Pattern Language: Network of Learning
“The system of public transportation- the entire web of airplanes, helicopters,...”
– A Pattern Language: Web of Public Transportation
“Individuals have no effective voice in any community of more than 5000-10,000...”
– A Pattern Language: Community of 7000
“Do everything possible to enrich the cultures and subcultures of the city, by...”
– A Pattern Language: Mosaic of Subcultures
“The suburb is an obsolete and contradictory form of human settlement.”
– A Pattern Language: Lace of Country Streets
“If the population of a region is weighted too far toward small villages, modern...”
– A Pattern Language: The Distribution of Towns
“Generating a single cover only takes about 1 second, but due to its iterative...”
– Faber Finds generative book covers
“Some people go to the gym, Some people go to nightclubs. We tried to build a...”
– For Geeks, a Frat House and Lab, All in One
Mapping Memory: Web Designer as Information... →
The BBC’s Fifteen Web Principles →
Broadmead evacuated as suspect package found →
Cabot Circus remains open
“You can do more than you think with small, consistent investments of your time.”
– Rands In Repose: The Trickle List
How I Explained REST to My Wife →
What Would the Perfect Streaming Music Service... →
Design for Emotion and Flow →
Causes of Flow
A clear goal
Immediate feedback on the success of attempts to reach that goal
A challenge you’re confident you have the skills to handle
“A 2005 study by Gregory Paul looking at 18 democracies found that the more...”
– Unlocking the misery some atheists feel
Gaza toll nears 300 amid new raids →
Inflatable Street Art →
Scrapy →
an open source web crawling and screen scraping framework written in Python
“It’s what you can do that should count when you apply for a job, not where you...”
– Should the Obama Generation Drop Out? - I’m very much for the demphasising the importance of degrees as a job qualification. I would have been much better off learning to develop software through an apprenticeship
Content Extraction from News Pages Using Particle... →
“Internet sites could be given cinema-style age ratings as part of a Government...”
– UK Gov considers censoring the Internet
Bunny Phone →
People love their mobile phones - but the nature of our relationship to them is different than the Nabaztag. Mobile phones tend to engender product lust, that fades. Which got me wondering - what if mobile phones were designed to foster and encourage this kind of pet-like relationship? What if they were more ambient like the Nabaztag - or pet-like and needed nurturing like a tamagotchi? How would...
Things We Humans Crave →
They’re hardwired into our brains and the stuff we need to truly feel “happy”:
Have satisfying work to do
Experience being good at something
Time spent with people we like
Be a part of something bigger than ourselves
“I can envision mobile devices functioning more like remote controls - moving...”
– Mobile Remotes and Dotted Lines
“I think the real value would be in a mobile tuning fork’s ability to reduce...”
– Mobile Tuning Fork
“Technology is intimidating to people and often serve more as a barrier to...”
– You design the system, people provide the content
Diamonds, Crystals, and Pearls →
“If mobiles are *the* ubiquitous computing device, the boundary between the...”
– Boundaries
Greasepocket: Greasemonkey for iPhone →
The Easy Way to Extract Useful Text from Arbitrary... →
101 Five-Minute Fixes to Incrementally Improve... →
Instructional scaffolding →
is the provision of sufficient supports to promote learning when concepts and skills are being first introduced to students. These supports may include:
Resources
A compelling task
Templates and guides
Guidance on the development of cognitive and social skills
WatchBeyond REST/RSS Polling? Building data services with XMPP
Beyond the API: Why Companies Should Have a... →
“These institutions are large, lumbering, and despite their liberal façade they...”
– Andy Rutledge, The Employable Web Designer