james cooke blog

Blog of tech and random...
Ask me anything or send me stuff.
Jul 20 ’10
ftp2svn : Something for version tracking when you’ve only got FTP.
A basic concept drawing - the scripting is working, I’m  making it more user friendly before releasing.

ftp2svn : Something for version tracking when you’ve only got FTP.

A basic concept drawing - the scripting is working, I’m making it more user friendly before releasing.

0 comments

Jul 19 ’10

Online news - with or without humans?

theluckystrike:

Sarah Chapman: “Welcome to the era of the algorithm as editor…”

The New York Times reported yesterday that Yahoo is to invert the traditional news model, in which editors decide what gets covered, by using popular search terms to guide their reporting on national affairs, politics and the media.

And as Yahoo! move away from the traditional editorial news model, Google have rolled editorial picks into their news service which was always “traditionally” built by algorithm. Maybe an attempt to improve how Google News handles zero day stories, and if that can be achieved, making it more of a news source, rather than a news aggregator.

Before editorial

After editorial

Is there convergence on a middle ground in online news between production and aggregation, and if so, what will that look like?

3 notes 0 comments (via theluckystrike & sarahchapman)

Jul 19 ’10
9gag:

This is how migraine looks like

Most accurate representation of migraine I’ve ever seen!

9gag:

This is how migraine looks like

Most accurate representation of migraine I’ve ever seen!

103 notes 0 comments (via 9gag)

Jul 18 ’10
9gag:

startupquote:

Creativity comes from constraint.
- Biz Stone


sooo - why do people us twitlonger at all?!?!

9gag:

startupquote:

Creativity comes from constraint.

- Biz Stone

sooo - why do people us twitlonger at all?!?!

183 notes 0 comments (via 9gag & startupquote)

Jul 16 ’10

geek fix : cron locale breaking subversion client

Working on an automatic subversion cron script that called svn to run some basic add / delete / commit functions and I ran into the standard error when running from cron but not from the command line with bash:

Can’t convert string from native encoding to ‘UTF-8’

The problem is documented way back in 2006 here.

It’s due to two things : how svn uses locales and how cron defaults to POSIX locale on ubuntu.

Proposed solutions are here and here. I chose to jack the following into my bash script:

export LANG=en_GB.utf8

Probably not even 100% correct, but it works.

0 comments

Jul 16 ’10
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

listentothebit:

tetris

Tetris - 1984 - Hirokazu Tanaka - Theme A

The original classic!

10 notes 0 comments (via listentothebit)

Jul 13 ’10
For Wordpress on the 960 grid, check out the 960bc template.
Here are two downloads of the template for uptight folks like me who prefer tarballs to zips and with no extra  mac and windows hidden files. This is the 960bc v1.6 release with those files removed:


960bc v1.6 tar.gz 56K

960bc v1.6 zip 62K

For Wordpress on the 960 grid, check out the 960bc template.

Here are two downloads of the template for uptight folks like me who prefer tarballs to zips and with no extra mac and windows hidden files. This is the 960bc v1.6 release with those files removed:

0 comments

Jul 10 ’10
fuckyeahcomputerscience:

thedailywhat:

OH SN-
[reddit.]


This is amazing!

fuckyeahcomputerscience:

thedailywhat:

OH SN-

[reddit.]

This is amazing!

904 notes 0 comments (via fuckyeahcomputerscience & thedailywhat)

Jul 10 ’10

Welcome (back)

theluckystrike:

…And so, I’ve decided to relaunch the blog. Tumblr makes it easier for me to post and manage things that inspire me from across the web (on a daily basis)

Stay tuned and say hello!

Rakim: Guess Who’s Back

2 notes 0 comments (via theluckystrike)

Jul 9 ’10
9gag:

Why hold a meeting?

On the other hand - meetings are toxic!!! (according to 37 signals)
Two sides of the coin… I’ll suggest a meeting now to discuss which is correct.

9gag:

Why hold a meeting?

On the other hand - meetings are toxic!!! (according to 37 signals)

Two sides of the coin… I’ll suggest a meeting now to discuss which is correct.

163 notes 0 comments (via 9gag)