James Cooke Blog

ftp2svn : Something for version tracking when you’ve...

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 15:42:42 +0100

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.

Online news - with or without humans?

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 11:20:00 +0100

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?

9gag: This is how migraine looks like Most accurate...

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 09:02:42 +0100

9gag:

This is how migraine looks like

Most accurate representation of migraine I’ve ever seen!

9gag: startupquote: Creativity comes from constraint. - Biz...

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 14:52:01 +0100

9gag:

startupquote:

Creativity comes from constraint.

- Biz Stone

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

geek fix : cron locale breaking subversion client

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 18:07:51 +0100

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.

listentothebit: Tetris - 1984 - Hirokazu Tanaka - Theme A The...

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 10:06:02 +0100

listentothebit:

Tetris - 1984 - Hirokazu Tanaka - Theme A

The original classic!

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

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 12:11:11 +0100

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

fuckyeahcomputerscience: thedailywhat: OH SN- [reddit.] This...

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 06:25:42 +0100

fuckyeahcomputerscience:

thedailywhat:

OH SN-

[reddit.]

This is amazing!

Welcome (back)

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 00:24:48 +0100

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

9gag: Why hold a meeting? On the other hand - meetings are...

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 12:26:22 +0100

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.

The design "funnel"

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 10:39:25 +0100

Design as “a cycle of elaboration and reduction”:

Elaboration phase (solid line) : “to generate as many different ideas as possible”.
Reduction phase (dotted line) : “to select one of those ideas and carefully refine it”.

via therecognitioneffect:

Concerning Fidelity in Design | UX Booth

Read this. Then show it to your account & project managers. This is an opportunity to not just own part of the design, but the design process.

Hanging at Protein Forum number 6 with Mark and Paul....

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 23:48:22 +0100

Hanging at Protein Forum number 6 with Mark and Paul. We’ve been working with Paul on the NIKE78 site.

The Times’ and Sunday Times’ share of UK newspaper web visits ...

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 16:18:19 +0100

The Times’ and Sunday Times’ share of UK newspaper web visits nearly halved in the month since bringing up the paywall. Full analysis on Paid Content and Hitwise.

shminking: These images are all from major online retailers,...

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 14:43:35 +0100

shminking:

These images are all from major online retailers, not fly-by-night sites. You’re not imagining anything; all of the shopping cart images look terrible! Conversely, all of the shopping bag images look pretty swell. Perhaps it’s easier to manipulate 200 pixels into the shape of a bag than a cart, huh?

http://www.intersmash.com/300images/

There are also studies of arrows, print logos and more - cool site!

gooneruk: This live tube train map is just phenomenal. It shows...

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 21:13:10 +0100

gooneruk:

This live tube train map is just phenomenal. It shows the position of trains across the whole tube network, relative to each station, and updates live as they move through the tunnels. The yellow pins are stations, and the red ones are trains.

Fun how some trains will go on random “off line” missions!

Plus where’s the overground?!

"While a magazine understandably wants to reap the financial benefits of having a major, deeply..."

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 14:11:42 +0100

“While a magazine understandably wants to reap the financial benefits of having a major, deeply reported story only available on the newsstand, the idea of holding breaking news for print doesn’t easily mesh with the demands of the 24/7 online news cycle.”

- Interesting how Rolling Stone attempted to build up hype, but the full McChrystal story was still published in full online before publication in print.

From Michael Calderone writing about Rolling Stone and McChrystal on Yahoo! News. More on how the story broke on Media Guardian.

"Need to be “part of the web” not just “on the web"

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 18:35:44 +0100

“Need to be “part of the web” not just “on the web””

- via: Lost In Time And Space: Solr and BigTable at The Guardian » “How The Guardian transforms from RDBMS to NOSQL”

Last week we put the new search functions of the EnviroSecurity...

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 11:29:03 +0100

EnviroSecurity Action Guide search

Text search with filters

Refinements shown with result counts

Special lists of results available

Last week we put the new search functions of the EnviroSecurity Action Guide live. The system is build on Solr running on Tomcat on Windows and has some great features - screengrabs above.

shminking: www.davaidavai.com and via We Are Social I’ll...

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 13:28:24 +0100

shminking:

www.davaidavai.com

and via We Are Social

I’ll probably break most of this out in my meeting later!

The “stuffing the internet” hobby! (remember to...

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 09:35:00 +0100

The “stuffing the internet” hobby! (remember to pause for weak lemon drink)