- 23 Jul 2010 » Indefinite in Number, But of Certain Fixed Shapes ∅
Produced in the late 1800s by a company called Richter’s — “Designed and Executed by Dr. Richter’s Art-Department,” then located at 74-80 Washington Street, New York, NY — the blocks and their instructional manuals that you see here were no mere playthings; they were marketed as intellectual stimulants, Frobelian educational props, for teaching children nothing less than how to think.
via BLDGBlog, photos of various manuals and instructions supplied with sets of Anchor Stones, small building blocks which feel (and look) like miniature stone blocks. I came across them in a toy store whilst staying with Matt Jadud in Boston in fall 2008 (picture above). There seems to be an active UK supplier, although I imagine the pieces would get everywhere… Very, very cool toy — looks like grown-up LEGO.
- 21 Jul 2010 » Welcome to Vim ∅
This is a Vim Introduction to be watched by those looking to start using Vim or are curious about what it can do, or whatever… You don’t necessarily “learn” anything here except that Vim is amazing and you get to learn my personal take on it :)
Roughly half-hour long hands on video exploring Vim and what you can get up to in terms of customising and exploiting the environment. Can’t seem to break the visual editor habit personally, Textmate is beginning to show age in some places though, having not been significantly updated for several years.1
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I regularly run into a bug whereby the default path is set to
/is quite annoying, and doesn’t seem to have been fixed despite being reported in September 2009 as a consequence of the Snow Leopard upgrade. ↩
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- 21 Jul 2010 » CoffeeScript - 7 Reasons You Are Totally Gonna Hate It ∅
From the CoffeeScript homepage:
CoffeeScript is a little language that compiles into JavaScript. Think of it as JavaScript’s less ostentatious kid brother — the same genes, roughly the same height, but a different sense of style. Apart from a handful of bonus goodies, statements in CoffeeScript correspond one-to-one with their equivalent in JavaScript, it’s just another way of saying it.
This 7 reasons presentation is wrapped in a nasty flash-document viewer, but shows off some nice examples of the syntax and the getting started process.
- 21 Jul 2010 » A re-introduction to JavaScript ∅
While often derided as a toy, beneath its deceptive simplicity lie some powerful language features. 2005 has seen the launch of a number of high-profile JavaScript applications, showing that deeper knowledge of this technology is an important skill for any web developer.
Dated, but a concise single page introduction to Javascript. At least it doesn’t pertain to the 1998-era, DHTML/IE4, clock following your mouse cursor variety.
- 15 Jul 2010 » Core Data and iPhone Applications - Protecting Your Data ∅
A good review of the security features added to iOS in version 4, along with the device features and versions that support them. Bookmarked for future reference on securing Core Data stores.
- 15 Jun 2010 » Pools in Python ∅
Object pooling is pre-allocating a number of objects to use later. It is done by creating a group of objects (pool) initially and when you need an object, you take one from the pool rather than creating it. When you are done with the object you send it back to the pool.
Nice explanation and small example of using object pools in Python, along with some performance measurements.
- 13 Jun 2010 » Matt Cutts' SEO site review session from Google I/O 2010 ∅
A couple weeks or so ago, we did an SEO site review session at Google I/O 2010. The video from that session is now live. The video is about an hour long, but I hope it’s a pretty good use of your time if you’re interested in search engine optimization. Enjoy!
Google provide a mass of information on how to create websites that rank well that’s both accessible and informative - this video adds to the pile, I always seem to pick up one or two new ideas for designing new templates and information flows (along with wanting to change everything that’s out there already…)
- 13 Jun 2010 » Invisible Status Bar Safari Extension ∅
Save display space or appeal to your own sense of minimalism by hiding Safari’s native status bar, and using the Invisible Status Bar instead. Only shows up when you hover over a link, i.e. when you need a status bar.
Copies Chrome’s behaviour of displaying the URL a link goes to onmouseover. A nice way to reclaim the ~20 pixels the status bar occupies if like me, you have the status bar enabled purely to see where links go.
- 13 Jun 2010 » Gmail Checker Safari Extension ∅
A Safari Extension for staying on top of your inbox.
A quite a stylish and unobtrusive way to integrate GMail into Safari, having the unread count next to the address bar in all open browser windows does feel like it could be a little too visible in terms of stealing focus from other tasks. Will be interesting to see how these extensions last in daily use.
- 02 Jun 2010 » cells. A massively multi-agent Python programming game ∅
Cells is a programming game, meaning that the player programms the agents before actual gameplay starts, and then watches pits his code against that of his oponents. It features two or more teams of hundreds or even thousands of identical agents, which I call “cells”. These cells live in a 2-dimensional simulated environment, and compete for the control of resources scattered around the world.
Looks really interesting - might be neat in CO538 next year to bring in some of the agent simulation? The dynamic of raising/lowering the terrain (changing the brightness of the background) is a nice touch.