Ebooks for materialists
You probably won’t be surprised to know that I love music. I have bought over 650 albums over the last 15 or so years and my collection is still growing fast. Almost every one of those albums I have bought on CD. And yet, the first thing I do when I get a new CD is rip it so that I can listen to it in digital format on my iPod. I’ve often thought about why it is that I hold on so tightly to the physical medium, even though music is readily available and easier to acquire as digital downloads. I think it’s because I’m a massive materialist. An album doesn’t really feel like an album unless I can touch it. I like being able to flick through the album artwork and liner notes. I like the craft involved in packaging. And I like displaying...
XKCD progress indicator
You all read today’s xkcd and wanted to incorporate this formula into your programs straight away. Here’s my Ruby implementation, if you would like a quick fix: require 'date' class XkcdDate # Progress indicator formatted as a date, as in http://xkcd.com/1017/ def self.progress(amount, total) percent = (amount.to_f / total.to_f) years = Math::E ** (20.3444 * percent ** 3 + 3) - Math::E ** 3 Date.today - (years * 365.25) end end It takes two arguments (amount and total, used to form the ratio) and returns a Ruby Date object, which you can format any way you like. And examples of its uses, as in the comic: >> [7.308, 31.12, 47.91, 70.33, 90.42, 100].each {|p| puts "#{p}: #{XkcdDate.progress(p, 100)}"} 7.308: 2011-12-18 31.12: 1995-02-15 47.91:...
Laptop lids
(Goodness, this is only my second post this month. Evidently real life is getting in the way. I have a massive list of things I’d like to write about, if that’s any consolation to my readers.) We live in the time where the laptop computer is ubiquitous. Most people who have a home personal computer use a laptop now, and it’s starting to become the primary workplace device too. Although tablets are gaining in popularity, it’ll be a while before they have anything like that market share. So let’s talk about laptop lids. Laptop computers fold away for ease of portability. It’s very easy to carry around a cuboid-shaped device. This isn’t news to anyone. But wherever I go — home or office — I see people walking around with...
Dr Richard Stallman — For a Free Digital Society
You know what they say about coming face to face with your heroes. It’s all true; at least in this case. As a die-hard ultra-liberal by persuasion and a software engineer by trade, it stands to reason that my ideologies lie somewhere in the free software movement. Imagine my delight when I discovered that none other than the movement’s founder, Dr Richard Stallman, was coming to give a lecture to the people of Leeds. Dr Stallman’s lecture title was “For a Free Digital Society” and the subject matter was about protecting our freedom in a world where things like surveillance and restrictions on ownership of content are easy for governments and megacorps to implement. Great: so far, so good. Those are things I’m worried about too...
My beef with Google+
I’ve been a member of Google+ since day 1, but I’ve not really taken to it in a big way. Initially I thought this was because none of my friends were on there, but no… now lots of my friends and other people of interest are on Google+ and (reasonably) active. So I thought to myself what it is about the user experience on Google+ that’s holding me back. I love the idea of putting all my contacts into so-called circles. It’s great to be able to make the distinction between friends, acquaintances, famous people I’m following, etc. and being asked to choose each time I share a new item. Facebook and Twitter both have lists for incoming data but Google+ has made it easy to do this for outgoing data. Except it hasn’t. When I...
Leeds-based non-binary nerd and sewist. I won't break my streak on Duolingo for anyone. 
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