The Chaoszone Weblog
Software Development, Digital Rights, Life In India, and occasional bits of Mindless Link Propagation.
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- The Hallows Approach (and Predictions)
The final Harry Potter book comes out in less than 24 hours, and while the media hype has been immense, it does not take away from the fact that these were very good books indeed — much better than the vast majority of children’s lit and a good swathe of “adult” lit. It’s pretty rare [...]
Fri, 20 Jul 2007 03:34:57 +0000 - Fun with synthesized RSS feeds
In an ideal world everyone would have full-content RSS-feeds. Until then making your own isn’t that hard — and it’s getting easier by the day with mash-up tools like Yahoo Pipes. Here are some I’ve created: Digg Direct - links directly to the stories, instead of wasting your time with Digg’s comments page. BBC’s 10 Things We [...]
Mon, 09 Jul 2007 18:40:39 +0000 - Get your blog iPhone-ready
Apple’s releasing a new phone today (if you didn’t know that, you’re lucky). Beside curing all manner of ills, the phone has a great web browser that should get people really interested in using the web while on the move. Now, the thing is lots of other phones have decent browsers — many phones run Opera, [...]
Fri, 29 Jun 2007 23:29:16 +0000 - Most Brits spell "organize" wrong
Using -ise for words like ‘maximise’ and ‘organise’ is a relatively new phenomenon in Britain, probably because maximize with a z looks too American to British eyes. In fact, the -ize form originated in Britain and is the preferred international form.
Tue, 26 Jun 2007 21:30:24 +0000 - The Ladies of Grace-Adieu
I enjoyed reading Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, and so was especially glad to be able to read The Ladies of Grace-Adieu, her book of short stories (apparently her next novel is a ways off). The stories, (mostly?) all written before the novel, foreshadow the excellent intermingling of dry wit – and surrealism and [...]
Tue, 19 Jun 2007 20:34:51 +0000 - CNN-IBN covers Blackle, gets most of the story wrong
According to CNN-IBN “Google has done its bit to save energy by launching Blackle — a Google search page that saves energy”, based on the theory that black pixels take less energy to display than white pixels. (Here’s a screen-grab of the story.) There are at least two problems with this. First, this is not applicable [...]
Wed, 06 Jun 2007 03:22:30 +0000 - Weird Al’s Lasagna
I’ve always liked Weird Al Yankovic, but I had never heard his Lasagna song, sung to the tune of La Bamba. (And if you’ve never heard of Weird Al before, listen to his Jurassic Park and his hilarious retelling of Star Wars Episode 1, sung to the tune of American Pie.)
Fri, 01 Jun 2007 07:06:44 +0000 - The Web Just Got an Upgrade
Google Gears is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality using JavaScript APIs. According to TechCrunch, one of the first demos to use Gears will be … Google Reader, which will add a green download button to the user interface. When you click the button, Reader will download the last 2,000 [...]
Wed, 30 May 2007 23:25:44 +0000 - Happy 50th, Helvetica
The BBC celebrates Helvetica’s 50th birthday. Check out the comments, where amateur font geeks have gathered to make bad font jokes (sample: “Two fonts walk into the bar, and the barman says, ’sorry lads, we don’t serve your type.’”) and wistfully talk about their favourite fonts (”Helvetica’s sexier sister, Verdana”) (!). PS. Windows users take note — Arial [...]
Thu, 10 May 2007 03:04:03 +0000 - Pins and Labour
That the new 20 pound note would feature Adam Smith is old news. What I hadn’t known is that his pin-manufacturing ‘case study’ would be immortalized on banknotes as well:
Tue, 13 Mar 2007 17:39:13 +0000
