Stuff and things

I’m a man on the edge. A man with a deep, dangerous...

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:34:09 +0000

I’m a man on the edge. A man with a deep, dangerous hatred.

I hate my alarm clock.

It’s not a bad alarm clock. I got it as a gift, and it has served me well for a few years now. But it works hard at bugging me. For example:

If the alarm is going off, and you want to see what time it is, you turn on the screen backlight by pressing “BRIGHTNESS CONTROL”. Except that the “BRIGHTNESS CONTROL” button is also the snooze (“REPEAT ALARM”) button. So the radio stops. And you must start it again. Of course dedicated buttons for these two functions would be crazy, since you need space for a dedicated “SCAN” button
To start the radio again, you press “SOURCE” until the function (FM, DAB, or “3.5mm jack you can put into your phone”) you want is highlighted on the screen. This helpfully remembers whether you had the alarm on earlier, to excite you by changing the number of presses required to get to DAB (I think it is 1 if the radio was on, 3 otherwise). This is a fun game!
If you try to turn one of the two alarms (“AL1” and “AL2”) off using their alarm buttons, you must use the alarm button for the alarm going off. Remember that the screen is unreadable and dark at this point! If you press the other button, it will toggle the other alarm on or off for the next day. This is a great feature for people who like to be surprised by which time they’re getting up.[1]
Whenever the radio is making a sound of any kind, there’s an audible background hum. This renders the fact that it “fades in” the radio when the alarm sounds effectively useless; the clicking on of the hum is loud enough to wake me.

[1] To be completely fair there is an “AL RESET” button snuck up in the corner which apparently resets either alarm.

[Flames image is CC-BY from pgordon on Flickr.]

I always liked the Banshee music player, but their 2.0 version...

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 23:17:31 +0100

I always liked the Banshee music player, but their 2.0 version seems to have fixed all of the niggling issues I had with previous releases, and fixed most of my typo’d music tags from when I still typed those on my own. Good stuff.

"I walked through my front door with purpose and gathered my family members in the living room to..."

Sun, 26 Dec 2010 16:43:15 +0000

“I walked through my front door with purpose and gathered my family members in the living room to tell them about my vision. I was going to rewrite the birth of Jesus Christ and I was going to make it POP.”

- Hyperbole and a Half is always great, and this Christmas-related entry had me giggling like an errant child.

CSS3 - A practical introduction

Sun, 31 Oct 2010 21:23:11 +0000

CSS3 - A practical introduction:

Quite enjoyed this presentation by Lea Verou; it’s both informative and, unusually, pretty. The new CSS3 stuff looks really neat, although I wouldn’t like to speculate when we can actually use any significant amount of it.

A representative of Twilio doing a presentation about the system...

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:04:41 +0100

A representative of Twilio doing a presentation about the system by live coding in front of the New York Tech Meetup. Really impressive.

via. this article on avc.com

Stupid Manufactoria has stolen my last couple of lunches from...

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:55:10 +0100

Stupid Manufactoria has stolen my last couple of lunches from me. I don’t usually fall for these nerd-focused casual games.

Some not entirely independent variables

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 21:32:26 +0100

Nearby sell-by dates.
Stupendous special offers.
Calum gorging himself on Frubes.

Headius: My Thoughts on Oracle v Google

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 12:42:22 +0100

Headius: My Thoughts on Oracle v Google:

Not only a good primer on the recent legal challenge, but actually a good primer on the background of Android and Java over the last decade or so. Excellent article.

10 Common Mistakes Made by API Providers

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 12:40:56 +0100

10 Common Mistakes Made by API Providers:

This list of common mistakes made in web APIs is excellent; many of the points apply equally well to APIs in general, especially remote ones.

Having installed apps from QR codes a couple of times, this new...

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 19:22:50 +0100

Having installed apps from QR codes a couple of times, this new GitHub feature seems disproportionately useful to me.

An excellent whiteboard animation based on a talk by Dan...

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 13:54:07 +0100

An excellent whiteboard animation based on a talk by Dan Pink’s talk on the same subject as his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us*. Found this via an entry on Coding Horror, which isn’t normally a blog I read, but I’m glad I did this time.

* Associates link, apologies for capitalism etc.

"We prove that the implementation always strictly follows our high-level abstract specification of..."

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 21:25:49 +0100

“We prove that the implementation always strictly follows our high-level abstract specification of kernel behaviour. This encompasses traditional design and implementation safety properties such as that the kernel will never crash, and it will never perform an unsafe operation. It also implies much more: we can predict precisely how the kernel will behave in every possible situation.”

- Bold claims from a proof of correctness of the seL4 kernel

BEHOLD PRINGLESCAT

Sun, 02 May 2010 21:32:17 +0100

BEHOLD PRINGLESCAT

"Dynamic programming” never meant anything; it was nothing but a political euphemism. But..."

Sat, 24 Apr 2010 14:24:32 +0100

““Dynamic programming” never meant anything; it was nothing but a political euphemism. But somehow it became attached to one of the useful concepts Bellman discovered, and to this day, students of computer science struggle to learn that simple idea, because it’s burdened with a nonsense name.”

- Interesting! I’ve always thought that term was weird.

#define private public

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 14:52:07 +0100

#define private public

Yeah, the Peter Serafinowicz-directed video for Hot Chip’s...

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 23:45:00 +0100

Yeah, the Peter Serafinowicz-directed video for Hot Chip’s I Feel Better is kinda old news now, but I’m putting it up here since it’s reappeared in my head. And I think the video is a work of genius, but it’s really quite difficult to tell.

Cthulu vs. Robots. Let it never be said that I don’t do...

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 11:28:13 +0100

Cthulu vs. Robots. Let it never be said that I don’t do anything at work.

There’s something delightfully straightforward about...

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 19:10:44 +0000

There’s something delightfully straightforward about Chrome’s approach to notification of broken certificates.

I didn’t realise that what my life really needed was a...

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:50:07 +0000

I didn’t realise that what my life really needed was a rock anthem about sci-fi horror flick Event Horizon, but it was.

Okay, Unicorn identicons are pretty damned awesome. I approve.

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:08:26 +0000

Okay, Unicorn identicons are pretty damned awesome. I approve.