This is a week from the blog of Rod Begbie, who is one…
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“Groovy Motherfucker”

Entries for week beginning April 22, 2007

April 28, 2007

April 27, 2007

Opera's Speed Dial for Firefox

Opera’s latest feature, implemented as a Firefox extension within a week!

Ironic Sans: Idea: Uncensor the Internet with Greasemonkey

Greasemonkey script to fix one of my pet peeves — W*nk*rs wh* ast*risk sw**r-w*rds. If you’re not willing to say “fuck”, saying “f*ck” isn’t any more genteel, you f**ker.

April 26, 2007

Happy Mondays man refused US visa | News | NME.COM

Bez won’t be appearing with the Happy Mondays at Coachella this weekend. What’s the point in seeing them, then? Bez *was* the Happy Mondays.

MIKE PIONTEK // software / mac os x / delivery status 3.2.3

Beautiful OS X Dashboard widget to track package delivery.

eBay Member Profile for tryork5ifp

Some excellent feedback given to eBay sellers. “Good Seller; reliable, fast, neat, but table manners are horrendous!” “What the..? What THE HELL is this stuff? How the HELL do you get it off? HELP!!”

Hackety Hack: the Coder's Starter Kit

Simple easy-to-get-started programming tutorial, based upon Ruby and Mozilla. Written by “Why the Lucky Stiff”. The “Hackety Manifesto” is worth reading.

April 25, 2007

Introducing http:BL | Project Honey Pot

Project Honey Pot announce a blacklist for IP addresses known to comment spam. This could be easy to integrate with a Django middleware…

Cabs, Logan Travelers Go Green - WCVB Boston

Interesting attempt by the City of Boston to encourage hybrid taxis — They’ll get to cut to the front of the taxi queue at Logan Airport. Hybrid car owners get “preferred parking” too.

Favourite Worst Nightmare

CD Purchase: Arctic Monkeys - Favourite Worst Nightmare

April 24, 2007

Yahoo! Music - Lyrics

Yahoo’s made a bunch of song lyrics legitimately available for searching. Nice, and all, but it’s still easier to google for “song title lyrics”.

PayPal Security Key

For $5, PayPal will give you a SecurID-type keyfob to make it much harder for anyone to penetrate your account. I’ve been carrying mine for a couple of months now.

Tracking Comment Spammers | Project Honey Pot

Project Honey Pot’s traps are now presenting spiders with forms that resemble comments/guestbooks/forums to try to gather some data on comment spamming. If you have a web site, it’s well worth installing the honeypot (or linking to a QuickLink) to help the cause.

Etsy :: Splatgirl MOOPockets

Holsters to keep your MooCards pristine prior to handing them out.

Anil Dash: Cats Can Has Grammar

IM IN UR BLOG EXPLANING UR DIALECTZ! Anil Dash breaks down the importance of good lolcat grammar.

Turn your Django application in to an OpenID consumer

Simon Willison’s OpenID consuming middleware for Django. I’ll probably have a stab at mixing this with my blog comments shortly.

Commentary

Since 99% of what I write here is now in the category of “links” rather than posts, and at the prodding of Mike, I’ve added the ability to comment on links on the site.

Turned out to be about 2 new lines of code and minor templatery tweaks (Thank you Django!)

Go crazy, gang. Feedback-me-do!

April 23, 2007

Flickr: 24 hours of Flickr

Day-long photo project on May 5th to create a book and “sponsored event”.

ZX Spectrum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

25 years ago today, the ZX Spectrum was unleashed by Sir Clive. And now, let’s pause for a quick Manic Miner session in celebration.

Here Comes the Fuzz

CD Purchase: Mark Ronson - Here Comes the Fuzz

Coda 1.0 Release Notes

“But for now: let all just pretend for one moment that Coda is so 100% pefect that this page is literally useless.”

Panic - Coda - One-Window Web Development for Mac OS X

Panic’s newest app is aimed squarely at web-devs, attempting to roll “all” the stuff you need to build a website into one app. Looks interesting — I’m definitely guilty of needing about 7 windows open to do web development (a couple of TextMates, Firefox, Safari, a terminal or two). It’ll be interesting to see if this can bring it all together for me.

Feed the Head

Pleasantly mindless Flash fun.

SlideShare

The worst website in the history of the world ever?

Not that it’s a bad site — it’s very nicely put together. I mean “worst” in the sense of “most evil and damaging to humanity”. Slide decks are going to fall into one of two main categories

1) Lots of text and information. Possibly useful as documents, but spectacularly fucking dreadful as presentations. (If the audience is reading your slide, they’re not listening to you)

2) Lots of pictures and headings, but minimal content. Potentially great illustrations if there’s someone giving an informative talk in front of them, but relatively useless to be shared on a website.

On the plus side, I’ll have a metric shitload of ammunition next time I do a presentation on awful powerpoint.

April 22, 2007

“DNTN XING”

“DNTN XING”

Piss-poor information design from the MBTA. "Downtown Crossing", the station that links the Red, Orange and Silver lines, is abbreviated to the meaningless "DNTN XING" on this service map. (Spotted on the wall at Copley Station)

saute-swinish