Software As She’s Developed

I’m listening to this excellent BBC podcast on Unintended Consequences of Mathematics. In his book The Mathematician’s Apology (1941), the Cambridge mathematician GH Hardy expressed his reverence for pure maths, and celebrated its uselessness in the real world. Yet one of the branches of pure mathematics in which Hardy excelled was number theory, and it [...]

[Read more →]

usual live blogging caveats – spelling errors, messy, etc etc @premasagar is visiting the Osmoplex today (thanks @jayfresh for arranging it) and is taking us through his work on iframes, widgets, and sandboxing. I’ve realised we could perhaps be collaborating as my jquery-iframe plugin is so close to his. Different emphases, but much overlap. GitHub is where [...]

[Read more →]

Last week saw a confluence of excellent events. In the same week as a house move, it proved to be a week of much learning and little sleep. I’d hoped to do a better write-up, it never happened, a combination of being too busy and new MAC BATTERIES SUCK, meaning the lappy couldn’t last [...]

[Read more →]

It’s been said that the world hasn’t been this excited about a tablet since Moses came down the mountain. January 27, 2010, is the day Apple is slated to finally put us out of our misery and tell us what it’s all about. But imagine Steve Job moseys onto the stage, launches a forceful history [...]

[Read more →]

Around the time Ajax got coined, one of the already-known patterns was 37Signals’ Yellow Fade Effect. As techniques were shared and visual effects libraries emerged, we began to see visual effects become commonplace on the web. I documented four of them in Ajax Design Patterns: One-Second Spotlight, One-Second Mutation, One-Second Motion, Highlight. (I wish I [...]

[Read more →]

The above image is inspired by Roy’s Rightful REST Rant, kanyelicious and kanyegate, uses @psd’s Roy Has a Posse, and is me getting up to speed with Photoshop (not that it shows) after using certain less worthy tools for image manipulation. I’ve said a bit about this on Twitter, but basically a couple of years ago [...]

[Read more →]

This article by Nick Zakas, covering some technical issues in iframe loading, triggered me to surface a JQuery IFrame plugin I made a little while ago, which supports loading IFrames. (I did tweet it at the time, though I’ve since changed the location.) JQuery IFrame plugin The plugin basically tells you, the programmer of the parent [...]

[Read more →]

I’m pleased to announce a major upgrade to WebWait, the first big upgrade since I launched the site 2.5 years ago. It’s based on watching how people are using it, talking about it, and sending me direct feedback about it. Thanks to all who have provided feedback. The new features are: Multiple sites You can [...]

[Read more →]

Osmosoft, Hackathons At Osmosoft, we have been engaging in a one-day hackathon about every month or so. There are several benefits: It helps us prove our tech in a range of application contexts. It helps improve and demonstrate our capabilities for reuse. Reuse can be as simple as slapping a Javascript file with inline comments on a server [...]

[Read more →]

Following up The New Registration and Login Grammars, I thought it would be interesting to look at how signup forms have changed over the years. 1999 Excite!. Goes so far as to ask you your race, and then a further question about whether you are of Hispanic or Latino descent. Oh, and then your household income! Talk [...]

[Read more →]