Much discussion at morning standup, as product owner is away for sprint planning on Thursday, and the other chap who could do it leaves this team at the end of the current sprint. And I smile serenely, for this is my last week here and I don't give a fig about the next sprint 
Happy invoicing!
- How to Advertise on a Porn Website - Maybe a touch NSFW. Fast food delivery site Eat24 discovered that advertising on porn sites was not only highly effective, but also extremely cheap compared to mainstream alternatives: "We compared our average CPM across major ad publishers such as Google, Twitter and Facebook and found we could get more impressions via porn sites than the big three combined, and at roughly 1/10th of the cost (!) High traffic sites with cheap ad space?? Did we just see a unicorn?"
- Whatever Happened to Tom Lehrer? - "Most people assume that Tom Lehrer is dead, just as he has always wished us to think. Lehrer is by no means dead... After he retired at the peak of his fame in 1960, he gleefully collected all newspaper references to “the late Tom Lehrer,” and a CD box set of his collected works that came out in 2000 was called “The Remains of Tom Lehrer.”" Good profile of everybody's favourite humorous songwriter. (By the way, the "That Was The Week That Was" referred to is the US version of the show.)
- How we built a DIY book scanner with speeds of 150 pages per minute - "We're not talking about the numerous book scanning services that have popped up in the last few years, offering book digitization at the cost of only a few cents per page. Nor are we talking about chopping off the binding of your book and feeding the pages into a copier or scanner, or purchasing a commercial book scanner for upwards of $10,000 (that just isn’t going to happen for most). No, we're talking toolbelts, paint cans, bike brakes, and digital cameras—doing it yourself." Now you can rip your library - though hopefully not literally
- Breakouts - Interesting site that collates implementations of the classic arcade game in numerous JavaScript libraries, complete with source code. "There is a plethora of JavaScript game engines out there. By comparing and studying the implementations, you should better be able to find an engine that meets your needs and style."
- Theoi Greek Mythology - "Welcome to the Theoi Project, a site exploring Greek mythology and the gods in classical literature and art. The aim of the project is to provide a comprehensive, free reference guide to the gods (theoi), spirits (daimones), fabulous creatures (theres) and heroes of ancient Greek mythology and religion." Now you can stop embarrassing yourself in polite company by confusing your Cyclopes with your Celedones.
- Liquid nitrogen sorcery - Hours of potentially extremely dangerous fun
- Big Buried Secrets: Giant Skeletons and the Smithsonian - One of the more obscure conspiracy theories going around is that skeletons of giants have been discovered, and are being concealed by the Smithsonian Institute: "...in modern times we would be hard pressed to explain why there are so few–if any–credible specimens that appear to depict humanoids of large enough proportions to qualify for being actual giants, let alone those which are kept from public view for clandestine reasons. The obvious skeptical assumption would be that this is simply because no such specimens exist. However, this lack of evidence, in the mind of the more conspiracy-minded among us, has more to do with a vast coverup than the actual non-existence of giants in ancient times."
- The Flight from Dallas - "From noon to dusk on November 22, 1963, history went dark, locked inside the closed and crowded cabin of Air Force One. Fifty years later, what happened after JFK died has fully come to light." Chris Jones puts together a detailed timeline of what happened on the Presidential plane in the immediate aftermath of J. F. Kennedy's assassination.
- Why Organizations Should Embrace Randomness Like Ant Colonies - "Consider the common ant. Each one is by genetic design capable of only a few simple behaviors and binary choices, making it a pretty dumb, rigid, inflexible being. Yet the collective behavior of an ant colony is adaptive, flexible and even creative; it’s a highly structured social organization." Andrew J. Smart argues that human organisations need to be better at coping with uncertainty.
- Terrible real estate agent photographs - "Inexplicably bad property photographs. It's that simple." Indeed:
Happy invoicing!
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