Rain later in the week, apparently 
Until that promised improvement, you can ride out this wretched hot weather by finding some shade and reading this lot:
Happy invoicing!
Until that promised improvement, you can ride out this wretched hot weather by finding some shade and reading this lot:- Anno NTK - "from the people who gave you NTK last time: exactly the same thing, 15 years later." NTK, the Internet geek newsletter of blessed memory, started 15 years ago and now you can subscribe all over again and have it emailed to you all over again. Issue 1 covers/covered, among other things: Netscape v. Internet Explorer, Steve Jobs returning to Apple, and PC maker Gateway 2000 buying Amiga Technologies.
- The Habsburgs, or...the Advantages and Disadvantages of Incest - "How rich was Mary of Burgundy? People called her Mary the Rich. Right. Of course, Maximilian was no ragamuffin himself, his father was the Holy ******* Roman Emperor, so his family owned a ton of tulip too, namely Austria. This meant that when Mary the Rich and Maximilian had a son, that son, who would end up being named Philip the Handsome, would inherit all of the Holy Roman Emperor’s tulip, and all of Charles the Bold’s tulip. Which was a lot of tulip." A detailed explanation of how the Habsburg Kings of Spain managed to breed themselves into extinction in a few generations through consanguineous marriage, expressed in rather more colourful language than my history teachers used.
- API Design - "I’ve designed literally dozens of component APIs over the years, including for clients like Apple, and I’ve learned quite a bit about the process... the feedback I’ve had has helped me put together a set of guidelines for API design that I’d like to share with you." Matt Gemmell, Mac and iOS developer extraordinaire, offers excellent advice on creating re-usable components.
- The Art of the Deal - "'Bezaf' — too much — Sam repeats, shaking his head and looking down at the small chest the two are haggling over... He shakes his head. Without another word he marches his four-foot-three-inch frame past me and out." Andrew McCarthy's award-winning article on how his 8 year-old son, Sam, learnt to haggle in the markets of Marrakech.
- Turtles, all the way down. Or gliders. Or glider turtles. - Conway's Game of Life, implemented in Conway's Game of Life
"The state of the eater is read by the collision of two antiparallel LWSSes, which radiates two antiparallel gliders (not unlike an electron-positron reaction in a PET scanner). These gliders then collide into beehives, which are restored by a passing LWSS in Brice's elegant honeybit reaction. If the eater is present, the beehive would remain in its original state, thereby allowing the LWSS to pass unaffected; if the eater is absent, the beehive would be restored, consuming the LWSS in the process. Equivalently, the state of the eater is mapped onto the state of the LWSS."
- Diary of a Girl Pickpocket - "I was married on the Thursday, and on the Saturday I got 10s. in the market. On Monday my brother Edward came to Leeds. We all went out, and Edward picked a pocket of 13s, but he had been watched, and we were all took up, and we got three months." Life in 1854: apparently "Victorian values" were something of a luxury commodity.
- Fashion It So - "Charlie (@chozzles) and Anna (@ajlobster) are revisiting Star Trek: The Next Generation. In a big way. And we've noticed that the clothes on that show are AMAZING. And not just 1987 amazing, or 24th century amazing, but BOTH, SIMULTANEOUSLY. We celebrate those fashions here. " Who'd have thought there was so much to say about TNG costumes: "Include a zippered fly for easy urination? No. Include shoulder pads? Absolutely!"
- The Top Ten Most Ridiculous Movie Posters At Cannes This Year - Ghost Shark? Seriously?
- Dozier School, Dead Boys, and Forensic Setting to Rights - "At least 81 boys died. Their remains lie in unmarked graves spread over the shuttered campus of the Florida Reform School for Boys. Located in Marianna, Florida, this brutal reform school – also known as the Dozier School for Boys – spread death and damage among the thousands of boys who came through its gates over a period of 111 years." Daniel Lende on the multi-disciplinary team working to find and identify the remains.
- Random Wodehouse Quote - Just the ticket! "I was so darned sorry for poor old Corky that I hadn't the heart to touch my breakfast. I told Jeeves to drink it himself."
Happy invoicing!
Comment