Hypertexthero flies about the internet recording interesting experiences in this Logbook. Browse past logs in the Archive. Track current flying on Twitter.

Friday, 3 February 2012

What Kind of World Do We Want to Live In?  #

What kind of a world do we want to live in? As we increasingly leverage our lives through the world of digital platforms, what are the values we wish to hold in common?

…

• No gatekeepers. The web is decentralized. Anyone can start a web site. No one has the authority (in a democracy, anyway) to stop you from putting up a shingle.
• An ethos of the commons. The web developed over time under an ethos of community development, and most of its core software and protocols are royalty free or open source (or both). There wasn’t early lockdown on what was and wasn’t allowed. This created chaos, shady operators, and plenty of dirt and dark alleys. But it also allowed extraordinary value to blossom in that roiling ecosystem.
• No preset rules about how data is used. If one site collects information from or about a user of its site, that site has the right to do other things with that data, assuming, again, that it’s doing things that benefit all parties concerned.
• Neutrality. No one site on the web is any more or less accessible than any other site. If it’s on the web, you can find it and visit it.
• Interoperability. Sites on the web share common protocols and principles, and determine independently how to work with each other. There is no centralized authority which decides who can work with who, in what way.

Thursday, 2 February 2012

Wear  #

My axiom for design, which I learned as a builder is:

“If it looks its best when its brand new, its a bad design.”

This axiom explains why glass buildings look terrible as the years elapse, why cheap furniture just looks old when its chipped, and why a good pair of leather shoes will outshine a pair of Nikes any day. Age is an inevitable part of design. If a product fails to recognizing the flipping calendar, it will eventually be replaced by a better looking object.

— Adam Marelli

An Essay on Typography  #

By Eric Gill.

ASCIIFI  #

Modern image to ASCII converter.

Tuesday, 31 January 2012

The Best of HTML5 <time>s  #

Collapse  #

Under a situation of declining marginal returns collapse may be the most appropriate response.

— Joseph Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies

Tuesday, 24 January 2012

Hackasaurus  #

Gives kids (and adults!) a peek into what makes a web page work. Found via the excellent Mozilla Drumbeat.

Wouldn’t it be great if kids learned more about web pages and the open world wide web rather than only about Apple iOS Apps?

Don’t miss the resources for teachers.

Thursday, 12 January 2012

Semantic Versioning  #

In the world of software management there exists a dread place called “dependency hell.” The bigger your system grows and the more packages you integrate into your software, the more likely you are to find yourself, one day, in this pit of despair.

Tuesday, 10 January 2012

Playdoh  #

Mozilla’s web application template based on Django.

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    o´   `o

$sbconfig['DefaultHost'] = "localhost";

$sbconfig['DefaultHost'] = "127.0.0.1";

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    o´   `o

Saturday, 7 January 2012

Python Development Environment Setup on Mac OS X Lion  #

Enable Colors in Mac OS X Terminal  #

Put the following in the .profile or .bashrc file in your home directory:

export CLICOLOR=1
export LSCOLORS=GxFxCxDxBxegedabagaced

Wednesday, 4 January 2012

All2MP3  #

Free utility to convert FLAC to MP3.

Naming and Searching Files  #

Excellent. I use the YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS part for photographs.

Sunday, 1 January 2012

Decentralized, Participatory Digital Democracy  #

Notational Velocity developer Zachary Schneirov:

And of course there are far more basic options available once we move away from the notion of “consumers” and “service providers”. There’s absolutely no reason a community group, organization, or collection of friends couldn’t share everything they needed using protocols and servers that have existed almost since the dawn of UNIX. And with federated protocols like XMPP (on which Google Wave was built) there’s also no reason that such services couldn’t “scale” to include progressively larger circles of contact. In the end, the need for profit can only ever add unnecessary and unwanted side-effects to our medium of communication, whether it’s omnipresent and invisible tracking of everything we read and say, a visual landscape overrun with advertisements, or software that disappears and takes our data with it once we stop paying rent. The “cloud” model is becoming popular first and foremost because it enables new forms of profit. However with just a tiny amount of work and responsibility, we can make the Cloud’s few advantages redundant, re-possess our information, and finally move to an era of worldwide, decentralized, participatory digital democracy.

Thursday, 29 December 2011

Why Mobile?  #

Tuesday, 27 December 2011

Current State of Multi-Device Web Design  #

Check out the Yiibu proof of concept website.

Monday, 26 December 2011

Simple & Useful  #

Nice little guide on web design by Jerrold Maddox. Simple and useful.

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    o´   `o

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    o´   `o

Saturday, 24 December 2011

Hitler Reacts to SOPA  #

Make no mistake, Hitler is right on this one.

Friday, 23 December 2011

Take it Easy, and Make it Count  #

Moxie Marlinspike answers questions on Slashdot:

From your Web site it looks like you’ve worn a number of hats. How do you mainly earn your living by penetration testing, developing software as a contractor, or what? Or do you have a day job? (I won’t ask where). Do you have any advice for software engineers seeking an independent career?

I was the CTO at WhisperSystems, which was just acquired by Twitter. In the past, I’ve done both contract and full-time software engineering work, and I’ve worked on boats and as a delivery captain. I’ve also spent a considerable amount of time being broke and living without money.

I don’t think I have any particularly sage advice for software engineers looking to go independent, so I’ll answer a different question: on a somewhat regular basis now, I receive inquiries from young people coming out of high-school or college, asking me what they should do to get started in their software or security career. My most common response is “don’t do it.” Or at least, not right now.

I think the biggest thing young people fail to realize is the interminable nature of a career. As a young person in the global north, your whole life is generally marked by periods with definite beginnings and endings: elementary school is 5 years, middle school is 3 years, high-school is 4 years. It’s significant because when you’re in high-school and hating the indignity of it all, there is at least a definite endpoint that you can look forward to. But if you’re coming out of that, you might not fully comprehend that when you start a career, you’re expected to do that… for the rest of your life! Don’t be too anxious to jump into that, because it’s not as different as what’s come before as you might think.

A friend of mine recently quipped “most people working in software discovered technology before they discovered themselves.” There are so many people in the industry working on projects without a real personal narrative as to why they’re doing them, other than the intrinsic feeling that solving technical problems is fulfilling. There is a whole entrepreneurial scene in the Bay Area right now; I can understand the draw of building things, but the level of self-seriousness that people bring to something like a “customer loyalty” startup baffles me. Honestly, it’s simply not true that this stuff is “changing the world,” so don’t be too concerned about missing out if you don’t jump in as quickly as you can.

Please, don’t spend your late teens or early twenties in front of your computer at a startup. If you’re a young person, I think the very best thing you could do is get together with a group of friends and commit to a one year experiment in which the substantial part of your life will be focused on discovery and not be dedicated to wage work — however that looks for you. Get an instrument, learn three chords, and go on tour; find a derelict boat and cross an ocean; hitchhike to Alaska; build a fleet of dirigibles; construct a UAV that will engage with the emerging local police UAVs; whatever — but make it count.

…

Completely unrelated to your work, but the name “Moxie Marlinspike” sounds wonderful. It’s obvious why you chose “Marlinspike”, after all as a sailor it’s an object that you may have found useful (and it’s not that uncommon to have a last name that is a tool or a trade). But the first name you chose – why did you choose it? Looking around for references to Moxie the most prominent one is for one of the earliest carbonated beverages sold in the world, which doesn’t sound too probable as an origin.

…

The notion of “realness as legality” is interesting to me because it seems like it should be possible for reality to extend beyond whatever is defined by law, yet this seems to be the litmus in most people’s minds. If I have a name which literally everyone in my life since childhood has known me by, it seems to me that this should be the definition of “reality,” not whether the government (who, by contrast, has a pretty cold and distant relationship with me as far as acquaintances go) agrees.

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