An online notebook
This afternoon, I ‘designed’ a quite frankly rubbish link icon for this blog, in the style of the little rectangles one sees on many blogs, including this one. Here it is:
The font is Jason Kottke’s Silkscreen, perfect for this kind of small scale work.
Just noticed from the phpBB site that version 2.0.17 has been released. Hopefully this will solve some of the security problems we have been having over on Palimpsest, where various web robots have been brining the site to a standstill, creating multiple database sessions as they plough through the site.
Nice profile of Tim Berners-Lee, ‘inventor’ of the World Wide Web, in today’s Guardian:
There are, according to recent figures, more than 35 million web users in the UK today. More than 15 million British homes have internet connections and, thanks to faster broadband technologies, we are living in a radically different world from that which was predicted.
The world wide web has changed millions of lives in little more than a decade. For some it has changed fortunes as well: this week was the 10th anniversary of what is widely acknowledged as the beginning of the dotcom boom – when the web browser firm Netscape floated on the US stock market before ever turning a profit. That sparked a technology goldrush that has transformed modern communication. And while much of the boom was hyperbole, one rock solid fact remains: none of it would have happened if it was not for Tim Berners-Lee.Sir Tim, named last year as the greatest living Briton, is rightly heralded as the godfather of the web. It was he who, as a physicist working in Switzerland, turned the internet from a disparate collection of academic and military computer systems into an international network. Without his input, arguably, the world would be a far duller place. The global village would still be under construction, technology would still be the preserve of an elite, and revolutionary companies such as Google, Amazon – and even easyJet – would not exist.
Links:
Went on a course today (in Bristol! 3 hours drive! Still, beautiful scenery) to have a look at Snap, a piece of survey (as in questionnaires) software.
It was a good course, and introduced all the various elements pretty quickly. A couple of things annoyed me though. Firstly, the fact that the tutor had to go through the rigmarole of informing us that when using the software, ‘variables’ mean ‘questions’ and ‘code labels’ (or something) mean answers. How ridiculous. Why not just call them questions and answers in the first place? I mean, I know what those names mean, but it doesn’t really matter.
Secondly, it’s the fact that it completely ignores loads of the keyboard shortcuts many of us take for granted. Fair enough, ctrl-c, -x and -v do as you would expect, but then these are almost written in stone. But what about inserting a page-break? Ctrl-enter, as in Word and about a billion other apps? No way. Ctrl-S it is, I think. Barmy. Does Ctrl-A select the whole document? Nope. It inserts a frigging column break! Gah. Delete a whole question? I would go for ctrl-backspace, but no (that doesn’t seem to do anything). Ctrl-Y does the trick. Eh? And while I am at it, while they use the standard Microsoft icon set for the various toolbars, why did they decide to use a green tick sign for save, rather than the little disk everyone else uses?
Overall, though, apart from these things, Snap seems fairly competent. Being survey software, it is effectively a stripped down database attached to a stripped down stats package. But it works.
This from BBC News:
A South Korean man has died after reportedly playing an online computer game for 50 hours with few breaks.
The 28-year-old man collapsed after playing the game Starcraft at an internet cafe in the city of Taegu, according to South Korean authorities.
The man had not slept properly, and had eaten very little during his marathon session, said police.
Online gaming in South Korea is extremely popular thanks to its fast and widespread broadband network.
Games are televised and professional players are treated, as well as paid, like sports stars.
Professional gamers there attract huge sums in sponsorship and can make more than $100,000 a year.
The man, identified by his family name, Lee, started playing Starcraft on 3 August. He only paused playing to go to the toilet and for short periods of sleep, said the police.
“We presume the cause of death was heart failure stemming from exhaustion,” a Taegu provincial police official told the Reuters news agency.
He was taken to hospital following his collapse, but died shortly after, according to the police. It is not known whether he suffered from any previous health conditions.
They added that he had recently been fired from his job because he kept missing work to play computer games.
Good grief.