October 3 2006
Why learning Haskell/Python makes you a worse programmer: So, learning Python and Haskell has demoralised me and encouraged me to write code that is bizarre and difficult to understand, and,…
September 20 2006
“Only the largest enterprises will be able to justify owning and operating their own servers.”
September 1 2006
The unremitting voice of nightly streams That wastes so oft, we think, its tuneful powers, If neither soothing to the worm that gleams Through dewy grass, nor small birds hushed in…
August 14 2006
People are starting to wise up to the distortions of bubble math surrounding the recent rush of interest in socially oriented websites steaming ahead under the banner of Web 2.0, but it is interesting…
August 4 2006
I guess this is only relevant for Illicit headz or my generation of Welli kids who remember Switchblade being quite possibly the best Package cover of all time, but hot damn... Looks like the new…
July 21 2006
I'll never write another novel on an electric typewriter. I'd rather use a sharp stick and a little pile of dogshit. - Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker On rereading this, and pondering…
July 13 2006
The games industry has come to a crossroads, something that is becoming more and more apparent as I engage deeper into research for my upcoming game (more on that soon). The Guardian Games Blog has…
June 29 2006
The synthesis of form Is not as some have thought A process whereby time Unwravels the intentions Of a hidden creator. But removing the teleological Source of all life Does not make the universe Cold…
May 16 2006
Yes, I'm still alive. No, I'm not planning to be at Webstock even though the lineup looks fantastic and me ol' mates Mark and Phil will be showing off some pretty cool stuff in the 8x5 session. I…
March 25 2006
I think someone is trying to tell me something... I've been noticing requests for http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/http popping up in the logs, which is probably a sign that I should be fixing a few…
March 8 2006
Joel on Software has published the first draft of a short essay on usability, where he makes the salient point that: Something is usable if it behaves exactlyas expected. This principle of usability…
February 15 2006
I noticed that New Zealand is not included on the Prejudice Map. Due to the obvious weirdness of our location on many Euro or US-centric world map projections, it's always funny to see where we are…
January 31 2006
Talking to a friend the other night who remarked that she thought surely most people still use the internet for porn, just like always? Which got me thinking about the latest movements towards logging…
January 28 2006
What error correcting code could cross the much vaunted gap Of people as particles, or functions of an ever fluctuating wave? Attraction and repulsion are forces, of matter, they don't, At least…
January 21 2006
Thanks again to Harry, I stumbled across two fascinating projects that tackle a particular fundamental problem in PHP5. The ambition of metaphp is to take over the world, and that's actually not such…
September 25 2006
My Salient feature about the gender imbalance in computer science is out - Putting Women in their Place. Obviously, it's focused on the specific situation of VUW, but it should be relevant in a…
September 19 2006
How could this have happened? How could some of the best, most fact-checked, most reputable news organizations in the English-speaking world have been so gullible? The answer is that they…
August 17 2006
The many "copycat" and "self-starter" groups that have been "inspired" by al-Qaeda and that have sprung up in England, Spain, Indonesia, and elsewhere will continue to pose the threat of attacks.…
August 13 2006
See how that one little cloud floats like a pink feather from some gigantic flamingo. Now the red rim of the sun pushes itself above the London cloud bank. It shines on a good many folk, but on…
July 26 2006
It may not matter whether Australian uranium is exported from three mines or thirty... This proposal, according to Labour leader Kim Beazley should define Australia's uranium policy. But maybe…
July 19 2006
This technique been mentioned in passing for a couple of years now, and recently seems to be gaining a fair amount of attention. Many web designers love the idea of building dropdowns like this.…
July 13 2006
The writer is doubtless stricken with writers block And can thus, for weeks, vanish into a myriad of dark rooms Where conversation dangles under glistening rows of liquor. The programmer is expected…
June 14 2006
The logical positivist movement stemming from the Vienna Circle is famous for its empiricist approach to scientific rationality and a theory of meaning based around the principle of verification.…
April 28 2006
March 24 2006
Last year, I picked up this curious book which seemed to sum up the zeitgeist of web programming in 2005 - an interesting and polemical twist from O'Reilly
March 7 2006
Trapped in the Neue Zealand ghetto region, and can't even fly to Auckland at the moment, let alone San Diego... But I'm keenly interested in a couple of presentations in particular: Firstly,…
February 5 2006
They say love is just chemicals In your bloodstream, tiny baubles, Inscrutable in their subtle action. You say love is a physical force, An emotion greater than any other, So impossible to…
January 31 2006
However many gaze across the evening At these crowded tentacles of suburb? Skulking gibboard ghettos bordered By sanded concrete fringes, locking The mediocre and the restless, Fuming with resentment, For…
January 26 2006
Google have released a bunch of high level statistics from a recent survey (SVG capable browser required), looking at the relative frequency of HTML elements across more than a billion web documents.…
January 19 2006
I'm not usually one to jump onboard the blog meme wagon, but after seeing the recent proliferation of America in Ten Movies or Less, I started wondering which ten films would best sum up the New…
September 22 2006
People are starting to catch on to two very powerful ideas - that functional languages are ideal for building persistent storage repositories, and that a huge subset of web applications don't need…
September 15 2006
No programming language is appropriate for every situation.
August 14 2006
Microsoft have announced plans to release a stripped down consumer version of their Xbox 360 development tools, hoping to spawn the emergence of a massive network of homemade game content - the…
August 9 2006
The state of science education in New Zealand, is in dire need of a massive creative rejuvenation, but it can only occur to it's fullest once there is widespread knowledge of an irreconcilable crisis…
July 22 2006
Via bTang, I just stumbled across this crying sculpture (.pdf) which explores the theme of communication through tears. Crying is often considered solitary and individual, but here a significance…
July 18 2006
The abnihilization of the etym by . . . the first lord of Hurtreford expolodotonates through Parsuralia with an ivanmorinthorrorumble fragoromboassity amidwhiches general uttermost confussion are…
July 4 2006
Just meandering on the Coromandel...
May 27 2006
Alain de Botton was in Wellington this week, promoting his new book The Architecture of Happiness, and we heard him speak the other night to a packed auditorium at Wellington Girls College, courtesy…
April 19 2006
We all suspected that Marty was an insane genius, seems the art world is starting to pay him some attention after the close of the Obsessive Drawing exhibition. Not that any of this publicity would…
March 11 2006
Clay Shirky on moderation strategies: Social software is the experimental wing of political philsophy, a discipline that doesn't realize it has an experimental wing. We are literally encoding…
February 23 2006
What is Yahoo! doing? That's the question asked by Greg Yardley, responding to recent talk about a pyramid of content creation, which he argues, shows how Yahoo's design decisions are being pushed…
February 2 2006
Recently, I've been looking for good case studies of the practical benefits of RDF adoption, and while I've found a little interesting stuff, I've been noticing a severe dissonance in the volume of…
January 28 2006
Charges: Silently enabling and contributing to the irreversible destruction of your planet. Absolving yourself of your responsibility to do anything about it that your immediate neighbors don't.…
January 25 2006
Eyebeam R&D have just announced the release of OGLE, a graphics extractor that intercepts OpenGL messages, and allows users to capture and save 3D data dumps that can be repurposed in a variety…
January 4 2006
It's 3am, after a night of boozing and rampaging in Whitianga and everything is closed except for a takeaway bar on one of the side streets. Rustic bogan dude steps out of the line at the counter,…