Nice out there today 
Still, it might be cold, so best stay inside and waste time on the Web instead.
Happy invoicing!
Still, it might be cold, so best stay inside and waste time on the Web instead.- Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? - Utterly heartrending Pulitzer-winning piece by Gene Weingarten, on parents who accidentally leave children in cars: "The defendant was an immense man, well over 300 pounds, but in the gravity of his sorrow and shame he seemed larger still. He hunched forward in the sturdy wooden armchair that barely contained him, sobbing softly into tissue after tissue, a leg bouncing nervously under the table. In the first pew of spectators sat his wife, looking stricken, absently twisting her wedding band. The room was a sepulcher. Witnesses spoke softly of events so painful that many lost their composure.... It was an inexplicable, inexcusable mistake, but was it a crime? That was the question for a judge to decide."
- Galaga No-fire Cheat - "In the early 80’s my Uncle Mike told me about a bug in the arcade game Galaga. If you know the secret, and if you are willing to wait 15 minutes, you can make the bees stop firing at you... Was the cheat purposefully added to the code as a backdoor for players in-the-know? Or is the cheat a glitch in the software – an unexpected side effect that persisted over several releases of the game ROMs? If the cheat is a glitch, what is wrong with the code?" Chris Cantrell digs through disassemblies of the Z80 code to find out.
- David Mamet's brilliant memo on drama - "I discovered this extraordinary memo from David Mamet to the writers of THE UNIT, a series he created a few semesters back for CBS... It is a simply brilliant essay on drama and writing in general. In fact, it’s pretty much all you need to know about writing drama. Excuse that it’s written in caps. I didn’t want to change a single letter."
- Detailed LU Track Map - "Ah, you have to love the Freedom of Information Act, under which large companies and corporations are obliged to release certain information to the public upon request... The latest gem to emerge is from a request to LU/TfL here, where someone had requested a detailed signalling and track plan map." Now you can memorise your regular Tube route so you know exactly when the train will rattle as it goes over points
- Getting away with rewriting code from scratch - "Joel Spolsky’s oft cited tribute to the sunk cost fallacy, Things You Should Never Do, Part I, extolls the follies of starting from scratch... You can rewrite old Code, but the old Code still needs to be maintained, and migrations should be slow and steady. In my short life as a programmer, I’ve managed to rewrite two codebases without destroying the future of the company by following this simple dogma." tef (no other name given) explains how to do it.
- Circolwyrde Wordhord - A glossary of computer terminology in Anglo-Saxon, such as "beta release: unfulfremedbrytnung". Handy if you find yourself providing tech support to medieval scholars
- Such DFW. Very Orwell. So Doge. Wow. - "Once upon a time, not so long ago, most people didn’t write much, and even if they did, only a tiny handful of people might read the results. As a result, most of the words that people read were written by a tiny elite group of authors and journalists, and almost exclusively in an anodyne, pristine mode... The problem, of course, is that English, as actually used by 99% of its practitioners, has never been even close to formal, pure, and precise." Jon Evans asks if it's time for us to move on from notions of "correct" written English in favour of more colloquial forms.
- Down The Rabbit Hole We Go! 300+ Mind Expanding Documentaries - "On this list of mind expanding documentaries you will find different viewpoints, controversial opinions and even contradictory ideas. Critical thinking is recommended. I’m not a big fan of conspiracy documentaries but I do like films that challenge consensus reality and provoke us to question the everyday ideas, opinions and practices we usually take for granted." This lot should keep you going till Easter.
- 5 Huge Brands That Pissed Off Whole Countries With Marketing - "...a business is a careful balance of product development, client base, finances, infrastructure, and whether the mere existence of the product insults the entire consumer base so viciously that they show up at your factory with pitchforks. Oh, didn't consider that last one, did you? Well, you should." Thanks to northernladuk for this one
- Imagine finding me - I saw this at several places over the weekend, but thanks to SimonMac for sending me a link to an article which included a link to the artist's own site. Artist Chino Otsuka Photoshops her adult self into photographs of her as a child, such as this one in Paris in 1982 and 2005:
Happy invoicing!
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