Boris: Make London a National Park!
Greater London National Park - sign the petition!
Greater London National Park - sign the petition!
2/5
Very short. Not as grubby as I was expecting. You'd be better off just reading The Lean Startup.
3/5
Engaging romp of an alien first contact mission to Earth as experienced by a video game developer.
It's spring time in the northern hemisphere, autumn if your water flows the wrong way down the plughole. Rendered in Catfood Earth.
(Published to the Fediverse as: Vernal Equinox 2014 #code #earth #equinox #spring #autumn #vernal The exact moment of Vernal Equinox 2014 rendered in Catfood Earth. )
Walking to work next to Andy Goldsworthy's wood line in the Presidio of San Francisco.
(Published to the Fediverse as: Commute failing to suck this morning... #photo #presidio Photo of Andy Goldsworthy's wood line in the Presidio of San Francisco, California. )
Pre-restoration photo of the Presidio Theatre in the Presidio of San Francisco.
(Published to the Fediverse as: Presidio Theatre #photo #presidio Photo of the Presidio Theatre in the Presidio of San Francisco, California. )
Did you know that Windows still has a vestigial finger command with just about nothing left to talk to? One of my New Year's resolutions is to bring finger back and unlike the stalled webfinger project I need to make some progress. Here's some C# to run your own personal finger daemon... you just need to create a .plan file in your home directory (haven't done that for a while):
(Published to the Fediverse as: Personal Finger Daemon for Windows #code #random #finger #fingerd An impractical attempt to bring finger back (the awesome UNIX utility for pinging a person, so much better than Facebook!) )
4/5
Epic book about the origins, frequency and long term outlook of life in the universe.
4/5
A search for a missing person is the backdrop for watching society start to collapse and the plot begin to thicken in the sequel to The Last Policeman. Here's hoping that the third book will be worth the wait.
Skype for Android is finally getting there. Push support means that it is now useful for more than conditioning your battery. Conversation read status is mostly synced between different client instances which is a big time saver. I'm actually starting to use it.
There is one horrible usability crime. When you open the app you get a list of unread conversations. Your set your finger in flight to the first one and then notice an ad sliding down from the top of the screen. With horror you realize it's too late to change course and you hit the ad instead of the conversation.
I'm not complaining about Skype being ad supported here, but if you were going to try and design a UI to trick people into clicking ads you really couldn't do better than this. I expect better from Microsoft.
Other than this the only real complaint is that new posts to group messages sometimes make it through to the notification bar and sometimes don't. You have to run the app periodically to see if there is something new.
Panoramic photo of downtown San Francisco by night from the end of Pier 14.
(Published to the Fediverse as: Pier 14 #photo #sanfrancisco Photo of San Francisco by night from the end of Pier 14. )
On Thursday The White House announced a trio of executive actions to fight patent trolls, most interestingly:
"Crowdsourcing Prior Art — To help ensure that U.S. patents are of the highest quality, the USPTO is announcing a new initiative focused on expanding ways for companies, experts, and the general public to help patent examiners, holders, and applicants find relevant “prior art”—that is, the technical information patent examiners need to make a determination of whether an invention is truly novel."
I've considered this for a few years as a for-profit business, paying a bounty to anyone who contributes prior art that helps take out a troll. But I have a way better idea: stop examining patents altogether.
(previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously)
(Published to the Fediverse as: You won't believe this one crazy trick that would fix the broken patent system #politics #patents The best way to fix patents is to stop examining them altogether. )
Export Google Fit Daily Steps, Weight and Distance to a Google Sheet
Accessing Printer Press ESC to cancel
Monitor page index status with Google Sheets, Apps Script and the Google Search Console API
Download a Sharepoint File with GraphServiceClient (Microsoft Graph API)
Enable GZIP compression for Amazon S3 hosted website in CloudFront
Scanning from the ADF using WIA in C#
International Date Line Longitude, Latitude Coordinates
Is it safe to open securedoc.html (Cisco Registered Envelope)?