This afternoon I signed up to a new web-based application from a very well-known media company. I gave them my email address and the password that I wanted to use and a few minutes later I got an email from them confirming my registration. That was fine. But then I noticed that the email from… Continue reading Basic Password Handling
Month: November 2005
Templating Systems
I’ve been thinking about templating systems a lot recently. By templating systems I mean technologies that allow you to mix some data with some fixed text to produce some kind of output. One obvious use is in creating dynamic web pages where, for example, you would create a row in a table for each item… Continue reading Templating Systems
It’s A Different World
Someone posted to Digg a link to this story on the BBC about the excuses that people give for being caught without a TV licence. This lead to a huge discussion along the lines of “d00d, they pay for TV over there – that’s teh suck!”. A few brave souls have tried to explain the… Continue reading It’s A Different World
Social Dilemmas
It’s always the same isn’t it? You wait all year for a decent geek night out and then two come along at once. So where shall I go on December 12th? London 2.0 or the Backstage meet-up. Decisions, decisions…
Unreliable Authors
Have you ever been reading something that you are enjoying when suddenly you come across something which is so stupid that you lose all confidence in the author and can no longer take anything they write seriously? It happened to me this morning as I was reading the introduction to Open Source 2.0. In the… Continue reading Unreliable Authors
Dixonsvision
A new word for the 21st century. Many people now own widescreen TVs. Most new TV programmes are made in widescreen. However TV stations still like to broadcast some older programmes that were made before programmes were made in widescreen. This gives you two options. You can either watch the programme in the correct aspect… Continue reading Dixonsvision
Hear From Your MP
The latest site from those nice people at My Society is called Hear From Your MP. The idea is simple (like most good ones) – you give them your name, email address and postcode and they add you to a list of people interested in hearing from your local MP. When they get twenty names… Continue reading Hear From Your MP
Interesting Open Source Books
A couple of interesting books on Open Source Software that I’ve read recently. Karl Fogel’s Producing Open Source Software should be essential reading for anyone involved in an Open Source project (or planning to get involved in an Open Source project). Fogel has been an important contributer to a number of major Open Source projects… Continue reading Interesting Open Source Books
Web Frameworks Night – Report
So last night was the Web Frameworks NIght. A great time had by all. Many thanks to the organisers. We had talks on three frameworks – Catalyst, Django and Ruby on Rails. My overwhelming impression was how similar all three frameworks are. There really seems to be little to differentiate them. As always the Perl… Continue reading Web Frameworks Night – Report
Java Programmers Embrace Ruby
Bruce Tate’s book Beyond Java has been published and there’s quite a lot of publicity for it appearing on the web. For example this article by Chris Adamson on the OnJava site. In the article Adamson interviews a number of well-known Java programmers about the future of Java. The replies seem pretty unanimous that Java’s… Continue reading Java Programmers Embrace Ruby