August 2004 – Page 10 – Something Odd!

Loos.. an expert in his field

I notice things. I can’t help it, but I do. Quite often I’ll miss the obvious but give me the obscure any day!
On the way to and from work last week I noticed a portaloo in the middle of a field! Everyday I meant to stop and take a few snaps of it, but I didn’t get around to it until Friday evening when it was being removed by this guy and his lorry!
No I have no idea why it was there!

Major Caching Update

I finally got around to profiling this site and came up with some astounding conclusions – it takes almost a second to fetch each post on this blog!
Therefore I’ve started to catch blog posts seperately from the main index page. In simple testing I’ve already noticed a significant speed-up but if you notice anything strange please leave a comment here or email me at the usual address!

Ireland=Atlantis?

According to this report Ireland could be where Atlantis was situated! Now if only it could have been somewhere exotic.. I wonder what was in Cork, like?

The Referers are Gone but I'm still kicking!

The referer db table just got hosed but I’ve rebuilt it. Unfortunately your referer listing is going to be a little short for a few days until it fills again!
Anyway, I have the following running each night. Should have done this before.

#!/bin/sh
export d=`date +%u` for i in `echo show tables |mysql -u username -ppassword b2` do echo "check table $i"| mysql -u username -ppassword b2 done mysqldump --opt -u username -ppassword b2 > backup/b2-$d.sql

the Bosco File

Thank God I’m not the only one keeping tabs on Bosco! Looks like the Bosco File is a pretty able guardian protecting the world from evil!
Even old friends are having doubts about his sanity..

Fortycoats said the “youngfeller is definitely not all there. I know he’s been drinking heavily lately, and there’s talk of drug abuse.”

The Ants Are Coming!

Last week flying ants came out in their millions and disrupted Irish life for a few days while they danced their mating dances! I was outside the office and spotted this lot coming out of their nest. It’s fitting that last weekend was the warmest this year! The average temperature was around 25deg C. Dry, dead heat!

Lots of Demos!

Woo, here’s a long list of demos! I might be busy tonight downloading this lot!

Link Catchup

That’s what weekends will do to you: you miss stuff! Here’s a few things I’ll be reading tonight.

Developing Photos That “Pop” – unfortunately it uses Adobe Camera Raw II but there’s probably something useful in there even for GIMP users!
USES AND APPLICATIONS OF 35mm LENSES – good humorous looks at lenses!
Over the gamut and through the woods – an in-depth, detailed look at colour.
Finishing a Full Game – applies to any project I suppose!
Digital memories survive extremes – the memory cards might survive but our digital archives probably won’t. 🙁

How HCI Killed Open Source

Great article and comic from usability guy, Tom Chi.
Brilliant comments too and so many quotables you should just read through them yourself. In an optimistic mood, I like to think there’s some way this could be solved:

OSS programmers are often just hacking in their free time because their day-jobs aren’t satisfying their desire to write strong code. So for those people, they’re coding as a hobby, not as a job, which makes it difficult to impose un-fun constraints on them like listening to a non-programmer (oh the humiliation) as to why their software isn’t usable. The trick here is to find a way that good HCI can mesh with the OSS mentality and development model. Any suggestions?

Like most things done “in their spare time”, things are far from perfect. When was the last time you cut the hedge so it was exactly straight, or washed and polished the car until it gleamed so much you could see your reflection in it – from 10 feet away? We need the hedge cutting and car washing professionals to join us in our spare time hobbies. Such a collaboration can only benefit both groups!
And if that site had permalinks to the comments I’d probably be linking to several of them. oh well, more usability work to be done! 🙂