This is ZX81.org.uk

It started with a glitch that you can see in the middle of the screen.

It’s one of the screens in a new app that I’ve been developing. There’s lots of hard stuff in there but this is the first problem that has really stumped me. What it appeared to be was this: a text view (UITextView) on a table (UITableView) showed a nasty glitch when you tried to place the curser in the text box.

• http://j.mp/y4VgND – For those that are interested: this is kind of technology I use in my day job. Tens of millions of records per day… http://t.co/ebMpRB7w
• http://testflightapp.com – @ellenich http://t.co/cTkoDDuE
• http://instagr.am/p/H66l8hyQmV/ – Groovy. http://t.co/DcuOQldA
• http://lanyrd.com/2012/lidg37/ – Hopefully making it to my first London iOS Developer Group meeting of the year tonight. http://t.co/NbKIMnTT #lidg

• http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2012-03-06/ – “Our lawyer has instructed me not to listen to your product idea.” http://t.co/jDWArMa6
• http://www.etsy.com/listing/91617431/upcycled-apple-computer-pet-bed?ref=cat_gallery_10 – Heh, for @krider2010 and @shabba1973. “@CMoz: Niiiice http://t.co/Tm2wIvmT Cat & mac lovers will love this!! :D”
• ZX81.org.uk – Photography, opinions and other random ramblings by Stephen Darlington – I’m moving zx81.org.uk to a new server, so if things are a little glitchy there for a while, that’s why.

• http://yfrog.com/nxqygvp – Thanks Xcode, very helpful. http://t.co/sYay95eo
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLfghLQE3F4 – Re. the privatisation of the Police… Fry and Laurie got there first in the eighties… http://t.co/VmYwnb20
• http://m.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/01/hitchens-201201 – @pdparticle Not necessarily. http://t.co/wnaNlFaj
• http://www.macworld.com/article/165587/2012/02/yahoo_facebook_in_intellectual_property_dispute.html#lsrc.rss_main – I guess this means that Yahoo! are officially on their way out. If you can’t compete, sue over vague IP rights. http://t.co/jCcILiUS
• http://instagr.am/p/HtVldeyQoU/ – Donkeys of Greece calendar: March 2012 http://t.co/UQe7wGzO
• http://bit.ly/ycpIfz – Unite Leader calls for competency on ‘a day of actual action’ http://t.co/OdrDQDjL
• http://geekpanic.com/post/18376086580/the-2-0-paradox – Interesting post on “The 2.0-paradox.” Thinking through this exact problem now. http://t.co/cqLqd2Ni
• http://pinboard.in/talks/biz.pdf – Interesting talk by the founder of @Pinboard. http://t.co/UwAHIHP6 [PDF]
• http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Scoopertino/~3/ntGLHzoJc6U/ – Apple takes the wraps off OS X Cowardly Lion http://t.co/9wM2DYVt
• http://j.mp/wW9h2u – “Apple’s share value hit an unprecedented $500bn… this morning, making the company worth more than Poland.” http://t.co/lkNP7zFY
• Cycling from the Czech Republic to Germany – I’ve updated all the images on my Prague to Meißen cycling trip blog. I’m better with Aperture than I used to be… It was a good trip; can’t believe it was in 2008!
• Rant: I Love Photography – Well said. Plus some great pictures!

Today the Telegraph had an article claiming that “the top one per cent of British earners are now paying almost 30 per cent of all income tax.” It’s then painted as a bad, unexpected revelation. But I’m not sure that should be the case. In one of my mini-Ben Goldacre moments, I think it’s one of those areas where your intuition and the numbers don’t necessarily align.

This post isn’t about politics or fairness or even, really, taxes. Instead it’s about maths, because what the story fails to say is that you would absolutely expect a small number of high earners to foot most of the bill.

• An Attribution Failure Theory – “Credit is easy. Well, mostly easy. It might have been hard to get the format of citations right at first in school when we were writing papers, but the act of citing is easy. You just do it. Yet, people all over the Internet don’t.”
• You Are Not Ruthless Enough – “Here’s the thing: you are not ruthless enough. You are certainly not ruthless enough to your objects, and you probably need to be more ruthless to yourself.” Programming Is Hard, Part 381.
• You Will Never Kill Piracy, and Piracy Will Never Kill You – “The seven step, ten minute download process (which will be about ten seconds when US internet speeds catch up with the rest of the world) is the real enemy the studios should be trying to tackle.”

I have to say that I love this slideshow feature in Aperture. I know it’s not new, it’s been there for a couple of years at least, but I just found it. To test it I put in a bunch of pictures that I took on my travels last year. I originally put some music on it too, but I had to take it off for the version on YouTube…

• Why are software development task estimations regularly off by a factor of 2-3? – Great answer. Very, very familiar…
• The Lego ZX81 – As per title. Very cool!
• Why I Hate Android – “When you think about it in the context of this election season we’re entering, it’s a brilliant political maneuver that Google has pulled off with Android. They’ve taken something they’ve done that’s actually bad for us and spun it in such a way that most people actually buy into it being good for us.”

Apparently the movie studios are placing further restrictions on rentals in order to promote the purchase of shiny disc. Marco Arment says this won’t work because:

If I’m adding a movie to my Netflix queue, I’ve already decided not to buy the DVD. I’m adding it because it looks mildly interesting and I’d like to watch it sometime.

I take the opposite approach. I am unlikely to buy a movie unless I have previously rented it. Why would I buy it if I don’t know whether or not I like it?

You’ve almost certainly seen that Wikipedia is kinda-sorta offline today protesting a proposed US law that would effectively give copyright holders the ability to blacklist pretty much any website without judicial review.

While rights holders do have legitimate concerns over people taking content without paying for it — I don’t like to call in piracy or theft — this really isn’t the answer. Wired sums it up nicely: