- The save page bookmark works with Google Reader. That is, it saves the link I’m reading rather than the Google Reader web page.
- Page turn. Rather than display the page as a long, scrollable single page, Instapaper paginates the document. You can “turn” the page much as you do in iBook or the Kindle app.
- Progress indicators. I like that it shows roughly how long a document is and how much has been read.
- Clean, minimal interface.
- The trick of reading the current page to make site like NYTimes (with page view restrictions) or LWN (pay walls) is a great idea but not completely reliable.
- Recent updates have been less stable. Going from day to night mode — an otherwise nice idea — almost always crashes. Putting the app into the background often loses the current location (it returns to the end of an archived article).
You’ve probably seen that it’s the Sinclair Spectrum’s thirtieth birthday today. There are lots of great retrospectives — this is probably the best single source I read — so I’m not going to rehash all that. But I thought it might be worth a few words of my own.
Like many Brits my age, the Spectrum was my first computer. Technically it was the family computer, but after a few weeks I was pretty much the only one who used it.
So there I was, trying to be a good Internet citizen. I updated my web server to use the latest version of Linux and… Boom! It would display the first post and then just peter out.
Unfortunately I don’t have the time or patience right now to track down exactly what the problem is — presumably something to do with PHP — so here you go: a new theme. It’s one of the ones I considered before I switched last time. A bit more minimal, more monochrome than last time. I like the minimal, and the lack of colour makes the pictures pop a bit more so it’s not all bad.
- Why the world needs introverts – “Introverts living under the Extrovert Ideal are like women in a man’s world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are.”
- Rubber Duck Problem Solving – Asking the question often gets you to the answer. I should know… nearly 20k reputation on Stack Overflow but less than a dozen questions asked!
- A TED speaker’s worst nightmare – This is brilliant.
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.”