• Deliberately uninformed, relentlessly so [a rant] – “Many people in the United States purchase one or fewer books every year. Many of those people have seen every single episode of American Idol. There is clearly a correlation here.” Wholeheartedly agree with this post. Not knowing stuff is fine. Being proud of not knowing stuff? Not so much.
• Twitter Can Predict the Stock Market – “Mao compared the national mood to the Dow Jones Industrial Average. She found that one emotion, calmness, lined up surprisingly well with the rises and falls of the stock market — but three or four days in advance.”

My first ideas when I first heard that this weeks PhotoFriday theme was “Architecture” was New York. I flirted with other places and ideas — such as the Eiffel Tower and a couple of shots from Vienna — but I kept coming back to the sky-scrapers and bridges of Manhattan. In the end I picked this one because it has Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building.

• Ideas are Nothing – Execution is Everything – “How often have you been approached by somebody who has a great idea for an iPhone app, and they will tell you the idea if you just do the programming, and then you will both share in the profits? As an aside, I wonder if this happens to book authors as well.”
• ‘Fractal’ mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot dies aged 85 – Ah, I remember all that time playing with Fractint on my 386SX… And I still don’t really understand the maths.

A few years ago I was very much “into” the whole open source movement. I read LWN (still do, actually). I bought a copy of The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

But one thing I never really did was contribute to open source projects. I never really had much need. They largely did what I wanted and when they didn’t, well, the modifications were too big to consider attempting in my spare time.

I’m not sure if this is close or abstract enough to count as a “Macro Shot,” which is this weeks PhotoFriday challenge, but I thought that it was close enough to be a contender. It’s a picture of the dead hard disk from my MacBook.

Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Unforgettable.” I’m entry number 198.

People are still laying flowers and postcards near where John Lennon died nearly thirty years after his death, so I think this qualifies as being “Unforgettable,” which is this weeks PhotoFriday challenge.

Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Reflect.” I’m entry number 257.

• Aerial views of New York – Neat pictures of Manhattan (and bits of New Jersey).
• Wallace and Gromit to appear on Christmas stamps – For once: Christmas stamps that I approve of.
• My First Week with the iPhone – I always assumed that a touch device like the iPhone would be pretty much useless for blind users. It’s good to be wrong.

• Protest The Pope – My images from todays “Protest the Pope” march and rally in London.
• Introducing: Yummy 2.5 – New version of Yummy, my iOS Delicious.com client, is now available on the App Store. Now includes iPad support, works better on iOS4 and has experimental pinboard.in support.

In fact I’m not completely happy with this image, at least for the theme of “Reflect,” which is this weeks PhotoFriday challenge. It’s a reflection but I’m not completely sure that it means “reflect.” But I couldn’t find one (or think of one to take) that would be more appropriate, so here it is. It was taken earlier this year in New York — it’s a reflection of the Chrysler Building in the building across the road from it.

• Pope adviser calls UK a Third World Country, deploys racism, then says atheists are aggressive – “The Vatican said the cardinal had not intended ‘any kind of slight’, and was referring to the UK’s multicultural society.” Well that’s okay, then. (Not.)
• Why parents can’t do maths today – Article on how they teach arithmetic in British schools. I think the interesting thing is that approaches to both long division and multiplication are now more heuristics than algorithms.