Infernus

(Thanks to the good Samuel Johnson for the title.) Apparently Japan will now teach patriotism in schools. Patriotism is a useful tool in politics: indeed, one would be pressed to think of a better tool. For when you invoke patriotism you invoke tribalism; you invoke the spectre of your enemies; you simplify and view subtleties [...]

Slowly, yet surely, J2ME is driving me completely mad. One of the nicer features of Java once write-once, run-anywhere – sure, you often need to arse around with user-interface tweaks (Swing for GTK+ and Mac OS X being prime examples), or with application server differences, but there’s a decent chance your business logic will run [...]

Hot on the heels of Silverlight (perhaps too close to avoid calls of ‘catch-up’) comes JavaFX, Sun’s answer to Flash and like (and hopefully solution to some of the joys of J2ME). One does, however, wonder if they’ve heard of brand dilution. Unlike J2ME, however, this isn’t Java but the scripting language formerly known as [...]

Having recently acquired a Pocket PC phone with 3.5G internet, I find myself in need of a feed-reader. I use NetNewsWire on my Mac – and it is superb – and NewsGator to ensure that I need only read once across all my devices. However, NewsGator has two flaws: firstly, there is no Linux client, [...]

Microsoft have just given the somewhat badly named WPF/E the shiny new label of ‘Silverlight‘. What’s more, they’ve actually made it interesting. WPF/E was a flash competitor built around XAML, Microsoft’s XML format for UI specification. Interesting, yet not really adding much more than you can already get in Flash or Apollo. Along with the [...]

Oh my. Someone went and leaked a HD-DVD key on Digg (far from the first place it ha appeared). The world’s worst piece of legislation is invoked (DMCA) and they get a take down notice. They try to implement, only to surrender to an overwhelming flood. Indeed, you can read about nothing else on Digg [...]

As if in a flash, I found yesterday that 17 months have passed since I signed up for an 18 month contract with T-Mobile. This means one important thing: I’m eligible for an upgrade. Hurrah! I signed up back in the formative days of Web’n Walk, where they offered half price line rental for 12 [...]

And today has seen a little more work Underground: The shared tracks algorithm has been rewritten (God knows what I was thinking of when I wrote it). Track size is now based on the zoom level. Bezier curves have been implemented (with a little help). Central tracks are now reasonably smooth. Still doesn’t do anything [...]

I’ve finally pulled finger today and geo-coded the entire London Underground. Yes, my long abandoned Tube on Google Maps has had a makeover. Not only is it now full screen, with the ability to toggle stations and lines on and off, but all [underground] lines are now present, along with the 275 stations. There are [...]

I’m all sorted at work now – I’ve left my Windows environment to atrophy and am using Ubuntu 7.04 as my main environment. What have I found? The good: It’s worth it just for the decent console. Windows magically change height to match as you drag from screen to screen. My Mac could do with [...]