Links from May 2009 (Phil Gyford’s website)

Here & There — a horizonless projection in Manhattan: I've seen these in the flesh and they are very lovely. And a satisfying size. Well done Jack.
Schmusic [House is a Feeling]: An interesting write-up of a talk, with lots of YouTube examples, about Chuck Roberts' "In the beginning there was jack..." a capella "My House" sermon and how well it works over different instrumentals. (via Soul Sides)
Philgyford's mailman-archive-scraper at master - GitHub: My first Python code and my first attempt at using GitHub. Suggestions for things I've done wrong are welcome, but please be gentle.

NameThis :: projects: Nice idea... pay $99 for people to suggest names for your new thing. (via Haddock)
Pepys on Twitter (Pepys' Diary): Samuel Pepys will now be updating his Twitter feed several times a day from 343 years ago.

The Straight Choice | The election leaflet project: I'm slightly unsure about the "why" of this project but it has a great pedigree so I'm sure it will be a Good Thing.
William Heath’s blog » Customer service: His amazing battle to get Orange to stop chasing him for debts incurred by someone who started an account in his name while he was in another part of the country. Stunningly poor and dumb service.
YouTube - Unit Four Plus Two -- Concrete and Clay: 1965(?) video for the song, filmed on the building site that was to become the Barbican.
How do I stop the "Mailbox is at 90% of quota" alerts?: No, really, how do I do this in Thunderbird? Anyone? Or anyone know somewhere else I can ask where I might get an answer? It's driving me nuts enough to consider switching to Apple Mail.
BBC News | Programmes | Newsnight | Stephen Fry dismisses MPs' expenses row: Exactly what I needed. Stephen Fry putting the infuriating and angry-making MPs' expenses stuff into perspective. It's a very bad thing but there are more important things to get angry about. (via Tom Taylor)

LittleSnapper - Screenshot and Website Capture for Mac OS X Leopard: Extremely handy for taking screenshots of websites. Very slightly flaky in places but otherwise a joy.
Bug 247193 – imap quota notification is displayed again and again: Great. The problem I'm having with Thunderbird has remained unfixed for FIVE YEARS. Go team! May have to switch.
Five Geek Social Fallacies: Old, but I'd forgotten them if I ever saw them before. #5 particularly relevant to the question of whether to organise things via Twitter.
Raph’s Website » The perfect geek age?: "Was being born in 1971 the perfect time to be born a geek?" Well duh, of course! It's a well known FACT. (via Boing Boing)

The Little Manual of API Design (PDF): Sounds like a handy thing for future reference. (via Simon Willison)
Bits & Pixels – Blog Archive – Cross-browser transparent columns: How to make the background of a block semi-transparent but have the content opaque. Bit of a palaver, but it works.
Welcome, 'Wired'. We call this land "Internet" | Boing Boing Gadgets: Interesting thread on Wired mag vs Wired.com, the relative importance and worth of each, their writers, conflicts of differing deadlines, content length, etc. No easy answers.
Yahoo! Placemaker™ Beta - YDN: Parses text and extracts any recognisable locations. (via Simon Willison)

BLDGBLOG: This Gaming Life: An Interview with Jim Rossignol: A very good read on architecture and gaming. Makes me feel all "yay".
Rules for Time Travelers | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine: Entertaining list of rules about time travel. (via Kottke)
Johnaugust.com » Take away the questions: Following on from those time travel rules: "In any script, look for scenes in which characters answer questions, and try to find ways to take the questions away."
My Cassette's Just Like A Bazooka?: A complete discography for all the tapes/records/CDs given away by NME between 1981 and 1988. Also some good commentary on the music and the paper. All we need now is a torrent...
YouTube - Cassetteboy vs The Bloody Apprentice: By half way through I couldn't stop laughing. Bloody brilliant.

Simonw's geocoders at master - GitHub: Python "code for accessing various geocoding web services with an ultra simple API". Sounds good.
Code: Flickr Developer Blog » Flickr Shapefiles Public Dataset 1.0: I keep seeing cool code stuff whizz by and I'm not making anything with it. May need to ringfence time from other commitments just to *do* something.
Batteries Feel Included: 309 - Easy Solutions #1: "So, you're in love with one of your friends, but she has a boyfriend and probably wouldn't have sex with you anyway." Excellent, easy to follow, advice. (via Haddock)
Dice-O-Matic hopper and elevator - GamesByEmail: A 7 foot tall machine that can roll 1.3 million dice every day, photographs them, and uses them as a random number generator for code.

Links from May 2009