Links from January 2010 (Phil Gyford’s website)

Commentpress: "An open source theme and plugin for the WordPress blogging engine that allows readers to comment paragraph by paragraph in the margins of a text."
Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive « alex.moskalyuk: If a pop science book is still too in-depth, this is a nice summary of the ideas in one. (Not sure where this is via as I belatedly read it on Instapaper.)
Looking Into the Past - a gallery on Flickr: Lovely photos featuring an old photo of the same view held between camera and background. Oh, just look, it'll make more sense.

David Simon - Vice Magazine: Once you're past the interviewer's introduction, this is good, aside from being split over several pages. Grr. Particularly liked the explanation of the Ancient Greek vs Shakespearean difference between The Wire and most other TV/film.
The Diary of a Nobody, as a daily weblog: From 'Punch' magazine in 1888.
Westminster City Council - The Life and Loves of a Victorian Clerk: Least inspiring implementation yet of realtime-historical-diary-online? No RSS, links, weblog view. Does have pictures though. And pointless generic "Was this useful?" block.
WW2: A Civilian in the Second World War: Another historical-diary-as-weblog, this time diaries from the home front in Essex during World War II.

Dave Eggers on his favorite things about newspapers | Books | Interview | The A.V. Club: An interview. I like, and share, his bemusement at newspapers' reliance on wire stories when the world isn't short of writers. (via Tom Taylor)
Simon Reynolds's Notes on the noughties: The musically fragmented decade | Music | guardian.co.uk: The 200 best albums of the noughties weren't as good as the best 200 of the 1960s. But the 2,000 best albums were better than the 2,000 best of the 1960s.
BLDGBLOG: Remnants of the Biosphere: Wow. Amazing to think this could be part of suburbs - I visited in 1997 and it was in the middle of nowhere.
Design 1968 Journal - VADS: the online resource for visual arts: A favourable period review of Britannic House, since revamped as City Point.

Dave's Mechanical Pencils: Uni Kuru Toga: A pencil in which the lead rotates when you press down so you don't get a sloping point. Plus: a blog about mechanical pencils! (via Crackunit)
Why Leslie Harpold's Sites Disappeared | Workbench: Sad-making. For the record, I would love it if everything I've ever put online remains available after my death. (via Haddock)
Walking Off the Big Apple: "A strolling guide to New York City." I'm planning a few days there in March, and I like walking around cities. Looks like a good place to start.

TinEye Reverse Image Search: Supply it with an image and it will look for other uses of that image on the web. (via Meish)
HomeAway Vacation Rentals: Beach Houses, Condos, Cabins, Villas & Vacation Rental Homes: Could do with "sort by distance from a given point" and better maps of each place's location, but handy otherwise.
Schneier on Security: The Comparative Risk of Terrorism: Some examples of how many Americans will die from different causes each day. eg, 50 murders, 85 suicides, 120 in traffic accidents. Every day.

Whole Earth Discipline: Online, annotated version of Stewart Brand's book. Annotations aside, seems to Instapaper quite well.
Flights - Search Data from Hundreds of Travel Sites for Cheap Flights at KAYAK: A good way to filter lots of flight search results.
John Graham-Cumming: Utter crap reporting from The Daily Telegraph: Also read the previous post about the CNN story. Come *on* journalists -- it's not difficult to at least be adequate at your job.

Flat rate VAT « Online accounting software news from Xero: Xero added support for the Flat Rate Scheme for VAT last month. I don't use Xero, but this is another reason to try it.
Dallas Clayton - An Awesome Book: If you need a little inspiring, this is like a lovely "think something big!" pill. (via Haddock)
Tools of Pro Django developer – aka What powers dinette and almost every app we write.: Some useful things to have a look into.
Notes on using pip and virtualenv with Django « SaltyCrane Blog: A handy guide. What am I getting into...

Robhudson's django-debug-toolbar at master - GitHub: Looks very handy for showing what's happening under the hood on your Django pages.
Express & Star: "Britain's biggest selling evening newspaper", their website now powered by WordPress.
Shift Run Stop – Episode 7: New Year’s Special – Adam Curtis and Avery Edison: Not to put down Avery Edison, but the Adam Curtis bits of this are fascinating and really worth a listen.

LRB · David Runciman · I Could Fix That: All interesting, but I particularly like the bits where Bill Clinton gets obsessed with details of things like Hubble and Dolly the sheep.
What all this Leno/Conan/Late Night Gubbins is about: a primer for friends in the UK (from little.red.boat ): Lengthy but clear explanation from Anna Pickard. Hurrah! I'm hoping she does get started on 'Saturday Night Live'...

Posthumous Hosting and Digital Culture – Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report: I've been pondering the same things, wondering about some kind of foundation you pay who will archive a static copy of your sites after your death. (via Waxy)
Timeline twins, music and movies: I keep thinking about this old post. I must be getting old. "Listening to Michael Jackson's Thriller today is equivalent to listening to Elvis Presley's first album (1956) at the time of Thriller's release in 1982."
Can't You Wait - Geographer: I don't *quite* understand it, but some refreshingly interesting design, not aping print.

CamWorld: Thinking Outside the Box: Cameron Barrett's account of SXSW 2000.
Hack the Planet: Are you sure?: A post-SXSW2000 discussion about weblogs and cliques and oh all those things that now seem so old.
Comments on 1142 | MetaFilter: A bit more flurry about weblogs and "3000 word" Ben Brown-style essays, post SXSW 2000. Quaint.
The benbrown website :: daily text: Ben Brown's 6985 word account of his SXSW 2000 and *that* weblog panel. A lovely piece, still worth a read.

The State of Split-Screen Gaming Article | Eurogamer: A summary of decent games to play with a friend in the same room. (Thanks Tom A.)
Boks - A Visual Grid Editor - Toki Woki.: An AIR application that generates customised CSS etc files for use with the Blueprint CSS framework. Handy.
Grange Hill Online - Locations: Amazing: matching up shots from Grange Hill episodes with photos of the real world contemporary locations. The Internet's fab. (via EnemyOfChaos on Twitter)

Links from January 2010