Links from April 2012

Links for Sunday 1 April 2012
Investments & ISAs | Your Ethical Money (an EIRIS initiative)
Big searchable table of ethical funds.
Ethical Funds | Save up to 100% on Initial Charges!
Lists of Ethical Funds for ISAs (more categories in left-hand menu. It's been hard just to find what's available anywhere.
» Update 1 – From the Windy City Early Retirement Extreme: — a combination of simple living, anticonsumerism, DIY ethics, self-reliance, and applied capitalism
Just for the metaphor about why it can be good to have a slightly popular blog, but not too popular: "if you're living in the 16th century, discussing your round earth theory with fellow scientists is good. However, being publicly known as the round-earth guy will get you burned at the stake."
The Online Photographer: Open Mike: Hobbies and Interests
Lovely post on working out which pastimes you consistently enjoy, and what it is about them you love. "Free yourself of the ideas that don't actually fit you, even if they're 'supposed' to be central to the hobby."

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Links for Monday 2 April 2012
Bestinvest | Fund Search | Comments | Ethical | ISA | page 1
Aha, Besinvest's Fund Search tool's Advanced search options lets you filter by "Investment Themes", such as Ethical. It's a start.
Chris Heathcote: anti-mega: a new fashion aesthetic
Brilliant. Yes, all this. It saddens me when I look in trendy little fashion shops and it's all button-up shirts and brogues. Where are the new, wearable clothes of the 21st century?
An Essay on the New Aesthetic | Beyond The Beyond | Wired.com
Long, excellent essay from Bruce Sterling on the New Aesthetic, why it's very interesting, and the problems it faces. Well worth a read.

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Links for Wednesday 4 April 2012
[this is aaronland] haystack triptychs
More brilliance from Aaron - code to backup and make a lovely standalone site out of your Instagram photos.
The Reaction To 'Girls Around Me' Was Far More Disturbing Than The 'Creepy' App Itself - Forbes
Yeah, this I think. There is creepiness around the app but, also, I can use my *eyes* to *see* girls around me but not many people are suggesting we put out our eyes or make all women hide themselves when out in public.
Luxurious Animals Blog - Combining Easel.js and Box2d in Canvas
I have no plans to use this stuff, but it seems good, so if I bookmark it, it's as good as learned!
EaselJS: A Javascript Library for Working with the HTML5 Canvas Element.
What it says in the title. "The API is loosely based on Flash's display list, and should be easy to pick up for both JS and AS3 developers."
Seth Ladd's Blog: Box2D orientation for the JavaScript developer
A series of posts describing how to use Box2D, "an open source 2D physics engine" with JavaScript.
Theresa May's Internet History - a Freedom of Information request to Home Office - WhatDoTheyKnow
Very good. If she's done nothing wrong, she's got nothing to hide, so there should be no problem, so they say. (via @gwire)

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Links for Tuesday 10 April 2012
Why the New Aesthetic isn’t about 8bit retro, the Robot Readable World, computer vision and pirates
Rev. Dan Catt on the distinction between computer graphics and computer vision, as regards the New Aesthetic. A good distinction.
Caine's Arcade on Vimeo
Lovely. Tears of happiness by the second half. (via Kottke)
Authenticity/Access | One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age
On how historical web pages (such as Geocities) appear differently now, even if you have all the original assets. eg, browser rendering, text anti-aliasing, MIDI audio, screen resolutions, etc.
Russell M Davies: History will remember Samuel Pepy's blog (Wired UK)
Nearly there. (Thanks Russell!)

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Links for Wednesday 11 April 2012
Your Choices | YourOnlineChoices UK
Opting out of ads that creepily follow you round the web. Includes advertising services that weren't on the Network Advertising Initiative page I linked to a couple of weeks back. (via @rooreynolds)

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Links for Thursday 12 April 2012
Envac – Residential areas
Vacuum-powered "waste handling". Maybe this is what the proposed Ikea development would use. Presumably more modern than the Barbican's old Garchey system.

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Links for Friday 13 April 2012
BBC - Weather - Get BBC Weather on your mobile
"Go to the web application on your mobile phone menu and type in www.bbc.co.uk/weather/mobile" I'M IN THE WEB APPLICATION! THIS IS A WEB PAGE! It's not even a clickable link.
Olympics 2012: branding 'police' to protect sponsors' exclusive rights | Sport | The Guardian
If you were wavering over your opinion of them, every paragraph here takes you closer to thinking "fuck the London Olympic Games 2012."
A Baseline for Front-End Developers - Adventures in JavaScript Development
All good stuff. But I must admit, after doing front end dev work (not solely, but a lot) over the past, what, 17 years, these days it's really, really hard to keep up. (via Dotcode)
PHP: a fractal of bad design - fuzzy notepad
This is all true, and so it would be good to read something about why PHP has been *so* popular despite being so bad. (via Paul Mison)
Edit Flow
This WordPress plugin looks like the bee's knees. Calendar, editorial comments, custom statuses, editorial metadata. And the site looks like it's been made by competent, caring people.
BuddyPress.org
This looks nice, and seems popular, although I wonder if it's overkill. Promising. Need to actually try these things.
Simple:Press
Another WordPress forum plugin. I dream of seeing one of these that looks simple and beautiful.
WordPress › Mingle Forum « WordPress Plugins
WordPress forum plugin that claims to be simple and good. Still looks like an old fashioned phpBB style forum though. (If you have a recommendation for a good WP forum plugin, do let me know!)

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Links for Saturday 14 April 2012
Essential JavaScript Design Patterns
Looks very, very good. But seeing this all on one page, rather than in book format makes my brain shake like it's about to explode. Too. Much. Stuff. To. Know. (via Tom Taylor)
List of windmills in London - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"A list of existing and former windmills whose sites fall within Greater London." Lists 15 locations in Clerkenwell alone. Internet is brilliant.

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Links for Sunday 15 April 2012
Issue #3057: bootstrap-dropdown.js clearMenus() needs ; at the end · twitter/bootstrap
Long, long discussion over whether to use a semi-colon or not. Saved to show non-coders how important the smallest details can be. And, also, USE SEMI-COLONS, WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!

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Links for Monday 16 April 2012
Magazine Modernisms | Dedicated to Modern Periodical Studies
A blog about interesting old magazines and journals.
MCEngine – The micro-comment engine | andydickinson.net
Another WordPress plugin for adding ability to comment on paragraphs (or just add "Winer Links" linkable paragraphs). Ah, it's a newer, better version of feedbackBP. Sounds very good, can't see any example though.
WordPress › Feedback by Paragraph (feedbackBP) « WordPress Plugins
"This plugin allows users to leave comments at paragraph level as well as post level." One of a few things that do this. Last updated in 2009... Update: Oh, replaced by MCEngine now.
EightMedia/hammer.js
"A javascript library that can be used to control gestures on touch devices. It supports the following gestures: Tap; Double tap; Hold; Drag; Transform (pinch)." Seems to work well.

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Links for Thursday 19 April 2012
24 ways: Rock Solid HTML Emails
2009, but I assume this is still a good overview of what you should and shouldn't do when making HTML emails.

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Links for Saturday 21 April 2012
Nick Sweeney: work and non work
Nick on the Instagram/Facebook thing, the value of work/play and user contributions. the CDDB comparison's an interesting one.

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Links for Monday 23 April 2012
Barbican Cinema's Official Tumblog
Documenting the creation of the new cinemas.

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Links for Wednesday 25 April 2012
New Plan To Redevelop Centre Point
Interesting in itself but also for the developer saying that in the long term, Centre Point will only be sustainable if turned into flats. Nice!
Modern Web Development
Pretty comprehensive and good look at the Chrome developer tools. A bunch of things I didn't know or had simply ignored. (via @simonw)
Descriptive Camera
A "camera" that outputs descriptions of the scene using Mechanical Turk. Very lovely. (via @tomtaylor)

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Links for Thursday 26 April 2012
Oids.X
Typical. There was, in 2003, a version of 'Oids' for Mac. I only realise this after Macs stopped running Power PC apps.

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Links for Friday 27 April 2012
CityDashboard: London
Not the prettiest thing in the world, but really nice as a "state of a place" display.

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Links for Sunday 29 April 2012
Towards a Socially Conscientiousness Lifestyle Design Movement | Beyond Growth
Not an appealing title, but quite a good 2010 post about whether solo "lifestyle businesses" are a good thing, for people or society.

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