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Writing: 2009

  1. Top Tunes 2009

    My favourite music of 2009.

  2. Week 340

    Summing up 2009, which, again, has felt too aimless.

  3. Finishability

    BERG’s video about digital magazines mentions the importance of a magazine being finishable, which is also true for news.

  4. Week 338

    Finishing Misfits, learning Django, turning down work.

  5. Making news easier to read online

    The New York Times Skimmer is an improvement over most newspaper websites, but it’s not there yet.

  6. Is modern web design too like print design?

    I’ve been wondering whether we’ve lost the “webness” of web design, whether it’s all too dull and influenced by print design.

  7. Week 337

    Work tailing off, and needing to be firm with myself to Get Things Done.

  8. A dispiriting blank side

    How writers and an artist cope with the blank page.

  9. Week 336

    Moving into the “learning and making things” phase that fills the spaces between work.

  10. Week 335

    Misfits is slowing down and the end is in sight.

  11. How’s the acting going?

    More than a year on, people still keep asking me this. Short answer: “It’s not.” But that’s fine.

  12. Not too many buttons

    The problem with the OpenOfficeMouse isn’t too many buttons. It’s more fundamental.

  13. Misfits

    The “Misfits Online Experience” has just launched, with all code by me for Six To Start.

  14. New London Review of Books website

    I did much of the HTML/CSS for the newly-relaunched LRB website.

  15. Flickr machine tags for film photos

    Creating Flickr machine tags to store information about photos taken on film.

  16. Haddock Blogs down for a bit

    Haddock.org is down for a bit, but the RSS feeds are now back up and running.

  17. Games have rules

    Frustrated by the lack of rules in Foursquare making me feel like a loser.

  18. The £10,000 playlist

    Why do we need a collection of MP3s when we can stream everything? What does that collection mean to us?

  19. A still more glorious dawn awaits

    Getting excited about outer space futures for the first time in years.

  20. I want to care

    The mainstream political parties don’t need social media strategies. They need policies that we can care about.

  21. Stilt-walking ants

    Some fun things about ants.

  22. Stand on the right

    What advice would you give to people visiting London for the first time?

  23. Time to follow Samuel Pepys

    If you’re ever going to follow Samuel Pepys on Twitter you should start now.

  24. Ununited Eurasia

    I worked on a project with Six to Start to promote Muse’s new single.

  25. All that guff

    Clarifying a couple of issues in my previous piece about newspapers’ problems.

  26. Why do you like running?

    Having complained about the quality of newspapers, now I’ complaining about TV and radio news.

  27. Anyone can write this crap

    David Simon wants newspapers to be as good as they once were and start charging. I’m not sure they were ever that good.

  28. No one will be pointing at them

    If all websites cost money to read, what would I pay for?

  29. Shownar

    I recently worked on Shownar, a new website about which BBC TV and radio programmes are surprisingly popular.

  30. The highwalks are an island

    A response to Will Wiles’ post ‘In Praise of Beech Street’.

  31. When theft isn’t theft

    Why I dislike the use of the word “theft” in relation to illegal downloading of software, music, movies, etc.

  32. Twittering betimes

    Samuel Pepys is on Twitter but doesn’t have many friends. Here’s why you should be his friend.

  33. Mailman Archive Scraper

    A Python script I wrote that scrapes a Mailman mailing list archive and republishes it elsewhere, with some optional additional changes.

  34. Email improvisation

    Guidelines for successful improvisation, whether on stage or on a mailing list about an imaginary office.

  35. Pretend Office

    I’ve been enjoying myself on the employee mailing list of a fictitious company.

  36. A tiny, tiny fraction

    I’ve archived a few GeoCities sites that will otherwise soon be wiped from the web by Yahoo.

  37. Ugly and neglected fragments

    GeoCities is an ugly disorganised mess. But it’s still a huge shame that Yahoo! is closing the whole thing down.

  38. Google Street View

    Google Street View is currently at its least amazing stage. Two thoughts on why and how it will get better as the years go by.

  39. It’s not a race

    Wondering why the BBC continually schedules hit US TV shows in bizarre ways, as if they don’t want anyone to watch them.

  40. Liking something the wrong way

    I was banned from a Flickr user’s photos for favouriting them too often.

  41. SXSW 2009

    A summary of my experience of the conference.

  42. Old Think for Old Publishers

    The ‘New Think for Old Publishers’ panel at SXSW 09 was an exercise in failing to managing expectations.

  43. Choosing a wiki

    A quick run-down of what I looked at when trying to choose a wiki for Septivium.

  44. Chart Hits 83

    Some of my favourite tunes from a cassette compilation I had when I was twelve. And why mainstream nostalgia makes us neglect things.

  45. Septivium

    I’ve started a new site, about learning everything.

  46. A new kind of front page

    A step towards a better front page for an individual’s aggregated content on the web.

  47. Flickr, Getty and the greater good

    The new Flickr/Getty arrangement is good for those aiming to get into stock photography, but not for the Creative Commons

  48. What am I up to?

    For everyone who thinks I’m just being an actor or something now.