vickytnz

tl;dr I decided to take interest in something that lots of other people do so I could talk to them.

I remember reading an article about the British show Bullseye that pointed out that the blue-collar workers shown in the 80s episodes actually knew more about current events at the time than some educated people might today. It was expected as common knowledge and things you would talk about. These days, sport is still the key cross-section.

And I'm pretty sure that football transcends class in the UK these days (I know to be at least a little interested in Sunderland and NUFC games due to moving here, just as every Kiwi worth their salt knows at least a little about rugby).

OK, I missed that, but still, that suggests two US links (not that I can see the actual data, it just links to the homepage), and ... Wikipedia? What does that mean in terms of a data set?

A comedy channel in the UK decided to rename the channel a few years back. They bandied names around, then someone said. "How about Dave? Everyone knows Dave, Dave's your mate." Dave it was. As it turns out, David has been in the top 3 names from 1954-1994, so reality is if you're a Boomer, Gen X, or Gen Y, you really do know a Dave. (Stats table here: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/publications/re-reference-tables.h...)

Gah, I hate stats that a) don't say where the information comes from b) don't say which part of the world they're talking about (US sites are particularly prone to this). I'm assuming this is from US census data, but it's not particularly obvious. There's a rest of the world, you know.... [EDIT: looking at the app, maybe it is worldwide? Still, referring to things like "Republican" doesn't inspire confidence that it's international]

The real problem with Wikipedia redesigns is that they don't address their real issue: editing. Wikipedia have serious considerations encouraging a wider audience of editors, and to do so in a verifiable and generally professional manner. Show me a good means of encouraging people to edit and use Mediawiki, then I'd be interested.

Case in point: I had an edit war on Guy Fawkes' since one person refused to let me include information about Australia and NZ celebrating it but only in organised displays due to fire concerns (with news references and all), as they considered it 'irrelevant'. Started off an entire battle about it.

When I started working on my thesis, I immediately set up my entire document directory for it to be in Dropbox. At the time I paid extra for versioning but now I think it'd built into even the basic model. This also saved my friend when she was in writeup and someone stole her Macbook.

Or as usability people say: "you are not your user".

A pattern library is normally a collection of best UI practices: see the Yahoo UI pattern library http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/ or http://ui-patterns.com/ for the two most well known examples. (It comes from Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language and it being adapted to object orientated programming by the Gang of Four in 'Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software'). The ALA version is a bit odd as it's more style-guide like (you normally have more options).

… though as someone who's done conference reporting, it can get pretty exhausting fast (though for me I usually did the writeups that night and had to have them up the following morning. I used to go home after the conference and basically sleep for a day!)

I hope everyone knows you're quoting "The Elements of Style" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style

An aside: I've been reading Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Book Store. Good, breezy, semi-techy read.

I was at a girls' school. As a straight-A student in a rough school, helping fellow students was a tactic for not being bullied. But all it takes is one kid to decide to take an exception to you and it can all go horribly wrong. And you might have done absolutely nothing (I know I didn't, many years later the bully apologised and admitted exactly that) but it's the one wave that can turn a tide. And that was with all girls!

To be honest, the distancing was only because of nuclear powered ships (NZ being proudly nuclear free and refusing US ships right to take harbour in the country cost us the ANZUS alliance). Unfortunately it only took a new threat (cyberterrorism) to get us back in again. restrains self from saying something about John Key

I'd like to think that Macaw is like training wheels (or a fixie bike) for getting into web development. Is it production ready-code? Probably not. Does it do a good job of showing how things should work? Hell yes.

I also took it to mean that it's not classy to smoke hash (i.e. 'you stay classy, San Diego' :D)

I probably should have chosen a better mnemonic to start from! I'd point out that if you see greater and less than more like arrows it's utterly confusing. I'm not denying I'm probably weird in that respect, it's just something I have to use tricks to remember….

I was taught the crocodile thing, but had real issues with it: I can think it through but it's not fast. I'm pretty much ambidexterous (i.e. write with left and catch a ball with my right) so while I can do quite a lot of things with both hands I also have problems with left and right!

Urrgh, if you're going to ask for money, at least ensure you use 'its' correctly on the fundraising button (i.e. it should be 'reach its fundraising goal'. I really wish everyone would read the Oatmeal piece on apostrophes http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apostrophe

Also margin of error: the longer the name is, the more likely you'll mistype it somewhere and screw everything up.

Amused to see how US commenters take to the famously opinionated yet erudite CIFers :D

Great idea. One minor quibble though: it's 180 webpages or webapps for me at least. I'd say that websites require full infrastructure etc.

Props for the Leave It To Beaver tshirt :)

I know a designer who used to be a psychologist working with disabled children. He has a similar perspective: "it's design, not brain surgery!"

Covers two of my pet peeves: random unnecessary info about coffee and hand-crafting pixels, and those damn skills graphs. I do like the location bit though (it's useful to know if someone is in SF rather than London).

Doesn't being an EU citizen give you free right of work? (This is spoken as someone who's non-EU and is going to have all kinds of fun sorting out visas once I finish studying in the UK).

I wonder if this is an American issue. I'd like to think that in the UK we're taught to be polite and that sitting at a table for hours on a single coffee would be rude.

Depends if they can handle the infrastructure though. Auckland Central Library in NZ was right next to two universities which meant that during the day all seats were taken up by students and the internet slowed to barely able to connect. Newcastle Library here in the UK has such iffy internet that you can barely connect.

Pretty sure they're using the McDonalds techniques of subtly edging people out. They ain't doing that by accident….

As someone who occasionally does spend a few hours in a cafe writing (I'm doing my PhD and it stops me going mad), what's the fair payoff? Sit at a small table and buy a decent coffee (i.e. a latte rather than a cheap filter coffee) every two hours?