http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf mutes ... or should I? Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:02:32 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en In a discourse in Plato's The Republic, the integrity of man is questioned and, perhaps, ultimately deemed to be fundamentally flawed: The Ring of Gyges is a mythical talisman that grants its owner the power to become invisible at will. Using the story of the ring, Plato's Republic, explores whether ... http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/10/19/death-note-a-modern-take-on-platos-gyges-ring/ Being told I have to stay at home and rest is always difficult for me, I get bored very easily, so I thought I'd lye in bed and catch up with some feeds - when I came across the above talk. I've written about Karen Armstrong and the Golden ... http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/10/02/karen-armstrong-lets-revive-the-golden-rule/ Publishing to the web has never been easier, with the proliferation of content management systems, online blogging platforms, microblogging, and more. However, publishing data is either the preserve of organizations prepared to manage their own IT, or requires individuals to sign up for one web 2.0 service after another. RDFa provides ... http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/09/18/beyond-web-2-0-how-rdfa-can-help-democratise-data-on-the-web/ Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories -- and maybe, a way forward. A very useful and thought provoking talk, Dan does well ... http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/08/28/dan-pink-on-the-surprising-science-of-motivation/ Psychologist Philip Zimbardo says happiness and success are rooted in a trait most of us disregard: the way we orient toward the past, present and future. He suggests we calibrate our outlook on time as a first step to improving our lives Interestingly enough having recently re-read George Lakoff’s Metaphors ... http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/07/19/philip-zimbardo-prescribes-a-healthy-take-on-time/ I've spent some time recently writing ant scripts to generate documentation, combine and minimise multiple javascript files into a single download. I thought I'd share what I have, in case others find it useful or can suggest better ways of doing what I'm trying to accomplish. Combining multiple JS files ... http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/07/19/combining-minimising-and-distributing-javascripts/ I travelled down to Oxford last weekend to attend the rdfQuery Dazzle event. Fairly early on we decided that one of the things we wanted to achieve was to get v1.0 of rdfQuery released. This involved a fair bit work, not only did we need to get unit tests working ... http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/07/19/rdfquery-10-released/ We are currently recruiting for a number of different positions at Talis, amongst these are several openings to join our development teams. Rob has already discussed the Web Application Technical Lead role, and I'll like to mention that we are also looking for Senior Developers to join both our Platform ... http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/07/19/were-hiring/ Faster than a speeding bullet! Easier to maintain than something that's really easy to maintain! Reliable! That's what we want from our tests, but how do we get there? This presentation covers key strategies and patterns for writing test suites using WebDriver, a developer focused tool for web application testing ... http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/06/14/webdriver/ You ever had one of those days when you get home from work, your tired, but you carry on working because there always seems far more to do than time to do it in? you feel like you want to find a way of picking yourself up out of whatever ... http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/06/11/yusuf-islam-the-cat-of-old/ It's not often I watch an anime, or any movie, that not only moves me but forces me to ask questions about society and our shared humanity. Jin-Roh is a title that has hovered around my awareness for years but I've never gotten around to watching it, at least not ... http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/05/25/jin-roh-the-wolf-brigade/ Afro Samurai:ResurrectionLast September I reviewed Afro Samurai which was one of the best anime's I'd seen in a long time. By the end of the first movie Afro had avenged his father and found a life of peace. In this sequel that peace is shattered by the arrival of a ... http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/05/25/anime-reviews-afro-samurai-resurrection-plus-more/ Many people have been mailing me and asking why I haven't blogged in a few months, and where I have been. Well in short I took a month off to get married to Sadia :) We are both very happy ;-). I've started putting pictures of our wedding into a ... http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/05/19/im-married/ Seth Godin argues the Internet has ended mass marketing and revived a human social unit from the distant past: tribes. Founded on shared ideas and values, tribes give ordinary people the power to lead and make big change. He urges us to do so. This is a great talk by ... http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/05/19/seth-godin-on-the-tribes-we-lead/ ABSTRACT This is the second talk that follows-up on the 14 best practices from YSlow and "High Performance Web Sites". The first talk presented three new best practices: Split the Initial Payload, Load Scripts Without Blocking, and Don't Scatter Inline Scripts. The most important of these is loading external scripts without blocking ... http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/03/19/lifes-too-short-write-fast-code/ 20 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. For his next project, he's building a web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, video: unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together. This is an inspiring ... http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/03/16/tim-berners-lee-the-next-web-of-open-linked-data/ This demo -- from Pattie Maes' lab at MIT, spearheaded by Pranav Mistry -- was the buzz of TED. It's a wearable device with a projector that paves the way for profound interaction with our environment. Imagine "Minority Report" and then some! Think Microsoft Surface without the table! This is ... http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/03/12/the-sixth-sense-wearable-tech/ Seem to have watched a lot of anime over the last few months. Here's a couple of brief reviews: Guyver: The Bioboosted ArmourThis new 26 part collection is a modern makeover of the original classic 1980's anime series. Based on Yoshiki Takaya's popular manga. The remake boasts a wonderful soundtrack ... http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/02/22/anime-reviews/ During a conversation with a certain cat loving friend of mine earlier on in the week it was suggested to me that its been a while since I've blogged anything other than short pieces highlighting bits of news or content out there on the web. She's absolutely right. So here's ... http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/02/22/2009-an-update/ ABSTRACT When I first visited the Palestinian territories, I was afraid I would have to hide my identity as an American and possibly wear a headscarf. To my surprise, I was warmly welcomed exactly as I was, and after more than two years living and working there, it remains one of ... http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/02/22/the-palestinian-perspective-what-the-world-looks-like-from-the-west-bank/ Browsers are continually upgrading - providing new features from the latest specifications. We'll look at modern JavaScript and DOM techniques that you can easily drop in to your applications for instant speed-ups. This is a great tech talk by John Resig that covers features in upcoming browsers such as new javascript ... http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/02/15/drop-in-javascript-performance/ Tim Berners-Lee gave a talk at TED2009 on Linked Data. The slides for the talk can be found here. TED have not made this talk available for viewing yet. However part of the focus of the talk was around linking raw scientific data with existing linked data sets already out ... http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/02/08/linked-data-and-scientific-publishing/ Highly innovative organizations face a constant challenge to process a flood of good ideas, both generated by employees and submitted from outside. In the wake of Google's Tenth Birthday Competition, this talk describes how innovation networks apply principles found in life's origins and evolution to "processing innovation." Debates about how ... http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/01/30/designing-innovation-networks-on-lifes-origins-and-evolution/ An excellent article by Eric Reis over on his blog in which he talks about "why PHP won" in his web application development over other (web scripting) languages: As a language, it's inelegant. Its object-orientation support is "much improved" - which is another way of saying it's been horrendous for ... http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/01/21/why-php-won/ I'm always wary of politicians, and political speeches, and yet Obama's inauguration speech left me feeling hopeful ... I guess only time will tell though. http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/01/21/obamas-inauguration-speech/ Last weekend waf fairly tumultuous it began with me discovering that my kitchen had been completely flooded, and ended with me winning my first ever archery medal. I'll be honest I was pretty upset when I discovered my kitchen was under four inches of water, fortunately my younger brother was ... http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/01/21/wolverines-archers-first-shoot-of-2009/ Paula Scher looks back at a life in design (she's done album covers, books, the Citibank logo ...) and pinpoints the moment when she started really having fun. Look for gorgeous designs and images from her legendary career. It's a wonderful talk, inspiring in many ways http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/01/19/great-design-is-serious-not-solemn/ As financial institutions melt down, you've probably heard a thing or two about credit--who gets it, from whom, and what it means for the global economy. There are very few bright spots in today's economic environment, but the good news is that in many parts of the world, loans of ... http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/01/13/changing-china-one-loan-at-a-time/ This is an old TED talk but always an inspiring one. Paul Moller talks about the future of personal air travel -- the marriage of autos and flight that will give us true freedom to travel off-road. He shows two things he's working on: the Moller Skycar (a jet ... http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/01/13/mollers-skycar/ Alan and Fiona gave me a copy of Being Alive for Christmas. It's an anthology of poems dealing with many themes and written by many many different authors. It is a wonderful gift and one that I'm really enjoying :) Within the covers of this book I found a poem ... http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/01/04/jerusalem-james-fenton/